Five
Culshaw’s threat was pure bluster, I was certain, but still it rattled me, so badly that I forgot about what I’d been doing and let the linguine boil over. By the time I’d taken it off the hob so that I could wipe off the spillage with a tea towel, an unwelcome smell told me that the sauce had burned itself into the base of its pan. ‘Bugger!’ I shouted, just as Tom came into the kitchen.
‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ he asked.
‘Dinner’s wrong. I think I’ve ruined it. Smell that sauce.’
Without a word, he took another pan from its place in the rack, lifted the original off the heat and emptied its contents into the replacement. Then he turned down the ring from level three, where I’d mistakenly set it, to one, and set the meal back to cooking. He looked at the rest of it and murmured, ‘We haven’t lost very much. It’ll be okay.’
I looked at him and thought of one of my favourite movies, Con Air, and the part where Agent Larkin asks Cameron Poe what he’s going to do for him and Cameron replies, ‘What do you think I’m gonna do? I’m gonna save the fuckin’ day!’
‘Thank you, Cameron,’ I said, and Tom laughed. It’s his absolute favourite movie, the one we watch together on shit weather nights in the winter. We know it so well that we can recite some of the dialogue ourselves, although he omits the F-words.
‘Put the bunny back in the box,’ he countered, with pauses, just like Nicolas Cage. (Real name Nicholas Coppola, but he changed it because he didn’t want to be known simply as the Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew: that’s how much of a movie anorak I am, and why I am in constant demand for L’Escala quiz night teams.)
If it hadn’t been for Tom I’d probably have freaked out when the sauce caught, and run screaming for the inevitable takeaway pizzas, but as it turned out, dinner went fine, and if anyone else noticed that it was well done and that the linguine was a little beyond al dente they had the very good sense to keep quiet about it.
Tom and Janet took on the waiting duties, with wee Jonathan, cheered up after apologising for swearing and being reprieved, helping out by setting the table. That left me free to have a drink with Conrad on the terrace, and to update him on Duncan’s triumphant phone call.
‘He thinks he can buy me, does he?’ he mused, when I told him about his pay rise. ‘He can stick that up his fundament. I’m very well paid as it is, and Audrey and I already have a bonus in place, in the form of share options in the Gantry Group. Susie’s thinking is if we help her run the company profitably, we should share in it. Don’t worry, though, I’ll stay, for her sake and the kids, but also to make sure he doesn’t try to make good on that threat.’
‘But what can you do about it if he does?’
He took a swig of his Saaz beer, straight from the bottle. ‘Whatever I reckon is necessary.’ His eyes went somewhere, but just when I thought he was lost in thought, he started humming an old Rod Stewart tune. (Sorry, let me rephrase that in case you thought I was being ageist; an old song by Rod Stewart.)
All the way through dinner we could hear fireworks exploding, but since San Juan is the summer solstice celebration, I knew that the real action wouldn’t begin until it began to grow properly dark, and so we didn’t have to rush. The sun was pretty much down by the time we were finished, and when I led everyone, including our Charlie, who is a brave, if slightly dim-witted, dog, upstairs to the top floor and through my bedroom to the terrace. It was something of a treat for the crew; my suite is the only part of the house that really is mine alone. The days when Tom could come crashing in are over. Now, he and I have an agreement that he knocks on my door and I knock on his.
The terrace offers a panoramic view of the entire bay, from L’Escala all the way round to Ampuriabrava, Santa Margarita and Rosas, so we were able to watch four firework displays, simultaneously, most of them far enough away for the sound to reach us a few seconds after we’d seen the multicoloured lights.
The kids loved it all. I’d have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been preoccupied with the shock of Susie’s new husband, and I’m sure that Conrad felt the same. By that time my greatest worry wasn’t Culshaw, or Susie; as far as I was concerned she’d made the mistake and she’d have to live with it. No, I was worried about how Janet and wee Jonathan were going to take it, and how it might affect my son’s relationship with them. With that guy as the official consort in Monaco, and him having history with Tom, I would worry about him every minute he was there. As for the others, I knew already that wee Jonathan hated his new stepfather, and as for Janet … in the brief time I’d spent at Susie’s when he was there, I’d picked up vibes from him that I didn’t like, the sort that would make me careful not to leave any adolescent daughter of mine alone with the man.
The pyrotechnics carried on unabated past eleven o’clock, as Tom had said they would. I called a halt around the half-hour. It was curfew time for the youngest member, and also I could see that they were getting ready for action under the floodlights that lit up the concert platform near the old Greek wall. Wee Jonathan didn’t protest; he was tired and, also, he knew he’d used up all that day’s leeway.
I stuck a metaphorical finger up to assess the weather, and decided that the temperature would not drop much during the night. Tom and Janet had both donned T-shirt and jeans for dinner and I decided that they’d be fine like that. ‘Come on,’ I told them when we were back downstairs, and after Tom had fed Charlie, ‘let’s go … unless you’ve changed your minds, that is.’ They both looked at me as if I was dafter than the dog.
As we left the house, I decided that if I was going to introduce them to adulthood, I might as well go all the way. Also, I’d skipped coffee after dinner and I felt like a fix, and so, instead of heading straight for the beach, I took us down instead to the square. The four café restaurants there can seat over three hundred people at their outside tables, and I knew that earlier, punters would have had to queue until one became free. As midnight approached, they were all still busy, but the frenzy was over and we found a vacant spot in Can Coll. I asked for an Americano with a little cold milk on the side, and a glass of the decent house white. The kids each copied my coffee order, but didn’t push their luck by asking for wine as well.
‘I liked the linguine sauce, Auntie Primavera,’ Janet ventured as the waiter returned with a laden tray.
‘Yeah, Mum,’ Tom chipped in. ‘Top form.’ He paused. ‘Can we cook tomorrow night, Janet and me?’
‘Tomorrow’s Saturday,’ I pointed out. Our norm is to eat out on weekend evenings, and I’d kept up the habit while the Monaco Three had been with us. ‘Do it one night next week, if you like.’
‘We might not be here then,’ Janet said. ‘I’d a call on my mobile from Mum, just before dinner. She said she’s coming back early and that she’s going to ask Conrad to take us home, on Monday or Tuesday.’ She frowned. ‘She said she wasn’t sure when their flight would land, since it was a long way, but that she’d let me know as soon as she did, and she knew for sure when we could come. I don’t understand that. It’s not a long flight from Scotland to Nice Airport. Has she really been in Scotland?’
‘Isn’t that what she told you? That she had to go there to run her business for a month?’
‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘It’s just funny, that’s all.’
‘Maybe something came up in the business,’ I suggested, ‘and she had to go somewhere else. Life isn’t always predictable.’
‘Ours is,’ Tom commented, as he added some milk to his coffee.
I laughed. ‘Does that concern you?’ I asked, changing the subject swiftly. ‘If it does we could always do unpredictable things.’
‘Could we go to America to see Jonny play on the tour next week?’ he shot back.
Jonny Sinclair (Big Jonathan) is his cousin, his Aunt Ellie’s older son from her first marriage. He’s a promising young pro golfer, and he’d lived with us for a while a couple of years earlier, while he was starting out on tour. He’d won his fir
st tournament, made some very decent money in Europe since then, some of it from a second win, in Italy, played all four rounds in the US Open, finishing in the top fifteen, and was teeing up again in a week’s time in Pennsylvania, on a sponsor’s invitation secured for him by Brush Donnelly, his reclusive but very effective agent.
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘It would be a lot of cost and a lot of hassle, and if we did go there, Jonny would be too busy to spend any time with us. Maybe next year we’ll go to the Masters, if he gets an invitation, and if it fits with the school holidays.’
‘Auntie Primavera.’ Janet’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. ‘There’s a man at a table in the next restaurant and he’s looking at you.’
‘Should I be pleased?’ I asked. ‘Does he look like a rock star?’
Tom covered his mouth with his hand. ‘Yes, but think Steven Tyler,’ he muttered. We’d watched a DVD of Be Cool a few weeks before, and Tom had been amazed that anyone could look like the Demon of Screamin’ and still be alive. ‘Next time they film a Terry Pratchett book,’ he’d suggested, ‘he should play Death.’
Casually, I looked around the square, then over my left shoulder. Yes, there was a dude not far away and he had been looking at me. I knew this by the intensity with which he was examining the façade of the church. It happens if you’re a woman on her own, or even with a couple of kids. Men sometimes eye you up and down; when you catch them at it, almost invariably they look away and pretend that they hadn’t been. When they’re bold and persist, you frost them until they desist … unless, of course, you don’t want them to desist, but I hadn’t come across one of them in many a year.
He didn’t look a bit like the Aerosmith front man, apart maybe in the size of his chin, and yes, he had high cheekbones too, accentuated by the glasses he wore, round like John Lennon’s but bigger and with blue-tinted lenses. He was a lot younger too, probably around my age, but from Tom’s perspective, within the human species that fits comfortably into the box labelled ‘old’ … for everyone other than me. His close-cropped hair was fairish with only a few streaks of grey, and he wasn’t skeletal like Mr Tyler, not in the slightest. In fact he looked as if he might have been something of an athlete once, and still kept in shape.
I turned away from him as casually as I’d glanced in his direction, and back to my young companions.
‘Do you know him?’ Janet asked, switching into French.
‘No,’ I replied, in the same tongue, ‘not at all.’ And yet, even as I spoke I realised that there was something there, the merest hint of a possibility that, in fact, I did. But if that was the case, I couldn’t place him and I wasn’t about to spend any time trying. Thousands of people pass through our village, year after year, and come back, so it was entirely possible that I’d seen him before. Instead I devoted myself to the coffee, and the white wine, which was actually rather better than decent.
The fireworks were still blazing away as my watch passed midnight, although they were more sporadic than they had been, and sounds of music had started to drift up from the beach. Tom and Janet were fidgeting in their seats, having finished their coffee, and I’d paid the bill, but I was not about to rush my wine. Not being a wholly irresponsible mother and guardian, I did check them for signs of tiredness, but they looked more awake than I felt. The stress of earlier in the evening had left its mark on me, and I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to get better any time soon. There were going to be ructions when the Monaco youngsters learned what their mother had been and gone and done, and while I wouldn’t be there to see them, I expected to hear about them very soon, as Janet and I had taken to exchanging emails on a regular basis.
‘Come on, then,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and hear how Bob Marley’s torch-bearers sound. But first, I will make a pit stop. I suggest that you two do the same.’ In recent years, the agency that manages all the beaches in Catalunya has installed a few portaloos for the summer months, but they’re not places I choose to visit when there’s another option.
They took my advice, then we headed off. I glanced to my left as we did so and saw that the guy who’d been appraising me earlier had gone before us. I felt a strange pang of disappointment, as if I’d wanted him to give me a wink, so I could blow him out, but it seemed that I hadn’t come up to scratch. God, Primavera, I sighed inwardly, when Steven fucking Tyler doesn’t fancy you, it has to be all downhill after that.
I cheered up, though, when we met Ben and Tunè at the top of the hill, heading in the same direction as us. ‘Mum’s babysitting,’ he explained at once, adding, ‘and dog-sitting. Cher and Mustard hate the noise.’ He ruffled Tom’s hair, and slung an arm round Janet’s shoulders. ‘Hey, you two, all grown up and heading for a night on the beach.’
‘Not all night,’ I told him, quickly.
Tunè grinned at me mischievously. ‘They can stay with us, Primavera, if you want to go home early.’ She was only pulling my chain, but it felt like another kick in the morale.
‘What’s early for you is late for us,’ I countered.
‘I know, really,’ she said, ‘but for us it’s a change to have a whole night to ourselves. You must remember that, from when Tom was three.’
I smiled and nodded. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t, because I had no such memory. When Tom was three, I was raising him unhappily on my own and plotting my irrational revenge on his father, having cut myself off from all my friends and family, even from my beloved old dad and mum, missing the last years of her life in the selfish process.
Nine years on, I’m a different woman, and I roundly dislike the other one. Most of the time she was an absolute bitch.
As always, I had my phone in my bag, but the last thing I expected was that it should ring at that time of night. I took it out and looked at the display, which shone brightly and told me that the caller was ‘Susie mobile’. I almost sent it to Voicemail, but relented and accepted it, slowing my pace a little as the kids walked on with Ben and Tunè. A few seconds later I wished I’d just rejected it.
‘Can’t come between me and my man, girlfriend,’ she growled. ‘You tried it once before and it didn’t work.’
‘Excuse me,’ I hissed, ‘I’m not having that from the woman who came to visit and fucked my husband, in my bed, the minute my back was turned.’
‘I took him from you, though,’ she chuckled, slurring her words, ‘and don’ tell me you didn’t try for a comeback.’
She sounded drunk and venomous and I reacted badly. ‘If I had done,’ I’m afraid I sneered … an ugly word for an ugly sound, ‘I’d have had him, honey. He only ever saw one thing in you and you’re sitting on it right now.’ She’d flipped my switch. But for the music from the beach, I’m sure the kids would have heard me. ‘You waved your child in his face. That’s why he married you; it wasn’t you he was in love with, it was her that he’d put inside you. Like an idiot, I hid mine. If I hadn’t …’ I stopped myself from yelling at her.
‘Sour fucking grapes, Primavera,’ she mumbled. ‘You just can’t stand to see me happy, can you?’
‘Listen,’ I retorted, ‘you’re pissed as a rat, and you’ll probably have forgotten all about this in the morning, but what I actually cannot stand is to see you unhappy, and that’s what you’re going to be if you don’t get rid of that arsehole right now. Even worse, your children will be miserable, because they can’t stand him either.’
‘Another black lie, you fucking tart.’
‘Yeah, well, you phone wee Jonathan tomorrow and tell him who his new daddy is and see what sort of a reaction you get. He was in tears tonight when he told me he thought Duncan was back, and they weren’t tears of joy.’
‘’Cos you’ve poisoned him against him.’
‘Bollocks!’ I wasn’t at my most articulate. ‘Speaking of poison, who poured you the drink you’ve just had too much of? No,’ I said before she could reply, ‘that was a rhetorical question. I know bloody hell who did. In case you’ve forgotten in your euphoric state,
you are recovering from chemotherapy for a form of cancer that is quite likely to damage your liver. The last thing that clown should be doing is giving you any alcohol, and as for getting you bloody trousered … Jesus Christ, Susie, you’d better employ a food-taster from now on.’
‘God,’ she said, contemptuously. ‘You really hate him, don’t you?’
‘I won’t deny that. I detest the man, I loathe him, and okay, hate will cover it as well. I know he’s spun you a story, Suse, because he phoned me a few hours ago, to tell me what it was, and to rub my nose in it … or so he thought. Everything I told you about his attempt to blackmail me is true, and I can even prove it.’
‘You might have to, girl, for Duncan says that if you repeat it,’ she hiccupped, ‘Duncan says we’re going to sue you for slander, or libel or whatever. He says we’ll put you in the fucking poorhouse, girl.’
‘Is that so?’ I laughed. ‘He thinks he can use your money to intimidate me? In that case, Mrs Culshaw, you tell your precious husband to bear this in mind. The version of me that he invented in his pathetic pseudo-novel might be a hell of a lot closer to the mark than he realises.’
‘What the fu … does that mean?’
‘It means,’ I told her, ‘that he has no idea who he’s taking on, or what could happen to him if he threatens my boy and me. Now, I’ve had enough of this shit. Call me tomorrow, Susie, when your headache subsides and you can think like the intelligent, rational woman that I know you are underneath all this nonsense. And please, for your children’s sake if nobody else’s, do not drink any more.’
Just as I ended the call, I heard her say, ‘Fuck off!’
Janet and Tom were waiting for me at the foot of the slope at the start of the boardwalk that runs behind the beach. Ben and Tunè were in the distance, heading for the music with another couple. ‘Who was that?’ my son asked.
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