A Perfect Husband

by Hilary Boyd

  ‘Lucky?’

  David shrugged his big shoulders. ‘Well, lucky to do what I do in such an ideal place.’ He chuckled. ‘Sorry, getting a bit carried away, but I love my work.’

  ‘That is lucky.’

  He pulled a face. ‘Any progress on that front for you?’

  Lily shook her head. ‘I’m doing what Helen suggested, learning to touch-type. It’s not so bad – repetitive, of course, but I’m already getting better.’ She paused. ‘David, I wanted to talk to you without Helen around.’

  He nodded. She had his attention.

  ‘I know it’s not easy for you both, having me staying open-ended like this. It would be my worst nightmare: the guest who comes for a week and stays ten years.’ She laughed to cover her awkwardness.

  ‘Ten years, is it? Well, at least I can manage my expectations,’ he joked.

  ‘I wouldn’t impose if I felt I had another option. I just worry, if it goes on too long . . .’ She stopped, leaning against the workbench, overwhelmed by her situation. ‘You will tell me, won’t you, if things are getting too bad? I know Helen’ll grin and bear it and say nothing until she actually stabs me. It’s not a secret that we’ve never been particularly close, but I don’t want it to get to that point.’

  David came round the workbench, resting his bottom against it alongside Lily, both of them looking out towards the setting sun – now a burnished haze on the horizon.

  ‘It’s not just you makes her bad-tempered, Lily.’

  ‘Kit, you mean?’

  He nodded.

  ‘She never talks about him to me. I feel I can’t ask.’

  ‘No, well . . . I wish she’d see him. I know she says she can’t, but the guilt of not doing so is eating her up. It’s almost as if she resents me for going.’

  ‘It’s a terrible situation.’

  Her brother-in-law didn’t reply, and for a while they leaned there together, in companionable silence.

  ‘But you will tell me . . .’

  He gave her a wry smile. ‘We’re not going to chuck you out, Lily.’

  Lily, uneasy about everything in her life these days, gave up trying to exact even this small promise. ‘Shall we walk back, or do you need to stay and work?’ she asked.

  Chapter 27

  Dillon dragged his bike listlessly up the stairs of his house and rested it against the wall in the corridor outside his flat. He dreaded coming home now, knowing that Gabriela wouldn’t be there. His fiancée had been gone nearly three weeks, but she was still being evasive about when she might return.

  ‘How is your mum?’ he’d asked last night, when she’d finally answered one of his many attempts to get hold of her – he reckoned she picked up on about one in six of his calls. This time there was a lot of noise in the background. It sounded like a bar and Dillon was immediately jealous.

  ‘She’s okay,’ Gabriela replied noncommittally.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Me and Bruna are meeting friends.’

  Did she sound drunk, or was he imagining it? ‘Obviously not a good time for a chat, then.’

  ‘Sorry? I can’t hear you. Hold on, I’ll go outside.’ There was a pause, the sound of footsteps, a door opening, then she went on, ‘What were you saying?’

  The date of their wedding had come and gone, unmarked by any communication from Gabriela. When he couldn’t get hold of her, Dillon had got drunk, phoned Freddy’s mobile, listened to the disconnected sound, then hurled his own across the room, cracking the screen. He still hadn’t forgiven Gabriela for running off like that, for not supporting him. It was as if it were only her pain, her problem.

  ‘I said it’s probably not a good time, if you’re with people.’

  ‘It’s okay, I’m outside now. Go ahead.’

  Dillon hesitated, upset that she didn’t seem to want a proper conversation. Like she was waiting for him to get on and explain why he’d rung, impatient to go back to her friends.

  ‘I didn’t have anything much to say, just fancied a chat, find out what’s going on in your life.’ He knew his tone was bordering on snippy, but he didn’t care.

  ‘Things are not bad,’ she said. But her voice was flat, he felt she was holding back.

  ‘So your mum’s calmed down?’

  ‘Mamãe’s never calm.’ A small laugh. ‘Not easy.’

  We can’t seem to communicate any more, he thought, with despair. She used to rattle on nineteen to the dozen, never stopped. ‘What’s the matter, Gaby?’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter. Why do you say that?’

  ‘Sounds like you can’t wait to get off the phone.’

  He heard an exasperated sigh, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Dillon. I’m standing in the middle of a noisy street.’

  ‘You said it was okay to talk.’

  ‘I meant if you have something important to say, then I can listen.’

  She sounded thoroughly irritated with him. ‘Would you rather I didn’t call you any more?’

  ‘No. No, of course not.’

  ‘So tell me what’s happening. I know you’re upset about the wedding, but is it more than that? I need to know.’

  He waited for her answer in trepidation, instantly regretting his question and wishing he could suck it back from the ether.

  ‘I can’t talk now, querido, I’ll phone you tomorrow,’ she said, sounding distracted, and was gone.

  Dillon was left, mobile to his ear, feeling almost breathless. He wanted to ring back immediately, but he knew there was no point. Running through their conversation in his head, he tried to pinpoint a moment of real connection between them. But there had been none. She’d called him ‘querido’, and that was something, he supposed, but the word had held no warmth.

  After gulping down half a bottle of cheap red wine, Dillon brought up his mother’s number on his phone and, without thinking twice, pressed the cracked screen – a reminder of all that was wrong with his life. She answered before the second ring.

  ‘Dillon!’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘How are you, darling? God, I’ve missed you so much.’

  Dillon felt immediately guilty, remembering the huge number of calls his mother had made in the previous weeks and the curt, angry one-liners he’d texted back in response. ‘Gabriela’s left me.’

  He heard an intake of breath and perversely enjoyed his moment of drama.

  ‘Left you? What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s gone back to Brazil, Mum. She seemed to think I’d made the whole thing up about Freddy. Said it reminded her that she found me tricky.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. She’ll be back, surely.’

  ‘Really? Doesn’t seem like it to me. She’s been gone for weeks and now she hardly wants to talk to me. Each time I ask when she’s coming home, she avoids the question.’

  Despite his resentment towards his mother, he was so happy to be talking to her again. If she had missed him, he had missed her just as much.

  ‘Maybe she just needs to get over the shock. It’s a big deal for a girl, having her wedding cancelled. She’ll be angry . . .’

  ‘I’m angry too. Everyone seems to think it’s just Gaby who’s upset, but I’m upset too, really upset. Honestly, Mum, this whole thing is a shambles. How could you let Freddy take all your money like that? Even if you didn’t know he was gambling, that was a pretty dumb thing to do.’ He paused for breath but couldn’t stop the rant, so long stored up. ‘I mean, where did you think he was every night? It’s like you were playacting this perfect marriage when both of you were on totally different planets.’

  His mother went silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I know. I was stupid. I trusted him.’

  The wind was taken out of Dillon’s sails as he heard the pain in his mother’s voice. ‘How are you managing?’ he asked in a gentler tone.

>   ‘Okay. I’m learning to touch-type so I can get a job.’

  Dillon had a sudden flashback to his mother walking into that swanky restaurant near where he worked, her clothes designer-expensive, her hair beautifully cut, the maître d’ fawning all over her because she was such a good customer. Touch-typing? God, he thought, how the mighty are fallen. ‘Oh, Mum . . .’

  ‘I’m okay, Dillon.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘I’m resourceful, I’ll manage. And . . .’

  She stopped and he waited for her to go on.

  ‘And, well, I’m sure things will work out. It’s lovely here in the spring. You forget, living in London, how beautiful the countryside is.’

  Dillon was quite sure that hadn’t been what she’d been about to tell him, and her enthusing about the countryside – a woman who had previously shown little interest in anything beyond the congestion zone? She’d sounded flustered. But he didn’t press her.

  ‘I’m so sorry about Gaby,’ she was saying, ‘but don’t hassle her, let her come round. She really loves you.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . . good to talk to you, Mum. Maybe I’ll visit one weekend, catch up with Helen and David. Seems like an age since I saw them.’

  Chapter 28

  Freddy turned his head a little, surprised by his darkening tan, which was reflected in the mirror behind the smart apartment-block reception in Portomaso Marina, five minutes north of St Julian’s Bay and his grandmother’s flat. He was sure the site used to be a beach popular with the locals – sharp rocks and a small strip of sand, if memory served him right. Had Nanna Pina called it ‘Shingles’ or something like that? He couldn’t remember. Anyway, the developers had changed all that.

  After only a few weeks in the sun, he looked like a native Maltese. He felt at home on the island, as if part of him had stayed there from his childhood, kept the place warm for him. He liked the people and that odd mix of British and Maltese that the islanders had made into something uniquely their own. He thought he’d muscled up a bit too, repairing the damage from his somewhat degenerate London lifestyle with the daily swimming and walking.

  He walked the ten minutes to the open-air pool by the water’s edge in Balluta every morning, before he’d even had breakfast, doing a hundred lengths as the sun rose across the sea. Then went back every evening for another hundred, in the setting sun, before supper. It was like meditation, Freddy found – a routine that bookended his days and gave him a sense of purpose.

  The rest of his day – after he’d dealt with the endless, irritating emails about his financial affairs – he would fill with activities such as sightseeing in the capital, Valletta, only a cheap bus ride away.

  He wandered around the old town, visited the stunning cathedral, sat at a pavement café with a beer or a cup of coffee in the sunshine. Or he might walk up to the seventeenthcentury Spinola Palace in St Julian’s, take a short ferry ride from the north tip of the island to Gozo, where his greatgrandfather had farmed a smallholding. Usually someone who was bored to death at the prospect of a ruin or a museum, Freddy found himself becoming fascinated by this strand of his heritage.

  He had to do something to keep busy, because he’d thought that by fleeing to a Mediterranean island, he would be conveniently separated from the snares and temptations of the metropolis. But he was much mistaken. There seemed to be a gambling joint on almost every corner of the island and in all the bigger hotels.

  Now, making his way towards the lift in the apartment block, he realized he was looking forward to seeing Shirley again. A social animal and a serial bonder – as Lily liked to call him – Freddy had managed his time so completely alone in Malta only because he’d been in shock. Anyone looking at his current lifestyle might think he was having the time of his life. But he felt like a fraud, a mere shell of a man. He had to wind himself up every morning to go through his daily paces.

  He missed Lily so much that he could hardly bear to think about her. When he did, he convinced himself that his course of action in not having any contact with her was for the best. Hearing her voice, listening to her tears and her assertions that she loved him would undo him, of that he was certain. No, he would rehabilitate himself, go back shiny and new, the husband she deserved.

  Shirley Solaris opened the door of her third-floor apartment with an anxious frown. ‘Oh, Freddy, come in . . . I’m so happy you’re here. You’ll know what to do.’

  The American, a well-preserved woman in her early sixties, was dressed in pristine white Capri pants, a broad-striped, loose blue and white cotton T-shirt, expensive gold chain necklace and patent-leather FitFlops, her toenails painted a bright coral. She dragged Freddy unceremoniously through the spacious sitting room and out onto the balcony, which looked over the marina and the gleaming rows of yachts towards the Hilton on the opposite side of the water.

  ‘You see?’ She pointed, squatting down and peering intently into the corner. Freddy, squinting in the bright sun, saw a small bird perched on the limestone floor of the terrace.

  ‘He must be wounded or sick,’ Shirley said. ‘He’s been there all morning. Do you think he’s a baby? He can’t seem to fly.’ She looked up at Freddy beseechingly, and he thought she might cry. ‘What shall I do?’

  Freddy, whose knowledge of birds was limited to those he found on his plate, preferably with a sauce, pulled a face. The bird, brown and speckled with a long beak and what Freddy, in his ignorance, considered rather over-large, bright eyes, was darting its head from side to side, clearly extremely nervous of all the attention.

  ‘I called Gori, our shiftless janitor, but he hasn’t got back to me.’ She stood up. ‘We can’t just leave him there, Freddy.’

  Freddy wasn’t sure why not – wouldn’t the thing just potter off as soon as Shirley stopped freaking it out? – but he tried to look as if he were considering the options. Do they have the RSPCA in Malta? he wondered, deciding the British influence would insist upon it. But does a bird count as an animal?

  Shirley, with her large, very blue eyes, sunglasses pushed to the top of her smooth, honeycomb-coloured hair, was waiting.

  ‘Is a bird an animal?’ he asked, quite keen to know the answer.

  Shirley laughed. ‘Well, I guess so. Why do you want to know?’

  He explained about the RSPCA.

  ‘You’re so smart!’ She looked delighted with this perfectly obvious piece of wisdom.

  ‘I’ll find the number,’ Freddy offered, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for his phone. He’d been hoping for a nice midday gin on the terrace, a bit of lunch, perhaps, in one of the many restaurants – none of which he could afford right now – in the marina complex. Not this palaver over a stupid bird. He’d never seen himself as the knight-in-shining-armour type, far from it, and the way Shirley was waiting eagerly for his next move was positively disconcerting.

  Freddy had met her on the ferry to Gozo. He’d been sitting alone at one of the wooden bench tables on the deck, basking in the Mediterranean sun and enjoying the stiff breeze that accompanied the sailing. He hadn’t slept well the previous night, anxious to the point of nausea about his future, and was almost dozing, not noticing Shirley among the other passengers until she sat down opposite him and asked him if he knew the ferry times for the returning boats.

  Although Freddy had not been in the mood for company, by the time they arrived in Gozo Shirley was his new best friend. She insisted they share a taxi to Mġarr ix-Xini Bay, a peaceful cove she knew, off the tourist map until Brangelina had used it as a location for a film the previous year. How could Freddy refuse? They had swum off the dock in the chilly spring sea, then eaten fresh grilled bream and delicious fried potatoes in the beach café, waiting half the afternoon for the food to arrive, by which time both he and Shirley were thoroughly pissed.

  Now, as luck would have it, the apparently feckless concierge pitched up at the door before the SPCA – not royal, obviously –
had been summoned.

  ‘I take him,’ he said, eyeing Freddy with great suspicion as he scooped up the bird in his big fists, the little thing flapping and struggling inside.

  ‘Where?’ demanded Shirley. ‘Where will you take him?’

  ‘I take him to the beach.’

  ‘The beach?’ Shirley screeched.

  ‘Is a rock thrush, Sinjura Solaris. He have many friend on the rocks.’

  Freddy didn’t take the sullen Gori for a man particularly interested in nature or its inhabitants, or one to put himself out for anyone, let alone a stray bird. He pictured him stomping downstairs and surreptitiously bashing the poor thing – for which Freddy now had great sympathy, having taken an instant dislike to the concierge – on the head and slinging it into the trash before returning to his afternoon bottle of wine and rabbit ragù. Shirley obviously thought the same.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll take it.’

  Gori shrugged, said nothing, just held out his cupped palms to the American. But Shirley blenched and stepped back. ‘Freddy, can you? The feel of feathers makes me retch.’

  Oh, for God’s sake, he thought, reaching out and hoping the same didn’t apply to himself – he’d never held a bird. But the little thing felt pitifully small and fragile, fluttery and struggling against his skin. Much more of this, he thought, and it will die of fright.

  *

  The thrush safely delivered to a rock – where it stood twitching uncertainly – Shirley took Freddy, as a reward for his diligence, to a charming waterfront café, which served Italian food and where the maître d’ welcomed her with open arms. The prices were eye-watering, the seafood risotto delicious. The second bottle of Soave was well under way when Shirley, seated beside Freddy so that they could both take advantage of the view over the bay, started leaning in towards him, her blue eyes slightly glazed, her hand wandering over the white tablecloth to rest on his. Used as he was to being on the receiving end of harmless flirtation – as Lily had often pointed out – Freddy felt suddenly awkward with this older woman he hardly knew and gently pulled his hand from beneath hers, putting it firmly in his lap.