‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘It would be a lot of cost and a lot of hassle, and if we did go there, Jonny would be too busy to spend any time with us. Maybe next year we’ll go to the Masters, if he gets an invitation, and if it fits with the school holidays.’
‘Auntie Primavera.’ Janet’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. ‘There’s a man at a table in the next restaurant and he’s looking at you.’
‘Should I be pleased?’ I asked. ‘Does he look like a rock star?’
Tom covered his mouth with his hand. ‘Yes, but think Steven Tyler,’ he muttered. We’d watched a DVD of Be Cool a few weeks before, and Tom had been amazed that anyone could look like the Demon of Screamin’ and still be alive. ‘Next time they film a Terry Pratchett book,’ he’d suggested, ‘he should play Death.’
Casually, I looked around the square, then over my left shoulder. Yes, there was a dude not far away and he had been looking at me. I knew this by the intensity with which he was examining the façade of the church. It happens if you’re a woman on her own, or even with a couple of kids. Men sometimes eye you up and down; when you catch them at it, almost invariably they look away and pretend that they hadn’t been. When they’re bold and persist, you frost them until they desist … unless, of course, you don’t want them to desist, but I hadn’t come across one of them in many a year.
He didn’t look a bit like the Aerosmith front man, apart maybe in the size of his chin, and yes, he had high cheekbones too, accentuated by the glasses he wore, round like John Lennon’s but bigger and with blue-tinted lenses. He was a lot younger too, probably around my age, but from Tom’s perspective, within the human species that fits comfortably into the box labelled ‘old’ … for everyone other than me. His close-cropped hair was fairish with only a few streaks of grey, and he wasn’t skeletal like Mr Tyler, not in the slightest. In fact he looked as if he might have been something of an athlete once, and still kept in shape.
I turned away from him as casually as I’d glanced in his direction, and back to my young companions.
‘Do you know him?’ Janet asked, switching into French.
‘No,’ I replied, in the same tongue, ‘not at all.’ And yet, even as I spoke I realised that there was something there, the merest hint of a possibility that, in fact, I did. But if that was the case, I couldn’t place him and I wasn’t about to spend any time trying. Thousands of people pass through our village, year after year, and come back, so it was entirely possible that I’d seen him before. Instead I devoted myself to the coffee, and the white wine, which was actually rather better than decent.
The fireworks were still blazing away as my watch passed midnight, although they were more sporadic than they had been, and sounds of music had started to drift up from the beach. Tom and Janet were fidgeting in their seats, having finished their coffee, and I’d paid the bill, but I was not about to rush my wine. Not being a wholly irresponsible mother and guardian, I did check them for signs of tiredness, but they looked more awake than I felt. The stress of earlier in the evening had left its mark on me, and I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to get better any time soon. There were going to be ructions when the Monaco youngsters learned what their mother had been and gone and done, and while I wouldn’t be there to see them, I expected to hear about them very soon, as Janet and I had taken to exchanging emails on a regular basis.
‘Come on, then,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and hear how Bob Marley’s torch-bearers sound. But first, I will make a pit stop. I suggest that you two do the same.’ In recent years, the agency that manages all the beaches in Catalunya has installed a few portaloos for the summer months, but they’re not places I choose to visit when there’s another option.
They took my advice, then we headed off. I glanced to my left as we did so and saw that the guy who’d been appraising me earlier had gone before us. I felt a strange pang of disappointment, as if I’d wanted him to give me a wink, so I could blow him out, but it seemed that I hadn’t come up to scratch. God, Primavera, I sighed inwardly, when Steven fucking Tyler doesn’t fancy you, it has to be all downhill after that.
I cheered up, though, when we met Ben and Tunè at the top of the hill, heading in the same direction as us. ‘Mum’s babysitting,’ he explained at once, adding, ‘and dog-sitting. Cher and Mustard hate the noise.’ He ruffled Tom’s hair, and slung an arm round Janet’s shoulders. ‘Hey, you two, all grown up and heading for a night on the beach.’
‘Not all night,’ I told him, quickly.
Tunè grinned at me mischievously. ‘They can stay with us, Primavera, if you want to go home early.’ She was only pulling my chain, but it felt like another kick in the morale.
‘What’s early for you is late for us,’ I countered.
‘I know, really,’ she said, ‘but for us it’s a change to have a whole night to ourselves. You must remember that, from when Tom was three.’
I smiled and nodded. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t, because I had no such memory. When Tom was three, I was raising him unhappily on my own and plotting my irrational revenge on his father, having cut myself off from all my friends and family, even from my beloved old dad and mum, missing the last years of her life in the selfish process.
Nine years on, I’m a different woman, and I roundly dislike the other one. Most of the time she was an absolute bitch.
As always, I had my phone in my bag, but the last thing I expected was that it should ring at that time of night. I took it out and looked at the display, which shone brightly and told me that the caller was ‘Susie mobile’. I almost sent it to Voicemail, but relented and accepted it, slowing my pace a little as the kids walked on with Ben and Tunè. A few seconds later I wished I’d just rejected it.
‘Can’t come between me and my man, girlfriend,’ she growled. ‘You tried it once before and it didn’t work.’
‘Excuse me,’ I hissed, ‘I’m not having that from the woman who came to visit and fucked my husband, in my bed, the minute my back was turned.’
‘I took him from you, though,’ she chuckled, slurring her words, ‘and don’ tell me you didn’t try for a comeback.’
She sounded drunk and venomous and I reacted badly. ‘If I had done,’ I’m afraid I sneered … an ugly word for an ugly sound, ‘I’d have had him, honey. He only ever saw one thing in you and you’re sitting on it right now.’ She’d flipped my switch. But for the music from the beach, I’m sure the kids would have heard me. ‘You waved your child in his face. That’s why he married you; it wasn’t you he was in love with, it was her that he’d put inside you. Like an idiot, I hid mine. If I hadn’t …’ I stopped myself from yelling at her.
‘Sour fucking grapes, Primavera,’ she mumbled. ‘You just can’t stand to see me happy, can you?’
‘Listen,’ I retorted, ‘you’re pissed as a rat, and you’ll probably have forgotten all about this in the morning, but what I actually cannot stand is to see you unhappy, and that’s what you’re going to be if you don’t get rid of that arsehole right now. Even worse, your children will be miserable, because they can’t stand him either.’
‘Another black lie, you fucking tart.’
‘Yeah, well, you phone wee Jonathan tomorrow and tell him who his new daddy is and see what sort of a reaction you get. He was in tears tonight when he told me he thought Duncan was back, and they weren’t tears of joy.’
‘’Cos you’ve poisoned him against him.’
‘Bollocks!’ I wasn’t at my most articulate. ‘Speaking of poison, who poured you the drink you’ve just had too much of? No,’ I said before she could reply, ‘that was a rhetorical question. I know bloody hell who did. In case you’ve forgotten in your euphoric state, you are recovering from chemotherapy for a form of cancer that is quite likely to damage your liver. The last thing that clown should be doing is giving you any alcohol, and as for getting you bloody trousered … Jesus Christ, Susie, you’d better employ a food-taster from now on.’