‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ he asked.
‘Dinner’s wrong. I think I’ve ruined it. Smell that sauce.’
Without a word, he took another pan from its place in the rack, lifted the original off the heat and emptied its contents into the replacement. Then he turned down the ring from level three, where I’d mistakenly set it, to one, and set the meal back to cooking. He looked at the rest of it and murmured, ‘We haven’t lost very much. It’ll be okay.’
I looked at him and thought of one of my favourite movies, Con Air, and the part where Agent Larkin asks Cameron Poe what he’s going to do for him and Cameron replies, ‘What do you think I’m gonna do? I’m gonna save the fuckin’ day!’
‘Thank you, Cameron,’ I said, and Tom laughed. It’s his absolute favourite movie, the one we watch together on shit weather nights in the winter. We know it so well that we can recite some of the dialogue ourselves, although he omits the F-words.
‘Put the bunny back in the box,’ he countered, with pauses, just like Nicolas Cage. (Real name Nicholas Coppola, but he changed it because he didn’t want to be known simply as the Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew: that’s how much of a movie anorak I am, and why I am in constant demand for L’Escala quiz night teams.)
If it hadn’t been for Tom I’d probably have freaked out when the sauce caught, and run screaming for the inevitable takeaway pizzas, but as it turned out, dinner went fine, and if anyone else noticed that it was well done and that the linguine was a little beyond al dente they had the very good sense to keep quiet about it.
Tom and Janet took on the waiting duties, with wee Jonathan, cheered up after apologising for swearing and being reprieved, helping out by setting the table. That left me free to have a drink with Conrad on the terrace, and to update him on Duncan’s triumphant phone call.
‘He thinks he can buy me, does he?’ he mused, when I told him about his pay rise. ‘He can stick that up his fundament. I’m very well paid as it is, and Audrey and I already have a bonus in place, in the form of share options in the Gantry Group. Susie’s thinking is if we help her run the company profitably, we should share in it. Don’t worry, though, I’ll stay, for her sake and the kids, but also to make sure he doesn’t try to make good on that threat.’
‘But what can you do about it if he does?’
He took a swig of his Saaz beer, straight from the bottle. ‘Whatever I reckon is necessary.’ His eyes went somewhere, but just when I thought he was lost in thought, he started humming an old Rod Stewart tune. (Sorry, let me rephrase that in case you thought I was being ageist; an old song by Rod Stewart.)
All the way through dinner we could hear fireworks exploding, but since San Juan is the summer solstice celebration, I knew that the real action wouldn’t begin until it began to grow properly dark, and so we didn’t have to rush. The sun was pretty much down by the time we were finished, and when I led everyone, including our Charlie, who is a brave, if slightly dim-witted, dog, upstairs to the top floor and through my bedroom to the terrace. It was something of a treat for the crew; my suite is the only part of the house that really is mine alone. The days when Tom could come crashing in are over. Now, he and I have an agreement that he knocks on my door and I knock on his.
The terrace offers a panoramic view of the entire bay, from L’Escala all the way round to Ampuriabrava, Santa Margarita and Rosas, so we were able to watch four firework displays, simultaneously, most of them far enough away for the sound to reach us a few seconds after we’d seen the multicoloured lights.
The kids loved it all. I’d have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been preoccupied with the shock of Susie’s new husband, and I’m sure that Conrad felt the same. By that time my greatest worry wasn’t Culshaw, or Susie; as far as I was concerned she’d made the mistake and she’d have to live with it. No, I was worried about how Janet and wee Jonathan were going to take it, and how it might affect my son’s relationship with them. With that guy as the official consort in Monaco, and him having history with Tom, I would worry about him every minute he was there. As for the others, I knew already that wee Jonathan hated his new stepfather, and as for Janet … in the brief time I’d spent at Susie’s when he was there, I’d picked up vibes from him that I didn’t like, the sort that would make me careful not to leave any adolescent daughter of mine alone with the man.
The pyrotechnics carried on unabated past eleven o’clock, as Tom had said they would. I called a halt around the half-hour. It was curfew time for the youngest member, and also I could see that they were getting ready for action under the floodlights that lit up the concert platform near the old Greek wall. Wee Jonathan didn’t protest; he was tired and, also, he knew he’d used up all that day’s leeway.
I stuck a metaphorical finger up to assess the weather, and decided that the temperature would not drop much during the night. Tom and Janet had both donned T-shirt and jeans for dinner and I decided that they’d be fine like that. ‘Come on,’ I told them when we were back downstairs, and after Tom had fed Charlie, ‘let’s go … unless you’ve changed your minds, that is.’ They both looked at me as if I was dafter than the dog.
As we left the house, I decided that if I was going to introduce them to adulthood, I might as well go all the way. Also, I’d skipped coffee after dinner and I felt like a fix, and so, instead of heading straight for the beach, I took us down instead to the square. The four café restaurants there can seat over three hundred people at their outside tables, and I knew that earlier, punters would have had to queue until one became free. As midnight approached, they were all still busy, but the frenzy was over and we found a vacant spot in Can Coll. I asked for an Americano with a little cold milk on the side, and a glass of the decent house white. The kids each copied my coffee order, but didn’t push their luck by asking for wine as well.
‘I liked the linguine sauce, Auntie Primavera,’ Janet ventured as the waiter returned with a laden tray.
‘Yeah, Mum,’ Tom chipped in. ‘Top form.’ He paused. ‘Can we cook tomorrow night, Janet and me?’
‘Tomorrow’s Saturday,’ I pointed out. Our norm is to eat out on weekend evenings, and I’d kept up the habit while the Monaco Three had been with us. ‘Do it one night next week, if you like.’
‘We might not be here then,’ Janet said. ‘I’d a call on my mobile from Mum, just before dinner. She said she’s coming back early and that she’s going to ask Conrad to take us home, on Monday or Tuesday.’ She frowned. ‘She said she wasn’t sure when their flight would land, since it was a long way, but that she’d let me know as soon as she did, and she knew for sure when we could come. I don’t understand that. It’s not a long flight from Scotland to Nice Airport. Has she really been in Scotland?’
‘Isn’t that what she told you? That she had to go there to run her business for a month?’
‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘It’s just funny, that’s all.’
‘Maybe something came up in the business,’ I suggested, ‘and she had to go somewhere else. Life isn’t always predictable.’
‘Ours is,’ Tom commented, as he added some milk to his coffee.
I laughed. ‘Does that concern you?’ I asked, changing the subject swiftly. ‘If it does we could always do unpredictable things.’
‘Could we go to America to see Jonny play on the tour next week?’ he shot back.
Jonny Sinclair (Big Jonathan) is his cousin, his Aunt Ellie’s older son from her first marriage. He’s a promising young pro golfer, and he’d lived with us for a while a couple of years earlier, while he was starting out on tour. He’d won his first tournament, made some very decent money in Europe since then, some of it from a second win, in Italy, played all four rounds in the US Open, finishing in the top fifteen, and was teeing up again in a week’s time in Pennsylvania, on a sponsor’s invitation secured for him by Brush Donnelly, his reclusive but very effective agent.