by Emlyn Rees
Tony had kissed plenty of girls before, but never like this. He couldn’t explain how connected to her, how mixed with her, he’d felt. He hadn’t wanted it to end.
Rachel reached out and unfastened his tie, sliding the knot down, then pulling, letting it slither from around his neck like a snake.
‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘That’s more like the you I know. Not that I know you at all.’
The comment brought him back down to earth.
‘Can I keep it?’ she asked, scrunching the tie in her hand.
‘I didn’t think you liked it.’
‘I don’t.’ She held it up to her face, and inhaled the night through it. ‘But it will remind me of you.’
She kissed him hard on the lips.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she told him.
The finality of it threw him into a panic. ‘When can I see you again?’ he blurted out, forgetting everything he’d ever learnt about playing it cool with girls, instead wanting there to be no mistake about just how keen on her he was. He’d lived in this town with her for his whole life; they’d wasted enough time already.
‘You decide. Write me another letter.’
‘But what about Bill?’ he asked, remembering how close he’d come to intercepting the last one, nervous that he might somehow find the next.
Rachel looked around. Her gaze stopped at the vase by their feet. ‘Write to me here,’ she said, kneeling down and setting the vase upright and placing a flat stone on top. ‘And I can do the same to you. This is our place now.’
She kissed him then, a last time, before squeezing his hands so tight that they hurt. ‘Always be this romantic,’ she whispered into his ear.
Then she was gone, swallowed up by the dark.
Chapter IX
Mallorca, Present Day
The sunlight poured in through the skylight and the cold shower switched off automatically as Sam stepped out from beneath its jets. Foamy water gurgled down the drain and the smell of camomile body wash lingered in the air. Dripping on to the wet room’s white-tiled floor, Sam peered up close at his reflection in the backlit shaving mirror, noticing for the first time the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
Crow’s feet. That’s what his mother had called hers when he’d naively pointed them out as a child. He remembered how ancient he’d considered her at the time. Calculating their respective ages, he smiled. She’d probably only been in her thirties, the same as he was now. He thought about how much of her life had still stretched ahead of her then and wondered if she’d realised it herself. Or guessed how quickly it could pass.
Laughter lines, not crow’s feet, he decided, noticing how his smile had served to accentuate them. Either that or not enough sunscreen. But nothing to do with age, he reassured himself. Nor stress. He pushed back his hair and started to rub his temples with the balls of his thumbs, the way the doctor had shown him. Stress, he told himself, was all in the mind.
He walked through to check on Archie. Even though barely ten minutes had past since Sam had put him to bed and read him some stories, he was already asleep. Sam stood there, listening to him breathe, watching him curled up in the tiny bed with his toy panda. No matter how little sense the rest of Sam’s life sometimes made, Archie was there to remind him that there would always be a purpose to it all.
He thought back to that morning, to when Archie had sneaked into his and Claire’s bedroom and tugged at his fingers, whispering over and over, ‘Up, Daddy, up, up, up,’ until Sam had finally rolled out of bed. In the kitchen, they’d cut slices of bread into fish shapes, and then Sam had toasted them and covered them with scrambled eggs. He’d discovered Archie no longer liked his cereal in a plastic bowl, but in a china one. ‘Like a gwone up, Daddy.’ Sam smiled. But it was a sad kind of smile, because here, before his very eyes, with each new word Archie mastered, he knew his life was slipping by, hour by day by year.
‘Sweet dreams, my beautiful boy,’ he said softly, closing the door on his way out.
He towelled down as he walked through to his and Claire’s bedroom. The night was so humid, it was like wading through sweat. He picked up the remote and flicked the A/C up to max. Already, any benefit he’d derived from the cold shower had been lost. The air-conditioning unit clicked on in the wall behind him and started to hum.
Letting the towel fall around his ankles, he stood naked beneath the ceiling fan and stared through the damask curtain at the illuminated silhouettes of the yachts lined up stern to dock in the harbour of Puerto Portals below the village.
One of them, The Ark Angel, was Claire’s, a thirty-five-metre Benetti steel-hulled motor yacht, which had been left to her by Tony (in spirit; in law, it was still held as a company asset).
It was the Angel Tony had been staying on when he’d died off Biarritz. But tonight it was to be a place of celebration. Its two decks were already decorated with red (Claire’s favourite colour) balloons in anticipation of the drinks party which Sam and Claire were to host. It was their wedding anniversary, put back a few weeks because of Tony’s funeral.
Claire was big on anniversaries, big on anything, in fact, which gave her an excuse to party. But this was to be a smaller gathering than intended, since – at Sam’s suggestion – they’d cut family from the original guest list. To avoid diluting the effect of Tony’s funeral, he’d said.
Claire was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing the red lace suspender belt and matching bra Sam had picked up from her favourite Westbourne Grove boutique the last time he’d been in London on business. The cream silk dressing gown she’d been wearing when he’d got back from playing squash after work lay in a ruffled heap on the rough-flecked sisal carpet. Bass throbbed out from discreetly hidden speakers. On the off-white wall opposite her, MTV Dance played on a flatscreen TV, one of three which Claire had had installed in their five-bedroom penthouse apartment. Claire watched it unblinkingly. She looked vampire-like without her make-up in the flickering light.
The room, styled with grey and beige furnishings, had an oddly impersonal feel to it. That was down to Claire, who’d always been keen on interior design. Ever since Sam had known her, she’d talked of one day making a business out if it. He wished she would. From her general delegation of the role to their nanny, Isabel Salvador, it was obvious that motherhood provided her with little satisfaction. So why not try something else? It would certainly have given them something else to talk about other than domestic issues and island gossip . . . Ambition, industry . . . Sam believed everyone could cultivate such qualities in themselves. They were qualities he respected, qualities he could have respected in her. Yet each time he’d offered to help turn her business idea into reality, she’d demurred. The timing had never been right, she’d always claimed. From the way she’d always said it, he’d come to suspect it never would be.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him now. She was waggling her toes at him; she’d painted her toenails gold.
A misty childhood memory surfaced in Sam’s mind of eating Cadbury’s chocolate, while watching the new colour TV his dad had bought the family one rainy afternoon just before Christmas. ‘You look like a Bond girl,’ he replied.
Claire grinned. Flattered? Amused? He couldn’t tell which.
‘Gold-toe-girl,’ she artfully sang to the tune of Goldfinger, as she slowly uncrossed her legs to reveal that she wasn’t wearing any knickers. ‘Or Pussy Galore,’ she joked, giggling, as she watched him running his eyes over her tanned legs. ‘So tell me, husband,’ she asked, ‘after all these years of marriage, do I still look good enough to eat?’
They made love – love, that’s what he told himself, because that’s what he wanted to believe – in the air-conditioned atmosphere with the fan spiralling above them.
Towards the end, Sam felt Claire’s nails digging deeper into his shoulders. Her eyes were closed, her teeth gritted. Passion could still captivate, he’d learnt. With or without love. With more of it, or with less.
‘Harder,�
� she was telling him now. He watched her eyes flash open. ‘Look at me, Sam. Look me in the eyes.’
His heart pounded. He did as he was told. Because he had to show her that he wanted her. Because he had to prove it to himself as well. It was like with each thrust he was trying to bring them closer, to cement them together. He wanted to make them one, not two. He wanted to fuse them like two separate chemicals into an unbreakable compound.
They rolled over, her clinging to him. She leant forward, her jade necklace hanging down between her pointed breasts, trailing across his face and chest. As she pressed down on him, he kissed her face feverishly. He thrust faster, harder, until finally he came.
She flopped down sweating beside him. ‘Happy anniversary,’ she gasped.
He lay there panting, remembering how her eyes had flashed open and stared into his, as she’d told him to look at her. A bead of sweat chased down his jawline and neck.
It hit him then, as she slid her hand into his and gripped it tight. In that moment of potentially perfect unity, his heartbeat stuttered, then raced. Air leapt like flames from his lungs. He felt trapped, like he was underwater. His brow ran wet with sweat. He turned from Claire to stop her seeing.
Instinct told him to crawl under the bed, to curl up on the floor in a ball. Get away from her, it seemed to shout. But he fought it. He knew what this was. It was the same debilitation which had possessed him as he’d stood at the church lectern and stared at Laurie Vale. It was fear and he mustn’t give in to it. Do that, he knew, and he’d find himself in the grip of a full-blown anxiety attack: breathless, dizzy, panicked and cramped.
He knew it, because that’s what had happened to him after the funeral, when Rachel had announced the news about Sam taking over Ararat to the rest of the family at Dreycott Manor. When she’d asked Sam to say a few words, he’d started stuttering like he hadn’t done since he’d been a child. As the family had stared at him in confusion, he’d managed to excuse himself and leave. That’s when he’d locked himself in the bathroom. That’s when the real panic had set in.
‘Are you OK, Sam?’ Claire was asking him now.
The throb of the bass boomed. Slowly – one, two, three, four – Sam started to count to ten. He focused on the light clock on the wall, telling himself that the pain was psychosomatic. It would pass. He’d been assured of that. In time. The same as the nervousness. And the sense of impending discovery, which had dogged his every step since Tony’s funeral. In time, he’d been told, it would all go away.
He’d had himself checked out the day he’d got back to Mallorca after the funeral. The biggies: cancer, heart disease; the tests (ECG, blood) for those had turned up negative. Stress, the company doctor had put his little episode down to. Unsurprising, considering what had happened to Tony, she’d opined. She’d asked Sam about his dreams then, about whether he felt he was losing control of his life. More relaxation, she’d then prescribed when he’d replied in the negative. Less alcohol (not that he drank much, anyway) and plenty of sleep. And, of course, time. Because time was the greatest healer of all.
‘Sam?’ He registered the note of urgency now present in Claire’s voice. (He’d told her nothing about his consultation with the doctor.)
Eight, he continued to count. Nine . . . The clock’s second hand flickered forward. As quick as it had come, the pain vanished from his chest, like a giant hand had released him from its grip. His shoulders slumped. His heartbeat slowed. He breathed in deep and closed his eyes.
With a supreme effort, he managed to speak. ‘I’m fine,’ he replied, forcing a smile as he rolled over to face Claire. Then the smile became genuine as he realised that, for now, he’d beaten it – the worry, the fear – just like the doctor had told him he could. Then came anger, anger that he could have been so weak.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘You went all quiet on me.’ She studied his face. ‘And you’ve turned a very peculiar colour.’
Getting up, he took his towel from the floor and wiped the sweat from his brow. He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I must be dehydrated.’ The croak in his voice abetted the lie.
She peered round at him, eyeing him sceptically. ‘You’re sure that’s all?’
‘Yes.’
She fetched a bottle of Evian from her dressing table.
‘Drink,’ she told him.
He drained it in one, a whole litre.
‘You’re getting some colour back now,’ she said. ‘Serves you right.’
‘Why?’
‘Playing squash in this weather and then fucking . . . what did you expect?’
He breathed out. There. He had an excuse and he hadn’t even used it. He had played squash, with his colleague and friend, Günther, after work. He’d lost five games in a row (the only five Günther had ever won). Sam shrugged at Claire, grinned, happy now to make a joke of it. Because he could now; now that he felt normal; now that his heartbeat was metronome-steady and it was like nothing had ever happened.
‘It was a bit stupid, wasn’t it?’ he agreed.
She nodded, smiled. Finally, her expression relaxed. ‘Though it does keep you in good shape,’ she remarked, kneeling on the bed behind him and stroking her hands over his well-defined arms. She began kneading his shoulders. ‘You’re still terribly tense. You’re not worried about tonight, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Sure?’
‘Positive. Why would I be?’
She ignored the question. They both knew why. Because of his uncharacteristic behaviour after the funeral when Rachel had asked him to give a speech. When he’d unlocked the bathroom door, he’d told everyone he hadn’t been stuttering at all, but choking, because he’d half swallowed some chewing gum. But he hadn’t thought that anyone had believed him then, and here was the proof of it now. ‘Only if you are,’ Claire continued, ‘there’s no need for you to give a speech.’
‘Didn’t I just tell you I wasn’t worried?’ he snapped. No one had mentioned the incident until now. He’d assumed it had been forgotten in the wider misery of the day. But of course it had been noted. Of course it had been noted by Claire.
‘No need to be like that,’ she chided, before musing, ‘But if it’s not the party that’s stressing you out, then what could it be, I wonder?’ He didn’t like the mockery in her voice, but he liked even less what she asked him next: ‘Don’t tell me you’ve still got a bee in your bonnet about Laurie Vale?’
He felt the tension heighten in her fingers. He had to be careful how he answered. Claire was bright. That was one of the traits which had drawn him to her in the first place. But he was bright, too, bright enough to know that he couldn’t simply dismiss her questions as idle curiosity, much less wifely concern.
Was she suspicious already? That was his greatest fear. Had his body language betrayed him when he’d introduced himself to Laurie at the funeral as if to a stranger? Had it led Claire to wonder why he’d then studiously avoided so much as looking at their beautiful new relation? Or had Claire spotted the fear in his eyes when she’d told him last night about Laurie’s arrival on the island? Could it be that Claire had intuitively diagnosed what the doctor had failed to: namely that the cause of his anxiety was a woman who’d reappeared in his life with the power to destroy it?
He didn’t need to fake his disgust about this latest turn of events when he answered, ‘I can’t believe she didn’t consult me.’
‘Who?’
‘Rachel. I can’t believe she’s moved that woman into the villa without running it by me first.’ Laurie Vale was to be staying at Sa Costa for the summer, last night’s email from Rachel had said.
‘But why should she?’ Claire asked, working her fingers around Sam’s neck.
Because I don’t want Laurie Vale anywhere near us, was the truth he couldn’t say.
‘Because I might have already arranged for someone else to stay there,’ he replied instead. Which was also true. Plenty of Ararat’s busi
ness associates had stayed at Sa Costa in the past. As well as being their home from home, Tony and Rachel had always looked on the property as a business asset, one which could be used to seal and sweeten any deal. ‘Someone important,’ Sam added.
‘Rachel obviously thinks that Laurie is important.’
‘Rachel hardly knows her.’ Fifty years. That’s how long Laurie’s side of the family had been cut off from Claire’s. It was just Sam’s luck that Rachel had decided that now was the time to start rebuilding bridges. And just his luck that Laurie Vale had been the first person who’d volunteered to walk across.
‘You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you?’ Claire asked.
‘About what?’
‘“You two might even end up friends”,’ Claire quoted. ‘Isn’t that what you told me before Pops’s funeral?’
‘And “pigs might fly”, you told me,’ he replied, remembering the conversation. ‘And you were right: she probably is just a little gold-digger, coming over here to see what she can get.’
‘My, my, well, it’s certainly true what they say about a little power . . .’ Claire’s fingers pushed roughly at a knot of muscle in Sam’s neck.
He twitched in pain, then turned on her. ‘My job’s to protect this company.’
She smirked, delighted at having baited him so easily. She started to say something, then stopped. Rolling away from him to the opposite side of the bed, she lit a cigarette and looked across at him with amusement.
‘What?’ he asked.
The fan’s vortex obliterated the thin vapour trail of smoke which she blew out. ‘What you said just now . . . about Laurie Vale . . . about her being a gold-digger . . .’
‘What about it?’
Claire’s smile broadened. ‘Well, I forgot to mention it earlier . . .’
He didn’t like the sound of this. ‘Mention what?’
‘That you’ll be able to tell her yourself . . .’
Sam turned cold. ‘I’m not following.’
‘When she comes to the party tonight. And before you say she can’t, it’s too late: I’ve already asked and she’s already said yes.’
