Sleight of Hand (34 page)

I think,
“I love you,”
and
“I have missed you so much,”
and
“I'm so happy,”
but “I …” is all I manage to say.

“T'es comme Paloma,” he says in an amused voice. “T'as pris du poids.” –
You're like Paloma. You've put on weight.”

“I … I can't believe that you're here.” I say.

Ricardo holds me at arm's length so that he can look at me. “You happy though?” he says peering into my eyes, wrinkling his brow.

I shake my head and work my mouth before I manage to say, “You have no idea babe.”

At that instant the entire weight of being separated from him, of worrying about our relationship, of the responsibility of looking after Jenny and Sarah on my own, the stress of what's been happening with Tom … it all wells up causing tears to slip down my cheeks. I suddenly realise how alone I have felt without him.

Ricardo's face is split in two by his grin and as I start to breathe again I can't help but copy it, so I end up crying and grinning at the same time.

Ricardo looks bemused. “Monkey birthday?” he says.

“I'm sorry?”

“That's what you say when it rains and sun at the same time, no?”

A fresh wave of tears wells up and I lean in and hug him tightly, breathing his scent as deeply as I can. I can still smell Colombia on him.

“God I've missed you,” I say. “I've missed you so much, I had
forgotten
how much.”

Ricardo frowns, and I shrug and laugh. “Come in, come in,” I say, dragging his huge wheeled bag over the doorstep.

“Jenny! Guess who's here!” I shout before I realise that she is just beside me at the base of the stairs.

“Hello,” she says in a strangely controlled, yet almost amused tone of voice. “It's been a long time.”

He turns his sun-like grin on Jenny but as they hug it vanishes momentarily and he pulls a worried grimace at me.

“God, come in here and see Sarah,” I say.

“My you are so big now,” Ricardo says as she looks seriously up at him and nods wide eyed. “You remember me?” Ricardo asks.

“Ricky,” Sarah says with a frown, and a ghost of the past drifts through the room.

“Yes, Ricky, Ricardo, Ricky, Ricardo,” he says, blustering through the moment. “This is me!”

He pulls his coat off and Jenny takes it from him and hangs it in the hall. “Shall I make tea?” she asks. But Ricardo and I are too busy staring at each other to reply, so she shrugs and vanishes into the kitchen.

“God, I still can't believe it,” I say, touching Ricardo's furry arm and noticing how hot his body feels – something I had forgotten. “How long are you staying? It's so brilliant to see you babe. Are you here till Christmas? This is such a brilliant surprise. Is this why you wanted the address? I thought you were sending me a postcard …” I burble.

“I decide to send me instead,” Ricardo says. “And I'm here as long as you want.”

“You got an open ticket?”

“Um, sort of,” he says.

“But what about your job?”

“I quit,” he says.

“You
quit?”

Ricardo beams at me again and blinks slowly. “My Chupy say he needs me here,” he says. “So here I am.”

I gasp and hug him again and shed a few more tears. How could I have forgotten how brilliant this man is? How could I ever have doubted this relationship?
How?

That day with Ricardo is probably the most beautiful we have ever spent together. It feels even more intense that the three days we stole before running off together.

Jenny, who seems a little paralysed by Ricardo's presence, returns quickly to bed, and Ricardo and I eat brunch under Sarah's watchful gaze before taking her to Eastbourne where I'm hoping we can find a mattress for immediate delivery.

I'm struggling to believe that Ricardo really is here beside me and find myself unable to resist pecking him on the cheek every time Sarah looks the other way. The fact that Ricardo was once her mother's boyfriend makes me twitchy, but even if I avoid kissing him in front of her, I'm sure she gets the idea from the simple fact that I can't stop grinning. I have never felt more in love than today, and it feels wonderful – and that's something I just can't hide.

As we walk from the car to Eastbourne Pier, Ricardo looks up at the Victorian facades and says, “It's really beautiful Chupy.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I think I am,” he says. “It's like a dream to get on a plane and suddenly be here.”

“I can't believe that you're not tired,” I say. “I slept the second I arrived.”

“But I'm a doctor babe,” he says. “I take a sleeping pill. I take two actually. I sleep for fourteen hours during the flight.”

I glance down at Sarah who is walking along beside me. “Are you OK?” I ask.

She nods, silently. I think she is in some way in awe of Ricardo. Perhaps it's his effect on me that's shocking her. Certainly the amount of effervescent
joy suddenly filling the air must be hard to understand after these past weeks of sadness and worry. Whatever the cause, as we walk along the pier today, Sarah even forgets about the blue dinosaurs.

In the town centre we head for a furniture store I have previously spotted. The fact that the salesman has an eastern european accent makes me hopeful that he's going to be more resourceful than your average English bed-salesman, and sure enough, he tells us that for twenty quid extra (cash) a friend of his will deliver it this very afternoon.

In the car home, Ricardo rests his hand on my leg provoking an instant erection. “It's a shame we don't have a bed yet,” he tells me in French – moving his hand to indicate that he has noticed.

“Well you'll just have to wait until it arrives,” I say, glancing back to check that Sarah is unaware.

I look over at him and he grins and says, “What?”

“I still can't believe you're here,” I say. “I have to keep checking. Did you really quit your job?”

“Jobs are easy come, easy go,” he says. “You remember how long it took me to get that job, right?”

“Sure. About ten minutes. All the same. I'm really grateful.”

He squeezes my leg. “I'm so happy to be here, Chups,” he says.

“Is Maria feeding Paloma?”

“Um, yes, of course.”

“But she'll get lonely on her own. She can't stay like that forever. We'll have to bring her back over fairly soon if we're staying here.”

“Well Federico might be using the house. That's what he said.”

“I thought he had a dog?”

“Yes. So this is why I tell Maria to take Paloma home if he come.”

“Right. Poor Paloma! She won't know what's hit her. I'm not sure she'll prefer Maria's kids to Federico's dog that much.”

“She'll be fine Chupy.”

“Do
you
remember Paloma, Sarah?”

“The cat?” she says.

“Gosh, you do.”

“She licked me.”

“Amazing,” I say. “I can't believe she remembers that. I don't remember anything from when I was three.”

“Well, you're not five,” Ricardo says.

“No, I suppose not.”

“Makes you wonder what
else
she remembers,” Ricardo says in French.

“You know I was going to buy a flight today? To come and visit you?”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Great minds think the same,” Ricardo says.

“I was so worried that I was losing you. Especially when you didn't call back.”

“Coming is better, no?”

“Oh yes!”

“You see, I'm very hard to lose.”

“Well good. I'm glad about that.”

“Jenny a l'air vraiment très malade,” he says. -
Jenny looks really ill
.

“Yes. Well, she is.”

“Can I come and talk to her doctor on Monday? She said you have to go on Monday.”

“God, I would love it if you did,” I say. “It has just felt like everything's on my shoulders, you know?” My voice is wobbling, so I stop.

Ricardo squeezes my leg again. “It's all OK now Chupy,” he says. “We can share it all. The good things and the bad things.”

When we get back to the house, I make a big salad for everyone and heat a frozen pizza to share. Jenny comes downstairs and joins us for lunch for only the second time this week. She's even wearing makeup – presumably an effort to look healthy and normal for Ricardo. But she eats little and says virtually nothing. I can sense her discreetly watching Ricardo and me. My guess is that she has a whole raft of feelings to work through about Ricardo, their previous relationship and this new, strange situation. She's doing pretty well considering.

Sarah, perhaps influenced by her mother, returns to being quietly awed too, and so it falls to Ricardo and me to make the conversation. Still, we have plenty of catching up to do, so we yack excitedly about Tayrona and Bogotá and London and life here in Pevensey Bay.

Ricardo clearly senses the strain of the situation because when Jenny asks what we have planned for the afternoon, he tells her that he doesn't know yet but that maybe he should look for somewhere to stay nearby.

“But you must stay
here,”
Jenny says. “I thought you two had a bed coming.”

“We do,” I say, trying not to show that I'm aghast at Ricardo's suggestion.

“I think maybe you're not so comfortable,” Ricardo says. “If Mark and I could stay nearby then perhaps …”

“That won't work,” I say in rapid French designed to be unintelligible to Jenny. “I have to be
here to look after Sarah. You haven't grasped the setup.”

“L'atmosphère est à couper au couteau,” he says equally rapidly. “On ne va même pas pouvoir niquer.” –
You could cut the atmosphere here with a knife. We won't even be able to fuck
.

Jenny frowns. “Despite your efforts, I think I understood the gist of that …” she says. “Look, why don't you go away for the weekend. I understand you need to catch up and you know … stuff.”

“I don't want to leave you on your own.”

“I'll be fine.”

“Sorry, but no,” I say, thinking about Sarah watching her mother vomiting, and all that could go wrong whilst Jenny sleeps.

“I'll call Tom and get him to come over then,” Jenny says.

“Yeah, that might work.”

As Jenny heads off to phone Tom, Ricardo winks at me and I grin. Every inch of exposed skin is calling to me and the desire to rip his clothes off and squash my body against his is almost unbearable. It feels like we're two magnets, and it's taking all my efforts to keep us apart.

As we wait for Tom to phone back, I realise that Ricardo's right – with Jenny in the next room we're not going to be able to do any more than cuddle. Silently. I struggle to force memories of Ricardo's trademark “good hard fucks”, from my mind.

But Tom never
does
phone back, so once Jenny has returned to bed, Ricardo and I simply sit on opposite sides of the table with Sarah in the middle keeping the two magnets from snapping together.

At two, I convince Sarah to go and have a siesta with her mum and Ricardo and I manage to have a
cuddle and a kiss on the sofa, but the frustration of not being able to undress in case someone comes downstairs is almost worse. Less than an hour later Sarah returns and Ricardo and I spring apart.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “It just feels peculiar in front of her.”

“I agree,” he says. “We can wait till tonight.”

The mattress arrives at six and Ricardo, visibly overcome by jet lag, soon makes his excuses and heads upstairs.

I sit and do colouring-in with Sarah and try not to think about his naked body between the sheets until finally, at eight, Jenny gets up.

She crosses the room to the table where we're sitting and nods at the stairs and says, “Just go.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, already standing. “I know it must be uncomfortable for you.”

Jenny shrugs. “It is,” she says. “But go anyway. Go before I go and climb in with him myself.”

It's an attempt at introducing a little humour to the situation, but a frown must flicker across my brow because Jenny laughs and says, “Joke, Mark!”

“Right, well,” I say, standing. “Don't. Don't joke.”

“Where are you going?” Sarah asks.

“Mark's very tired,” Jenny tells her. “He's going to bed for a sleep.”

Upstairs, I find Ricardo snoring lightly. He is splayed across the bed with one arm, one knee and one buttock peeping from beneath the white quilt.

I close the door quietly and stand and stare at the vision. Just his presence in the room makes my heart race, and I try to work out what it is about his body that I find so very very sexy. For Ricardo is no
Brad Pitt, and he's no athlete either, in fact, like myself, he's currently packing a few extra pounds, but these do nothing to reduce how sexy he looks.

I look at the swirls of dark hair covering his arms and legs and note that, irritatingly, without doing any sport he's still naturally muscly.

I look at his long trunk and stubby legs and decide that it is above all that ratio of upper body to lower body that I find unbelievably cute. And then I grin and think,
“No, it's just all of it. It's just him.”

I swallow the saliva forming in my mouth and lay myself as gently as I can on the bed beside him. He doesn't stir.

I roll onto one side, and edge backwards until my buttocks just touch his knee, and he groans, rolls onto his own side, and then shimmies behind me so that his knees are behind mine. “Chupy,” he murmurs, laying a heavy, hot arm over my waist.

Within seconds he's snoring again, but I don't mind. Just this is perfect; just the unexpected presence of my man behind me here, now, is ecstasy.