Which is when Perry becomes Perry again, and the dagger in her hand turns against herself as he gazes at her with so much hurt love that she is more alarmed for Perry than for herself.
'I tried to airbrush you out, Gail. I did my absolute damnedest to airbrush you out. I believed I could protect you from being involved. It didn't work. They've got to have us both. Initially anyway. He was – well – adamant.' Lame laugh. 'The way you would be about witnesses. "If the two of you were present, then two of you must obviously come." I'm really sorry.'
And he was. She knew he was. The day Perry learned to fake his feelings would be the day he wasn't Perry any more.
And she was as sorry as he was. Sorrier. She was in his arms telling him this when a black taxi with its flag down appeared in the street outside, last two numbers 73, and a nearly cockney male voice informed them over the house entryphone that he was Ollie and he had two passengers to pick up for Adam.
*
And now she was excluded again. Debarred, debriefed, discarded.
The obedient little woman, waiting for her man to come home, and having another man-sized glass of Rioja to help her do it.
All right, it was in the whole ridiculous contract from the start. She should never have let him get away with it. But that didn't mean she had to sit and twiddle her thumbs, and she hadn't.
That very morning, although he didn't know it, while Perry had been sitting here waiting obediently for the Voice of Adam, she had been busy in her Chambers tapping away at her computer, and not, for once, on the matter of Samson v. Samson.
That she had waited until she got to her office rather than use her own laptop from home – that she had waited at all – was still a puzzle to her, if not a cause for outright self-reproach. Put it down to the Perry-generated prevailing atmosphere of conspiracy.
That she still possessed Dima's deckle-edged business card was a hanging offence since Perry had told her to destroy it.
That she had gone electronic – and therefore interceptible – was as it now turned out also a hanging offence. But since he had not informed her in advance of this particular branch of his paranoia, he could hardly complain.
The Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate of Nicosia, Cyprus, its website informed her in bad, blotchy English, was a consulting company specializing in providing help for active traders. Its head office was in Moscow. It had representatives in Toronto, Rome, Berne, Karachi, Frankfurt, Budapest, Prague, Tel Aviv and Nicosia. None, however, in Antigua. And no brass-plate bank. Or none mentioned.
'Arena Multi Global prides itself on confidentiality and entreprenurial [with an 'e' missing] flare [misspelled] at all levels. It offers top-class oportunities [with one 'p'] and private banking facilities' [spelled correctly]. Note: this web page is currently under reconstruction. Further information available on application to Moscow office.'
Ted was an American bachelor who sold futures for Morgan Stanley. From her desk in Chambers she rang Ted:
'Gail, sweetheart.'
'An outfit calling itself the Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate. Can you dig up the dirt on them for me?'
Dirt? Ted could dig dirt like nobody else. Ten minutes later he was back.
'Those Russki friends of yours.'
'Russki?'
'They're like me. Hot as hell and rich as figgy pudding.'
'How rich is rich?'
'Anybody's guess, but looks mega. Fifty-something subsidiaries, all with great trading records. You into money-laundering, Gail?'
'How did you know?'
'These Russki mothers pass the money around between them so fast nobody knows who owns it for how long. That's all I got for you but I paid blood. Will you love me for ever?'
'I'll think about it, Ted.'
Her next step was Ernie, the Chambers' resourceful, sixty-something clerk. She waited till lunchtime when the coast was clearest.
'Ernie. A favour. Rumour has it that there's a disgraceful chat site you visit when you want to check out the companies of our highly reputable clients. I'm deeply shocked and I need you to consult it for me.'
Thirty minutes on, and Ernie had presented her with an edited printout of disgraceful exchanges on the subject of the Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate. Any asshole got an idea who runs this junk shop? The guys change MDs like socks. P. BROSNAN Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the wise words of Maynard Keynes: Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Asshole yourself. R. CROW What the f***'s happened to MG's website. It's curdled. B. PITT MG's website is down but not out. B-s rises to the surface. Assholes all beware. M. MUNROE But I'm really really curious. These guys come on at me like they have the hots, then they leave me panting and unfulfilled. P.B. Hey guys, listen to this! I just heard MGTC opened an office in Toronto. R.C. Office? You're shitting me! It's a f***ing Russian nightclub, man. Pole dancers, Stolly and bortsch. M.M. Hey, asshole, me again. Is the office they opened in Toronto the same one they closed in Equatorial Guinea? If so, run for cover man. Run now. R.C. Arena Multi f***ing Global has absolutely zero hits on Google. I repeat zero. The whole outfit is so uber-amateurish I get palpitations. P.B. Do you by any chance believe in the afterlife? If not, start believing now. You are treading on the Biggest Bananaskinski in the laundering arena. Official. M.M. They were just so enthusiastic about me. Now this. P.B. Stay away. Stay far, far away. R.C.
*
She is in Antigua, wafted there by another tumbler of Rioja from the kitchen.
She's listening to the pianist in the mauve bow tie crooning Simon and Garfunkel to an elderly American couple in ducks pirouetting all alone on the dance deck.
She's fending off the glances of beautiful waiters who have nothing to do but undress her with their eyes. She is overhearing the seventy-year-old Texan widow-woman of a thousand facelifts telling Ambrose to bring her red wine as long as it isn't French.
She's standing on the tennis court, demurely shaking hands for the first time with a bald fighting bull who calls himself Dima. She's remembering his reproachful brown eyes and rock jaw and the rigid, Erich von Stroheim backward lean of his upper body.
She's in the Bloomsbury basement, one moment Perry's life companion, the next his surplus baggage, not wanted on voyage. She's sitting with three people who, thanks to our document and whatever else Perry has managed to bubble to them in the meantime, know a whole lot she doesn't.
She's sitting alone in the drawing room of her desirable residence in Primrose Hill at half past midnight with Samson v. Samson on her lap and an empty wineglass beside her.
Springing to her feet – whoops – she climbs the spiral staircase to her bedroom, makes the bed, follows the trail of Perry's dirty clothes across the floor to the bathroom and stuffs them into the laundry basket. Five days since he made love to me. Will we establish a record?
She returns downstairs, one step at a time, one hand for the boat. She's back at the window, staring into the street, praying for her man to come home in a black cab with the last two numbers 73. She's riding buttock to buttock under the midnight stars with Perry in the bumpy people carrier with blackened windows as Baby Face, the short-haired blond bodyguard with the linked gold bracelet, drives them to their hotel at the end of the birthday revels at Three Chimneys.
'You had good night, Gail?'
This is your driver speaking. Until now, Baby Face hasn't let on that he speaks English. When Perry challenged him outside the tennis court, he didn't speak a word of it. So why's he letting on now? she wonders, alert as never in her life.
'Fabulous night, thank you,' she declares in her father's voice, filling in for Perry, who appears to have gone deaf. 'Simply wonderful. I'm so happy for those magnificent boys.'
'My name is Niki, OK?'
'OK. Great. Hello, Niki,' says Gail. 'Where are you from?'
'Perm, Russia. Nice place. Perry, please? You had good night too?'