I heard the front door open. I backed out and pulled the door shut quietly, then turned, went into my own room and lay on my bed, waiting for the ticking in my left eye to go away. I heard voices. Miles, I thought, and someone else: a woman, but not Astrid or Pippa. I don’t know how long I lay there, whether or not I slept, but when I went downstairs Dario was awake, sitting on the sofa smoking a cigarette, and Mick was frying eggs at the stove. The smell made me feel sick again. Miles was there, and so, too, was the woman whose voice I had heard. She was tall and striking and had flawless skin, but her face was discontented and her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. She reminded me of a bird of prey, a hawk perhaps. I told myself I had to be careful.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Mick was sitting at the table and Astrid was at the stove. She was wearing blue jeans and a light brown T-shirt. She was barefooted again, leaning up to reach a saucepan down from a high shelf. The effort pulled her shirt up, exposing the smooth brown skin of her lower back.
‘Sorry,’ I said, turning to go.
‘That’s all right,’ said Astrid. ‘Join us.’
I thought of my instruction manual. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
She laughed. ‘I’m cooking one of my special recipes. Pasta accompanied by spicy red pesto bought from a deli, sprinkled with cheese, plus red wine.’
‘Sounds fantastic,’ I said.
‘It is,’ said Astrid. ‘Even I can’t fuck it up.’
I found Mick disconcerting. He was like a smooth wall that provided no fingerholds. He didn’t seem to find it awkward to stay silent. He looked at me for a moment, then got up and collected plates, forks and glasses, three of each. He took a bottle of red wine from a carrier-bag on the floor, opened it and poured some into each glass. I picked up mine.
‘Cheers,’ I said, too quickly. Astrid was stirring pasta in the saucepan and Mick just stared at his glass. It felt like an awkward moment but then Astrid smiled, picked up hers and took a gulp from it.
‘Mick and I were talking about travelling,’ she said. ‘Have you done much, Davy?’
Lying is like a really good tool. It’s a tool for manipulating people, for controlling them. You can tell them what they want to hear; you can make them think you’re a particular person. The point of lying is to have different lies for different people. Different people need different lies, the way that different jobs need different tools. If you have just one lie for everyone, you might as well tell the truth because the truth is much easier. If you’re telling the truth, you don’t need to think because the truth automatically fits together neatly. Lies aren’t like that. You have to make them fit. And you have to remember which lie you’re telling at any particular time, and to whom, and if it fits with every other lie you’ve told and whether anything could happen, today, tomorrow or the day after to expose it. Knowing when not to lie is part of the skill. I knew, I just knew, that Mick and Astrid were talking about travelling because they had both done a lot. And I would so much like to have said yes, so that I would have been part of the club. But then they would ask where and I would name some place, and it would turn out that one of them had been there and it would go terribly wrong. It would only take something as small as that to ruin everything in the house and force me to leave.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Round Europe mainly,’ said Astrid. ‘ India, a bit in the Far East, Australia. Nothing like Mick.’
‘Where have you been, then?’ I said to Mick.
He made a dismissive gesture. ‘I just got back from Latin America,’ he said. ‘I was there a couple of years.’
I thought of my book, my manual on how to be a real person. Bring people out, it advised. There’s no such thing as a bore. All a good talker needs is a good listener.
‘What’s the best place you went to?’ I asked Mick. ‘Where would you really recommend?’
He thought for a moment. ‘ Brazil,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Number one.’ He held up one finger. ‘The rainforest. Two: the Amazon. Three: big, noisy, exciting cities. Four: the dancing. Five: the cachasa.’ He started on the fingers of his other hand. ‘Six: the music. Seven: the beaches. Eight: excellent dope.’ This was the most I’d ever heard Mick say, but he continued. ‘Then there’s the women.’
‘Number nine on your list,’ I said lightly, pleased to see Astrid grinning, but Mick scowled as if I was mocking him.
‘They’re the most amazing women in the world. Present company excepted.’
‘Oh, shut up, Mick,’ said Astrid, heaping pasta on to the plates.
‘And it’s cheap.’
‘Sounds great,’ I said. ‘How’s your Spanish?’
Mick looked at Astrid.
‘Portuguese, in fact,’ said Astrid. ‘ Chile and Peru and the rest speak Spanish.’
‘Yes, I knew that,’ I said. ‘I meant when you were travelling round the rest of South America. Actually, I was thinking of learning Portuguese.’
‘Really?’ said Astrid. ‘Everyone says it’s a lovely language.’
Fuck, I thought. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I’d told the truth to stop myself looking stupid and I’d made myself look stupid anyway.
The next day I went to the bookshop and found a guide-book to South America. Brazil really did look good. Ten days later, I was sitting in a class at an institute in Clapton with several businessmen, a few white-haired retired men and women and a couple of younger people I couldn’t make out. Introductory Portuguese taught by a middle-aged woman, fat, bespectacled, Portuguese, but not at all the kind of woman Mick had been talking about. Week four. It was late March by now and I’d missed weeks one, two and three but I told the woman in the office I’d catch up.
Several days later, when I met Mick in the hall, I said in a cheery voice, ‘Bom dia.’
He looked startled. ‘Is this for real?’
‘I told you I was planning to learn.’
‘Spanish is really more useful,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re planning to go to Brazil. Or Angola or Mozambique.’
‘Or Portugal,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said, sounding doubtful. ‘Was it the women? I may have exaggerated about them.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I like the sound of the language.’
Mick’s expression relaxed. ‘I do too,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not taking the piss. Boa sorte.’
‘What?’
‘Good luck.’
For the next few weeks, I lived my life happily in compartments. There was the Portuguese compartment, where I was a person planning a project in Brazil. There was the work compartment. Down in Camberwell I was the young apprentice, eager to learn. It was always good to pretend to know less than you really did. I could clearly see that Dario was taking the housemates at Maitland Road for a ride. He was allegedly paying his rent in kind, by doing the house up. It was mainly painting, but he also did a bit of electrics, a bit of carpentry, even some plastering and plumbing. It was a botch job. When he painted a room, he couldn’t be bothered to tape up the wood frames. I mentioned it once but he said it was a waste of time. All that was needed was a steady hand. The result was paint speckles on the woodwork. His carpentry was all ragged edges, protruding screws and ill-fitting joints. If his electrical work was of the same standard, there was probably a risk of fire.
I thought of mentioning it to Miles and provoking a row, but that didn’t fit with the role I was creating. For the moment, I was the perfect housemate, the one who did the washing-up and patched over disagreements. It was always useful to have ammunition that could be used later.
I wanted to get to know the housemates individually. One evening I wandered out into the garden to get a shirt off the line and found Dario in a corner, smoking a joint. He offered it to me and I took a puff.
‘It’s good stuff, isn’t it?’ he said.
It never had much effect on me. I’d always found it difficult to see why it meant so much to other people, why they gave it so much attention. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s really good stuff.’