Faith - Lesley Pearse [76]
‘I’ve been something of a nomad,’ Stuart said. ‘But I’ll be back here for a while now, and I’ll keep in touch.’
She got up out of her chair stiffly. ‘Do what you can for Laura,’ she pleaded, putting one hand on his arm. ‘She’s lost the two people she cared about most, and I know how that feels.’
‘Well, hello, David, you old bastard!’ Stuart exclaimed when he walked into the bistro in Putney and found his old friend already there, sitting at a table. David was the same age as himself, but despite being a lawyer, he had the look of a sportsman: clear, tanned skin, muscular and very fit. ‘You look great – receding hair makes you look even more intelligent.’
David laughed and stood up. ‘Glad you’ve lost none of your incisive wit. Good to see you again.’
David already had a beer and he ordered one for Stuart. They told the waiter they’d order food later.
Stuart had met David Stoyle on the plane flying out to Columbia back in the eighties. Stuart was going as a joiner to a new site the oil company had acquired in Bogotá. David was one of the company lawyers. Had they not been given seats next to each other, they would probably never have met, much less become close friends, because management and the manual workforce didn’t normally socialize.
David was from a rarefied white-collar world. He’d been to public school and university, and though not a snob or a stuffed shirt, he normally mixed with people from a similar background to himself. But stuck on a long flight side by side with someone of the same age, both a little apprehensive about the unknown quantity of their destination, they soon got talking.
By the time they got off the plane with thick heads from too much whisky, their friendship was sealed. They had discovered they shared the same passion for climbing and were both adventurers at heart. David loved rugby, sailing, cycling and running. Stuart loved football, playing the guitar and chess. Yet their different interests and backgrounds didn’t matter, and they knew that they would be searching each other out constantly in the next few months. As Stuart said at the time, ‘We’re mates now.’
Back then David had a fine head of light brown curly hair which became attractively blond-streaked in the sun. He was a good-looking man with a fine physique and bright blue eyes that won him many female admirers. Over the years Stuart had taken a mischievous delight in pointing out that his friend, who had so many great advantages over lesser mortals, was actually losing his hair. But then David took equal pleasure in teasing Stuart about his skinny legs.
‘So what’s the real reason for insisting on meeting up with me tonight?’ David asked after they’d caught up with some of their news and ordered steak. ‘I know there is one or you would have invited yourself to my house. Julia thinks you want to lure me away to the Third World but are too cowardly to do your presentation in front of her.’
Stuart laughed. Julia had been David’s girlfriend when they met; now they were married with two children, Abigail and William. David was always jetting off to some far-flung place with his work, and as Stuart was often there too, as project manager, Julia jokingly blamed him for making her a grass widow.
‘Julia can rest assured I have no interest in luring you away anywhere,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to point me in the right direction to get help for a friend.’
As concisely as he could, Stuart explained about Laura and how he hoped he could find grounds for an appeal against her conviction. ‘I’ve already been to see her lawyer in Edinburgh, and quite frankly I think the man is a tosser. I kind of hoped you might be up for rescuing a damsel in distress.’
‘Company law is quite different to criminal law, Stu,’ David said, and Stuart noticed that when he frowned two