Sleight of Hand (22 page)

At seven am – quite a lie-in these days – it's barely light and way too cold to eat outside, so we move a fold-out table in front of the window and set breakfast up there.

The sky is still pink from the recent sunrise, a crazy contrast against the sea, momentarily pea-soup green. We sit and sip at mugs of tea and stare out to sea, all three of us mesmerised by the view.

By the time we have finished our bowls of cereal, dark clouds are appearing on the horizon. “We'd better get out and make the most of it,” I say. “I don't think the weather is going to hold.”

“You and Sarah go,” Jenny says. “I'm happy just pottering here.”

Wrapped against the cold, I attempt to teach Sarah to skim stones, but she's too young and merely manages to chuck one at my head, to fall flat on her face, and to get soaked up to her knees by a wave. But she doesn't care about any of it, and as she tears up and down the steep pebble beach chasing birds, and as she clambers on the crumbling wooden breakwaters, she doesn't stop smiling for one instant.
And I remember, with thanks, my own childhood. I wonder what London kids do all day long.

Back at the house, Sarah plays with a pile of pebbles I have brought in from outside, and Jenny and I sit side by side and stare at the view some more, this time with cups of coffee.

“It just changes all the time,” she says.

“I know.”

“Even while you were out with Sarah, the sky went from pink to blue to green. Now it's grey.”

“It looks like a Rothko,” I say.

“A Rothko?”

“Oh, a painter. Russian, I think. He did big modernist things that are just swathes of colour. Have you seen how dark it is though? It looks upside down.”

“Upside down?”

“Yeah, the sky is darker than the sea. It should somehow be the other way around.”

“I suppose,” Jenny says pensively, supping her coffee. “It's going to piss down though. Are the views as good back in Colombia?”

I swallow and pause considering my answer. Discussing Colombia or Ricardo with Jenny has always seemed like a minefield to me, which is why, up until now, we have scrupulously avoided both subjects.

“It's different,” I say. “The sky is less … changing … I suppose. It's more just blue in the dry season, and grey in the wet season.”

“What's it like there? Otherwise, I mean?”

“It looks like a holiday brochure really. You know, palm trees and white sand.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Yeah,” I say. “And the house is amazing. It's wooden, on stilts. Oh, I sent you photos didn't I?”

“Yeah.”

“There's no big window you can sit behind like this, though. Which is a shame. But Colombia is very beautiful.”

“I'm sensing a ‘but,'” Jenny says.

I frown, and wonder if she's hoping for some dirt on my relationship with Ricardo. If so this could yet turn sour.

“No, not really … it's just that it's Colombia,” I say.

“Is it sort of third-worldy?” Jenny says.

“God don't say that. They hate that.”

“Yes, I suppose they would.”

“No, it's just a very different society.”

I tell Jenny about the parties and the beach bar and the influx of tourists in the summer. I do my best to explain how joyous and open people are. And then I tell her about the stories of kidnappings and police informants having their legs chainsawed off, and men with machine guns in the boot.

“God, it sounds terrifying,” Jenny says.

“For the most part, they're just stories you hear,” I say. “But yeah, it's unsettling to say the least. You're always a bit on guard.”

“But Ricky takes care of you?”

“Ricardo? He hates Ricky you know.” The truth is that I hate it even more. Ricky is Jenny's Ex. Ricardo is all mine.

“Yes. Ricardo, then,” she says. “Sorry.”

“Well, he's Colombian. So he knows how things work, so …” I say. “It's reassuring to have him around.”

“Did you find any wifi to Skype him?” Jenny asks.

“No,” I say. “No, none at all. And it costs a fortune from my mobile, one pound fifty a minute, I think. I only have about a fiver left, so …”

“Well, you can use mine if you want.”

“Nah, thanks. You're all right,” I say, thinking that using Jenny's phone to call her ex would somehow be just a bit
too
weird.

Jenny sips her coffee and looks back out to sea. She sighs deeply. “You do love him though?” she asks.

I wrinkle my brow and wait for her to look back at me.

When she does, she too frowns. “I just mean … you know … it's real.”

I nod vaguely. “It's real.”

“That makes it more understandable somehow,” she says.

I nod and lick my lips. “No, it's real,” I say again.

“Mummy, look,” Sarah says. We both turn to see that she has piled up five of the stones.

“Very good,” Jenny says. “Try and get one more on the top. How about that big one?” Then she glances at the time on her mobile. “And what about Tom?” she asks. “How do you feel about Tom these days?”

I shrug. “It's difficult,” I say. “But you know that.”

“Yeah …” Jenny says. “But you loved Tom too, right?”

I nod and shrug simultaneously.

“But you love Rick … Ricardo more?”

I laugh lightly. “They're very different Jen,” I say.

“You don't sound very sure.”

“Why are we discussing all this anyway?”

Jenny shakes her head. “No reason. If you don't …”

“It's not that. It's just a bit strange. I mean, with you.”

“I'm just trying to … you know … relax a bit about it all. Understanding things helps. Maybe.”

“Right,” I say. “Well, I suppose they're so different it's hard to compare. I guess that's what I would say.”

“Right.”

“I mean, if you could pick and mix, you could make up this perfect partner with all the ideal character traits,” I say. “Sexy, and funny, and easy going and … But you can't … so there are things that I loved about Tom …”

“Like his sense of humour,” Jenny says.

“Well, yes. Exactly. He's very witty. He is actually sharper than Ricardo, wit-wise.”

“Right.”

“But there are things that drove me insane about Tom – things that meant that we simply weren't compatible.”

“Sure.”

“And with Ricardo, nothing we've come up against yet is a deal breaker. So … it continues.”

Jenny frowns. “And is that … you know … enough?”

“Enough?”

“Well it sounds like you're saying you just haven't found a reason to dump him yet.”

I laugh. “I'm sorry Jen … it's hard to explain. Especially to you. I tend to … you know … tone things down. For your sake. But he's sexy and solid and reassuring. He's generous and a good cook and …”

“OK, OK. So you do love him.”

I shrug and nod vaguely. “Well yeah. What are you gonna do?”

“I still think Tom is kind of … well … more straightforward.”

“Well in some ways he is. He's very direct about what he is and what he thinks. But if you don't see eye to eye, there's no compromise possible.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean. But you're exactly the same.”

“Maybe that was the problem,” I say. “And Tom is from the same culture. Ricardo's, you know, more exotic.”

“Harder to read.”

“Exactly.”

“But that's quite appealing too,” Jenny says.

“Well, exactly. Mystery is quite sexy too.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Well yes. Of course you do.”

“Anyway, enough of that,” Jenny says, clapping her hands and standing. “I'm, um, going to get started on lunch.”

“Oh!” I say, surprised at the quick-change of rhythm. “I think I'll give the boy a quick call after all.”

“Use mine if you want,” Jenny says.

“No. I only want to say, ‘hi'.”

I step beyond the bay window and phone Ricardo.

In a rush and a gush I tell him that I don't have much credit but that I love him and that we're at the seaside and the view is amazing. He tells me that he's missing me too and that Paloma is on his knees and that it's a lovely sunny day. The entire conversation must last less than three minutes.

When I step back inside, Jenny is fussing with Sarah's hair. She looks up at me with hair-clips between her teeth. “That was quick,” she mumbles.

“Yeah, well, as I say. At one-fifty a minute … I just said I was fine and that we're at the seaside. I tried to describe the view. Have you seen how dark the sky is now?”

Jenny gazes at the sky beyond the window. “Wow,” she says. “Amazing. Can't you send him a photo with that amazing gadget of yours? A picture's worth a thousand words and all that.”

“Not without wifi. Oh, actually, I can,” I say. “Of course I can. I just can't use Skype.”

I step back from the window and set up the shot, and then I hesitate and wonder whether to ask Jenny and Sarah to pose in front of the window. I'm sure Ricardo would be interested in seeing how big Sarah has grown, and for that matter, how different Jenny looks in her Monroe wig. But then again, sending my boyfriend photos of his ex is, perhaps, a little bit too much.

As I look at the image on the screen and try to decide, Tom knocks on the front door which settles the matter once and for all. I'm certainly not sending poor Ricardo a photo containing
both
of our exes, and so as the first spots of rain hit the window, I simply snap a shot of our seascape view and send it on as quickly as I can, before Tom gets involved and starts asking what I'm up to.

With no phone line and no broadband either we could only talk for a couple of minutes. I understand why you sent me that email, babe, I know you
meant
well. The picture was supposed to reassure me. “I miss you. Look at the view!” the accompanying text said.

But because I was missing you so much I
did
look at the view. I looked at it a little too hard.

To start with, I sat on the balcony with Paloma on my lap, and we looked at it on my iPhone. I compared the English sea with the Caribbean before me. And then, a little bored and keen to play with my new toy, I downloaded it to the computer so that I could look at it on the big screen.

I sat and looked at the strange grey sea, and the black horror-film sky, and the boats on the beach, and I imagined you in the distance over the horizon and I missed you as much as I ever have. And then I noticed the whispy reflection in the corner, a family of ghosts, reflected in the window.

Once I enlarged it, it became heavily pixelated, but I could still tell it was you, holding your phone up to take the photo. And I could make out Sarah facing sideways watching you, and Jenny beside her touching her new blond hair, as if she somehow knew she was in the picture.

But there was a third adult in that picture babe, and it wasn't just anyone: I was pretty sure that it was Tom. And you hadn't said anything about Tom
being there – not one word. Which got me to thinking.

Despite everything you had told me about how irritating Tom was being, I started to get angry, because that reflection was a secret photo within a photo: it was a portrait of you and Jenny and Sarah, and
Tom
. It was a
family
photo babe, and I saw suddenly that you were in the exact same configuration as when I first met you, and I realised that something was happening here: you were being sucked into your old life. And I was becoming an outsider again.

As my boring Saturday went by, I kept going back inside and looking at that photo. I kept looking at it and feeling sick, and wondering what I needed to do.

As if that wasn't a bad enough start to my weekend, the phone then rang, and thinking it was you, and that maybe I could ask you about Tom and you could reassure me, I swiped it from the base and sank onto the hammock.

But it wasn't you Chupy was it? It was Carlos.

He was polite and friendly. He asked how I was. He asked me
where
I was. He reminded me that we had met at Maria's baptism twenty-five years ago and asked me if I still saw her. And then, as if it was a question like any other, he asked me why I didn't want my nephew to give my phone number to his wife.

Cristina had phoned Juan, it seems, and when Juan lied and said that I had gone overseas that crazy bitch had gotten Carlos to make the call instead.

“She's just worried about you, man,” Carlos said, “What with your mother dying and you living out in the sticks on your own.”

I lied in the only way I could think of. I said that I was trying to forget about
mi mamá's
death, and that it was hard enough to do so without all these calls from family to check up on me. I said the concern was sweet, but that it was just a constant reminder, that kept dragging me back. Which sounded, even to me, like a load of bullshit.

I told him that I wasn't on my own, as well. I said that I shared the house with Paloma. Carlos assumed that Paloma was a “chiquita” and laughed and called me a dirty old so and so, all very man-to-man.

He seemingly bought all of my bullshit, but with a guy like Carlos, you never can tell, because with a guy like Carlos, that would always be his reaction. No matter what he was thinking, he would always seem cool and unruffled, right up to the moment when his henchmen turned up to slit your throat.

The problem that then arose was that only three people ever phoned me with hidden numbers: you when you used Skype, Cristina – obviously to trick me – and Carlos of course: in his line of business you don't dish out phone numbers lightly.

And so, from that point on, every time the phone rang and no number showed, instead of grinning and assuming it was you, my hand started to hesitate. Sometimes late at night, it trembled.