‘The day after …’
‘But you deserve an all-expenses-paid holiday. Remind me where you’re going … ?’
‘To Tuscany.’ My intention was to stay in a farmhouse – complete with swimming pool, patio, telescope and temperamental Fiat Uno – all owned by my aunt Liz. Liz had offered me the place after she got a last-minute booking cancellation. She knew I needed foreign solace, post-Patrick, but was suffering the usual cash-flow dramas.
‘Tuscany?’ he made it sound like a snake’s hiss. ‘The good news, Ru, is that I have a proposal for you. A very decent one.’
I narrowed my eyes into slits which I hoped said, ‘Don’t-mess-with-my-plans, Buddy.’
‘I propose this place, Ruby.’ He passed me a postcard with a shot of a very, very blue bay, surrounded by a Mediterranean-looking town or village. The swirly gold inscription said Greetings From Malta. The idyllic colours were deliciously unreal. The picture looked like it had been taken in 1955.
‘Turn it over. It’s from my sister-in-law Fiona. I just got a call from her. She’s been on holiday there, renting an apartment in a place called Bencini Bay. She says she saw Johnny Rigg having a Cisk in the apartment next door to hers, last night.’
‘Having a what?’
‘A Cisk,’ he said, pronouncing it chisk. It’s the local Maltese lager.’
‘Johnny Rigg?’
‘Yes. The long lost Johnny Rigg. In Malta.’
‘God. Do you think it’s true?’
‘Fiona’s daughter reckons it was him, too. And she should know. Her bedroom’s covered with Johnny Rigg posters. They saw him on the porch before he turned in.’
‘I see.’
‘So, as you’re about to go on holiday anyway, Ru, and as you did so well with Belle, I thought you could take your camera with you, and go to Malta instead.’ He clasped his hands together, as though this was a done deal. ‘It’s a beautiful apartment, Ruby, practically five star. Rustic. You’ll love it.’
‘…’
‘Ru, Fiona’s coming back to England today, and you can rent the apartment she was in …’
‘But …’
‘… It’s right next door.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you, Rod?’ He could not be serious.
Then again.
‘But, Rod, you know this celebrity thing …’
‘Of course, we’ll help you out financially.’
It’s not just that I didn’t want to miss out on Tuscany. The idea of spending my holiday chasing a movie star – who, on top of everything else, most likely wanted anonymity – sucked a very large and fat one.
‘Rod … that’s not a holiday. This movie-star-chasing thing …’
‘Ruby, I’ll be covering your costs …’ Tabloid purulence oozed from his pores like coke from a detoxing addict. ‘I’ll throw in a per deum and only deduct five days from your annual holidays, whether or not you find Rigg.’
‘I’m only taking seven days plus the weekend, Rod!’
‘Sorry, Ru. I need you down there. Your flight’s booked for tomorrow at midday, from Gatwick.’
I expected to fly into a barren island full of big fat Brits and Germans on package holidays, wearing Liam Gallagher hats and blow-up rubber duckies round their waists.
From the moment I stepped into the hot air outside Malta airport, though, the vibe was mellow. I was collected by a driver in a rusty yellow Mercedes whose ID card said he was called Joe Caruana and who ferried me under a bright blue sky into an open landscape. Pot-holed roads took us through shady avenues, past limestone churches with huge green domes and alongside shops with faded awnings. On the pavements, old women were gathered chatting and fanning themselves, while nearby, men stood around smoking like it was 1975.
We rounded a corner which revealed a glimmering coastline and horizon, then took a narrower road which led down to a bay, with colourful row boats bobbing on its still waters.
‘Next right for Bencini Bay Road,’ Joe called out in his singsong accent, as our tyres squealed around another corner and we pelted down a yet narrower street, swerving to avoid the odd stray cat and seminaked child. As I watched sun dancing on the water through the cracks between the buildings, I felt marginally less murderous.
Having paid and tipped Joe, I followed Rod’s instructions to ‘walk down the gravelly path at the side of the building’.
And there it was.
My des res for the week.
I dropped my suitcases to have a proper look.
It was rustic, to be sure. But not the five-star luxury Rod promised me. Not at all. In fact, it was more like three-star or plain old home stay. And far, far superior. The exterior was white. The front porch was woven with bougainvillaea. The front door was thirty seconds walk to the glistening sea.
Inside was cool, in both senses of the word. There was a mini chandelier in the living room, a floor mosaic in creams, ochres and greens, and a woolly three-piece suite. The yellowing Laminex and PVC setting in the kitchen looked seventies authentic, and the TV hissed so loudly when I turned it on that I jumped. Even the phone line had an exotic dial tone.
Glory be to the Evening News.
I switched off my mobile and took off my shoes to enjoy the cool tiles. Leaving the front door open to the warm evening air, I felt a light sea breeze filter out a bit of the London pollution in my head.
What a place.
For a fashion shoot location.
For a study of the Maltese lifestyle caught in a fast narrowing time warp.
For a gal.
To be alone.
I allowed myself just one thought about Patrick McColl.
He would have loved this.
More or less housebound by my Evil Johnny Rigg Mission, at least for the first few dutiful hours, I showered, changed and repaired to the porch to admire the view while I contemplated my options. In the end I ate lunch out there, bread and a sticky white cheese bought from the shop across the road, and enjoyed the solitude and late afternoon sun.
For want of anything better to do, I spent a couple of hours writing a cathartic letter to Patrick McColl, which I knew I’d never send. I told him I still can’t compose a letter which isn’t angry, that I can’t remember the ‘good times’, that I only have pointless thoughts about him making passionate love to Pippa behind my back, and sick questions about what she looks like, and if she’s similar to, or very different from me. I told him I wonder if he’d seen my shot of Belle or if he still checks the News for my by-line.
Less than four months ago, Patrick came home and told me about Pippa. Our brittle, mature discussion shattered into a shrill screaming match in moments as it became apparent that this Pippa woman was more than ‘just’ a fling.
‘How do you feel about her? Are you going to stay with her?’ I screamed across our living room.
‘I don’t know, Ruby,’ was his death knell response.
I found out last week that Pippa has moved in with him.
It never would have worked anyway. When he insisted we go to salsa classes together, I felt like we were turning into his ballroom-dancing parents.
When I found myself resisting the urge to call him a fucking bloody asshole c*nt, I sighed, re-read and shredded the letter.
As I pondered over my glass of duty-free white wine, Bencini Bay shimmered under a pale early evening sky, humidity glowing, a transparent half-moon rising and yellowy streetlights across water lighting up early. The smells of evening started. Someone was frying garlic nearby, making my mouth water, despite my snack. My holiday flat was wasn’t set in the rolling hills of Tuscany, but if I could just find Johnny Rigg and be done with this unspeakable business, it would very seriously do.
I grabbed my camera and ambled down to the shoreline to a large rock, listening to the water licking my toes. I wanted to photograph this place, with or without Johnny Rigg in the frame. I had about ten minutes of light left before sundown.
I raised my camera. Then froze.
Two m
en were approaching. And one was Mr Movie Star himself, the multi-millionaire male Miramax muse, Johnny Rigg, was approaching, crunching down the path to the flats, rounding the corner.
He was wearing fly-eye shades, and his floppy hair had been shorn to a number two, but he was instantly recognizable.
Mr Charisma incarnate.
He hadn’t spotted me. I zoomed in for maximum close-up and looked through my lens. I took a millisecond to admire the guy Johnny was with. He had curly sun-kissed hair and a big smile, and sounded like he was encouraging Johnny into something.
‘But you’d better hurry, mate,’ was all I heard him say.
Holding my breath, I started snapping, taking Johnny’s picture twice, getting him clean from the waist up. Then I carried on clicking, panning slowly, from left to right, as if I was taking an innocent 180-degree-stick-together-later-panorama extravaganza. As I stood out there on the rock I was confused about a lot, but very sure on one thing: this wasn’t why I’d become a photographer. Johnny Rigg kept walking towards the flats. As I lowered my camera, the blond guy started across the grass towards me.
‘Hey. What are you up to?’
I almost lost my footing on the moss as my body prepared for fight or flight while simultaneously trying to look casual. ‘Pardon?’
‘Sorry,’ he said, closer now, half-smiling, perhaps in amusement as I shakily headed off the rock to the sand. ‘Sorry.’ He put out a large tanned hand for me to balance on, which I accepted. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘What are you taking pictures of?’ He was much taller than me and he had a London accent.
‘These … apartments. They’re gorgeous. I’m staying in that one.’ I pointed.
‘Yeah. They are gorgeous.’ His skin was the colour of melted chocolate and he had heavy-lidded eyes.
‘When did you arrive?’ he asked, sizing me up. How good was his radar?
‘I just got in today.’ If I’d really been on my toes, I’d have adopted a Norwegian accent to complete my Demure Tourist disguise.
‘Holiday?’
‘Yeah.’ I nodded sincerely.
‘Right. Hi.’ The sun made his face tawny. ‘Sorry about … I was just …’ He didn’t finish his sentence as we watched Johnny Rigg disappear inside the flat. ‘I’m Stu.’
‘Hi, Stu.’
I listened to the evening.
‘So, you’re staying next door?’ he asked.
I nodded again. ‘Yep. I got in a few hours ago. From Gatwick.’ We walked towards the flats and stood awkwardly between his porch and mine.
‘Excellent.’ His face softened and I could have hugged him. His eyes were acid blue. Johnny Rigg emerged from their flat carrying a large black backpack over one shoulder.
‘I’m cutting it fine.’ He looked at his watch.
‘You’ll get there,’ Stu said. I looked from the movie star to his mate, my mouth open as I failed to think of something to say. The stillness was broken by the sound of a car horn honking.
‘That’ll be it, mate,’ Stu said.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll help you with your stuff.’
‘Thanks.’
Inside me, a voice was reminding me why I was here. To stitch up Johnny Rigg. I’d got my shots but I didn’t feel as victorious as might have been expected. This close up, Johnny Rigg looked more ‘human’ than plastic icon movie star. Moreover, his face exuded a funeral despair, as if an acting coach had commanded it.
Johnny turned and left, as if headed for the guillotine. Just as well I had my shots. The temptation to ask them where they were going was almost overwhelming. Stu looked at me. ‘See you.’ He disappeared round the corner with Johnny and I settled at the table on my front porch, to see what unfolded. I felt like a frog on a log, waiting. But I didn’t want to just disappear inside my apartment. I furtively hit ‘rewind’ on my film.
When Stu returned a few moments later, he stood by my porch, giving me a moment to admire his laid-back air, the clear eyes, the fuzzy blond hair on his forearms and his big bare feet, sprinkled with sand.
‘Enjoying the sunset?’ he asked.
‘Mmm …’ The view in general, actually.
‘Sorry about before. I was just …’
‘Don’t worry about it …’
‘Are you busy?’ he asked.
‘Not really.’ Smiling.
‘… because I’ve got some pastizzi and a few Cisks. If you want one …’
‘What’s a pastizzi?’ Had Johnny Rigg gone for good?
‘A Maltese pastry, if you’re hungry.’
I was and I’d be very happy to taste my first pastizzi. Not to mention inaugural Cisk. Even so, I was reluctant to dine with my prey. Or the friend of my prey. No matter how extremely cute he was. And I mean, extremely.
Stu returned from his flat with paper bags greasy with heat and two cans of Cisk. Snapping one can open, he offered it to me with a grin that flicked the switch on my internal combustion.
‘Thanks,’ I simpered as I accepted it, proving that it isn’t only men who can’t hang on to their hormones.
Johnny Rigg’s disappearance from London had come suddenly and lasted far longer than anyone had expected. The son of a celebrity shoe designer and a pouting former model from the sixties, one minute he was the leading thirty-something man in enough films to hold his own festival, the next his wife, a make-up artist called Sally, was unfaithful to him, with her personal trainer, a former Gladiator (once known as Vlad, now called Brad). It was a classic Pash And Dash. After their tryst, Vlad/Brad apparently ran straight from Sally’s arms to the nearest journo hack he could find, to do a tabloid tell-all, for a reportedly very large fee.
Less than two weeks after publication of Vlad/Brad’s imaginatively titled ‘My Two Nights Of Passion With Johnny Rigg’s Wife’, Johnny cancelled out of a string of promotional appearances for his latest blockbuster.
Then his agent pulled him out of a film commitment he was all but signed to.
Johnny Rigg was AWOL.
Stu pulled out a chair for me and passed me a diamond-shaped pastry. ‘Welcome to Bencini Bay,’ he smiled as he raised his glass.
‘Thanks.’
His blue eyes seemed to relax. ‘So what’s your name?’
‘Ruby.’ In the candle’s flickering, I noticed his broad, one could say noble, shoulders.
‘Go on then, take a bite.’ He motioned at my pastizzi.
I grinned and gulped my lager, then cracked the top off the crispy pastry, watching the steam funnel out. I made ‘Mmmmm-ing’ sounds and tried not to choke on my beer with confusion. ‘This is extraordinary.’
‘I love it here,’ he agreed.
‘It’s incredibly beautiful.’ I stopped chewing and we smiled. Then he stumped me. ‘So, Ruby, what do you do? Do you live in London?’
I’d let my guard down without a pat alibi in reserve. ‘Yeah. I’m … a greeting-card writer.’ What? ‘You know, I write those little ditties in greeting cards. “Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m in Malta and so are you.” That sort of thing.’ He’d never fall for it.
‘Excellent,’ he laughed. ‘I guess someone has to do it …’
‘Do you think it sounds like a strange job?’
‘No. Not at all. I just never met anyone …’
‘You never met a greeting-card writer?’
‘No, funnily enough.’
‘Well, you have now.’
While he talked, I envisaged the Evening News headline that would hit the streets in a day or two, thanks to my shots: ‘We Track Down Heart-Broken Superstar To Paradise Isle’. But where had Johnny Rigg gone?
As we chatted I could sense my camera at my elbow. Maybe it was too late. Perhaps I was already the tabloid shark I’d supposedly railed against becoming.
I knew my shots of Rigg could go towards buying me a pay rise at the News; and if I quit the News and sold it on the open market? A new car? A new car with a stereo and new tyres? A cheaper new car and new
wardrobe? A lot of the camera gear I still needed to go into freelance?
‘So, Ruby, let’s hear one of your favourite greeting-card messages.’
‘Pardon?’
‘You must have a favourite.’
‘Oh. OK. Let me think …’ This evening was too balmy for straight thinking. ‘All right. My favourite ever ditty – but it wasn’t one of mine …’
‘Go on then …’
‘OK.’ God. I cleared my throat. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you almighty, I wish your pyjamas were next to my nightie. Don’t get excited, don’t get red. I mean on your clothes line, not in bed …’
Ground, please eat me.
What I’d recited was a poem my sister Melanie and I said as kids. When I’d found it printed on a greeting card, I’d stuck it to the kitchen pinboard at home. At Patrick’s home. At what was now Patrick and Pippa’s home.
Stu grinned rather generously at my pathetic effort as I felt myself blushing. ‘You write them for a living?’ he asked, sounding incredulous. ‘OK. Another one …’
‘Oh no, Stu, don’t. I don’t want to think about work.’
So we changed the subject and did the safe tourist chat thing, about sunsets we’d known and places we’d seen. We treated ourselves to some duty-free Cointreau and we launched into a discussion about the ideal holiday.
My thoughts flitted between his travel tales and my not so Zen yen to touch his curls, to feel if they were as soft as they looked. By rights, I should have been on the phone to Rod hours ago, figuring out how to get my shots to the News picture desk for tomorrow’s morning deadline. Instead I sat idly chatting, laughing at Stu’s many crappy jokes, talking about home and panicking slightly as we figured out we had about one point five degrees of separation; his flatmate’s ex-girlfriend used to work at my sister’s old advertising agency.
‘So how long are you here for, Stu?’
‘The flat’s rented to the end of the month. You?’
‘Ten days.’
‘Have you been here before?’
‘Never. Have you?’
‘A few times. My parents have a timeshare at the other end of the island.’
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