Deadly Business

One

‘Woof woof.’

That’s little Lily Simmers’ war cry. They were the first proper words she ever uttered, and on the day of her third birthday party they were still her favourites, even though she had amassed a much larger vocabulary by then, a mixture of the Catalan and Castellano spoken to her by her mum, Tunè Miralles, and her dad, Ben Simmers, and the English which she uses with her paternal grandparents, all three of them.

All the kids in Catalunya grow up bilingual, with two native languages, and around St Martí d’Empúries many are like Lily, picking up English or French as they grow up in the cosmopolitan community that it has become. My son speaks four, having learned French while living with his father in Monaco, then picking up the local lingos when we settled here, after his father’s death and my rebirth. He’s literate in all of them, more so than I am. I’m very proud of that because he’s … I almost said ‘only twelve’, but Tom Blackstone isn’t ‘only’ anything. I still think of him as my child, but he isn’t any more, not really. He’s a big boy, one metre sixty-two (around five feet four) already, mature for his years, and has taken the first steps into adolescence.

Lily’s toddler barks were directed at her parents’ two Labradors, Cher and Mustard, as they patrolled the perimeter of the party site, a grassy area enclosed by the remaining walls of what was, a couple of hundred years ago, the first house in the village as you approach up the hill that leads from the beach, on the other side of the church from our place. Tunè and Ben had chosen it because it’s shaded even in June, when the sun was at its highest. They’d held her first two parties at home, but they had been as much for adults as children, maybe even more so, since Ben’s father told me after the second that the last of the guests didn’t leave until after midnight.

Tom and I were invited to all of them because, as Tunè put it, we’re almost family. I’m ‘Tia’ to Lily; that’s ‘Auntie’ in English (‘Primavera’ has at least two syllables too many for her at the moment), and I am her number one babysitter. I volunteered as soon as she was born. When Tom was an infant, I was in a big mess personally and emotionally, and I didn’t get the most out of that time. Oz … that’s his father … and I were in the terminal stages of a very short marriage when I discovered I was pregnant, and I was so antagonistic towards him that I left him the same week that my Clearblue kits both showed positive. Yes, I did it twice, to be sure, to be sure.

Oz: my strength and my weakness, the guy I met when he was a nobody, without the merest twinkle of a film actor showing in his eye, then loved and battled with alternately as his star gained luminescence, until those people who suggested snidely that he was cast in his first movie only because of a passing resemblance to Keanu Reeves came to refer to Keanu as ‘Oz Blackstone lookalike’.

I let him think that I had run off with someone, but I hadn’t; in fact I cut myself off from everyone I knew, family and friends, although I had very few of the latter at that time, and one of those wouldn’t have been interested in helping me out as she was in a similar situation herself.

I didn’t know it at the time, and didn’t find out until I made the mistake of attempting to front him up just after Tom was born, that my fecund spouse had managed to knock up both me and my erstwhile best pal within a few weeks of each other, and that she had filled the vacancy I’d created. When I found out, I beat another hasty retreat, and it was another three years before he discovered that little Janet wasn’t his first child after all.

Things got even more complicated after that, and I lost my precious Tom for a while. I don’t know what would have happened if Oz had lived, but I’m certain of one thing. I would have fought tooth, nail and very sharp claw to get my boy back, for every day that I spent without him caused me pain that I cannot bear to recall and, if I did, wouldn’t be able to describe.

But he didn’t live, damn him. I re-emerged from my shadows, and did a deal with Susie, the official widow, who was my friend again by that time, to regain custody. I couldn’t think of moving anywhere else but St Martí. I’d lived here before, with Oz and without him. Tom doesn’t know it, but he was conceived in a house not far from where we live now; some day soon I’ll tell him, for a person has a right to know every scrap of the truth about himself. I may refrain, though, from telling him that his half-sister was also conceived there, a very few weeks later. Once he learns a little more about human gestation he will work out the timing for himself, but I’ll deal with that when it happens.

The two young people in question were both on party parade as I sat on the wall watching the fun, acting as toddler wardens, handing out drinks and wiping off smeared chocolate cake before it did too much damage to clothing. Janet looked completely at home, and in command. She’s bilingual in English and French, but she sees enough of her half-brother … Susie and I tried from the start to ensure that they, and wee Jonathan, her younger child with Oz, spend at least six weeks together each year … to have picked up plenty of Catalan and Spanish from him, even if she doesn’t really know which is which. She’s growing fast too, only a few centimetres shorter than Tom. She’s a pretty girl, taking after Susie in looks as much as Tom takes after Oz, but in a year or so she’ll have reached her mother’s height, while he’ll be eye to eye with my one metre seventy. Wee Jonathan, I reckon, will always be just that; he’s a small broody child, with his father’s dark hair, like Tom, his mum’s oval face and eyes that never give any hint of what’s going on behind them. He’d opted out of the celebrations; instead he was on the beach with Conrad Kent.

Conrad Kent? Susie’s minder. His official title was logistics manager, but make no mistake, that’s what he was employed to be, back when Oz was alive, so that she could run her property and construction group from Monaco, with a managing director in charge in Scotland. The idea was that he would keep the family home secure, well maintained and running smoothly, with his wife Audrey as Susie’s personal assistant, but that he would also be driver and bodyguard, and his number one priority would be keeping the children safe.

Oz employed both Kents some years ago, and they were even more needed after he died. Conrad isn’t a big bloke, and he dresses like a hotel manager, or the principal in a very expensive car dealership. He’s half Welsh, half Jamaican, and he has a degree that he’s never used, in some obscure subject. He’s very neat, always precise and immaculate, but he has a military background and there is something about him that tells you he is not a man you should ever mess with.

He’d come with the children, and would stay until it was time for them to go home, in a few days. We’d been a three-kid (and one minder) household for a month, for a reason that still concerned me. A year before, Susie had told me that she had ‘a wee health issue’. As it turned out, it was bigger than she’d suspected. She’d been investigated for anaemia but leukaemia had been diagnosed. She’d undergone a course of chemotherapy during the autumn, another a few months later, and, as scheduled, was just completing a third.

On each occasion the children, and Conrad, had stayed with me. Audrey had stayed by Susie’s side, to help her in any way she needed. She’d told the kids that she had to go away on business, and neither of them had questioned that, but the last time I’d seen her, when I took Tom along to hers for Easter and saw the effects of the chemo, I couldn’t imagine that she could fool them for much longer.

If it came to that: her consultant was absolutely sure, she said, that the third course of treatment would see her in remission. I wasn’t as bullish; I’d paid a visit to the man myself and used my nursing experience to interrogate him. I reckoned he wasn’t even absolutely sure that the sun would rise next morning. Now I’m not an oncologist, and although I have worked in that area, I only have a little knowledge … and you know what they say about that. Nonetheless I was worried, for Janet and Jonathan, but also, cravenly, as I will admit, for myself and my lifestyle. Those two kids don’t have a close relative in the world other than their mother and Tom, and my thinking was if anything did happen to Susie, well, I could hardly let them go into an orphanage, could I?

‘Are you all right, Auntie Primavera?’

Janet’s question startled me. ‘What? Yes, of course. When am I ever not all right, kid?’

She smiled. ‘Never, but …’ she hesitated for a second or two before blurting out, ‘I can tell when Mum’s thinking about my father. You looked the same way just now.’

That cut the feet from under me; Tom had said much the same thing to me a couple of years before, when he’d caught me off guard.

I dealt with it as casually as I could. ‘Did I indeed? And who do you imagine I might have been thinking about?’

Wrong move, Primavera. Janet’s face fell; she frowned and bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I thought you might have been …’

‘Thinking about him too?’ I said, smiling to ease her embarrassment. ‘As it happens, I wasn’t, but you’re right, I might have been. I do think about him, for the very same reason your mum does, and you do, and Tom does, and wee Jonathan does. Because we all loved him and we all miss him.’

‘You loved him too?’ There was a hint of a challenge in her voice.

‘Of course I did,’ I replied. Janet and I had never shared a ‘big girl’ conversation. I decided that the time had come. ‘I take it that by now you understand the reproductive process,’ I continued, making it into a question with a raised eyebrow.

She flushed a little. ‘How babies are made? Yes, we did that at school a long time ago.’

‘Yeah well … Love has, or should have, a lot to do with that. I’ve had one baby, that’s Tom. I made him with your father. That’s why he’s your half-brother, and I will tell you this, I wouldn’t have wanted to make him with anyone else in the world. So yes, I might not have been very good at showing it sometimes, but I loved him. I’m proud of it too, just as your mum is.’

‘Did he love you?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. He said he did and I believed him. Your father had a great capacity for love, and I don’t mean that sarcastically. He loved me, and he loved your mother and he loved his first wife.’

Her eyes widened, and she gasped. ‘His …’ she began, then fell silent.

Christ on a bike, Primavera! Right off the cliff. Susie hadn’t told her. ‘Yes.’ I looked her in the eye. ‘You father was married three times. The first time was to a girl he grew up with.’

‘What happened to her? He never talked about her, and Mum never has either.’

‘It hurt him too much to talk about her. It hurt him very, very badly.’

I could see her feel his pain. ‘What happened to her?’

‘She died, Janet. There was a simple, one in a million, household accident and she died. It broke his heart.’

She frowned again, a little wince. ‘Once when I was young, I saw him crying. He was sitting in his chair, on his own, and he was crying. He didn’t see me, but it frightened me, so much that I couldn’t ask him why. Do you think that was why? Was he thinking of her?’

I nodded. ‘Probably. He wouldn’t have been thinking of me, that’s for sure.’

She didn’t pursue that. Instead she asked, ‘Did you know her?’

I nodded. ‘Yes I did; she was around when I met your dad. He and I were together for a while, but she was the one.’

‘Did Mum know her?’

‘Yes, they met.’

‘So why has she never mentioned her?’

That was a good question and I reckoned that I knew the answer. If she had, then given her daughter’s perspicacity, it would have opened a whole barrel of worms about that time in her life. Susie had been right to keep the lid on it, and I was going to have to apologise to her for taking it off.

‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘You’d have to ask her yourself.’

‘Maybe I won’t.’

‘Your decision, but I think you have to, now that careless old Auntie Primavera’s spilled the beans. There shouldn’t be any secrets between mothers and daughters.’

‘She kept it a secret from me,’ she retorted, resentfully. ‘It involved my father, and she didn’t tell me.’

‘No,’ I countered. ‘The way I see it, she hasn’t told you yet, that’s all. I’ll bet she was only waiting till she judged you were old enough.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.’

She gave me an appraising look, then nodded. I thought we were done, but no.

‘What was her name?’ she asked.

I’d started, so I had to finish. ‘Jan,’ I told her, ‘short for Janet.’

Her mouth dropped open again. ‘I was named after her?’

‘I wasn’t around when you were named,’ I pointed out, ‘so I can’t say that for certain.’

‘But I was, wasn’t I?’

I smiled, and gave in. ‘For sure, kid, for sure,’ I admitted. ‘How do you feel about that?’

She thought about it for a few seconds, then a slow grin spread across her face. ‘My father named me after his lost love, his childhood sweetheart. I think that’s pretty cool.’

To you, no doubt, I thought, but I wonder what Susie thought about it. Could it be why she’s never spoken a word to you about Janet the First?

She jumped up on to the wall beside me, all arms and legs and red hair. Out of the shaded area, I could see that her face was pink; given her hair colouring and her complexion, her mother had always insisted that she uses fifty-factor sun protection, and leaves nothing uncovered. I did not intend to send her back home sunburned or I’d hear about it.

‘Do you have any Nivea with you?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘Then do me a favour. Even though it’s evening now, there’s still power in that there sun. Go back to the house and put some cream on, everywhere that isn’t covered.’ She was wearing shorts and a cap-sleeved T-shirt so that meant most of her. I gave her the key and she headed off, obediently, knowing, no doubt, that whatever her mother chucked at me, she’d get it first. I wondered if Janet ever had rebellious moments at home, for she’s never shown any when she’s stayed with me, not one. I guessed that she must have inherited that virtue from her grandparents, for it hadn’t been evident in either of her parents.

‘Hey, Primavera.’ I looked around, to see Tunè heading towards me with a plate held out before her. ‘You want some?’ she asked me, in Catalan. ‘I didn’t think it was possible that we could make too many sandwiches for Lily and her friends, but it seems that we have. The Nutella ones are all finished, but there’s tomato and cheese spread.’

‘Oh damn,’ I laughed. ‘I was looking forward to a Nutella sandwich.’ I helped myself to a handful from the plate. She smiled with me, as if she thought I’d been kidding, but I wasn’t; they’re my weakness. In Vaive, our beach bar of choice, they have Nutella toasties on the menu now, and I’m the cause.

‘Ben still working?’ I asked her. I’d noted his absence.

‘Yes. He closed the shop for Lily’s birthday, but one of his restaurant customers needed an urgent delivery, so he had to go. He’ll be back soon, though.’

Ben runs our local wine shop at the foot of the narrow street that leads up to St Martí’s main square, extravagantly named Plaça Major. It’s taken up entirely in summer by café restaurants, of which all but one are big on pizzas. It was quarter to seven, on Friday, June the twenty-third. It was quiet at that moment in time, but in a couple of hours it would not be, for on that auspicious date the Festa de San Juan, the national celebration of the summer solstice, takes place.

Once I heard a Brit expat describe San Juan as ‘like Guy Fawkes night. You know.’ That’s akin to describing the Spanish Civil War as ‘a little local dispute’. San Juan has fireworks too, but it’s much, much more. It’s more like the bombing and rocket campaign that preceded the invasion of Iraq at the start of the second Gulf War. If it’s explosive and they can get their hands on it, the locals will set it off, and by that I mean locals all across Spain. L’Escala, the municipality of which St Martí is a part, is a big enough community to make some serious noise, and we were about an hour away from the usual kick-off time. They don’t wait for dark; thunderflashes make their point twenty-four hours a day.

That was why the party was starting to break up, and why Tunè was trying to offload the sandwiches. I scoffed mine and jumped down off the wall ready to help with the clear-up. In fact there was little to clear; Cher and Mustard are very effective in that respect, with anything that’s edible.

We were finished, the party guests and their parents had all gone home, and Tom was fitting a reluctant Lily into her pushchair … if I’d tried that there would have been trouble, but she’s his girl … when Janet reappeared. She looked at her half-brother. ‘Did you ask?’ I heard her say.

‘Ask what?’ I said.

Tom replied. ‘Can Janet and I go to the concert?’ His voice had begun to deepen over the winter; I’ve noticed that the more serious he is, the lower the register.

I frowned at him, as if I meant it. ‘Which one?’ I retorted.

He gave me his exasperated sigh; I’m told that’s something else that comes with puberty. ‘You know which one, Mum. The one tonight, on the beach, for San Juan.’

I kept my frosty face on. ‘Do you know when it starts?’

‘Yes, round about midnight.’

‘Remind me. How old are you two?’

‘You know how old; twelve.’

‘Then I rest my case.’

‘Oh, come on, Mum,’ he protested. ‘It’s happening three hundred metres away from our house. Do you think we’re going to sleep through it? Never mind the concert, the rockets and the bangers will go on till one o’clock, earliest. Please, Mum. We won’t be drinking, or smoking dope or anything like that. You can send Conrad to look after us, if you like.’

As he spoke, I saw the man in question, and his sandy charge, crest the hill behind him.

‘I don’t send Conrad anywhere,’ I pointed out. ‘He’s responsible to Susie Mum for Janet and Jonathan; he decides where they go.’

‘So I can go, but not Janet?’

‘Did I come close to saying that?’ I exclaimed. ‘Conrad,’ I called out, ‘these two want to go to the reggae concert on the beach tonight. What do you think of that?’

He pursed his lips. ‘Definitely not without a minder,’ he said. ‘And that’s a problem ’cos for all my West Indian heritage, I can’t stand reggae.’

‘Then it’s just as well for everybody,’ I told him, grinning, ‘that I’ve been waiting for a few years for Tom to be old enough for us to go.’ I pointed at him, and his half-sister. ‘There’ll be a curfew, mind,’ I warned them. ‘Two o’clock, latest.’

‘Three o’clock?’ my boy shot back.

‘Two thirty. You’ll have had enough by then, trust me. Janet, it’ll probably be cool during the night, so make sure you dress warm enough.’

‘I will do, Auntie Primavera,’ she promised. ‘But what about Jonathan?’

I was about to tell her that he was just too young, when he beat me to the punch. ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t like loud music and I don’t like big crowds.’ He spoke French, as if he was trying to cut the rest of us out of an argument between him and his sister, but I knew by that time that it went deeper. Wee Jonathan made a point of speaking French almost exclusively in Monaco, and would do the same when he’s at mine if I let him get away with it. I will only speak English to him there, and won’t acknowledge his reply unless it’s in the same language. I have no idea what goes on inside the kid’s head, but I can only guess that he’s rejecting something, possibly his entire family.

‘That’s okay,’ Tom said to him, in the same language. ‘I hadn’t thought about you. I’m sorry. I’ll stay with you if you want, Jonathan.’

‘You will not!’ Janet snapped. ‘He’s the baby of this family and he’s not going to decide what we do.’

‘No more are you,’ Tom murmured, in Catalan.

‘I don’t want anyone to stay in with me!’ Jonathan shouted, exploding into English. ‘Go to your fucking concert and enjoy yourselves!’

‘Hey,’ Conrad barked, grasping the child by the shoulder. ‘That settles it. You are grounded, boy. You don’t leave the house till Monday, earliest.’ He glanced at me. ‘I’m sorry about that, Primavera. I don’t know where he picked that up.’

I laughed. ‘You don’t? His father and I used to have conversations just like that. For all that Oz and Susie were happy, I’m sure they had their moments too.’ I went over to the kid. His eyes had more life in them than I’d ever seen before, but it was the wrong sort. I took his hand; he tried to pull it away but I didn’t let him. ‘Come on, Jonathan, let’s you and I go home. Would you like to phone your mum? You haven’t spoken to her for a couple of days.’

‘No.’

‘Send her an email, then?’

‘No.’

‘She’ll be missing you,’ I ventured as we started to walk towards the house.

His bottom lip trembled. ‘She won’t, or she’d have taken me with her.’

‘Mum,’ Tom called, from behind me, ‘can Janet and I go down to the beach bar for a Fanta?’

‘Okay, but be home before eight, so you can get cleaned up for dinner.’

‘I’ll go with them,’ Conrad said. ‘I fancy a beer.’ And he didn’t fancy letting Janet out of the sight of an adult. Oz was rich and famous, and he had been obsessive about his kids’ security. He and his minder had been very close, and Conrad still heard and obeyed his master’s voice, even from beyond the grave.

They went on their way, and wee Jonathan and I continued on ours. There’s a simple cold shower at the side of the house. I made him stand under it for a minute or so, not as a penance, but to wash the sand off: standard practice. When it was done, I towelled him half dry and then we went inside. He would have headed straight for the room he was sharing with Tom, but I wouldn’t let him. Instead, I took him into the kitchen, gave him a glass of Activia pouring yoghurt, vanilla flavour, and sat him at the table. I’d seen enough of him by that time to know that always gets his attention.

‘Now,’ I began, ‘now that everyone’s tempers have cooled, tell me again why you think your mother won’t be missing you.’

‘Because she didn’t take me,’ he repeated, quietly, but stubbornly.

‘She couldn’t. Your mother’s a businesswoman. Sometimes she has to be away.’

‘She’s never left me before, only this last year. Any time she’s had to go to Scotland before she’s always taken Janet and me.’

‘And Conrad and Audrey.’

‘Yes.’

‘And those times I’ll bet she worked a lot and you didn’t see much of her.’

‘Yes,’ he conceded, grudgingly.

‘In that case, do you think she might have decided that now you’re old enough for her to leave you for a while, that’s best for you?’

He avoided the question by attacking his glass.

‘Jonathan,’ I continued, ‘I know how I feel when Tom visits you and I’m not there. I promise you, I miss him every day he’s away, but still I let him go, because it’s good for all you kids that you spend time together when you’re growing up. Your mum feels the same way.’

‘She can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I saw her plane ticket in her office. She’s gone to America.’

He was right about that. Susie’s consultant had sent her to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, for her treatments.

‘I think she’s gone with Duncan,’ he whispered.