‘Sure, it’s my own fault, I’ve been caught at the naughties. But I don’t care about that; when I find whoever it was shopped me, I’ll fucking well kill him. . Or at least, by the time I’m finished he’ll wish I had.’
‘Will that make you feel better?’ Steve asked me.
‘No,’ I answered, ‘but it’ll make him feel worse than I do, and that’s important to me.’
I left him there, the poor, battered Proton salesman, and headed back home. I stopped for petrol on the way, and was just leaving the gasolinera when my mobile phone sounded. I pulled into the car park of the furniture store across the road and answered the call. I found myself hoping that it was Prim, telling me that she had turned the Mercedes around and was coming back, but it wasn’t. It was my Other Woman.
‘Hi,’ said Susie cheerily. ‘I’m in the office, and I’ve just dictated a letter to you, inviting you to become a director of the Gantry Group. Today’s a no-lunch day, so I thought I’d give you a call and see how you’re doing on your own.’
‘Not very well,’ I answered. ‘Not very fucking well at all.’ I told her about Prim’s early return and about what had happened that morning. When I was finished, she was silent for what seemed like quite a while.
‘Oh dear,’ she sighed at last. ‘I must have been crazy to assume that she’d never find out. She’ll be after my blood, I suppose.’
‘Several pints of it. The least you can expect is a fairly ferocious phone call,’ I admitted. ‘I guess I should have called you, to warn you, but the red mist came down. As a result, I’m just on my way back from making a fool of myself yet again.’
‘How?’
‘Miller. I assumed it was him and I went to his place to give him another doing. It wasn’t.’
‘So who did take the photos?’
‘I haven’t a bloody clue, Susie; not yet, at any rate.’
‘Don’t go overboard when you find him, Oz. Promise me that.’
‘I’m promising nothing any more. Promises just get you into bother.’
‘What about the one you made to me? About looking out for me?’
I had actually thought about that. ‘That still stands, whether Prim comes back or not. I gave you my word.’
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I really am sorry. I never meant to mess things up between you two.’
‘What would you do differently in the same circumstances? ’ I fired at her.
‘Nothing.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Do you want to come over here?’ she asked.
‘No. We’ve been over that, and you were right.’
‘What about the new movie? What happens if Prim doesn’t come back, and tells Dawn and Miles why?’
‘Right now, I don’t give one damn. But we’re contracted, Miles and I, for one more picture at least, and he has an option on me for the one after that.’
‘Will she come back?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you want her to?’
I had been thinking about that, on and off, from the moment her car turned out of the driveway. ‘Susie,’ I replied, ‘you made it pretty clear that I’ve been misusing women all my adult life. I’ve got to start being honest with someone.’
‘Be honest with me, then. If Prim did leave, and I turned up again, would you throw me out?’
‘I. . Oh shit, I don’t know. I’ll tell you one thing, though; I wouldn’t have any bloody illusions about you.’
Susie gave the short, brittle laugh that was one of her trademarks. ‘Now there’s a fine basis for a relationship. Oz, don’t be an idiot any longer than you have to; get your arse down the road to Barcelona and ask her to come back home. Even if a wee bit of begging’s called for as well. What’s the name of her hotel?’
‘The Husa Princesa. Why?’
‘Because I’m going to phone her, take my punishment like a big girl, and apologise for my part in messing up your nice, yuppie, beautiful people future.’
‘She probably won’t speak to you,’ I warned.
‘Oh she will. She’ll speak to me all right. It’ll take me a while to get a word in, but when I do I’ll tell her the truth, that when a couple of self-indulgent schemers like you and me are left alone under the same roof, by accident or design, then sparks are bound to fly.’
A recollection came to me. ‘And she did tell me not to put you in a hotel, I recall.’
‘That’s better!’ Susie exclaimed. ‘You’re sounding like your real self again; conniving, crafty and quick on your feet.’
‘Just like you?’
‘Absolutely. By the time we’re finished, the pair of us, she’ll be apologising to you because her mother got cancer.’ She giggled.
‘If I thought you really meant all that,’ I murmured into the phone, ‘you would terrify me. Happily, I know that most of it’s just front.’
I heard her take a deep breath. ‘I’m glad you said that; I really am. I can take anyone else thinking I’m nothing but a brassy wee cow, but not you.
‘Oz, Prim’s a good woman who had a hard time and didn’t deserve another. Yet I’ve given her one, and as a lady who’s been hurt herself, and knows what it’s like, the truth is that I’m just a tiny bit ashamed of myself. And so, when you’ve run out of ways to justify yourself, will you be.’
Deep in my heart of hearts, I wished that I could agree with her. . but I didn’t tell her that. ‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘If you’re serious about calling her, do it. Just don’t take all the blame on yourself.’
‘Oz Blackstone,’ she gasped. ‘You are some piece of work. As if I would!’
I could feel her hair against my face as she spoke, catch her fragrance, taste her lips. ‘That’s good,’ I laughed, ‘because neither will I.’
It would be wrong to say that I was preoccupied as I drove home. I knew that Susie was right and that there was a case for contrition, but I hesitated. I knew that I was a degree-level, out of the closet, male chauvinist pig, and I had my doubts about whether I could pull it off. I once heard a famous comedian say that when you can fake sincerity, you’ve cracked it. He got a laugh, but I knew that he was serious. Budding actor or not, I doubted whether I was in his class.
The garage looked enormous as I drove into it. Even with the Voyager in it, there was still a big aching void where the Mercedes had stood. I had grown to love that car.
I went in through the back door for the second time that day, disabling the alarm, and wandered through to the living room. The envelope in which those damned photographs had been delivered still lay on the floor where Prim had dropped it. I picked it up and looked at it, in a vain attempt, I suppose to find something familiar in the way the letters P. R. I. M. were printed. Nothing did. A name scrawled in ballpoint, that was all I saw. I wandered back to the kitchen, to get myself a beer and to think about fixing myself something to eat.
The tray lay on the work-surface; the one which I had used to carry our breakfast through to the lounge, before our world blew up, and on which I had carried it back afterwards. The cereal was still in its bowls, the milk was curdling in its jug, the coffee was cold in the pot, and the two mugs stood empty waiting for it to be poured.
I sighed and then I frowned. The mugs didn’t match. I picked them up, one in each hand and looked at them closely. They didn’t match.
We all have our characteristics, every one of us; mannerisms, habits, phrases we use to flag up and emphasise meaningful statements. ‘To be honest with you …’ is one of my stepmother’s, and it’s meaningless, because she always is.
One of my peculiarities is symmetry; I like things to match whenever possible, to the point that I’m obsessive about it. I’ve been known to spend half an hour with a pile of black socks from the tumble dryer sorting them into absolutely identical pairs. . As if one black sock is any different from another as far as your feet are concerned.
So, when I had loaded the breakfast tray that morning, naturally I had picked out, from the crockery and cutlery which we had inherited with the house, two identical bowls, yellow, to go with the milk jug, two matching spoons carefully picked out from among the odds and sods in the drawer, and two blue mugs with raised square markings.