I am lying wrapped in a cotton sheet in the bedroom, unable to keep an eye on Sofía as she wanders around the apartment, audibly picking up odd bits of paper and magazines, making no secret of her nosey fascination for my closed, obscure existence. In the sitting room she switches a CD from Mozart to Radiohead and then returns to give me a kiss. It surprises me that she has not picked up on what I said about Saul.
‘What time do you have to go home?’ I ask.
‘You want me to leave?’
‘Of course not. I want you to stay. I want you to stay for ever.’
‘Ten o’clock,’ she says, ignoring the flattery. ‘Julian thinks I have yoga with María.’
She has left the room again. From the kitchen she asks if I would like some water and I hear her pour two glasses from a bottle in the rack. I put on a T-shirt, pull the duvet across me for warmth and catch Sofía’s perfume on the pillow.
‘You friend said that you used to work in oil,’ she calls out. ‘How come you never told me about this?’
‘Does that upset you?’
‘That you didn’t tell me?’
‘Yes.’
She comes back into the bedroom, hands me the glass of water and appears to give the question some serious thought.
‘It doesn’t upset me that you didn’t tell me,’ she says eventually. ‘It upsets me that you have things to hide.’
‘Well, that’s my problem, my past,’ I reply, with more candour than intended. ‘We all have secrets, Sofía. We all have things we conceal.’
‘I don’t.’
This might be a way into the Julian situation, a chance to begin asking awkward questions. She is wearing one of my business shirts and a pair of thick winter socks, leaning up beautifully against the wall at the foot of the bed next to a Habitat Matisse.
‘You don’t have secrets? You don’t have things you hide from me?’
‘Nothing,’ she says, with melodramatic conviction. Lifting her foot onto the bed she begins stroking my leg through the duvet. I adore the shape of her thighs. ‘I show everything to you, cariño. I trust you with my marriage. There is nothing I wouldn’t tell you.’
‘And Julian?’
Her face falls. ‘What about Julian?’
She doesn’t like it when we talk about him. It is a sour subject, guilt-gathering. She fucks me wearing his wedding ring but flinches if I ever touch it.
‘Does he keep things from me?’
‘What do you mean?’
Fearing that I have been cack-handed, I adjust the pronoun in Spanish to alter the meaning of the sentence.
‘You misunderstood me. I said, “Does he keep things from you?”’
‘I don’t think so.’ Sofía looks nonplussed.
‘You don’t think so?’
‘No.’ She pulls away, no longer touching my leg. I have played it badly. She walks up to the window, seems to pick a piece of dust off the wall and then flicks it out of her fingers like an insect. She turns to face me. ‘Why are you asking me these questions?’
‘I’m just interested.’ I’m also beginning to wish we had had this conversation on the telephone. ‘Don’t you like it when we talk? I don’t want us just to fuck and not speak. I want us to mean more to each other than that.’
This turns out to be an effective if unpremeditated tactic. Sofía returns to the bed, touches my arm and looks at me with a mixture of surprise and delight. ‘Of course, of course. I don’t want that either. We make love, Alec, we have some time together, I like to talk.’
‘I just wanted to know more about Julian.’
‘Of course.’
She kisses my forehead.
‘It’s just that Mikel Arenaza told me something. In San Sebastián. Something about him.’
That stops her. Dead in her tracks. She sits up. ‘What?’
‘That he was married before you. That he had another life.’
If Sofía and Arenaza are part of a conspiracy against me, they will have expected me to bring this up. Equally, if she has no inkling about Julian’s past, that may help to expose his true motivation. But she begins to smile.
‘You didn’t know about that? Julian never told you he was married?’
‘Never. And neither did you.’
She begins to caress my palm with her thumb. ‘Well, that is his secret.’
‘Of course.’
‘And he is ashamed by it, I think. A part of his life that went wrong. Julian is a very proud man.’
‘Very.’
‘And Mikel told you this?’
‘He was drunk.’
‘Mikel is a fascist.’
She curls her bare legs up onto the bed so that her knees are almost tucked under my chin. This is how I wanted the conversation to progress. I would like to run my mouth along the bliss of her soft thigh, but need to stick to the task at hand.
‘He told me that Julian’s wife left him for another man. His best friend.’
‘Felipe, yes. An engineer.’
‘Where was he from?’
‘Colombia.’
‘Julian’s wife was Colombian?’
It doesn’t feel good to be feigning surprise like this, but it is necessary in the circumstances.
‘No. American. An East Coast family, lots of money. But they moved there because she was working for the government.’
‘The American government?’
‘Yes. She was some kind of banking or finance specialist. So boring’ Sofía uses a great Spanish expression here. Que coñazo! What a drag. I feel a great sense of relief.
‘And that’s how she met Felipe?’
‘I suppose, sweetheart, I suppose.’
For the sake of seeming disinterested I break off now and spend a wordless ten minutes exploring her naked body. Eventually we make love again, have a shower, and then head back to bed.
‘So what was Julian doing all day?’ By now it is as if I am making light of the whole thing, a joke of it. Both of us have a glass of wine in our hands and my skin is damp from the shower. ‘Was he working at the American embassy as well? Was he working for Endiom?’
‘Oh no.’ She laughs. ‘This is why he keeps it a secret. He was teaching English, like all good British people when they live away from home. In the old days Julian wasn’t the successful private banker. He was just following Nicole around the world.’
‘Nicole was her name?’
‘Si.’
‘Did you ever meet her?’ This elicits a brief look of Hispanic disgust, sour as old milk, which effectively provides me with an answer. ‘OΚ, but how come Julian’s best friend was Colombian?’
Sofía spins on the bed and places her head next to mine. Perhaps she has finally grown tired of all the questions.
‘Felipe was not his best friend. Julian does not have friends. Only silly people from his school in England.’ She starts to imitate them, adopting a clipped Sloane, arching her neck so that she is kissing me as she speaks. ‘“Sofía, darling! How charming to meet you! I don’t know how you put up with old Jules.” They are such idiots, these English. But not you, cariño. Not you.’
I reach for her stomach and walk my fingers up to her nipples.
‘So?’ she says, sighing. ‘You have no more questions? The little interrogation session is over?’
‘It’s over,’ I tell her. ‘It’s over,’ and I take the glass of wine out of her hand and place it on the floor.
13. Development
Late on Thursday morning the Nokia mobile shrills beside my bed.
‘Alec?’
It’s Arenaza.
‘Mikel, hi. Sorry, I was asleep. How are you?’
‘You sleep? At eleven o’clock? Are you sick, Milius?’
‘I was up late last night.’
‘OΚ. I am ringing to tell you that I’m going to the airport now. I fly into Madrid this afternoon. We still going to have dinner, right? You want to meet up on Saturday?’