If we had been trying to tire each other out, which we weren’t, then the outcome was a draw. We slipped into sleep together. I dreamed. I saw the two of us, on a sailing boat, knowing that we were due in harbour but without a wind to blow us home.
When I woke next morning, she was standing at the side of the bed, looking down at me, and she was dressed. ‘I’m going home, Oz,’ she said. ‘I’ve just phoned the airport, and they can get me on to a flight this afternoon.’
I wasn’t surprised; I had known that the third night was it. Still I asked her. ‘Wait another day?’
She shook her head. ‘No. If I did that, it could fuck up my game-plan big-time. I might start to want you in that way after all.’ She smiled. ‘Not love you, you understand. Susie doesn’t love. Just want you.’
‘Okay.’ I stepped out of bed, right side as always. I’m superstitious that way; I never get out of bed on the wrong side. ‘You put the coffee on. I’ll shower and dress, then I’ll drive you down.’
‘No, I’ll get a taxi.’
‘You’ve got one: no arguments.’
We ate a quick cereal breakfast then I loaded Susie’s case into the Voyager, and we took to the road. We spoke very little on the way down, not at all, in fact, just listening to CDs, until we were past the hilltop prison. ‘What would have happened over the last couple of days, d’you think,’ I asked, ‘if you hadn’t gone down those stairs?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, with a smile. ‘I caught you off-guard, and it was wicked of me, but I needed you awful bad.
‘Probably we’d just have had a nice chaste weekend, but. . You weren’t exactly in the best frame of mind yourself, were you?’
I had to agree with her. In truth, I still wasn’t, but that was something to be confronted later, even though a wee, lurking, bit of me wanted to say ‘Fuck it’, and get on that plane with Susie.
‘I’m glad you came,’ I told her. ‘I don’t regret what happened, and I’m not going to feel guilty about it. You were right about many things, one of them being that I like women. I enjoyed you, Susie; I loved having you, one might say. I hope you enjoyed me too.’
She smiled again at my sudden declaration. ‘You were all right,’ she conceded. ‘Yes, okay, it was great; never better.
‘But that’s the least of what you did for me. Three days ago, when I walked up your drive, I was hurting, I was insecure and, for all that my business is doing well, inside I had the self-esteem of a gnat. Now I feel like me again, I know where I’m going and I have the self-belief to get there.
‘I was glad when I found that Prim was in the States. I was glad to have you to myself. I never meant to blurt out the truth about her and Fortunato, but I don’t regret that either. You don’t deserve to be allowed to live a lie; even if I do understand why she kept those things from you.’
‘Do you think it would have made any difference to how I felt about her,’ I asked her, ‘if she’d told me the whole story from the start? Every fucking detail?’
‘No.’
But it does now, I thought to myself. It means that she’s not the person I thought I married.
‘I just wish she had, though,’ I said.
‘Maybe, but now you’re even. You’ve got a secret to keep from her.’
‘What if I don’t want to?’
‘Hey, I thought you’d stopped kidding yourself. You won’t because it’s in your interests not to. Sure you’ll say that it would only hurt her, but in terms of this great new career of yours, it could hurt you more. You’ll stay with her.’
‘But what if I didn’t? What about you and me?’
She gave me a look that bored into me even though I had my eyes on the road ahead. ‘I thought we’d agreed how you and I are going to be in the future. You’re going to be the strong man behind the Gantry throne.’
‘Yeah but what if. .?’
‘No what ifs,’ she exclaimed, suddenly, sharply.
‘We’re too alike, Oz. We’re hard, clever, ruthless, ambitious, rich and however many other adjectives we’ve got in common. The thought of you and I together full-time scares the hell out of me, as it should you. You get on with your life, I’ll get on with mine, and we’ll be there for each other as need be. That’s all I can handle. Susie doesn’t love; Susie can’t love.
‘Deal?’
‘Sure, it’s a deal. Oz doesn’t love either, not any more. Just as well, eh?’
It was Sunday, so the airport was relatively quiet. I parked and we walked together to the check-in, me wheeling that bloody great case behind me.
The departure gate was at the top of a big escalator. Having ditched the luggage, we rode up it arm in arm, Susie, clutching her passport and boarding card. At the top she turned towards me.
‘One last confession,’ she said.
I looked at her, intrigued; I’d thought that everything lay bare between us. ‘When I came out here, I wasn’t just concerned about the Castelgolf thing: I knew it was a con. The other investors and I finally twigged a few weeks ago that something was up. We put detectives on Chandler and Hickok, and we heard about the suicide, supposed, when it happened.
‘We didn’t call in the police at that stage for one reason only. One of the other investors is chief executive of a major public company, and he crapped himself about what the City might make of the news that he’d been the victim of a professional scam. When I heard that you and Prim were here, so close to the action, I volunteered to come out, and go to see the banker and the lawyer, Toldo, to find out whether the money was safe.
‘We didn’t have much hope of that, though. The day after Hickok’s death, the detective we put on Chandler reported back that he’d flown to the Costa del Sol, then out again to Rio, using another of his names.’
‘You know what that means, don’t you?’ I murmured. I had been keeping pace with her.
‘Yes indeed. Whoever it was that chucked me down your stairs. . and I agree that someone did. . there’s precious little chance that it was him.’
‘So who did?’
‘Exactly. And, just as intriguing. . why? It wasn’t Chandler, and if it was linked to my business in Glasgow, then it would just have happened there. I would understand if someone had seen me and had to have my fabulous body, but why would anyone want to break into your house, just to attack me?
‘Christ, I’d been in town for less than a day. Who would even know I was there?’
I didn’t have an answer for her, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it either, not then at any rate. Susie slipped her passport and boarding card into her shoulder-bag, put her arms around my neck, and pressed herself to me; we kissed, a mix of Glasgow and Fife style, a long and slow goodbye. If either of us had been wearing shades they’d have steamed up.
Finally, we came up for air. ‘I’ll write to you when I get back,’ she said. ‘Formally inviting you to join the board. You’ll let me know when you leave here, won’t you?’
‘Sure. I have the Glasgow premiere of Snatch coming up in a couple of weeks. I’ll be back for that, certainly: we’ll be back, I should say. You’re on the invitation list, by the way. It’ll probably be there when you get home.’
‘You make sure it is “we”,’ she cautioned me. ‘But don’t look for me there; not just yet.’
‘Fair enough,’ I acknowledged. ‘Hey. Just you remember, when you go looking for your titled consort, don’t go selling yourself short.’
She looked at me as if I was daft, her brown eyes flashing, the light glinting on her hair. ‘Selling doesn’t come into it, honey. I’ll be buying.’
I laughed at her frankness, but doubted if she’d have to get her chequebook out.
She kissed me again. ‘Hey,’ she whispered. ‘If Susie did love …’
‘Yeah,’ I answered. ‘Oz too …’
She turned and walked towards the gate, passport produced and offered for the cursory inspection, then she was through, beyond the metal detector and gone. She didn’t look back; to my complete surprise, I experienced a sudden surge of loneliness. It was nothing new to me, yet it signalled the truth of what she had said. My life had changed.