by Alison Bond
‘Do you have contacts in the Cayman Islands?’ she said. ‘Financial connections?’
‘Of course,’ he said, as if the Lubin family had money stashed everywhere across the world, and who was she to say that they didn’t.
‘I tried to find out about the money, but it was impossible,’ she confided. ‘Maybe someone who was a valued customer somewhere, maybe someone like that would have more success?’
‘I will do what I can,’ he said. ‘Leave it with me.’
The wave organ wailed beneath their feet, putting sound to the constant swell of the water. She thought about it crooning to itself late at night, when it was empty here and there were no tourists to hear the melancholy song of the sea. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
‘As are you,’ he said swiftly, a little too swiftly. She’d cued up the line. Would he think she was fishing for compliments too?
‘Why are you here?’ she asked. ‘It’s a long way to come for a slice of pizza.’
‘I was looking for you,’ he said. ‘We are not children. I think you know what I want.’
He pulled her to him and kissed her deeply. They sat on the stone steps beneath a sky speckled with stars now.
She thought of her crummy hotel room, the last of a long line of empty nights and empty beds. He was young, too young. There was something sleazy about his insistent pursuit of her, but something undeniably attractive too.
Her nerves danced as he pushed his body against hers.
He was just a boy, a boy in the shadow of his powerful father.
She thought about Jackson and for the first time in months she felt nothing, just an empty space where her feelings used to be, a space longing to be filled.
Lubin was right there asking her to be with him. Even if it was just one night.
What harm could it do?
23
Gabe was looking for a place to live. Christine wanted a big townhouse on the eastern edge of town, near the botanical gardens and the posh part of the university district. Something with ‘character’. Gabe wanted a flash apartment in the centre. If there was a compromise of some kind then they had yet to reach it.
Years of marriage had taught him how to read her unspoken signals easily, a dozen every day, and he knew she wouldn’t be happy until she got her own way.
‘Can we get a move on?’ he said. ‘I said I’d meet Joe later.’
‘Again?’
She said it like he was out every night. Which he wasn’t. He liked a few beers every now and again – where was the harm in that? It felt to him that living away from home brought out a needy side of Christine he hadn’t noticed before, and didn’t much care for. What was he supposed to do? Stay in the hotel with her every night and watch EastEnders on cable? But he didn’t want to fight about it. He was saving his battles for the more important things in life. Like an apartment he had his eye on in the spanking new development two minutes’ walk from the centre. The middle of town, that’s where he needed to be, in the heart of the action. If he’d wanted suburbia they could have stayed in England. There would be plenty of time for that when they were old.
‘Why do we need all this space?’ he said as they walked around a beautiful brownstone, the sort of thing that would cost millions in London or New York but here they could buy for the same price as their modest St Ashton semi.
‘You never know,’ she said.
‘You never know what?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe we try IVF again,’ she said quietly. ‘Now we’ve a bit more money.’
He didn’t want to say no, but his sperm count didn’t exactly leap at the prospect.
‘You don’t have to be sure,’ she said. ‘It’s just something I was thinking about.’ She smiled in a hopeful way that made a lump come into his throat. Because he knew that when Christine thought of IVF treatment she thought ahead to a plump little baby, the image of them both, and the family they would become. But when Gabe thought of IVF he looked back and all he could see was the look on her face when they failed for the third time. Part of her was dying a slow and agonizing death. He couldn’t take it and was ashamed of himself. They stopped trying because their marriage could not survive another attempt. Now they were in a different city, in a different life, so of course she thought it might be time to try again.
His reluctance was clear. She could read his unspoken signals too.
‘Just keep an open mind, okay?’ she whispered sharply, and he wasn’t sure if she was talking about the house or the treatment. ‘You think you can manage that?’
When had it started to fade? he wondered. Once upon a time he would have done anything for her, anything she asked. The day that she agreed to marry him was the happiest day he had ever known. Until he scored three goals against Spurs. Once all he wanted was a big house filled with Christine and their children. Now the thought of rattling around this empty house with her made him panic. And hidden somewhere at the back, behind the nice guy that he tried to be, was a deeper fear that having a child was a dream that belonged in the past not the future.
Gabe seized upon a friendship with Joe in the way that countrymen tend to do when abroad. But Joe was glad to have him so everyone was happy.
At first they talked mostly of football of course. Gabe told Joe the story of that match, the story he would never grow tired of. They talked about the English Premier League, who was playing well, who was disappointing, which teams could hope to finish where. They gossiped about players much in the way that women do about the wives and girlfriends, the WAGS: who’s doing what, who had the best style, who’s the most likely to go far.
Joe and Gabe would have been annoyed by the comparison.
After a few weeks, when both men had had the chance to size each other up and decide that the other was sound, the conversation drifted into the personal. So Gabe knew about Layla, and now he knew about Layla and Daniel.
‘So go on,’ he pressed Joe, ‘then what did you say when Layla told you about this new bloke?’ Joe led them through the cobbled streets of the old town, glad that he had a friend at last to keep his misery company.
‘What was I supposed to say? I said I was really happy for her.’
‘In other words you lied.’
Joe nodded glumly. He had lied. But then hadn’t he spent the last ten years lying by omission?
He turned into a narrow alleyway before ducking through the doorway of an imposing tenement building where he bounded up three flights of stairs and pushed through an unmarked metal door. It opened, somewhat surprisingly, onto a bar with battered old sofas and a fantastic view of the main market square.
‘Nice place,’ said Gabe.
Joe looked around as if he was seeing it for the first time, even though the pretty waitress greeted him by name. ‘I suppose,’ he said. ‘But there’s about a hundred places just like it. Trouble is most of them are too easy to find.’
Joe ordered the drinks. Gabe still had trouble when pronouncing the ubiquitous Zywiec beer, something Joe said would immediately mark him as a tourist, so as they waited for their beers he spent a minute coaching Gabe until he sounded like a native. At least he now knew one useful word of Polish.
Gabe exchanged loaded looks with the dusky waitress and wondered what time she might finish. The mixed blessing of Polish licensing laws meant that you could get a beer practically any time you might want one, but meeting one of the universally sexy waitresses after work would mean staying up until dawn. He wasn’t even sure if he had the guts to cheat on his wife, but the idea excited him far more than house-hunting. He finished his first drink quickly just to have an excuse to talk to her. Meanwhile Joe lingered over his first, despite Gabe’s urgings to drown his sorrows the old-fashioned way.
‘Last night on the piss, isn’t it?’ said Gabe. ‘Going booze-free next week in preparation for Saturday.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Joe. Gabe drank quite a lot, Joe realized, and it felt like every time they went out Gabe managed to drink on
e more than the time before.
‘It’s a bloody necessity. I don’t know how these Polish boys do it. I’ve seen them out downing the vodkas, but they’re always pretty sharp at training the next day.’
Should Joe bother to explain that vodka was just a part of life for some of them? Especially those from rural Silesia. Back home their fathers probably still regularly drank a glass of vodka with breakfast in winter, but would frown upon excessive beer drinking as a boorish sin against God. No, it wasn’t worth trying to bridge the cultural divide. Joe had been trying to keep a foot in both camps for most of his life, and knew better than most how hard it was. Instead he asked Gabe’s advice: what should he do about Layla?
‘Sorry to say this, mate,’ said Gabe. ‘But I think you’ve got to move on.’
‘Where?’
‘I mean move on from this Layla girl. She’s with someone now. You had your chance; you blew it.’
‘What if she comes next Saturday?’
Gabe paused for thought. ‘You mean if she blows off this Daniel geezer to come and watch you play football?’
‘Yeah. Surely that means something?’
‘Do you think she will?’
‘No,’ said Joe. His chin sank down into his chest. He swigged at his pint, trying hard not to picture Layla, his Layla, wrapping those slender arms round someone else.
‘Cheer up,’ said Gabe. ‘You’re going to be a massive football star; you’ll have more women than you can handle. What do you want to tie yourself down for anyway?’
Joe tried not to think of tying Layla down, but it was impossible. For the first time he thought that perhaps he wanted her more than football.
In the summer the sunlight started to gently burn away the night around four in the morning, sometimes even earlier, but in the middle of winter four o’clock in the morning was black as midnight. Gabe and Joe had drunk enough, but they were still thirsty. Joe because he was trying to dull the ache of a broken heart and Gabe because he was living the dream, and a big part of that dream was being in a place where some of the finest beer he had ever tasted could slip down your throat at less than a pound a throw.
They grinned at each other.
Joe thought Gabe was fantastic. They got on brilliantly. He didn’t even realize that he was drawn to Gabe in an effort to create the kind of closeness he had never felt with his father. And for Gabe, who had never had the son he had once wanted so much, Joe was a safe substitute, although Joe, simply by virtue of having his entire life ahead of him and the freedom that comes with that, made Gabe feel old.
‘Let’s go to a club,’ slurred Gabe.
‘Okay,’ said Joe. ‘What kind of club?’
‘There must be a kick-arse lap-dancing club somewhere?’
Joe wasn’t sure. And unfortunately the few friends he had that might be able to tell him wouldn’t appreciate being woken at 4 a.m. But there must be. In the summer this city was overrun with British stag parties.
They would find a taxi. Polish taxi drivers knew everything.
After speaking English all night and drinking far more than he ever usually would, Joe found that the word for ‘stripper’ had fallen out of his head and he wasn’t sure if he had ever known the word for ‘lap-dancing’ to begin with. Instead he asked the taxi driver to take them to a bar with girls and he was relieved when he seemed to understand what they wanted, even if he did start the meter at twenty złoty, which seemed more than strictly necessary.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Gabe. ‘That’s like – what? Four quid? It’s nothing.’
They crossed south over the river into the no-man’s land of Podgórze, but this didn’t overly concern Joe. He could well imagine that this lesser-known area, far from the tourist trail, was where things started to get interesting. He hoped Gabe would be impressed.
Gabe was currently trying to engage the taxi driver in conversation, impossible given that they only spoke three words of the other’s language, but still there was laughter and good spirits. Joe was happy.
So this is what men do …
It had been just him and his mum for all this time, and his devotion to football was what he had in his life instead of friendship. Until now. Until Gabe.
Between Gabe Muswell and Samantha Sharp his prospects for the kind of life he might want for himself given the choice were much improved. Samantha had been amazing, talking his mum through all the pros and cons about playing in the Premiership and assuaging all her fears, which Sam seemed to intuitively know were more about Joe spending too much time with his father. His dad would love Gabe. Next time his dad was over they could all go out. The three of them. Men around town. Yeah, sod Layla Petherick.
The taxi pulled off the main street, did a couple of turns and drew up in front of an ugly post-war block, the ubiquitous grey of communist Poland. The meter had somehow climbed to the lofty heights of one hundred and seventy złoty, a large amount in any currency, but clearly nothing to Gabe who threw two hundred at the driver and told him to keep the change.
Joe felt a flicker of apprehension pierce his beer buzz as he looked at where they were, a building with nothing to distinguish it from its neighbours save for one small red lightbulb in the first-floor window, but before he could voice his concern Gabe had waved the driver off and they were stranded. He figured they might as well go in.
The bell was answered by a large man with close-cropped hair and a suspicious expression. Gabe started making a noise in English and almost got the door shut in his face until Joe stepped in with his native tongue.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘He’s cool, I swear, he’s cool.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Wine and women,’ said Joe, and flashed his most persuasive smile. The one he used on his mum when he wanted to get his own way.
It worked. The doorman’s steely demeanour almost cracked, but not quite, and he moved aside to let them through. They climbed dark narrow stairs to the first floor.
The place reminded Gabe of the working-men’s clubs that his dad had taken him to as a kid, long ago. The kind of bar where he would curl up in a chair and fall asleep under a coat while his dad rolled fags and swapped fruitless racing tips with the locals.
The walls were yellowed by years of smoke, and the cheap tables and chairs were decrepit, the wood splitting into splinters waiting to happen. There was a small bar and he sincerely hoped that the barmaid wasn’t part of the entertainment. She was caked in thick make-up that failed to mask her terrible skin, with dyed black hair that hung in ratty clumps around her plump face. He wondered if she was told to wear those clothes or if she actually thought she looked good. Tight jeans and lacy camisole tops should really be left for the girls and this woman hadn’t been a girl for years. But the beer she served was cold and lively, particularly sweet after the dry taxi ride.
Only two of the tables were occupied. At one sat three men in their fifties, none of them speaking, and at another a couple, him older, speaking in heated whispers.
At the far end of the room was a small platform perhaps a foot high, not enough to call a stage, and not a pole or a hot Polish girl in sight.
‘Where are the girls?’ hissed Gabe.
‘Dunno,’ said Joe. ‘Give it a few minutes and then I’ll ask.’
The minutes ticked by and no entertainment appeared. The brutish doorman came up to the bar and engaged the middle-aged barmaid in conversation. Gabe nudged Joe who had to pretend to have more courage than he did to ask the doorman, ‘Where are the girls?’
‘Making themselves pretty for you,’ was the reply that Joe translated for Gabe, who seemed happy.
They ordered more beers, yet more beers. Joe’s head was starting to swim, and just as they started drinking them half a dozen women filed out onto the stage.
There was no music, no spotlight, they were not dancing. They walked out slowly and stood like they were in a police line-up.
‘Come, come,’ said the doorman in English, and then to
Joe, ‘They will do anything, all of them. Pick one.’
‘Oh, mate,’ said Gabe, showing a sudden burst of perception. ‘I don’t think this is a strip club – it’s a brothel.’
Joe started to explain to the doorman that there had been a mistake, but it was hard. Gabe was talking over him, ignoring the language barrier. ‘We were misinformed,’ he said. At the same time he was looking at the girls. One of them, at the end, was quite beautiful. She saw him looking and smiled. It was a coy smile, but loaded with sexual possibilities. Gabe glanced at Joe who was getting into a heated debate with the doorman. He wandered over to the girl at the end of the line.
‘You speak English?’ he said. ‘Angielsku?’
She turned down her lower lip. ‘Little bit,’ she said, holding perfectly manicured talons an inch or so apart.
She had wide cheekbones and pale-green eyes, and was very young. If he had seen her in England he might have thought she was a schoolgirl, but in any country in the world he would still have noticed her endless legs. In her heels she was taller than him. There wasn’t a scrap of fat on her. She was squeezed into a pair of cheap nylon hot pants and a little white top through which he could faintly see the outline of her tiny nipples.
‘How old are you?’ he said.
‘Twenty.’
Old enough, unless she was lying. His cock stirred as he thought of nailing her.
‘Joe,’ he said. ‘Hey, Joe, wait a minute.’
Was it cheating on his wife to sleep with a prostitute? Okay, yeah, course it was, technically, but it wasn’t as bad as picking up a girl in a bar, was it? It wasn’t like he wanted to flirt with this little minx and have some kind of clandestine affair. They wouldn’t be swapping mobile phone numbers and making up some kind of code for when she called. This wasn’t a thing. It was just sex. How could Christine be threatened by that? How could Christine even find out about that?
The amount of beer he had consumed was enough to make him think he could do anything.
