I’d forgotten what a good listener he was. It was refreshing discussing Seb with him; everybody else was forever telling me to give him a loose lead, while Ricardo encouraged me to continue to push and guide. I couldn’t quite square this with the negative attitude he had towards his domineering father, but he said that was more to do with a lack of warmth, and, he added with a squeeze of my arm, that couldn’t be a problem with me. He thought he could help.
‘Ed Montague – you know, the Oncology consultant – his son was very difficult a few years ago. He took him to a clinical psychologist who specialises in teenage boys – in Harley Street I think it was – and the guy really helped him. What’s your mobile? I’ll try and get hold of Ed this afternoon and get his name for you.’
He texted me later and asked if I’d like to meet him and Ed in the canteen after work. But my clinic ran over.
‘He had to go. But never mind, you can talk to him about it another time,’ Ricardo said, handing me a piece of paper with the psychologist’s details. ‘But it does sound like it’s worth trying this guy.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Let me get you another coffee.’
When I opened my bag to get my purse out I remembered his present in my desk drawer.
‘Why do I have to open my present on the train?’ I asked, sitting down again with the coffees.
‘Ah. Well I think you’ll understand when you see it.’
‘Can’t I dash and get it now, open it in front of you?’
‘No.’
‘Why? What is it?’ I asked, laughing. But he just smiled, shook his head. ‘Why can’t you watch me open it?’
‘Oh I could, I’d love to, but... Look it’s something I just happened to see at the weekend, but people might get the wrong idea.’
‘Well what about the bus, can I open it there? Don’t think I can wait until the train.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, smiling again. ‘Or... don’t know how you are for time... but we could go and have a quick drink somewhere if you like, and you could open it there.’
Time? I had an entire evening. I wasn’t wanted as a piano teacher; I’d been forgotten – after a short dutiful text – as a wife; Seb hadn’t replied to my friendly message and Kenny could barely tear himself away from Grandpa when I’d rung to say hello.
‘But isn’t Ana expecting you home?’
‘I’ll give her a call, but I know she won’t mind. Is that a yes?’ I nodded, grinning. ‘Go and get it then. I’ll meet you at the main entrance.’
I dashed off to my office, amazed at how much better I was feeling. But Damian was there, frowning at his screen.
‘Ah, Rosie. How’s your presentation coming on?’
‘I’m doing a poster. Never do talks unless there’s a gun to my head,’ I said, wandering if I could grab the present without him noticing. The answer was no.
‘Looks like Ricardo’s a bit sweet on you. These Latins are incorrigible.’
‘Oh please,’ I said, flinging the parcel into my bag with as much nonchalance as I could find.
‘So open it then.’
‘Oh... it’ll be chocolate. Always is.’
‘Good! Just what I need. Go on, let’s be having it.’ I could feel my heart begin to race.
‘No really... I can’t trust myself,’ I said, patting my tummy. ‘I’ll wait till I get home and the kids can hoover them up.’
He smiled.
‘Speaking of which, I’ve gotta go,’ I said, looking at my watch, grabbing my mac.
‘Er, your iPod? And Filofax?’ he asked, pointing a skinny finger at my desk.
‘Oh yes. Thanks.’
***
It was two dolphins on a silver chain. Quite cheesy really. But one dolphin slightly bigger than the other, like the ones we’d followed for ages in a boat on the Intracoastal Waterway. Eleven years earlier.
‘Oh. It’s exactly like...’
‘I know. I couldn’t resist it. I know you probably won’t wear it, but I wanted you to have it.’
‘I love it, and I will wear it, at the meeting.’
‘Good. I’ll be checking.’
‘Are you coming then? That’s great!’
‘Yes. I’m staying at the Las Olas, and I’ll be busy, but maybe we can take a boat trip again.’
‘And the Cheesecake Factory?’
‘Yes, maybe that too – I’ll get you invited to the department evening there. Meanwhile, come on, eat up – that’s not a bad cheesecake you’ve got in front of you now.’
‘I know. Thanks for bringing me here, you’ve really cheered me up.’
‘Good. You deserve it. Let me know when Jez goes back to Crete and maybe we could do this again.’
I looked into his big kind eyes, perhaps for a little too long. He stroked my cheek. ‘Let me drive you to London Bridge.’
I could feel myself blushing. ‘Oh no, it’ll make you really late –’
‘I want to.’
‘Ana will wonder where you –’
‘No she won’t. The sitter said she won’t be back until eleven.’ His face clouded for a moment; it sounded like he didn’t know where she’d gone.
So we walked back to the hospital car park and got into his car – a normal one, nothing flashy, I noticed – and we talked about other things we wanted to do in Fort Lauderdale. It had all come back to us: the places we’d been together and all the ones that we hadn’t got round to.
‘This is getting to be quite a list,’ he said, pulling in. ‘How are we going to have time for the meeting?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, laughing.
‘Do you think it would help if...’ He was looking down at the steering wheel.
‘What?’
‘If I changed my hotel?’
‘Oh. Well that depends where you’re thinking of –’
He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t tease me,’ he whispered.
‘We could have another pretend affair, couldn’t we?’
He sighed. ‘We could, yes.’
11.
I was cuddling Kenny on the sofa, watching The Incredibles family do their stuff. Not for long, of course; he soon fish-slipped from my arms and put the big monkey with the Velcro hands round his neck instead. And he wanted his Daddy.
He must have landed by now, I thought. He’d said he’d get the train from the airport, so I had Kenny on standby to dash out of the door with me to go and pick him up from the station. My phone buzzed a text: perhaps it was too noisy at the airport for a call.
‘That’ll be him. There are your shoes – put them on.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Home early. Can you come now? I have much to show you,’ I read.
To show me? Lots of photographs of Cretan urns, which would all look much the same; I’d have to learn to be more discerning. Or Elizabeth’s villa, where he may or may not have been staying.
‘Where are you?’ I replied.
‘At the piano, where you think!?’ What? And then I noticed: it was from Ali. I felt a wave of simultaneous irritation and elation; I was becoming accustomed to the mixed emotions he elicited. I’d got it all wrong, they did still want lessons. But this no-notice summons was out of order.
‘I am home early too. And away on Friday for a week, but I can come on Monday 2nd.’
‘Too far. You come Thursday?’
I thought about it for a moment. The night before I fly, when I should be packing and spending time with Jez and Kenny. But I could probably come home early and do that on Wednesday. ‘Yes, seven okay?’
‘GOOD! Ali xx’
I must have been smiling to myself.
‘Daddy!’ Kenny exclaimed.
‘No, it wasn’t him.’ Why had I thought it was? Jez hated texting; it was a family joke that once when I’d sent him a long message discussing childcare logistics he’d replied with a single ‘k’. ‘Never mind, I’m sure he won’t be long.’
‘But I’ve got my shoes on now,’ he s
aid, looking down at his feet in horror.
‘It’s okay, just stay in the hall.’ Kenny and shoes and germs. How I envied friends with little boys who came running into the house with muddy feet. ‘And anyway, I cleaned them up for you.’
‘You make me wear them in the house, and now when I take them off I’ll be walking on germs!’
I should have remembered not to ask him to put shoes on further than a few inches from the mat. Bloody hell, I thought, you need a hundred per cent concentration to deal with members of this family.
Then Jez walked in, having been dropped off by Elizabeth, he said. Kenny was immediately in his arms, Daddy sorting out his shoe-germs issue with a couple of inspired comments I didn’t catch. And we had the over-cooked jacket potatoes, under-cooked vegetables and the vegetarian sausages that I’d forgotten nobody likes. I cleared up while Jez put Kenny to bed.
‘So how did it go?’ I asked when he came back.
‘Really well. Incredible watching these artists at work, and we visited a museum and got some good ideas for new designs. Sarah’s a bit of a drag though – she really didn’t need to be there. And she’s got this really irritating laugh. Another day and I would have throttled her.’
‘Perhaps she won’t always be able to come,’ I said, the raki almost making me laugh at the unintended innuendo.
‘Perhaps she shouldn’t be allowed to come,’ he said, laughing.
That sounded a good idea. It wasn’t proof that everything was okay, but it was a start.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘Oh – sorry. Just tired. I suppose I’m just going to have to get used to these bouts of single parenthood,’ I said.
‘Yes... but Dad and this new girlfriend said they wouldn’t mind looking after the boys if you wanted to come with me some time. You’d love Elizabeth’s villa – it’s just like that tiny one we rented in Paxos.’
Paxos. Our first holiday abroad, and almost certainly where Seb was conceived. My throat tightened painfully and I was fighting back tears. I got up, not wanting him to see my face.
‘I’ll just check on Kenny,’ I said.
I whispered ‘Get off him’ to the monkey round Kenny’s neck, pulling the Velcro hands apart; picked up a cow and an anteater off the dreaded germ-ridden carpet; stroked his hair, his downy neck. He stirred, so I tiptoed out of his room and through the hall, opened the squeaky kitchen door as quietly as I could.
There he was, tapping a long, fast message: someone had finally persuaded him to switch to predictive texting. And when he looked up with wide eyes and snapped his phone shut, I knew who it was.
12.
‘Rosi!’ A kiss on each cheek, and then holding my shoulders. ‘You don’t know what you do to me! I have things to complete, people that I must talk with, but always I am playing the piano. Is big problem. I show you and then you teach me more. This time I am the first. Come.’
He took my bag and the cardigan over my arm, sat me down on the chair next to the piano. The stool was different.
‘I tell shop is shit and they change it,’ he said, following my gaze, sitting down and turning a few pages back in the book, to the New World Symphony melody. I saw that he’d put the finger numbers under the left hand notes, but it wasn’t the moment to mention it. There were some nods of his head as he seemed to be silently counting himself in, and then he played it. Or rather, performed it, because he’d shaped the phrases, added dynamics, even without any guidance from the music, or, as far as I knew, any familiarity with the original. Then looked at me for approval.
‘That’s... beautiful. You’ve added phrasing and dynamics – louds and softs. Look – I can show you how what you’ve done would be shown in the music,’ I said, drawing them in, teaching him the signs and the Italian words.
‘Why not they put this?’
‘Because most people aren’t ready for them at this stage in the book.’
‘Ah.’ He grinned, shrugging his broad shoulders.
‘But this isn’t allowed,’ I said, pointing to the fingering numbers under the left hand notes and rubbing them out.
‘I look at music, like you tell me.’
‘Yes, but you’re looking at numbers. What are you going to do when you’re faced with...’ and I pulled the Bach out of my bag, ‘this,’ I said, pointing to the serpentine left hand. ‘You can’t do that by numbers.’ He was reaching for the book, but I put it away before it occurred to him to ask me to demonstrate; I didn’t want to perform it until it was perfect. Especially now he’d set a standard. But he was turning the page of his book, keen to show me how he’d gone on to the next piece on his own.
Eventually Jessie came in, carrying a couple of shopping bags. I wondered if Ali ever graced Tesco’s.
‘Look where I am now. Almost I am where you were, Jessie,’ he boasted.
‘But he doesn’t know the names of the left hand notes and will have a test next week,’ I said.
‘Ali, you could have offered Rosie a drink and a flapjack. Honestly,’ she said, smiling at me.
‘Oh. I take her now.’ He grabbed my arm, led me to the kitchen and made me a strong coffee. I began to relax, took a flapjack.
Ali poked around in the shopping bags like a child, murmuring approval. Until he picked out a box of porridge and his face fell. ‘No, no, no, is not this,’ he said.
‘They’d run out of Jordan’s. Don’t be such a fuss pot,’ Jessie said.
‘Fuss... pot? What is?’ he said, laughing and putting his arms round her as she reached up to put the box in the cupboard, turning her round and kissing her. I looked out of the window, embarrassed and stupidly hurt. ‘My Jessie, she looks after me. Is job the most difficult in the world, I think,’ he said. ‘I put the things away, you have lesson mi cariño,’ he said to her.
So we left him pottering around the kitchen and went to the piano. Jessie had also worked hard; she’d cut her fingernails and was trying to keep her fingers curved. She read well but struggled with counting. And laughed readily at her mistakes. In fact, we were laughing so much at one point that Ali came in and asked what we were up to.
‘You not laugh with me, it’s you must not do this, you must listen to me!’
‘Well you probably need that,’ said Jessie, looking at me for agreement. ‘Oh Rosie, we gave you the wrong money last week. I’ve been talking to a friend of mine who learns guitar, and now realise you meant fifteen pounds for half an hour. We’ll put it right –’
‘No, it was right. I haven’t got a teaching diploma,’ I said, trying to remember if I’d mentioned this before.
Ali waved his hand. ‘Is not important,’ he said. I said I needed to go, and Ali showed me out, pressing an envelope into my hand.
‘Take this. Well deserved. But I think you would do it for nothing,’ he said, narrowing his eyes as if he could see into my mind.
‘Well, I...’ My cheeks flushed with humiliation.
‘I don’t mean because of who I am, is because of who you are. You are good teacher, Rosi. Special person. I am... we are lucky to find you.’
I was mumbling something about enjoying teaching them when he suddenly took my shoulders and kissed me briefly but firmly on the lips. My heart pounded and I must have looked stunned; he looked down, perhaps aware he’d gone too far.
‘See you on the second,’ I said, somewhat breathlessly, and after a struggle with the front door latch I was out, not looking back but wondering if he was watching me. I walked briskly, trying to restore sense to my shaky body, turning the corner with relief. Telling myself, he’s Cuban, it’s the way they are, it’s nothing. And he’s got pretty little Jessie to look after him, doing the most difficult job in the world, and no doubt hoping to hang around long enough to look after his kids too. Then my phone buzzed a text in my pocket and I stopped.
‘Rosi, do not be cross.’
‘Not cross. But will be if you put left finger numbers in,’ I replied.
‘You look cross when you went.’<
br />
‘Just embarrassed. English. Don’t worry.’
‘Good. I will work hard for you XXXX.’
13.
This time tomorrow. In bikini yet? Getting on plane now. Can’t wait. I giggled to myself: realised I’d have to delete these pretend-affair texts. But sometimes – caressed by the sun, lulled by tepid, rocking water – I was daydreaming that it wasn’t pretend, feeling the softness of his hair, the reassurance of his strong arms when he hugged me goodbye in the car. Even more confusingly, sometimes those arms weren’t his, the hair black but curly.
He finally arrived, slightly shiny from the plane, and embraced me formally in front of the receptionist. She told us that she’d put him in the room next to mine, seeing as we were both here for the conference.
‘Give me ten minutes,’ he whispered, going off to his room.
I went back to the pool garden and waited for him. Ten minutes. Twenty. Half an hour. I went to his room and knocked, asked in a jolly colleague voice if he wanted me to order some lunch.
He opened the door with a mobile to his ear and motioned for me to come inside. The room was steamy and scented from his shower; he was wearing the hotel bathrobe, his hair combed flat and dripping onto his shoulders.
I sat down on a chair with a discarded shirt and looked at the floor, wondering if I should offer to come back later. He clicked his fingers to get my attention and mouthed ‘Damian’: the creep was obviously still in a flap about his presentation. He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked up to the heavens for patience before putting it back again, and I had to slap my hand over my mouth to stop myself from laughing.
But when the call was over I started to feel embarrassed again.
‘Shall I come back when you’re dressed?’ I offered. I couldn’t seem to meet his eyes but, looking down, saw the muscular legs that I remembered walking next to on the beach all those years ago.
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