I rolled on to my back and Jan slid on top of me, her long legs covering mine, propped up on her elbows with her hair falling towards my face.
I let my eyes roam. ‘Nice tits,’ I said, by way of morning conversation.
‘Nice love handles,’ she replied, taking a grip of my extended waist with her right hand and squeezing. ‘They’re new. I think I like them.’
‘Don’t,’ I murmured. ‘They’re going.’Her face fell, just for a moment, before she slammed her smile firmly back into place. ‘No,’ I said, hurriedly. ‘I meant I’ve started exercising again.’
‘Sure,’ she whispered, ‘but they are going, aren’t they? Back to Spain, to find out whether Gavin Scott’s Dali’s a fake or not.’
‘Aye, and to sort out a few other matters too. But let’s not talk about that.’
‘No,’ she said, lowering her lips to mine. ‘I’ve got other things in mind.’
Afterwards, as the gleam of orgasmic triumph in Jan’s eye began to soften once more, we lay in silence for a while, gazing up at the slivers of Monday morning sky which showed through the glass of the belvedere. The rain had gone, and the autumn sunshine was back.
I broke the quiet, reaching across and rubbing her nipple with the flat of my thumb. ‘You remember I had a long talk with Ellie, on Saturday night?’ I asked her.
‘Mhm.’
‘She told me that I should cut you out of my life, for your sake.’
‘Funny, that,’ said Jan. ‘She told me that I should cut you out of mine, for my sake. What did you say to her?’
‘I told her that you’d have to wield the knife for both of us. What did you say?’
‘I said …’ She paused, and looked up at the sky once more. ‘I said that you can’t cut your heart out and expect to go on living.’
I didn’t have a funny line to follow that. So I said, ‘Ellie cares about you and me, but she doesn’t really know us; like not really.’
She wrapped her arms around me again. ‘No. No one really knows you and me, except for you and me.’
‘Only,’ I cautioned her, ‘all of a sudden I’m not sure that I know me any more.’
Jan propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at me. On occasion she may fart quietly in her sleep, but I’ve never known anyone who looks, invariably, as beautiful as she does when she’s newly wakened in the morning.
She fixed me in the eye and spoke, slowly and deliberately. ‘In that case, Osbert Blackstone, the one and only true love of my life, the sooner you get back to Spain and find yourself again, the better it will be.’
I started to speak, but she put a finger across my lips. ‘No pressure. No demands. No ultimatum. I’m saying nothing other than this. For the first time I’ve made love with you in the knowledge that you were living with another woman. But it’ll be the last. I’ll always love you, and I’ll always be your best friend, but I can’t be your second best woman. You’ll always love me too, I know. But you have to work out how you want it to be. Like it’s been for the last few years, as best of friends … except without the occasional bit of the other … or like we were before that. Agreed?’
I nodded my head on the pillow. ‘Agreed.’
‘Good,’ she said, running her hand down my belly and leaning over me again. ‘But for now, since we’re here …’
18
Eventually, I shaved, showered and dressed, then, leaving Jan stretched out in the bath, I went out to fetch our breakfast. My old pal Ali, the open-all-hours grocer at the top of the close, looked up in surprise when I walked into his shop. In fact his eyebrows shot up so far that I thought he would dislodge his turban.
Until I left for Spain, Ali and I had been team-mates in a five-a-side football club which played at Meadowbank every Tuesday night. The lads and I had a theory that Ali’s turban was stitched into his scalp, since he never took it off, not even in the showers.
‘Oz, pal. Hullawarerr, how yis been?’ he bellowed as I walked in. Ali was born and raised in Scotland. His complexion and head-dress may be sub-continental Asian, but his accent is pure Rab C.
‘Hullawrerr to youse, China,’ I responded. ‘I’s been fine.’
‘So ah see,’ he said, taking a closer look. ‘Yis’re fuckin’ darker-skinned than me noo. How long are yis here for?’
I checked my watch. It was just leaving 10:30 a.m. ‘About five and a half hours.’
‘Is yer lass back wi yis?’
‘No. Prim’s in Spain. We’re living there now.’
‘Aye, ah ken. Yis sent me a postcard, mind.’
The wheels were turning under that turban. ‘So have yis been stayin’ in the loft?’
I decided to cut the interrogation short. ‘That’s right, sunshine. With Jan, my old school chum. She’s living there now. Tall girl, dark hair; shops in here according to the label on her washing up liquid. Now we’d like breakfast. So it’ll be four of your freshest rolls and half a pound of your spiciest Lorne sausage, please, my good man. Oh yes, and a Daily Record.’
Ali glanced at his watch, as he selected four rolls from that morning’s batch. ‘Breakfast!’ he said. ‘At half past ten! You’ll be in the Daily fuckin’ Record yirself, the wey you’re goin’ on, pal.’
Jan was in the kitchen when I got back, in her dressing gown, with her hair wrapped in a towel.
‘Go on,’ I said, kissing her shiny nose. ‘Get yourself sorted. I’ll make breakfast. Incidentally, shouldn’t you be working today?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t have any meetings, so I’m okay. You know what the self-employed life is like. I’ll do a double shift tomorrow. So I’m yours for the day, or at least till you catch your plane.’
‘Good,’ I said, ‘for there’s something I’d like to do in town, while I’ve got the chance. So you get your legs and stuff upstairs and get dressed. I’ll be about ten minutes with the rolls and coffee.’
It was a mild morning, so we ate in canvas chairs out on the pocket-sized wooden balcony. As the last of the coffee went down, Jan grabbed my Daily Record and handed me three envelopes, already opened. They were all addressed to Blackstone Spanish Investigations.
They were all follow-ups from the other enquiries which Jan had fielded on the previous Friday. One was from a firm of Glasgow solicitors, looking to have a statement taken in Tarragona from a potential witness in a civil court action. The others had come from manufacturing companies looking for information on the sales potential for their products in Spain.
‘Interesting,’ I said, as Jan studied her horoscope. It always amazes me how intelligent people can fall for that crap. ‘I can do the interview, no problem. Prim can tackle the other two. They’ll be desk research mainly. Hal, at the consulate, will be able to give us some of the information, and probably the contacts who’ll give us the rest.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Jan, ‘but just remember that Gavin Scott comes first.’
‘Sure.’ I took her hand and looked out across the roofs of the Old Town, towards the crests of Holyrood Palace. ‘All this, the last few days,’ I said. ‘It’s doing my head in, you know. A week ago, Prim told me I was well down the road to vegetation. She was right. She came up with the business idea. She, more than anyone, put me on that plane.
‘Look at me now, seven days later. Sat on another terrace, with another woman. And you know, don’t you, that part of me wants to stay here?’
Jan gave my fingers a squeeze. ‘Sure, darlin’,’ she said, in her lazy drawl. ‘But all of you’s got to want it or it’s no good. Okay, so you and I took each other by surprise last night. But we’ve slept together often enough before.’
She caught my smile. ‘Okay, maybe not often enough.’ She laughed, then was serious again. ‘Still, it shouldn’t have casual consequences for either of us. Make no mistake, I know what I want, bottom line, and I know why. But I’m not going to tell you what this is. Not now, anyway.