Deadly Business

Five

Culshaw’s threat was pure bluster, I was certain, but still it rattled me, so badly that I forgot about what I’d been doing and let the linguine boil over. By the time I’d taken it off the hob so that I could wipe off the spillage with a tea towel, an unwelcome smell told me that the sauce had burned itself into the base of its pan. ‘Bugger!’ I shouted, just as Tom came into the kitchen.

‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ he asked.

‘Dinner’s wrong. I think I’ve ruined it. Smell that sauce.’

Without a word, he took another pan from its place in the rack, lifted the original off the heat and emptied its contents into the replacement. Then he turned down the ring from level three, where I’d mistakenly set it, to one, and set the meal back to cooking. He looked at the rest of it and murmured, ‘We haven’t lost very much. It’ll be okay.’

I looked at him and thought of one of my favourite movies, Con Air, and the part where Agent Larkin asks Cameron Poe what he’s going to do for him and Cameron replies, ‘What do you think I’m gonna do? I’m gonna save the fuckin’ day!’

‘Thank you, Cameron,’ I said, and Tom laughed. It’s his absolute favourite movie, the one we watch together on shit weather nights in the winter. We know it so well that we can recite some of the dialogue ourselves, although he omits the F-words.

‘Put the bunny back in the box,’ he countered, with pauses, just like Nicolas Cage. (Real name Nicholas Coppola, but he changed it because he didn’t want to be known simply as the Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew: that’s how much of a movie anorak I am, and why I am in constant demand for L’Escala quiz night teams.)

If it hadn’t been for Tom I’d probably have freaked out when the sauce caught, and run screaming for the inevitable takeaway pizzas, but as it turned out, dinner went fine, and if anyone else noticed that it was well done and that the linguine was a little beyond al dente they had the very good sense to keep quiet about it.

Tom and Janet took on the waiting duties, with wee Jonathan, cheered up after apologising for swearing and being reprieved, helping out by setting the table. That left me free to have a drink with Conrad on the terrace, and to update him on Duncan’s triumphant phone call.

‘He thinks he can buy me, does he?’ he mused, when I told him about his pay rise. ‘He can stick that up his fundament. I’m very well paid as it is, and Audrey and I already have a bonus in place, in the form of share options in the Gantry Group. Susie’s thinking is if we help her run the company profitably, we should share in it. Don’t worry, though, I’ll stay, for her sake and the kids, but also to make sure he doesn’t try to make good on that threat.’

‘But what can you do about it if he does?’

He took a swig of his Saaz beer, straight from the bottle. ‘Whatever I reckon is necessary.’ His eyes went somewhere, but just when I thought he was lost in thought, he started humming an old Rod Stewart tune. (Sorry, let me rephrase that in case you thought I was being ageist; an old song by Rod Stewart.)

All the way through dinner we could hear fireworks exploding, but since San Juan is the summer solstice celebration, I knew that the real action wouldn’t begin until it began to grow properly dark, and so we didn’t have to rush. The sun was pretty much down by the time we were finished, and when I led everyone, including our Charlie, who is a brave, if slightly dim-witted, dog, upstairs to the top floor and through my bedroom to the terrace. It was something of a treat for the crew; my suite is the only part of the house that really is mine alone. The days when Tom could come crashing in are over. Now, he and I have an agreement that he knocks on my door and I knock on his.

The terrace offers a panoramic view of the entire bay, from L’Escala all the way round to Ampuriabrava, Santa Margarita and Rosas, so we were able to watch four firework displays, simultaneously, most of them far enough away for the sound to reach us a few seconds after we’d seen the multicoloured lights.

The kids loved it all. I’d have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been preoccupied with the shock of Susie’s new husband, and I’m sure that Conrad felt the same. By that time my greatest worry wasn’t Culshaw, or Susie; as far as I was concerned she’d made the mistake and she’d have to live with it. No, I was worried about how Janet and wee Jonathan were going to take it, and how it might affect my son’s relationship with them. With that guy as the official consort in Monaco, and him having history with Tom, I would worry about him every minute he was there. As for the others, I knew already that wee Jonathan hated his new stepfather, and as for Janet … in the brief time I’d spent at Susie’s when he was there, I’d picked up vibes from him that I didn’t like, the sort that would make me careful not to leave any adolescent daughter of mine alone with the man.

The pyrotechnics carried on unabated past eleven o’clock, as Tom had said they would. I called a halt around the half-hour. It was curfew time for the youngest member, and also I could see that they were getting ready for action under the floodlights that lit up the concert platform near the old Greek wall. Wee Jonathan didn’t protest; he was tired and, also, he knew he’d used up all that day’s leeway.

I stuck a metaphorical finger up to assess the weather, and decided that the temperature would not drop much during the night. Tom and Janet had both donned T-shirt and jeans for dinner and I decided that they’d be fine like that. ‘Come on,’ I told them when we were back downstairs, and after Tom had fed Charlie, ‘let’s go … unless you’ve changed your minds, that is.’ They both looked at me as if I was dafter than the dog.

As we left the house, I decided that if I was going to introduce them to adulthood, I might as well go all the way. Also, I’d skipped coffee after dinner and I felt like a fix, and so, instead of heading straight for the beach, I took us down instead to the square. The four café restaurants there can seat over three hundred people at their outside tables, and I knew that earlier, punters would have had to queue until one became free. As midnight approached, they were all still busy, but the frenzy was over and we found a vacant spot in Can Coll. I asked for an Americano with a little cold milk on the side, and a glass of the decent house white. The kids each copied my coffee order, but didn’t push their luck by asking for wine as well.

‘I liked the linguine sauce, Auntie Primavera,’ Janet ventured as the waiter returned with a laden tray.

‘Yeah, Mum,’ Tom chipped in. ‘Top form.’ He paused. ‘Can we cook tomorrow night, Janet and me?’

‘Tomorrow’s Saturday,’ I pointed out. Our norm is to eat out on weekend evenings, and I’d kept up the habit while the Monaco Three had been with us. ‘Do it one night next week, if you like.’

‘We might not be here then,’ Janet said. ‘I’d a call on my mobile from Mum, just before dinner. She said she’s coming back early and that she’s going to ask Conrad to take us home, on Monday or Tuesday.’ She frowned. ‘She said she wasn’t sure when their flight would land, since it was a long way, but that she’d let me know as soon as she did, and she knew for sure when we could come. I don’t understand that. It’s not a long flight from Scotland to Nice Airport. Has she really been in Scotland?’

‘Isn’t that what she told you? That she had to go there to run her business for a month?’

‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘It’s just funny, that’s all.’

‘Maybe something came up in the business,’ I suggested, ‘and she had to go somewhere else. Life isn’t always predictable.’

‘Ours is,’ Tom commented, as he added some milk to his coffee.

I laughed. ‘Does that concern you?’ I asked, changing the subject swiftly. ‘If it does we could always do unpredictable things.’

‘Could we go to America to see Jonny play on the tour next week?’ he shot back.

Jonny Sinclair (Big Jonathan) is his cousin, his Aunt Ellie’s older son from her first marriage. He’s a promising young pro golfer, and he’d lived with us for a while a couple of years earlier, while he was starting out on tour. He’d won his first tournament, made some very decent money in Europe since then, some of it from a second win, in Italy, played all four rounds in the US Open, finishing in the top fifteen, and was teeing up again in a week’s time in Pennsylvania, on a sponsor’s invitation secured for him by Brush Donnelly, his reclusive but very effective agent.

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘It would be a lot of cost and a lot of hassle, and if we did go there, Jonny would be too busy to spend any time with us. Maybe next year we’ll go to the Masters, if he gets an invitation, and if it fits with the school holidays.’

‘Auntie Primavera.’ Janet’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. ‘There’s a man at a table in the next restaurant and he’s looking at you.’

‘Should I be pleased?’ I asked. ‘Does he look like a rock star?’

Tom covered his mouth with his hand. ‘Yes, but think Steven Tyler,’ he muttered. We’d watched a DVD of Be Cool a few weeks before, and Tom had been amazed that anyone could look like the Demon of Screamin’ and still be alive. ‘Next time they film a Terry Pratchett book,’ he’d suggested, ‘he should play Death.’

Casually, I looked around the square, then over my left shoulder. Yes, there was a dude not far away and he had been looking at me. I knew this by the intensity with which he was examining the façade of the church. It happens if you’re a woman on her own, or even with a couple of kids. Men sometimes eye you up and down; when you catch them at it, almost invariably they look away and pretend that they hadn’t been. When they’re bold and persist, you frost them until they desist … unless, of course, you don’t want them to desist, but I hadn’t come across one of them in many a year.

He didn’t look a bit like the Aerosmith front man, apart maybe in the size of his chin, and yes, he had high cheekbones too, accentuated by the glasses he wore, round like John Lennon’s but bigger and with blue-tinted lenses. He was a lot younger too, probably around my age, but from Tom’s perspective, within the human species that fits comfortably into the box labelled ‘old’ … for everyone other than me. His close-cropped hair was fairish with only a few streaks of grey, and he wasn’t skeletal like Mr Tyler, not in the slightest. In fact he looked as if he might have been something of an athlete once, and still kept in shape.

I turned away from him as casually as I’d glanced in his direction, and back to my young companions.

‘Do you know him?’ Janet asked, switching into French.

‘No,’ I replied, in the same tongue, ‘not at all.’ And yet, even as I spoke I realised that there was something there, the merest hint of a possibility that, in fact, I did. But if that was the case, I couldn’t place him and I wasn’t about to spend any time trying. Thousands of people pass through our village, year after year, and come back, so it was entirely possible that I’d seen him before. Instead I devoted myself to the coffee, and the white wine, which was actually rather better than decent.

The fireworks were still blazing away as my watch passed midnight, although they were more sporadic than they had been, and sounds of music had started to drift up from the beach. Tom and Janet were fidgeting in their seats, having finished their coffee, and I’d paid the bill, but I was not about to rush my wine. Not being a wholly irresponsible mother and guardian, I did check them for signs of tiredness, but they looked more awake than I felt. The stress of earlier in the evening had left its mark on me, and I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to get better any time soon. There were going to be ructions when the Monaco youngsters learned what their mother had been and gone and done, and while I wouldn’t be there to see them, I expected to hear about them very soon, as Janet and I had taken to exchanging emails on a regular basis.

‘Come on, then,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and hear how Bob Marley’s torch-bearers sound. But first, I will make a pit stop. I suggest that you two do the same.’ In recent years, the agency that manages all the beaches in Catalunya has installed a few portaloos for the summer months, but they’re not places I choose to visit when there’s another option.

They took my advice, then we headed off. I glanced to my left as we did so and saw that the guy who’d been appraising me earlier had gone before us. I felt a strange pang of disappointment, as if I’d wanted him to give me a wink, so I could blow him out, but it seemed that I hadn’t come up to scratch. God, Primavera, I sighed inwardly, when Steven fucking Tyler doesn’t fancy you, it has to be all downhill after that.

I cheered up, though, when we met Ben and Tunè at the top of the hill, heading in the same direction as us. ‘Mum’s babysitting,’ he explained at once, adding, ‘and dog-sitting. Cher and Mustard hate the noise.’ He ruffled Tom’s hair, and slung an arm round Janet’s shoulders. ‘Hey, you two, all grown up and heading for a night on the beach.’

‘Not all night,’ I told him, quickly.

Tunè grinned at me mischievously. ‘They can stay with us, Primavera, if you want to go home early.’ She was only pulling my chain, but it felt like another kick in the morale.

‘What’s early for you is late for us,’ I countered.

‘I know, really,’ she said, ‘but for us it’s a change to have a whole night to ourselves. You must remember that, from when Tom was three.’

I smiled and nodded. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t, because I had no such memory. When Tom was three, I was raising him unhappily on my own and plotting my irrational revenge on his father, having cut myself off from all my friends and family, even from my beloved old dad and mum, missing the last years of her life in the selfish process.

Nine years on, I’m a different woman, and I roundly dislike the other one. Most of the time she was an absolute bitch.

As always, I had my phone in my bag, but the last thing I expected was that it should ring at that time of night. I took it out and looked at the display, which shone brightly and told me that the caller was ‘Susie mobile’. I almost sent it to Voicemail, but relented and accepted it, slowing my pace a little as the kids walked on with Ben and Tunè. A few seconds later I wished I’d just rejected it.

‘Can’t come between me and my man, girlfriend,’ she growled. ‘You tried it once before and it didn’t work.’

‘Excuse me,’ I hissed, ‘I’m not having that from the woman who came to visit and fucked my husband, in my bed, the minute my back was turned.’

‘I took him from you, though,’ she chuckled, slurring her words, ‘and don’ tell me you didn’t try for a comeback.’

She sounded drunk and venomous and I reacted badly. ‘If I had done,’ I’m afraid I sneered … an ugly word for an ugly sound, ‘I’d have had him, honey. He only ever saw one thing in you and you’re sitting on it right now.’ She’d flipped my switch. But for the music from the beach, I’m sure the kids would have heard me. ‘You waved your child in his face. That’s why he married you; it wasn’t you he was in love with, it was her that he’d put inside you. Like an idiot, I hid mine. If I hadn’t …’ I stopped myself from yelling at her.

‘Sour fucking grapes, Primavera,’ she mumbled. ‘You just can’t stand to see me happy, can you?’

‘Listen,’ I retorted, ‘you’re pissed as a rat, and you’ll probably have forgotten all about this in the morning, but what I actually cannot stand is to see you unhappy, and that’s what you’re going to be if you don’t get rid of that arsehole right now. Even worse, your children will be miserable, because they can’t stand him either.’

‘Another black lie, you fucking tart.’

‘Yeah, well, you phone wee Jonathan tomorrow and tell him who his new daddy is and see what sort of a reaction you get. He was in tears tonight when he told me he thought Duncan was back, and they weren’t tears of joy.’

‘’Cos you’ve poisoned him against him.’

‘Bollocks!’ I wasn’t at my most articulate. ‘Speaking of poison, who poured you the drink you’ve just had too much of? No,’ I said before she could reply, ‘that was a rhetorical question. I know bloody hell who did. In case you’ve forgotten in your euphoric state, you are recovering from chemotherapy for a form of cancer that is quite likely to damage your liver. The last thing that clown should be doing is giving you any alcohol, and as for getting you bloody trousered … Jesus Christ, Susie, you’d better employ a food-taster from now on.’

‘God,’ she said, contemptuously. ‘You really hate him, don’t you?’

‘I won’t deny that. I detest the man, I loathe him, and okay, hate will cover it as well. I know he’s spun you a story, Suse, because he phoned me a few hours ago, to tell me what it was, and to rub my nose in it … or so he thought. Everything I told you about his attempt to blackmail me is true, and I can even prove it.’

‘You might have to, girl, for Duncan says that if you repeat it,’ she hiccupped, ‘Duncan says we’re going to sue you for slander, or libel or whatever. He says we’ll put you in the fucking poorhouse, girl.’

‘Is that so?’ I laughed. ‘He thinks he can use your money to intimidate me? In that case, Mrs Culshaw, you tell your precious husband to bear this in mind. The version of me that he invented in his pathetic pseudo-novel might be a hell of a lot closer to the mark than he realises.’

‘What the fu … does that mean?’

‘It means,’ I told her, ‘that he has no idea who he’s taking on, or what could happen to him if he threatens my boy and me. Now, I’ve had enough of this shit. Call me tomorrow, Susie, when your headache subsides and you can think like the intelligent, rational woman that I know you are underneath all this nonsense. And please, for your children’s sake if nobody else’s, do not drink any more.’

Just as I ended the call, I heard her say, ‘Fuck off!’

Janet and Tom were waiting for me at the foot of the slope at the start of the boardwalk that runs behind the beach. Ben and Tunè were in the distance, heading for the music with another couple. ‘Who was that?’ my son asked.

I was still blazing mad, but sensible enough to realise that ‘Nobody’ would not cut it as an answer, so I told him the truth. ‘We were just having some girl talk,’ I added.

‘Did you ask where she is?’ Janet enquired. She hadn’t forgotten our earlier discussion.

Maybe my state of mind influenced me, but I’d like to think that I simply decided it would be plain wrong to deceive her further. ‘She’s in America,’ I told her. ‘Something came up and she had to go there.’

‘When she went away last winter and before that in the autumn, was she in America then too?’

There was something in her question, in its intonation, that told me she wasn’t buying any cover stories, not any more.

‘Yes, she was,’ I admitted, then went further. I owed Susie nothing and I wasn’t going to jeopardise my relationship with Tom’s highly intelligent half-sister, or him for that matter, by insulting them with any more attempted wool-pulling. ‘Your mother’s had a health problem,’ I told her. ‘She’s being looked after by a consultant in Monaco and he’s referred her to a clinic in America for treatment.’

She stood tall and looked me in the eye, directly, giving me no wiggle room. ‘She’s not going to die, like Dad, is she?’

‘Your father died from a heart condition that wasn’t detected until it was too late. Your mother’s illness has been diagnosed, and it’s being treated appropriately. Her doctors are very happy with her.’

I was dreading the next question: is it cancer? Thankfully, Janet seemed to decide that she had enough information and didn’t ask it. Instead she digested the news for a few seconds. ‘I won’t say anything to Jonathan,’ she said. ‘He worries about too many things as it is.’ Good kid; perceptive kid; caring kid.

I nodded. ‘He doesn’t need to know.’

‘No. Thanks for telling me, Auntie Primavera. Mum’ll tell me too, eventually. When she does, I won’t let on that I knew already.’

‘I don’t mind if you do. My roof, my rules, like we say. If it was me, I’d have told Tom, but we all have to make our own judgements on the big issues in life. So don’t go blaming her, will you?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know. That’s two secrets in one day.’ She looked at her semi-sibling. ‘Did you know that our dad had been married before he married either of our mums?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, Mum told me, after he died and we came to live here. Grandpa Mac talks about her too. Hasn’t he ever mentioned her to you?’

‘I haven’t seen Grandpa Mac since I was seven,’ Janet murmured, ‘the summer we came here and he was here too. I’d like to go and see him in Scotland, but Mum won’t take me.’

That didn’t surprise me. While I get on with the entire Blackstone clan, I know that they don’t have a lot of time for Susie. I got over, more or less, the way she and Oz got together, but they never did, Ellie especially. I wouldn’t want to be in the same room as the two of them.

‘In that case,’ I promised, ‘next time you’re here with us, I’ll make sure that Grandpa Mac’s here too.’

‘And Grandma Mary?’ Tom asked.

‘If she wants.’ I wasn’t sure that she would. Mac hadn’t said anything specific, but I wasn’t sure that he and his second wife were doing too well.

As I spoke, I realised that the crowds were gathering, and that I was way above their median age. ‘Enough of all that stuff,’ I declared, firmly. ‘Do you guys want to go to this gig or don’cha?’

They beamed, both of them, and Janet jumped up and down like a one-woman football team that had just won the cup.

‘Well, let’s go,’ I shouted, ‘before the band gets tired and the bar gets emptied.’

Not that there was any chance of either eventuality.

We headed along the boardwalk, towards the old Greek wall, and the bandstand. It might have been billed as a reggae night but the musicians were all Catalan, mostly local, and they were pretty damn good. We were all wearing flip-flops, but I removed mine and stowed them in my bag, making damn sure it was zipped. Ours is a peaceable place but there were bound to be strangers around. Spain is a lovely country, but be under no illusion, it has its fair share of casual, opportunist crime and then some, if you’re casual and careless enough to provide opportunities.

The beach bar was still well provisioned when we reached it but it was thronged, and selling out fast. Sensibly, they weren’t dispensing anything in glass, but I wasn’t fussy. I caught the owner’s eye and asked for three bottles of still water. I gave the kids one each and we wandered closer to the action. I recognised the bass player and one of the guitarists, and the girl with the mike was familiar too. They’d switched from reggae into a set of gipsy-style music; it was earthy, to say the least, and the singer knew all the actions. For a moment I wondered whether it was suitable for twelve-year-olds, then Tom laughed at one of the lines and I realised that a frontier had been crossed somewhere without my noticing.

But I did notice something else, or rather someone. The bloke from the square had made his way to the concert too, or maybe he’d just been curious and followed the noise … or maybe he’d followed us. Nonsense, Primavera, I scolded myself mentally, all that crap with Culshaw’s making you paranoid.

The one certainty was that the man was as smitten by the singer as every other guy with a pulse in the audience, even my son by the looks of it. With his attention elsewhere I was able to study him more closely than in the restaurant. Yes, he was probably early to mid-forties, quite tall, a little over six feet, with a fairly muscular build under his striped short-sleeved shirt, and he hadn’t been in the area for very long, for he was still a bit of a paleface. Plus he was British; I’ve lived in the village for long enough to make an educated guess at individual nationalities. Sometimes the clue is in height, with the Dutch for example; others, it’s how their kids are dressed, for example if a boy’s wearing a blue football shirt with a rooster crest and the name ‘Ribery’ on the back, then he’s either French or confused. With the Brits, it’s their pasty or pink faces and their general deportment. That falls into two categories. There are those who think that everywhere is a colony and that therefore they have first dibs on tables, waiters, etc., and who assume that if they speak English very slowly and very loudly they will be understood. Then there are those who are diffident to the point of nervousness, and completely out of their comfort zone in any country that doesn’t serve warm dark beer or tea in large earthenware pots. The man I was looking at was harder to place than most, but I decided that he belonged in the former category, if only because he didn’t look as if he had ever been nervous in his life.

Therefore, summed up, mystery man was a middle-aged British citizen, a stranger on his own in a place that almost without exception attracts families or older couples. A widower, perhaps, or a divorcee, but certainly not gay from the way he was admiring the vocalist. Profession? You can’t tell a book by the cover. I have seen men shuffling along the beach in the sort of swim shorts that should never have left the factory, unshaven and with at least three over-spilling bellies, and learned later that they were corporate lawyers, hedge fund managers, surgeons or whatever. But Mr Brit was well dressed in his expensive tourist shirt and trousers with a discreet Lacoste alligator just below the waistband, and he had the air about him of someone who had no need or desire to dress down from his day job. Simple, Primavera, he’s a rep.

I nodded at that verdict, at the very moment when the singer took a break and he glanced across and caught me looking at him. He smiled, and started to move in my direction. Oh shit, I thought, and harboured the notion of using the kids as a human shield but they’d drifted a couple of metres away from me, closer to the stage. All I could do, other than grab them and beat an undignified, not to mention cowardly, retreat, was to stand there and wait, pretending that I was ignoring his approach.

‘Primavera?’ Ben Simmers’ call took me unawares. I turned towards him and realised from his expression that he had taken in the whole thing. His raised eyebrows, and his concern, asked, quite clearly, whether I wanted him to intervene, but I shook my head briefly.

The guy drew closer; he was smiling and didn’t pose any threat in such a throng, but still, I felt a pang of something that might have been alarm, if not outright fear. Rarely do I feel vulnerable, but I did then, because I had this continuous nagging feeling that I was missing something.

He stopped, standing in front of me, no closer than the kids were, sorry, kid, because Tom had left Janet’s side and was standing in front of me, a five foot four inch, fifty-nine kilo bundle of something serious.

As I put a hand on his shoulder, the newcomer spoke. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ Slightly Irish accent, but I still couldn’t pin him down.

‘If that’s a pub quiz starter,’ I replied, ‘the answer is, it’s a line from It Started with a Kiss, by Hot Chocolate, early nineteen eighties. If it’s a chat-up line, it’s crap and you’d be well advised to desist, because quite apart from my son here, there are at least three guys watching you right now who would be happy to take you to the top of the old Greek wall and chuck you in the sea if they thought you were annoying me.’ I paused. ‘If, on the other hand, it’s a straight question, then no, I don’t have a clue.’

‘You’re Liam Matthews!’ Janet’s exclamation cut in out of the blue. ‘You were a friend of our father’s. You were in some films with him and you came to visit us once when we lived in Scotland, beside Loch Lomond. I wasn’t very old at the time, but I remember you. Don’t you, Tom? It was just after you came to live with us.’

‘Got it in one,’ the former stranger laughed, as Tom shook his head. ‘You can only have been about … what … four, then. I didn’t meet your brother that day, though, just you. You wandered in when your dad and I were talking and he introduced me, and made you shake my hand, like a little lady. By God, but you’ve grown up. You’re a proper lady now, no mistake; he’d have been very proud of you, as I’m sure Susie is.’

Liam Matthews! Liam bloody Matthews. A name from way, way, in my past; it must have been almost fifteen years back. Finally I remembered him, and the first time I’d ever seen him. It was in Barcelona, and I was covered in blood.

After Oz left me for Jan, and went back to Scotland, I stayed on in our apartment in St Martí and took a job as a nurse in the Trueta hospital in Girona. A few months later, I was in the near-legendary JoJo’s Bar in L’Escala one night when the telly ran an ad for a wrestling show in Barcelona, and who was doing the promo but Oz. The shock knocked me off my bar stool.

The nutter had got himself involved with a Glasgow-based outfit called the Global Wrestling Alliance. Ostensibly he was their ring announcer, but as it turned out he was really working on an undercover investigation into a series of attempts at sabotage. Whatever, I couldn’t let the circus leave town without seeing for myself; I booked a ticket and drove down.

It wasn’t my intention to meet him … well, that’s what I told myself and still do … but there was another serious incident that very night. One of the wrestlers was shot, yards away from me, in the middle of the ring, and I wound up in there doing some battlefield first aid. The man’s name was Jerry Gradi, and happily it still is, because they reckon I saved his life. I’m still on Jerry’s Christmas card list and he’s on mine, but he’s the only one of that crew I kept in touch with.

Liam was there too, although I didn’t pay too much attention to him, or give him any thought, considering everything that was going on, then and afterwards.

It’s an evening I’ll never forget, for a reason that Duncan Culshaw touched on in his scurrilous book. After the shooting, Oz and I crossed paths at the hospital where Jerry was taken, when he came to check that he was going to be all right. The two of us had dinner together and that’s where he was when he had the phone call that told him that Jan had been electrocuted by the faulty washing machine in their flat in Glasgow.

Fast forward a little. I kept in touch with him, this time to check that he was going to be all right. Eventually, one thing led to the other, I moved back to Scotland, and we became a couple again. Odd? No, I’d never stopped loving the boy, and he didn’t hate me too much either.

He was still involved with the GWA; indeed, that’s how he got into the acting business. As a ring announcer, he fell well short of being Michael Buffer, but nonetheless he made an impression. As a result, he landed some voice-over work on TV commercials. Eventually Miles Grayson, my brother-in-law, was brave enough to cast him in a movie, and it all took off from there. Before it did, though, Oz and I had socialised with some of the wrestling crew and Liam had been among them.

He’d looked a hell of a lot different then, hence my failure to recognise him. Apart from the specs, which were new, and the fact that he’d carried at least ten kilos more muscle in those days, he’d lost the big hair. Liam had been famous … some said notorious … for his ponytail, which hung on the end of one of the worst mullets I’ve ever seen. He’d looked like a holdover from a seventies pop band, but at some point since then he’d turned into a New Age man.

My brother-in-law may have had something to do with that too; at Oz’s suggestion he’d cast Liam as a cop in one of his movies. The Showaddywaddy look would not have worked for that.

When my reverie was over and I rejoined the moment, I saw that Liam was gazing down on Tom, who still hadn’t relaxed from his defensive posture. ‘Wow,’ he murmured. ‘Even if I didn’t know who you were, son, I’d have picked you out of a line-up of five hundred as Oz’s kid.’ He grinned. ‘You think you could take me, slugger? Your dad could have, that’s for sure.’

‘I’m not a slugger,’ Tom replied, quietly. ‘What’s your wing chun belt?’ he asked.

Matthews put his thumb in his waistband. ‘About thirty-four just now. What’s wang shine anyway?’

‘Wing chun is the martial art I study. It’s Chinese, something like karate.’

‘I’m only kidding,’ Liam said. ‘I know what it is and I can guess what it means: it means, “Don’t mess with me,” right?’

‘No; actually it means “Forever springtime”. It’s close to what my mother’s name means in English.’

‘Whatever, young man,’ the ex-grappler chuckled. ‘I am more pleased to meet you than you could ever imagine.’ He extended his hand and Tom shook it. Then he looked at me. ‘And I’m just as pleased to meet you again, Mrs Blackstone.’

‘Stop kidding around,’ I told him. ‘It was Primavera back then and it still is. So, Mr Matthews,’ I continued, as the singer reappeared to finish her set, ‘what brings you here? Are you a tourist, and if so is Mrs Matthews back at the hotel? Her name was Erin, wasn’t it?’

‘Don’t you give me the “mister” either,’ he replied then shook his head. ‘Erin was never officially sanctioned, so to speak, nor has anyone else ever been. If you remember, she was an air hostess. She wound up marrying a pilot she thought was a safer bet than me.’

‘Maybe the Specsavers look put her off. I didn’t mark you down to wear those ever.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t like contacts, and I won’t let anyone burn my eyes with lasers. These are the best I can do. You’re still twenty-twenty, yes?’

‘So far,’ I said. ‘So, Liam, what are you doing here?’

‘It isn’t a long story,’ he replied, glancing up at the stage, ‘but this is probably not the place to tell it. If you’d like to meet for lunch tomorrow, today rather,’ he corrected himself, ‘I’ll tell you then.’

Given the Susie situation, I wasn’t sure how the day would pan out. ‘Lunch might be a problem,’ I said. ‘Coffee would be better. Same place you were earlier, eleven thirty?’

‘That’s good for me. I’ll say goodnight then.’

‘Aren’t you staying for the music?’

He looked up at the singer once again. ‘Better not,’ he chuckled. ‘I can’t understand a word she’s singing; I can only guess at it, and it’s driving me crazy.’