‘You got the job, beach boy,’ I told him. ‘Do the rest, will you? Sorry if the informality bothers you,’ I murmured, ‘but that’s the way it is here.’
He grinned. ‘If this was Toronto, you’d be in jail.’ He took the lotion from me and massaged it into my back, gently, with hands that were strong but surprisingly soft.
‘I’ll bet you’re glad it isn’t,’ I whispered, but there was nobody close by to hear me anyway. Tom and Janet were escorting a hesitant wee Jonathan towards the Mediterranean. His little bag was slung over his shoulder, as usual. I couldn’t imagine what he carried in it; his pet frog, for all I knew.
‘You could be right,’ he said. ‘Hand-holding’s still forbidden, I take it?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said firmly. ‘So’s this.’ I rolled on to my side, propped myself up on an elbow, took hold of his shirt, drawing him to me, and kissed him, properly, none of that on-thecheek stuff, but long and slow, feeling my nipples harden as my breasts pressed against him. ‘Sorry,’ I murmured as I came up for breath, ‘but I felt an overwhelming need to do that. Let’s just call it a reward for you being so Goddamned nice.’ I smiled at him. ‘But I warn you, if you suggest that you could be even nicer I’ll have to put my top back on.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he chuckled. ‘My nose is hurting already.’
‘I can cure that,’ I said. ‘I’m a nurse.’ I kissed him again, for longer than before, slipping my hand inside his shirt and running my palm over his chest, feeling his heart beat fast against it.
‘People will talk,’ he whispered, when he could.
‘People are talking already.’ I laughed. ‘After last night, I promise you, people are talking all over L’Escala. It’s the way this place is. Gossip moves faster here than a fire through pine needles. Fuck them all. It’s a while since they’ve had me to feed off. Let them choke on me.’
He drew a deep breath. ‘Primavera, I’m having trouble working out when you’re serious and when you’re not.’
I rolled on to my back, felt for my Maui Jim sunshades and slipped them on. ‘Right at this moment, Liam,’ I confessed, taking his hand in mine, ‘so am I. But I promise you this; I might be cautious but I’m not a tease. We’re both going to find out quite soon.’
‘Likely I’m as cautious as you are,’ he said. ‘I promise you something too. I really didn’t come here with anything like this in mind. But I’m not going to run away from it either. Whatever else happens between us, it’ll be at your pace. And suppose nothing else does, the last couple of days are the best I’ve had in years.’
I squeezed his hand. ‘Apart from all the great things that come from being a mum,’ I replied, ‘the same’s true for me.’
Liam slipped off his shirt, folded it neatly, and used it as a pillow. We lay side by side and looked at the cloudless sky for a while, counting the condensation trails of the aircraft passing five or six miles above us.
‘We’ll be on one of them tomorrow,’ I murmured. ‘Tom and me. I’d rather not be, but maybe it’s come at the right time.’
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ he asked. ‘If my speculation last night is anywhere near the mark, will you be welcome?’
‘I hope so, but it won’t matter. I’ll be holding the reins, driving the bus, pick your own analogy. I have to go, Liam, regardless. If you don’t feel like waiting around here, I’ll understand.’
He rolled on to his side and put his hand on my belly, between my navel and my breasts. ‘I’ll be here when you go, Primavera, and I’ll be here when you get back. My word on that as an Irishman,’ he chuckled, ‘and a kung fu master. I’m looking forward to working out with your lad, remember.’
‘I think he is too,’ I told him. ‘You know he’s been weighing you up, don’t you?’
‘Sure. I wouldn’t expect anything else of him. How am I doing?’
‘Okay. I’d say you’re passing his test, whatever that is.’
‘He doesn’t discuss?’
‘Not unless I ask him. He had a slight go at provoking me this morning, but he realised I wasn’t ready to talk, so he dropped it. It’s bound to happen, though, probably while we’re away.’
‘Then tell him that what I want more than anything else is to be his friend and yours.’
I propped myself up on my elbows. ‘Tell him yourself,’ I suggested. ‘He’s coming.’
He was, with Charlie on his lead, and he wasn’t smiling. My instant thought was that he’d seen me snogging Liam’s face off and was about to give us a rollicking for public indecency. If he had, it wasn’t at the top of his worry list.
‘Where’s wee Jonathan?’ he asked.
A small cold spasm of concern grabbed at the pit of my stomach. ‘What do you mean?’ I spluttered. ‘He went off with you and Janet.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘but he was being a miserable wee sod, so Janet told him to go back up to you. He did.’
‘If he did, then he was quiet about it. We haven’t seen him.’ Or we were otherwise occupied and missed him.
‘You must have seen him!’ Tom snapped. He hadn’t raised his voice to me since he was five and I’d said he couldn’t have a third Cadbury’s cream egg.
I jumped to my feet. ‘Well, we didn’t, okay!’ I stepped across to the shelter and looked inside, hoping that he’d be lurking there, but he wasn’t.
Janet had joined us. ‘Maybe he needed the toilet,’ she suggested, as anxious as the rest of us. There’s a chemical loo on the far side of the bridge, parked there for the summer like the others along the beachfront. We’d passed it and wee Jonathan had asked what it was for. He’d made a face when I told him.
‘Maybe,’ Liam agreed. ‘I’ll go and check.’
‘No,’ Tom said, grimly. ‘I will. If he’s there I’ll have a serious word with him. Janet, you look after Charlie.’
I didn’t want that to happen. This was a new version of my son; I didn’t think for a second that he’d thump his brother, but in that mood he was likely to scare the living crap out of him. ‘We’ll both go,’ I declared. ‘Meanwhile, Liam and Janet, you two have a look around here for him. He may just have settled down to play somewhere.’ Janet gave me an Are you kidding? look but didn’t argue. I put my bikini top back on and headed after Tom.
There was a queue of three outside the toilet cabin when we got there. A second later the door opened and a lady emerged, so large that she couldn’t have smuggled a Chihuahua in there with her. I asked her, in Spanish, whether a small boy had been in before her. She looked at me blankly. I tried French and we touched base. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘A very smelly German man.’
As I was having that conversation, Tom headed to check out Vaive but neither Theresa nor Philippe had seen him since we’d all left. We asked their customers as well but nobody recalled seeing anyone who fitted our description, not even the windsurfers, and that was bad news, for they don’t miss much.
We returned to the other two, hoping to see him there, retrieved and chastened. I was even prepared to see his sister’s palm print on his ear, indeed I’d probably have sanctioned it, but no palm print, no ear, no wee Jonathan.
I was in a panic, and so was Janet. Even Liam seemed at a loss. Fortunately Tom had his wits about him and took charge. ‘Mum, one more place to try,’ he said. ‘Home. He may just have gone back to Conrad. He’s upset about his mum being away, and about that …’ he paused, then continued, leaving the epithet unsaid, ‘… Duncan, because he thinks he’s come back and he’s terrified of him.’
I looked at Janet. ‘Does he know Susie’s ill?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘Not from me, Auntie Primavera; I didn’t say a word to him. But I suppose … he’s such a sneaky little sod, and he’s good with computers, maybe he could have found out some other way.’
‘He’s not sneaky,’ Tom said, firmly. ‘He’s unhappy. He just wants to be back in Monaco and for everything to be okay but it isn’t. And if he’s right about Duncan, then it won’t be.’ He looked at Janet. ‘What about Susie Mum?’ he demanded. ‘Is she ill?’