Therefore, summed up, mystery man was a middle-aged British citizen, a stranger on his own in a place that almost without exception attracts families or older couples. A widower, perhaps, or a divorcee, but certainly not gay from the way he was admiring the vocalist. Profession? You can’t tell a book by the cover. I have seen men shuffling along the beach in the sort of swim shorts that should never have left the factory, unshaven and with at least three over-spilling bellies, and learned later that they were corporate lawyers, hedge fund managers, surgeons or whatever. But Mr Brit was well dressed in his expensive tourist shirt and trousers with a discreet Lacoste alligator just below the waistband, and he had the air about him of someone who had no need or desire to dress down from his day job. Simple, Primavera, he’s a rep.
I nodded at that verdict, at the very moment when the singer took a break and he glanced across and caught me looking at him. He smiled, and started to move in my direction. Oh shit, I thought, and harboured the notion of using the kids as a human shield but they’d drifted a couple of metres away from me, closer to the stage. All I could do, other than grab them and beat an undignified, not to mention cowardly, retreat, was to stand there and wait, pretending that I was ignoring his approach.
‘Primavera?’ Ben Simmers’ call took me unawares. I turned towards him and realised from his expression that he had taken in the whole thing. His raised eyebrows, and his concern, asked, quite clearly, whether I wanted him to intervene, but I shook my head briefly.
The guy drew closer; he was smiling and didn’t pose any threat in such a throng, but still, I felt a pang of something that might have been alarm, if not outright fear. Rarely do I feel vulnerable, but I did then, because I had this continuous nagging feeling that I was missing something.
He stopped, standing in front of me, no closer than the kids were, sorry, kid, because Tom had left Janet’s side and was standing in front of me, a five foot four inch, fifty-nine kilo bundle of something serious.
As I put a hand on his shoulder, the newcomer spoke. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ Slightly Irish accent, but I still couldn’t pin him down.
‘If that’s a pub quiz starter,’ I replied, ‘the answer is, it’s a line from It Started with a Kiss, by Hot Chocolate, early nineteen eighties. If it’s a chat-up line, it’s crap and you’d be well advised to desist, because quite apart from my son here, there are at least three guys watching you right now who would be happy to take you to the top of the old Greek wall and chuck you in the sea if they thought you were annoying me.’ I paused. ‘If, on the other hand, it’s a straight question, then no, I don’t have a clue.’
‘You’re Liam Matthews!’ Janet’s exclamation cut in out of the blue. ‘You were a friend of our father’s. You were in some films with him and you came to visit us once when we lived in Scotland, beside Loch Lomond. I wasn’t very old at the time, but I remember you. Don’t you, Tom? It was just after you came to live with us.’
‘Got it in one,’ the former stranger laughed, as Tom shook his head. ‘You can only have been about … what … four, then. I didn’t meet your brother that day, though, just you. You wandered in when your dad and I were talking and he introduced me, and made you shake my hand, like a little lady. By God, but you’ve grown up. You’re a proper lady now, no mistake; he’d have been very proud of you, as I’m sure Susie is.’
Liam Matthews! Liam bloody Matthews. A name from way, way, in my past; it must have been almost fifteen years back. Finally I remembered him, and the first time I’d ever seen him. It was in Barcelona, and I was covered in blood.
After Oz left me for Jan, and went back to Scotland, I stayed on in our apartment in St Martí and took a job as a nurse in the Trueta hospital in Girona. A few months later, I was in the near-legendary JoJo’s Bar in L’Escala one night when the telly ran an ad for a wrestling show in Barcelona, and who was doing the promo but Oz. The shock knocked me off my bar stool.
The nutter had got himself involved with a Glasgow-based outfit called the Global Wrestling Alliance. Ostensibly he was their ring announcer, but as it turned out he was really working on an undercover investigation into a series of attempts at sabotage. Whatever, I couldn’t let the circus leave town without seeing for myself; I booked a ticket and drove down.
It wasn’t my intention to meet him … well, that’s what I told myself and still do … but there was another serious incident that very night. One of the wrestlers was shot, yards away from me, in the middle of the ring, and I wound up in there doing some battlefield first aid. The man’s name was Jerry Gradi, and happily it still is, because they reckon I saved his life. I’m still on Jerry’s Christmas card list and he’s on mine, but he’s the only one of that crew I kept in touch with.
Liam was there too, although I didn’t pay too much attention to him, or give him any thought, considering everything that was going on, then and afterwards.
It’s an evening I’ll never forget, for a reason that Duncan Culshaw touched on in his scurrilous book. After the shooting, Oz and I crossed paths at the hospital where Jerry was taken, when he came to check that he was going to be all right. The two of us had dinner together and that’s where he was when he had the phone call that told him that Jan had been electrocuted by the faulty washing machine in their flat in Glasgow.
Fast forward a little. I kept in touch with him, this time to check that he was going to be all right. Eventually, one thing led to the other, I moved back to Scotland, and we became a couple again. Odd? No, I’d never stopped loving the boy, and he didn’t hate me too much either.
He was still involved with the GWA; indeed, that’s how he got into the acting business. As a ring announcer, he fell well short of being Michael Buffer, but nonetheless he made an impression. As a result, he landed some voice-over work on TV commercials. Eventually Miles Grayson, my brother-in-law, was brave enough to cast him in a movie, and it all took off from there. Before it did, though, Oz and I had socialised with some of the wrestling crew and Liam had been among them.
He’d looked a hell of a lot different then, hence my failure to recognise him. Apart from the specs, which were new, and the fact that he’d carried at least ten kilos more muscle in those days, he’d lost the big hair. Liam had been famous … some said notorious … for his ponytail, which hung on the end of one of the worst mullets I’ve ever seen. He’d looked like a holdover from a seventies pop band, but at some point since then he’d turned into a New Age man.
My brother-in-law may have had something to do with that too; at Oz’s suggestion he’d cast Liam as a cop in one of his movies. The Showaddywaddy look would not have worked for that.
When my reverie was over and I rejoined the moment, I saw that Liam was gazing down on Tom, who still hadn’t relaxed from his defensive posture. ‘Wow,’ he murmured. ‘Even if I didn’t know who you were, son, I’d have picked you out of a line-up of five hundred as Oz’s kid.’ He grinned. ‘You think you could take me, slugger? Your dad could have, that’s for sure.’
‘I’m not a slugger,’ Tom replied, quietly. ‘What’s your wing chun belt?’ he asked.