The Heat of Betrayal (18 page)

‘
Arrêtez, s'il vous plait
,' I told Simo, indicating that honking the horn was doing no good. His reply was to point to a building across the street, a semi-crumbling apartment block, art deco in style, with an all-purpose neighbourhood shop on the ground floor that was already open. Directly opposite was a café with a terrace. I also took in an optician's and a boutique displaying white and maroon leather jackets in its window, along with stonewashed jeans and paisley silk shirts. A cavalcade of expensive bad taste, playing visual games with me after a night of brief, fitful sleep in the back seat of a rusted car. The donkey-cart driver finally got his beast moving, clearing the road. Simo pulled the car over, pointing again to the building across the way.

‘
Votre adresse
,' he said, motioning for me to leave. I reached into my pocket and dug out a 100-dirham note. When I proffered it to him he just shrugged and accepted it with a fast nod. As I slid off the back seat, he uttered two final words:

‘
Bonne chance
.'

When I and my backpack were on the street and the car door shut, the engine belched one last time before disappearing into the already congealing traffic. I checked my watch again and wondered if I could go up to Samira's apartment now, bang on the door and confront her, force my husband to leave her bed and come with me.

But all my instincts told me to walk away now. Cut my losses. Accept the sad finality of it all. Try not to save him – as much as I still wanted to. However frightened and worried I was that my husband was heading towards some point of no return.

I knew I was negotiating with myself, talking myself into some sort of compromised position from which nothing good would come.

Go to the café. Order a coffee. Ask them to call you a cab. Immediately. Get to the airport. Get on the plane. Hit the portal marked: ‘I'm out of here . . . permanently.'

Instead I hoisted my backpack and crossed the street to her building. I scanned the list of names accompanying the apartment numbers and buzzers that were banked on a wall to the left of the entranceway. They all listed the tenants by last name, with no Samira or even an S in sight. Damn . . . I considered going inside the shop next door and showing the picture of Samira, asking the man behind the counter if he knew her. Then I reasoned that, as she lived upstairs, she was a regular here. Which would probably mean that if some sleep-starved, stressed middle-aged American woman held up her snapshot and demanded to know her last name and apartment number, the guy in the shop would undoubtedly ring to warn her of some crazy lady lurking below. He might also call the cops. Best to be prudent and wait.

What I discovered inside the shop surprised me. It was well stocked with upscale prepared food, largely French in origin. It did have a considerable amount of local produce – hummus, tahini, couscous, assorted Moroccan pastries. But it also sold teas from Hédiard in Paris. And Nespresso coffee capsules. And Belgian chocolate. And Italian extra-virgin olive oil. This was the sort of local deli that would fit into any cosmopolitan city, and clearly catered to an educated clientele. There was also a rack of foreign newspapers in French, English, German, Spanish, Italian – all that day's editions. I grabbed a copy each of the
International New York Times
and the
Financial Times
, paid for them, then crossed back across the street and found a table on the terrace with a direct view of the entrance to the apartment building. A waiter arrived at the table. I ordered breakfast, realising that, in addition to dealing with virtually no sleep, I hadn't eaten anything except a single baklava since my late breakfast the previous day, fear and stress supplanting hunger. I started to take in my surroundings. The buildings here all were largely art deco, with a few new structures dotting what was otherwise a fairly intact architectural quarter. The café I was in wouldn't have been out of place in Paris. There was an interesting-looking bookshop next to one of those places that specialises in exquisitely packaged soaps and bath oils. Advertisement posters showed young, vibrant, professional couples looking dreamily at each other while holding the latest in mobile phones. There was a high-tech electronics store, stocking the latest in laptops and cellular communications. A woman in tight track pants came jogging by. There were a considerable number of high-end Audis and Mercedes and Porsches parked on the road. There was not a burqa in sight. I was in a Morocco completely divorced from the realm behind the walls in Essaouira; a world familiar, yet utterly foreign.

Two more men with donkey carts came trudging down the road. One of the animals stopped to pee, simultaneously splashing the fender of a Mercedes SUV. Its owner – a portly business type in a black suit and white shirt, with a cigarette and a cellphone in either hand – rose from his café table and came waddling over, shouting reproaches and abuse. The donkey driver tried to amelior-ate the situation by rubbing the fender with a corner of his djellaba. This infuriated the owner even more. My orange juice and croissants arrived just as a policeman showed up, telling the businessman to calm down and also instructing the driver to stop rubbing more donkey urine into the Mercedes paintwork.

I bit into my croissant, relieved to be eating something. I stared down at the
International New York Times
, thinking that during our time in Essaouira never once had I thought about buying a newspaper. Now I was learning about a Wall Street downturn, and another wave of bombings in Beirut, and the death of a one-time dictator in the Caucasus, and . . .

The yelling across the street rose in volume. The businessman was now so frustrated with the donkey driver's mild-mannered reaction to the bestial baptism of his car that he actually pushed him, causing the policeman to restrain him. Then, in a moment beyond stupid, the businessman shoved the cop so hard that he tumbled into the street. Regaining his balance the officer dodged an oncoming car. It braked wildly, front-ending the Mercedes.

Chaos ensued as the businessman became near-deranged, yanking open the door of the car that had just flattened the front of his own, clawing at the driver. The donkey, a little distressed, began to bray. His cries of confusion made me look directly across the street at a crucial moment – just when the door to the apartment building opened and a young woman with long, richly curled black hair walked out. She was exceptionally tall – over six foot, long-legged, absurdly thin, dressed in tight blue jeans, chic sandals and a loose white linen shirt. I had Paul's notebook on the table and I pulled out the photo of Samira. It must have been taken a few years ago, as the woman before me was more mature, but still unbearably beautiful. I threw some money down on the table and raced over. She was standing not far away from the scuffle still in progress – the businessman now being handcuffed – watching the drama unfold. I approached her.

‘Are you Samira?' I asked.

She seemed thrown by the question, but still asked me in flawless English:

‘Who wants to know?'

‘Paul's wife.'

Her face tightened.

‘I have nothing to say to you.'

She turned and started walking off. I followed her, calling out:

‘Please, I need to know—'

‘Did you just hear what I said to you?'

She kept walking, me alongside her.

‘Is he here, with you?' I asked.

‘I am not talking to you.'

‘You have to.'

As I said this I made the mistake of touching her on her arm. She shrugged me off, hissing:

‘You put a hand on me again . . .'

She stalked off. But I kept pace with her.

‘You know where he is,' I said.

‘No idea. Now leave me.'

‘Don't lie to me.'

Now she stopped and turned on me:

‘Lie? Lie? You dare—'

‘Tell me where he is.'

‘Let him tell you that.'

‘So he's upstairs? In your place?'

‘I wouldn't let him through the front door.'

‘So he came here?'

‘I am getting into my car now.'

‘You have to help me,' I pleaded.

‘No, I don't . . .'

She reached into her bag, pulled out a set of keys and clicked open a small Citroën parked on the street. As she went to open the driver's door I blocked her path.

‘I know who you are. I know that you're involved with him. And if you want him, that's actually fine by me. But I just need to know—'

I was all but yelling. But her voice became louder than mine.

‘Involved with him? I
want
him? Do you know who I am?'

‘Yes, I do . . .'

‘Do you really?' she said, suddenly very cold and quiet. ‘Because if you did know, you wouldn't dare make accusations like that.'

‘Who are you then?' I demanded.

She met my gaze with a look of ferocious contempt and said:

‘I'm his daughter.'

I STOOD ON
the kerb for a long time after she had pulled away in the car. I was so stunned by the revelation just delivered that I stopped dead in my tracks as she brushed me aside. When I glanced up I caught sight of her face, staring back at me with hardened contempt. Yet her eyes also radiated the saddest sort of despair.

Then she accelerated and the car shot off down the street.

I remained motionless for several moments, not knowing what to do next. Eventually I retreated to the café. The waiter was keeping an eye on my table: my newspapers, my croissants, my orange juice. As I approached he handed me the 100-dirham note I had thrown down before I got up to pursue Samira.

‘You left all this behind,
madame
.'

‘I had to speak to someone.'

A small nod of acknowledgement. Had he watched that scene unfold? Did he put two and two together and reason that it was a wife confronting the woman she thought was her husband's mistress? If only he knew the truth. If only I knew the truth.

I sat back down and shut my eyes, exhausted and confused and flattened by a disclosure that I simply never saw coming.

He has a child. He has a child who is at least thirty years old. Maybe older. A daughter. A beautiful daughter.
Evidently conceived with a Moroccan woman. Judging by her age, the point of conception was decades ago – and the photo Paul kept of her in his notebook must have been ten years old. A secret he kept from me always. A secret that made his other great deceit – promising me a child and then having a vasectomy – even more heartbreaking.

‘Would you like your coffee now,
madame
?'

It was the waiter. I indicated that would be fine. Hunger forced me to eat the croissants, drink the very good orange juice. I tried reading one of the newspapers. The words swam in front of me and I pushed it away. The businessman was now being forcibly pushed into the back of a police car, struggling against the cuffs that were restraining his hands behind his back. He was going to be arrested for assaulting a police officer and would have to spend serious money on a lawyer. We really are the architects of our own miseries, aren't we? Just as I saw the hatred and the hurt in Samira's eyes and knew that her father had deeply wounded her in some way.

Her father.

Who was her mother? Where was she now?

I checked my watch. Six-forty-three a.m. My midday flight was not far off. I drank my coffee. Having been turned away by his daughter, seeking refuge in the city he once called home, Paul would surely turn to friends. Or more specifically: a friend. Someone whose name he dropped both in conversation and in the pages of his journal. Opening it I found the entry I was looking for. The entry where he wrote about wanting to re-establish contact with Samira.

Can Romain B. H. aid my cause?

Romain Ben Hassan. Whose address was written just below.

I called the waiter over, showed him the scrawled address and asked where it might be.

‘Two streets from here,' he said, then insisted on drawing me a map on the back of a bar coaster, explaining that I could make it to the man's front door in around five minutes.

A manic plan began to form in my head. I would walk over to Ben Hassan's place – where, no doubt, my husband was sleeping off the events of last night, which must have involved some sort of confrontation with his daughter. Knowing Paul, the last thing he would have done was find a hotel and recuperate alone. Which is why I was pretty sure that he had taken refuge at his friend's apartment. The idea of crossing the Atlantic now, uncertain of his whereabouts or his injuries, would be impossible for me. If he was at Ben Hassan's I could, at least, make sure that he was in one physical piece (whatever his mental state), and have a direct face-to-face with him. Then hit the street. Jump a cab to the airport. And fly out of all this sadness.

The coffee arrived. I drank it quickly, the caffeine giving me a fast antidote to my fatigue, and I ordered a second. I threw it back and settled the bill, counting my remaining dirhams. I asked the waiter how much a taxi would cost from here to the airport.

‘You will need to negotiate, but don't pay more than two hundred dirhams. Make sure you agree the price before he starts driving.'

I thanked him for his kindness and his advice, as well as his impromptu map which I now used to guide me to 3450 rue Hafid Ibrahim. Though I was too preoccupied to take in much in the way of my immediate surroundings I did note that this quartier – which the waiter told me was known as Gauthier, after the French architect who designed the layout and many of the 1920s apartment buildings that decorated the area – was still very jazz era, albeit in a slightly crumbling way.

Number 3450 rue Hafid Ibrahim was a building that had seen a happier past. Chipped masonry. A broken sequence of pavements in front of its main entrance. A huge water stain above its front doorway. Electrical wires dangling down from a broken entrance light. I scanned the list of names by the front door and spied ‘
Ben Hassan, R., 3eme étage, gauche
'. To hell with the fact that it was still so early in the morning. I had to see my husband. But I knew that to ring the bell would be to alert both Ben Hassan and Paul of my arrival. So I loitered with intent until a woman around fifty – dressed in a black business suit and big Chanel sunglasses – came out. She looked at me askance when I walked in past her, holding the door for her as she exited. I was about to invent some excuse – ‘I forgot the door code' – but thought better of it. I simply headed to the staircase – probably once grand and marbled, now showing signs of the same water damage that marked the ceiling, with wooden banisters that bent when I grabbed hold of them.