‘Magnum ice creams,’ she replied instantly. ‘The white chocolate kind.’
‘Then how about you and Tom going and getting him one, hell on, two, and sticking them in the freezer for when he gets back?’
Tom looked at me for confirmation; I nodded. They left, Charlie following behind, heading for the nearest supply of ice-cream treats on sticks. I turned to Liam. ‘You gorgeous man,’ I murmured. I took his hand and tugged it. There was no doubt about what I had in mind, but he shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, softly. ‘I want you too, but this is not the time. You’re worth more than the half-hour we’d have before the cops get here with wee Jonathan. When he does there’s going to be a lot of emotion in here, and you’re the best person to handle it.’
‘Then afterwards.’
He grinned. ‘Sure. And what time do you have to be at the airport tomorrow?’
‘Early,’ I admitted.
‘What I thought. So you and Tom get up and bugger off, leaving me to share an awkward breakfast with Conrad, the kids and Charlie.’
I laughed, then gasped. ‘Charlie,’ I exclaimed. ‘I’d forgotten, we have to give him to Ben Simmers this evening, and he’ll be closing his shop soon.’
‘You make my case,’ he said. ‘Primavera, tough as it may be to tear myself away from you, and your remarkable body … don’t think I didn’t take a good look … I’m going to kiss you farewell now and then I’m going back to the hotel. When you come back, you’ll have had almost a week to think about me. If you haven’t thought better of everything we both have in mind right now, we’ll see where that takes us.’
I wanted to tell him, no way was he going anywhere, but I’d learned even in only a couple of days’ reacquaintance that he had an annoying tendency to be right all the time. So we kissed each other farewell, I gave him a quick squeeze for luck, hard enough to make his eyes widen, and I let him go on his way.
Eleven
I took Charlie down to Ben’s as soon as Liam had gone. An hour later I’d have been glad of his distracting presence, for it was pretty emotional when the Mossos people, a man and a woman, arrived with wee runaway Jonathan.
They parked their car outside the village and wore plain clothes when they walked him up to the door. They may have been under orders from Alex, but whether they were or not, I was grateful to them for their sensitivity. The square was Sunday busy and being hauled out of a police car in full view would have dissolved what was left of the kid’s self-esteem.
As it was, he was the picture of misery when I opened the front door to them, and he wrapped himself around me, tight as a small python. He was wearing what I can best describe as a long shirt, stretching down past his knees. The female officer explained that he had wet himself in the back of the truck and that his beach clothes were in his little bag, which he still carried slung over his shoulder. If he’d been planning to run away, I knew what I’d find in there when I looked: his favourite toy, a stuffed green dinosaur that he’s had from infancy, and a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in French.
When I asked her if she could give me the names and address of the couple who’d been his unwitting taxi drivers, she shot me a look full of alarm and shook her head. I explained that I only wanted to apologise to them, and to thank them for doing the right thing when they’d found the wee chap, but still she said that she couldn’t do that, or her bosses would hand her her head as a plaything. I didn’t press her further. I decided instead that if Philippe and Theresa knew them, as almost certainly they would, I would give them a five-hundred euro tab at Vaive to work their way through, and that’s a lot of chicken pigs.
Janet and Tom were waiting in the hall when I said goodbye to the cops and peeled wee Jonathan from round my legs. He looked at them fearfully, then saw what his sister was holding in her hand and burst into tears.
‘It’s all right,’ Tom told him, as he took the white chocolate Magnum from his sister. The kid gave him an awkward, cracked smile. We took him into the kitchen, where Conrad joined us, and I sat him at the table, while I tossed his damp and smelly beach clothes into the washing machine, along with my reprieved bikini and a couple of towels, all I had left to boost the load after my earlier burst of laundry mania.
He was halfway through his ice cream when I came back from the utility room. I let him finish before I asked the question that we all knew had to be put. ‘Why did you run away, son? You need to tell us, so we understand and can help you.’
His eyes became hard; they were scary in such a small child. ‘I don’t want Duncan as a daddy,’ he whispered.
‘Neither do I,’ Janet exclaimed. ‘But it’s not going to happen. Mum doesn’t like him any more, remember.’
‘But she does,’ wee Jonathan wailed. ‘She’s in America and they’ve got married.’
‘No they haven’t,’ Janet protested. ‘Jonathan, Mum’s in America because she’s been ill, but she’s better now and she’s on her way home.’
Fuck it, Susie! I thought. You couldn’t trust your daughter with the whole truth, and now I’m stuck with it.
‘They are so married,’ the wee fellow insisted. ‘I heard Auntie Primavera talking to Mum on the phone and that’s what they were talking about.’ He looked at me warily. ‘I couldn’t help it, Auntie Primavera. I was going to the toilet and the door was open.’ That was a small lie, the toilet being one floor above the room where I’d spoken to Susie, but I wasn’t going to pick up on it. ‘I heard you say it.’
Janet was struck dumb. She turned to me, and I nodded. It was all I could do. ‘Mum never told me,’ she said, sounding more bitter than a twelve-year-old ever should. ‘When I spoke to her she told me about her illness, but she didn’t say anything about that.’
I reached out and ruffled wee Jonathan’s hair. ‘Maybe you can see why,’ I suggested. ‘I am sure she felt, and still does, that it was something she had to tell you in person.’
‘She can tell me any way she likes,’ she protested. ‘I agree with Jonathan. I don’t want her to be married to that man. He’s not nice. He tried to bully the boys, and I don’t like the way he looks at me either.’
That was a new element, although it didn’t take me completely by surprise. ‘What do you mean by that, Janet?’ I asked her.
She hesitated. ‘It’s just … not nice. There was one time at home last year when I’d just got out of the pool and I’d taken my bikini off. I thought I was alone, but there’s a glass door and it was like a mirror and I could see Duncan there and he was looking at me, with no clothes on. When he realised I’d seen him, he just smiled. He’s a bad man, Auntie Primavera.’
Too bloody right he is, I thought, as alarmed by the revelation as she must have been by the experience. ‘Then you must tell your mother that story,’ I insisted.
‘I can’t,’ the girl whispered.
‘Then I will,’ said Conrad. ‘And I’ll be asking Mr Culshaw about it as well.’
Janet took her brother’s hand. ‘We don’t want to live with him, Auntie Primavera. We don’t have to, do we? Can we stay here tomorrow?’
‘I’d love to say yes, Janet. But you know I can’t; your mother wants you home. You might not like her choice of a husband; hell, I don’t, as you must realise, but it was hers to make.’
‘But you don’t always need to have a man,’ she pointed out.
‘True,’ I admitted. ‘I haven’t had a partner, not since your dad and I split up thirteen years ago. That’s been my choice …’ I felt Liam’s presence in the room, ‘… but I’m free to change my mind about it, just as your mum’s free to … make her own mistakes. Duncan will know, or be told by me if necessary, that as your stepfather, he has to care for you two as if you were his own. Let’s not condemn him out of hand. The fact that he’s back with your mother means surely that he knows he could have been better last time, and that he’ll be a good stepdad.’