Sleight of Hand (28 page)

*

The trip to London goes without surprises. The hospital staff extract a few tubes of blood for tests and hand Jenny a fresh batch of pills – the whole thing takes less than an hour.

On the way back, we call into B&Q and pick up tools and pots of paint. Sarah, who refused to eat lunch in London, turns, unusually, into a screaming devil child halfway around B&Q and maintains a war on our eardrums during the remainder of the journey home.

When we get back I find our first pile of redirected mail lying on the doormat.

Jenny busies herself with Sarah's tea, and I carry the paint in from the car before slouching on the sofa to leaf through the mail in case any of it is for me.

One hand-written envelope is bizarrely addressed to
Jenny Gregory
– her old married name. I glance back towards the kitchen, and then hold it up against the table lamp beside me. Seeing that the letter inside is handwritten, I slide it down the side of the sofa and a few minutes later hand Jenny the remainder of the pile.

“Bill, bill, bank …” she says, leafing through them. “Oh!” She rips open the final envelope and says, “Oh. Well, at least that's good news. They've granted me incapacity benefit. Four hundred and eighty quid a month.”

“Nice,” I say.

“Yeah …” she says. “It's better than a kick in the arse isn't it?”

It's not until she retires that night that I retrieve the hidden envelope from the side of the sofa. Dreaming up plans of how to redeliver the letter should I need to do so, I open it as carefully as I can and extract the single sheet of notepaper and smooth it open. In almost unintelligible scrawl, it reads:

“Always happy to help,” I mutter, refolding the letter and slipping it into my backpack. “Useless, drunken loser.”

The next day is sunny and once Jenny has headed off with Sarah across the pebbles – subtly encouraged to do so by myself – I text Ricardo and ask him to phone me when he gets up. Nearly an hour later, he finally calls.

“Hello babe,” I say. “You're late today.”

“It's the weekend,” he says. “And I was tired.”

“It's Thursday,” I point out.

“Well, it's
my
weekend.”

“Sure. Look, I need to talk to you. I did a bad thing.”

“Really bad?”

“Yeah, pretty.”

“If you sleep with someone I don't think I want to know,” he says.

I frown. “That's a joke right?” I say. It's hard to read his voice this morning.

“Why?
Did you?”
he asks.

“Well, no,” I say. And that's it. The decision to not tell him has apparently been made – just like that. At least I'm not lying. I didn't
sleep
with anybody. And after all, what decision was there to be made? It's not as if there's any reasonable way to tell your boyfriend that you have been
half
sucked-off twice, once by your ex and once by a random stranger.

“OK. So what you do?” Ricardo asks.

“I intercepted a letter.”

“Sorry?”

“I stole a letter. To Jenny. From Nick.”

“Ahh. What did it say?”

“Nothing really. It just has his new address and phone number. Now he's out of prison.”

“OK, so?”

“Well, do you think I should tell Jenny or not?”

“Tell her that you steal her letter?”

“No. I mean, do you think I should
give
her the letter?”

“I don't know,” he says.

“You sound funny. Are you OK?”

“Yes.”

“But you … don't have any opinion?”

“No. I just wake up.”

“Maybe you should wake up more and call me back later,” I say, starting to feel annoyed at his terse attitude.

“Do what you want,” he says. “Give it, don't give it.”

“Ricardo!”
I whine.

“Well …”
he says.

“But if I give it to her she might get back into that whole thing of giving Sarah to Nick.”

“Then don't give her,” he says.

“You're not being very helpful today,” I point out.

“Look, babe …” he says with an audible sigh. “Either you agree we should take Sarah, or you let her contact Nick.”

“How can it be that straightforward for you?”

“It's not so complicated either,” he says. “Either we agree to take her or we don't. If not, I agree with Jenny that Nick isn't the worst thing that can happen.”

“Well that's because you don't know him,” I say.

“Look … just do what you want,” he says.

“Why can't we discuss this?” I say. “Why does every phrase have to be the definitive answer?”

“I'm discussing,” he says.

“No you're not. You're saying, ‘do it,' and then ‘don't do it,' That's not a discussion.”

“Because you don't listen maybe.”

“I don't
listen?”

“Yeah. You do what you want. So I'm bored with the talking.”

I take a deep breath before replying. “OK babe,” I say. “So, what do
you
think?”

“I
tell
you already,” he says.

“Then tell me again. This time I'll listen.”

“I think you tell Jenny that
if
anything happen, we will look after Sarah.”

“Right.”

“Now I have to go.”

“But we've only been talking for five minutes.”

“Yes, but a car arrive outside.”

“I don't believe you.”

“That's nice. Very nice. Thanks.”

“Well, we never have visitors up there. Who is it?'

“I don't know.”

“Look, why don't we have nice long talks anymore? And why don't you call me Chupy anymore?”

“Really Chupy. You're just grumpy today. And I have to go.”

“And don't just
Chupy
me to get rid of me.”

“You see. Grumpy.”

“You know what's happening here?” I say. “We're drifting apart. This isn't good.”

“Yes babe.”

“Yes?! If we carry on like this we'll end up splitting up.”

“And that's
my
fault?”

“Well, no, it's nobody's fault but …”

“OK, talk tomorrow. I go now. Goodbye.”

“Bastard!” I mutter as the line goes dead. And then I see Jenny hesitating beyond the bay window.

“How long have you been there?” I ask once I have slid the window open.

“About a minute,” she says. “Why?”

“No reason.”

“Have you two been arguing?”

“No.”

“You so have. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I don't.”

“Fine. Come on inside Sarah. It's OK. Mark's just grumpy.”

“I am
not
grumpy.”

“OK. Mark
isn't
grumpy,” she says rolling her eyes.

I think that was the first time ever that you didn't believe me about something, Pumpkin. I was hurt and annoyed about that, not least, because what I was saying was true. A taxi
had
just pulled up in the car park, and as I put down the phone a booted foot was descending from the rear door.

By the time I got outside, the taxi was already receding into the forest leaving a trail of dust in its wake, and Cristina was standing there like a shop-dummy, smiling and glassy eyed.

What a beautiful place
– those were her words Chupy, as if this was a perfectly normal visit. I asked her how she had found me, and she said that she had got the address from Carlos' computer, which got me worrying right off about why Carlos would have my address in the first place.

She looked strange though. It was something about the way her eyes didn't match her smile, like a lying politician or a photo-fit police picture. I asked her what the hell she was doing up in Tayrona, and she told me she had left him.
He hit me
, she said, and I could see that her cheek was a little red where she had been slapped.

I grabbed her arm and bustled her inside the house and out of the sight of Carlos' spies who, my imagination insisted, were already gathering in the forest around the house.

Once inside she tried to kiss me but I pushed her away, and she told me again that he had hit her and that she had walked out with nothing but the
clothes on her back to avoid suspicion. She said that now, finally, we could be together.

I did my best to talk reason to her babe. I told her that I had a wife who would be home tomorrow. I reminded her that Carlos would kill us both if he found her here, but it was like talking to an automaton. She was dosed up on Valium and vodka, and she just kept on repeating that she didn't have any other option but to come here, and I felt sorry for her, I really did, because I know how, once you get involved with someone like Carlos for business or pleasure, your options just shrink and shrink until there are no options left at all. I myself was only involved with his wife, but already I could feel my own walls closing in.

I tried to book her on a flight back to Bogotá that day so that she could be back before he even noticed, but there were no flights available, so I made up the spare room just to make it clear what was and wasn't happening here. The idea of one final fuck did actually cross my mind, but the thought that Carlos or his men might turn up at any moment and catch us together played like a horror film in my mind so that idea went no further.

She took another Valium and I served her a nice big glass of wine and parked her on the balcony and she just drifted away babe. She sat, all afternoon, staring out at the waves and talking quietly to herself. Paloma, who I think thought she was being wooed, took a shine to her and jumped onto her lap, and neither of them moved for the entire afternoon.

That evening as I cooked dinner, she tried again to seduce me. She put on a baby Marilyn Monroe voice and pouted and said,
Baby Ricardo, don't you want to look after little Cristina?
and I pushed her away and understood exactly how Carlos had come to hit her,
because she was so irritating I wanted to slap her myself.

As we ate she said little, just muttering occasionally in a random, crazy kind of way, but even the few random factlets that she thus released into the ether were more than I wanted to know. I thought about putting my fingers in my ears and singing a song, but I didn't babe, and so I heard when she said that Carlos spied on her and that he listened to her phone calls. It sounded like paranoid schizophrenia, but, well, as they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not after you, especially when you're talking about the likes of Carlos.

I heard too, when she named a few well known government officials who came to the house and these were names that were big enough that even I knew them. These were names that I
really
didn't want to hear.

She asked again if she could stay, and I told her again that she couldn't. I said again that Carlos would kill us both if she did, and then suddenly babe, it was over. At that moment, she had some kind of revelation – I saw it happen. I saw her fall out of love with me.

You're scared of him
, she said, and I replied that, of course I was fucking
scared of him
. And it's true babe. Thinking about how Carlos was hanging out with not only the secretary to the minister for the economy but also the assistant to the CIA head of
Plan Colombia
, and that, thanks to Crazy Cristina, I now
knew this
was making my hands shake. I had been sitting on them to hide the fact, but now I saw that it was my escape route and so I held them up to show her instead.

I thought you were more of a man
, she said, and I agreed that it was a shame that I wasn't and, just like that, her love affair with Ricardo was over.

After dinner, she went off to the spare room of her own accord, choosing Paloma not me as her sleeping partner and I sat and watched the forest for headlights and then at first light drove her to Santa Marta.

At the airport she said,
you're all bastards really aren't you
, and I agreed that we mostly were. Sending her back to slap-happy Carlos I felt like a bastard too, but, as I say, by this point she had no options.

Outside, I bought a packet of cigarettes and smoked one to calm my nerves and I watched and waited to see that she didn't change her mind and reappear.

A short guy came up and asked me for a cigarette and I should have said no and walked away, but I never was very good at avoiding trouble Chupy.

He lit his cigarette and then asked me if I was Federico's cousin.

“So who's the girl?” he asked.

“Just a friend,” I told him.

And he nodded slowly at this and said to give Federico his love.

As he walked away I realised that he hadn't said who he was, and as he crossed the car park he looked back at me babe, and something about that look wasn't right. I couldn't explain exactly what was wrong, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end and even though it was a beautiful sunny day, I shivered.

If astrology truly worked there would be days when the horoscope would simply tell you to stay in bed and keep your eyes closed. Jenny looks hers up every morning. I can tell, because when I open my laptop it's sitting there on the screen announcing that she's going to have an “active day,” or “get in touch with long lost friends,” when all that actually happens is that she takes three colourful pills and spends the day in bed feeling sick.