Our kind of traitor

11

Of the many emotions that Gail had expected to feel as she boarded the 12.29 Eurostar from St Pancras Station bound for Paris on a cloudy Saturday afternoon in June, relief was about the last of them. Yet relief, albeit hedged around with every sort of caveat and reservation, was what she felt, and if Perry's face opposite her was anything to go by, so did he. If relief meant clarity, if it meant harmony between them restored, and getting back on track with Natasha and the girls and mopping Perry's brow when he was doing his Land and Liberty number, then Gail was relieved; which didn't mean she'd tossed her critical faculties out of the window, or was one half as enchanted as Perry patently was by his role as master-spy.

Perry's conversion to the cause had come as no big surprise to her, though you had to be a Perry-watcher to know just how far he had moved: from high-minded rejection to outright commitment to what Hector referred to as The Job. Sometimes, it was true, Perry would express residual moral or ethical reservations, even doubts – is this really the only way to handle this? Isn't there a simpler route to the same end? – but he was capable of asking himself the same question halfway up a thousand-foot overhang.

The original seeds of his conversion, she now realized, had been planted not by Hector but by Dima, who since Antigua had acquired the dimensions of a Rousseau-esque noble savage in the Perry lexicon:

'Just imagine who we'd have been if we'd been born into his life, Gail. You can't get away from the fact: it's practically a badge of honour to be selected by him. And I mean, think of those children!'

Oh, she thought of the children all right. She thought of them day and night, and most particularly she thought about Natasha, which was one reason why she had refrained from suggesting to Perry that, stuck out on a headland in Antigua with the fear of God in him, Dima mightn't exactly have been spoiled for choice when it came to selecting a messenger, confessor, or prisoner's friend, or whatever it was that Perry had been appointed, or had appointed himself. She'd always known there was a slumbering romantic in him waiting to be woken when selfless dedication was on offer, and if there was a whiff of danger in the air, so much the better.

The only missing character had been a fellow zealot to sound the bugle: until enter on cue Hector, the charming, witty, falsely relaxed, eternal litigant, as she saw him; the archetypal justice-obsessed client who had spent his life proving he owned the land that Westminster Abbey was built on. And probably if her Chambers spent a hundred years on his case he would be proved right and the courts would find for him. But in the meantime the Abbey would remain pretty much where it was, and life would go on as before.

And Luke? Well, Luke was Luke, as far as Perry was concerned, a safe pair of hands, no argument: a good pro, conscientious, savvy. All the same, it had been a comfort to Perry, he had to admit, to learn that Luke was not, as they had at first assumed, the team leader, but Hector's lieutenant. And since Hector could do no wrong in Perry's eyes, this was obviously the right thing for Luke to be.

Gail was not so sure. The more she had seen of Luke over their two weeks of 'familiarization', the more inclined she was to regard him – despite his twitchiness and exaggerated courtesy and the worry-ripples that flitted across his face when he thought nobody was looking – as the safer pair of hands; and Hector, with his bold assurances and ribald wit and overwhelming powers of persuasion, as the loose cannon.

That Luke was also in love with her neither surprised nor discomfited her. Men fell in love with her all the time. There was security in knowing where their feelings lay. That Perry was unaware of this came as no surprise to her either. His lack of awareness was also a kind of security.

What disturbed her most was the passion of Hector's commitment: the sense that he was a man with a mission – the very sense that so enchanted Perry.

'Oh, I'm still on the testing-bench,' Perry had said, in one of his throwaway self-denunciations he was so fond of. 'Hector's the formed man' – a distinction he constantly aspired to, and was so reluctant to bestow.

Hector a formed version of Perry? Hector the raw action man who did the stuff Perry only talked about? Well, who was in the front line now? Perry. And who was doing the talking? Hector.

*

And it wasn't only Hector that Perry was enchanted by. It was Ollie too. Perry, who prided himself on a shrewd eye when it came to deciding who was a good man on a rope, had simply not been able to believe, any more than Gail had, that lumbering, out-of-condition Ollie with his camp ways and single earring and overintelligence, and the buried foreign accent she hadn't been able to trace and was too polite to question, should turn out to be the model of a born educator: meticulous, articulate, determined to make every lesson fun and every lesson stick.

Never mind it was their precious weekends that were being hijacked, or it was late evening after a wearying day in Chambers or in court; or that Perry had been in Oxford all day attending ball-breaking graduation ceremonies, saying goodbye to his students, clearing out his digs. Ollie within moments had them in his spell, whether they were walled up in the basement, or sitting in a crowded cafe on Tottenham Court Road with Luke out on the pavement and big Ollie in his cab with his beret on, while they tested the toys from his black museum of fountain pens, blazer buttons and tiepins that could listen, transmit, record, or all of the above; and for the girls, costume jewellery.

'Now which ones do we think are us, maybe, Gail?' Ollie had asked when it came to her turn to be fitted. And when she replied, 'If you want it straight, Ollie, I wouldn't be seen dead in any of them,' off they had trotted to Liberty's to find something that was more her.

Yet the chances of them ever having to use Ollie's toys were, as he was anxious to tell her, virtually zero:

'Hector, he wouldn't dream of letting you near them for the main event, darling. It's only for the "in case". It's for when all of a sudden you're going to hear something wonderful that nobody was ever expecting, and there's no risk to life or property or such, and all we need is to be sure you've got the necessary know-how to work it.'

With hindsight Gail doubted this. She suspected that Ollie's toys were in reality teaching aids for instilling psychological dependency in the people who were being taught to play with them.

'Your familiarization course will proceed at your convenience, not ours,' Hector had informed them, addressing his newly recruited troops on their first evening in a pompous voice she never heard him use again – so perhaps he too was nervous. 'Perry, if you find yourself stuck in Oxford for an unscheduled meeting or whatever, stay stuck and give us a call. Gail, whatever you do at Chambers, don't push your luck. The message is act natural and look busy. Any alteration in either of your lifestyles will raise eyebrows and be counter-productive. With me?'

Next, he reiterated for Gail's benefit the promise he had made to Perry:

'We shall tell you as little as we can get away with, but whatever we do tell you will be the truth. You're a pair of innocents abroad. That's how Dima wants you, and that's how I want you, and so do Luke and Ollie here. What you don't know you can't fuck up. Every new face has got to be a new face to you. Every first time has got to be a first time. Dima's plan is to launder you the way he launders money. Launder you into his social landscape, make you respectable currency. Effectively, he'll be under house arrest wherever he goes, and will have been since Moscow. That's his problem and he'll have thought hard and long about how to solve it. As ever, the initiative is with the poor bugger in the field. It's Dima's job to show us what he can manage, when and how.' And as a typical Hector afterthought: 'I'm foul-mouthed. Relaxes me, brings me down to earth. Luke and Ollie here are prudes, so it evens out.'

And then the homily:

'This is not, repeat not, a training session. We don't happen to have a couple of years to spare: just a few hours spread over a couple of weeks. So it's familiarization, it's confidence-building, it's establishing trust in all weathers. You in us, us in you. But you are not spies. So for Christ's sake don't try to be. Don't even think about surveillance. You are not surveillance-conscious people. You're a young couple enjoying a spree in Paris. So don't for fuck's sake start dawdling at shop windows, peering over your shoulders or ducking into side alleys. Mobiles are a slightly different matter,' he went on, without a blip. 'Did either of you use your phones in front of Dima or his gang?'

They had used their mobiles from the balcony of their cabin, Gail to call her Chambers concerning Samson v. Samson, Perry to call his landlady in Oxford.

'Did anyone in Dima's lot ever hear either of your phones go off?'

No. Emphatic.

'Do Dima or Tamara know either or both of your mobile numbers?'

'No,' said Perry.

'No,' Gail replied, if slightly less confidently.

Natasha had Gail's number and Gail had Natasha's. But within the four corners of the question, her reply was truthful.

'Then they can have our encrypted jobs, Ollie,' Hector said. 'Blue for Gail, silver for him. And you two people please hand over your SIM cards to Ollie and he'll do the necessary. Your new phones will be encrypted for the calls between the five of us only. You'll find the three of us pre-set under Tom, Dick and Harry. Tom's me. Luke's Dick. Ollie's Harry. Perry, you're Milton after the poet. Gail's Doolittle after Eliza. All pre-set. Everything else on the phones functions as per usual. Yes, Gail?'

Gail the barrister:

'Will you be listening to our calls from now on, if you haven't been already?'

Laughter.

'We shall be listening only on the pre-set encrypted lines.'

'No others? Sure?'

'No others. Truth.'

'Not even when I call my five secret lovers?'

'Not even, alas.'

'How about our personal texts?'

'Absolutely no. It's a waste of time and we're not into that stuff.'

'If our pre-set lines to one another are encrypted, why do we need our funny names?'

'Because people on buses earwig. Any more questions from the prosecution? Ollie, where's the bloody malt?'

'Got it right here, Skipper. Actually, I got a new bottle already' – in that irritatingly unplaceable voice.

*

'So your family, Luke?' Gail had asked him over soup and a bottle of red in the kitchen one evening before they went home.

It amazed her that she hadn't asked him the question before. Perhaps – dark thought – she hadn't wanted to, preferring to keep him on a hook. It evidently amazed Luke too, because his hand rose sharply to his forehead to comfort a small, livid scar that seemed to come and go of its own accord. A fellow spy's pistol butt? Or an angry wife's frying pan?

'One child only, I'm afraid, Gail,' he said, as if he should be apologizing for not having more. 'Boy. Marvellous little chap. Ben, we call him. Taught me everything I know about life. Beats me at chess too, I'm proud to say. Yes.' Twitch of the stray eyelid. 'Trouble is, we never get around to finishing a game. Too much of this.'

This? Did he mean booze? Spying? Or falling in love?

She had briefly suspected him of having a thing with Yvonne, largely from the way Yvonne discreetly mothered him. Then she decided they were just a man and a woman working side by side: until an evening when she caught his eyes staring now at Yvonne, now at herself, as if they were both some sort of higher being, and she thought she'd never seen such a sad face in all her life.

*

It's last night. It's end of term. It's end of school altogether. There will never be another two weeks like these. In the kitchen, Yvonne and Ollie are cooking a sea bass in salt. Ollie is singing from La Traviata, rather well, and Luke is doing appreciation, smiling at everyone and shaking his head in exaggerated marvel. Hector has brought a grand bottle of Meursault – actually, two bottles. But first of all, he needs to talk to Perry and Gail alone in the Headmaster's chintzy drawing room. Do we sit or stand? Hector is standing so Perry, ever the formalist despite himself, stands too. Gail selects an upright chair under a Roberts print of Damascus.

'So,' says Hector.

So, they agree.

'Last words, then. Without witnesses. The Job is dangerous. I've told you before but I'm telling you again now. It's fucking dangerous. You can still jump ship and no hard feelings. If you stay aboard, we'll wet-nurse you all we can, but we've got no logistical support worth a hoot. Or as we say in the trade, we're going in barefoot. You don't have to say your goodbyes. Forget Ollie's fish. Get your coats from the hall, walk out of the front door, none of it happened. Last call.'

The last of many, if he did but know. Perry and Gail have discussed the same question every night of the last fourteen. Perry was determined she should answer for them both, so she does:

'We're all right. We've decided. We'll do it,' she says, sounding more heroic than she means to, and Perry does a big, slow nod and says, 'Yup, definitely,' which doesn't sound like him either – a thing he must know, because he promptly turns Hector's question back on him:

'So how about you people?' he demands. 'Don't you ever have doubts?'

'Oh, we're fucked anyway,' Hector replies carelessly. 'That's the point, isn't it? If you're going to be fucked, be fucked in a good cause.'

Which for Perry, of course, is balm to his puritan ear.

*

And to judge by the expression on Perry's face as they pulled into the Gare du Nord, the same balm was still working, because there was a suppressed I-am-Britain look about him that was completely new to Gail. It wasn't till they reached the Hotel des Quinze Anges – a typical Perry choice: scruffy, narrow, five rickety floors high, tiny rooms, twin beds the size of ironing boards, and a stone's throw from the rue du Bac – that the full impact of what they had signed up to hit them. It was as if their sessions in the Bloomsbury house with its chummy family atmosphere – a cosy hour with Ollie, another with Luke, Yvonne has dropped by, Hector's on his way over for a nightcap – had instilled in them a sense of immunity which, now they were alone, had evaporated.

They also discovered that they had lost the power of natural speech and were talking to each other like an ideal couple in a television commercial:

'I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, aren't you?' says Doolittle to Milton. 'I've never seen Federer in the flesh before. I'm really thrilled.'

'I just hope the weather will hold,' Milton replies to Doolittle with a worried glance at the window.

'Me too,' Doolittle agrees earnestly.

'So how's about we unpack this lot and find ourselves a spot of food?' Milton suggests.

'Good idea,' says Doolittle.

But what they're really thinking is: if the match is rained off, what on earth will Dima do?

Perry's mobile is ringing. Hector.

'Hi, Tom,' says Perry idiotically.

'Checked in OK, Milton?'

'Fine, just fine. Good trip. Everything went perfectly,' Perry says with enough enthusiasm for both of them.

'You're on your own tonight, OK?'

'You said.'

'Doolittle in the pink?'

'Blooming.'

'Call if you need anything. Service round the clock.'

*

In the hotel's minuscule hallway on their way out, Perry discusses his anxieties about the weather with a formidable lady named Madame Mere after the mother of Napoleon. He has known her from his student days and Madame Mere, if she is to be believed, loves Perry like a son. She stands four foot nothing in her bedroom slippers and nobody, according to Perry, has ever seen her without a headscarf over her curlers. Gail enjoys hearing Perry rattling away in French, but his fluency has always been a challenge to her, perhaps because he is not forthcoming about his early instructors.

At a tabac in the rue de l'Universite, Milton and Doolittle eat indifferent steak frites and a tired salad and agree it's the best in the world. They don't finish their litre of house red, so take it back to their hotel.

'Just do whatever you'd normally do,' Hector had told them airily. 'If you've got Paris-based buddies and want to hang out with them, why not?'

Because we wouldn't be doing what we normally do, is why not. Because we don't want to be hanging out in a St Germain cafe with our Paris-based buddies when we've got an elephant called Dima sitting in our heads. And because we don't want to have to lie to them about where we got our tickets for tomorrow's Final.

*

Back in their room, they drink the rest of the red out of tooth-mugs and make deep and adoring love without speaking a word, the best. When morning comes Gail sleeps late out of nervousness, and wakes to find Perry watching the rain spotting the grimy window, and worrying again about what Dima will do if the match is cancelled. And if it's postponed till Monday – Gail's thought now – will she have to call her Chambers with another cock-and-bull story about a sore throat, which is Chambers code for a bad period?

Suddenly everything is linear. After coffee and croissants brought to their bedside by Madame Mere – with an appreciative murmur to Gail of 'Quel titan alors' – and a vacuous call from Luke asking whether they had a good night and are they feeling fit for tennis, they lie in bed discussing what to do before start of play at 3 p.m., allowing plenty of time to get to the stadium and find their seats and settle in.

Their answer is to take it in turns to use the tiny handbasin and dress, then march at Perry's pace to the Musee Rodin, where they attach themselves to a queue of schoolchildren, make it to the gardens in time to be rained on, shelter under the trees, take refuge in the museum cafe and peer through the doorway while they try to work out which way the clouds are moving.

Abandoning their coffees by mutual consent, but for no reason either of them can fathom, they agree to explore the gardens of the Champs-Elysees, only to find them closed on the grounds of security. Michelle Obama and her children are in town, according to Madame Mere, but it's a State secret, so only Madame Mere and all Paris knows.

The gardens of the Marigny Theatre, however, turn out to be open and empty, except for two elderly Arab men in black suits and white shoes. Doolittle selects a bench, Milton approves her choice. Doolittle stares into the chestnut trees, Milton at a map.

Perry knows his Paris and has of course fathomed exactly how they will reach the Roland Garros Stadium – metro to here, bus to there, a fat safety margin to make sure they meet Tamara's deadline.

Nevertheless, it makes sense for him to be burying his face in the map, because what else is there to do if you're a young couple on a spree in Paris and have decided, like a pair of idiots, to sit on a park bench in the rain?

'Everything on course, Doolittle? No little problems we can solve for you?' Luke directly to Gail this time, sounding like the Perkins' all-male family doctor when she was a girl: Sore throat, Gail? Why don't we have those clothes off and take a look?

'No problems, nothing you can help us with, thanks,' she replies. 'Milton tells me we'll be hitting the trail in half an hour.' And there's nothing wrong with my throat either.

Perry folds his map. Talking to Luke has made Gail feel angry and conspicuous. Her mouth has dried up, so she sucks in her lips and licks them from the inside. How much madder does this get? They return to the empty pavement and set course up the hill towards the Arc de Triomphe, Perry stalking ahead of her the way he does when he wants to be alone and can't.

'What the fuck d'you think you're doing?' she hisses into his ear.

He has dodged into an airless shopping mall that is blaring out rock music. He is peering into a darkened window as if his whole future is revealed there. Is he playing spy? – and incidentally flouting Hector's injunction not to look for imaginary watchers?

No. He's laughing. And a moment later, thank God, so is Gail as, arms slung round one another's shoulders, they gaze in disbelief at a veritable arsenal of spy toys: brand-name photographic wristwatches that cost ten thousand euros, briefcase microphone kits and telephone scramblers, night-vision glasses, stun guns in all their glorious variety, pistol holsters with non-slip lap-straps as optional extras, and pick-your-own bullets of pepper, paint or rubber: welcome to Ollie's black museum for the paranoid executive who has nothing.

*

There had been no bus to take them there.

They hadn't ridden on the metro.

The pinch on the bum she'd received from a departing passenger old enough to be her grandfather was non-operative.

They had been wafted here, and that was how they had come to be standing in a queue of courteous French citizens at the left side of the western gate to the Roland Garros Stadium exactly twelve minutes before the time appointed by Tamara.

It was also how Gail came to be smiling her way weightlessly past benign uniformed gatekeepers who were only too happy to smile back at her; then sauntering with the crowd down an avenue of tented shops to the thump-chump of an unseen brass band, the mooing of Swiss alphorns and the unintelligible advice of male loudspeakers.

But it was Gail the cool-headed courtroom lawyer who counted off the sponsors' names on the shopfronts: Lacoste, Slazenger, Nike, Head, Reebok – and which one did Tamara say in her letter? – don't pretend you've forgotten.

'Perry' – tugging hard at his arm – 'you promised me faithfully you'd buy me some decent tennis shoes. Look.'

'Oh, did I? So I did,' agrees Perry alias Milton, as a bubble saying REMEMBERS! appears over his head.

And with more conviction than she might have expected of him, he cranes forward to examine the latest thing by – Adidas.

'And it's high time you bought some for yourself too, and threw away that stinky old pair with verdigris round the uppers,' bossy Doolittle tells Milton.

'Professor! I swear to God! My friend! You don't remember me?'

The voice had come at them without warning: the disembodied voice of Antigua bellowing above the three winds.

Yes, I do remember you, but I'm not the Professor.

Perry is.

So I'll keep looking at the latest thing in Adidas tennis shoes, and let Perry go first before I turn my head in an appropriately delighted and highly astonished manner, as Ollie would say.

Perry is going first. She feels him leave her side and turn. She measures the length of time it takes for him to believe the evidence of his eyes.

'Christ, Dima! Dima from Antigua! – incredible!'

Not too much, Perry, keep it down -

'What in Heaven's name are you doing here! Gail, look!'

But I won't look. Not at once. I'm eyeing shoes, remember? And eyeing shoes, I'm always distracted, I'm on a different planet actually, even tennis shoes. Absurdly, as it had seemed to them at the time, they had practised this moment outside a sports shop in Camden Town that specialized in athletics shoes, and again in Golders Green, first with Ollie overplaying the back-slapping Dima and Luke playing innocent bystander, then with their roles reversed. But now she was glad of it: she knew her lines.

So pause, hear him, wake, turn. Then be delighted and highly astonished.

'Dima! Oh my God. It's you! You marvel! This is just totally – this is amazing!' – followed by her ecstatic mouse-squeak, the one she uses for opening Christmas parcels, as she watches Perry dissolve into the huge torso of a Dima whose delight and astonishment are no less spontaneous than her own:

'What you do here, Professor, you lousy goddam tennis player!'

'But Dima, what are you doing?' Perry and Gail together now, a chorus of yaps in different keys, as Dima roars on.

Has he changed? He's paler. The Caribbean sun's worn off. Yellow half-moons under the sexy brown eyes. Sharper downward lines at the corners of the mouth. But the same stance, the same backward lean saying 'come at me if you dare'. The same Henry the Eighth placing of the little feet.

And the man's an absolute natural for the stage, just listen to this:

'You think Federer gonna pussy this Soderling guy the way you pussy me? – you think he gonna tank the goddam match because he love fair play? Gail, I swear to God, come here! – I gotta hug this girl, Professor! You married her yet? You goddam crazy!' – as he draws her into his enormous chest, driving his whole body against her, starting with a clammy, tear-stained cheek, then his chest, then the bulge of his crotch until even their knees are touching; then shoves her away from him in order to bestow the obligatory three kisses of the Trinity on her cheeks, left side, right side, left side again while Perry does 'well, I must say this really is the most ridiculous, totally improbable coincidence', with rather more academic detachment than Gail thinks appropriate: a little short on spontaneity in her opinion, and she's making up for it with a thrilled gabble of too many questions all at once:

'Dima, darling, how are Katya and Irina, for Heaven's sake? I just can't stop thinking about them!' – true – 'Are the twins playing cricket? How's Natasha? Where have you all been? Ambrose said you'd all gone to Moscow. Is that where you all went? For the funeral? You look so well. How's Tamara? How are all those weird, lovely friends and relations you had around you?'

Did she really say that last bit? Yes she did. And while she's saying it, and intermittently receiving bits of answer in reply, she is becoming aware, if only in soft focus, of smartly dressed men and women who have paused to watch the show: another Dima-supporters' club, apparently, but of a younger, slicker generation, far removed from the mossy bunch assembled in Antigua. Is that Baby-Face Niki lurking among them? If so, he's bought himself an Armani summer suit in beige with fancy cuffs. Are the link bracelet and the deep-sea-diver's watch nestling inside them?

Dima is still talking and she is hearing what she doesn't want to hear: Tamara and the children flew straight from Moscow to Zurich – yes, Natasha too, she don't like goddam tennis, she wanna get home to Berne, read and ride a bit. Chill out. Does she also gather that Natasha hadn't been all that well, or was it her imagination? Everyone is conducting three conversations at once:

'Don't you teach goddam kids no more, Professor?' – mock outrage – 'you gonna teach French kids be English gentlemen once? Listen, where you sitting? Some goddam bird house, top floor, right?'

Followed by, presumably, a rendering of the same witty suggestion over his shoulder in Russian. But it must have got lost in translation, because few of the group of smartly dressed onlookers smile, except for a spruce little dancer of a man at their centre. At first glance, Gail takes him to be a tour guide of some sort, for he is wearing a very visible cream-coloured nautical blazer with an anchor of gold thread on the pocket, and carrying a crimson umbrella which, together with the head of swept-back silvery hair, would have made him instantly findable by anyone lost in a crowd. She catches his smile, then she catches his eye. And when she returns her gaze to Dima, she knows his eye is still on her.

Dima has demanded to see their tickets. Perry makes a habit of losing tickets, so Gail's got them. She knows the numbers by heart, so does Perry. But that doesn't prevent her from not knowing them now, or from looking sweetly vague as she hands them to Dima who lets out a derisive snort:

'You got telescopes, Professor? You so fucking high up, you need oxygen!'

Again he repeats the joke in Russian, but again the standing group behind him seems to be waiting rather than listening. Is his breathlessness new since Antigua? Or new for today? Is it a heart thing? Or a vodka thing?

'We gotta goddam hospitality box, hear me? Corporation shit. Young guys I work with from Moscow. Armani kids. Got pretty girls. Look at them!'

A pair of the girls do indeed catch Gail's eye: leather jackets, pencil skirts and ankle boots. Pretty wives? Or pretty hookers. If so, top of the range. And the Armani kids a hostile blur of blue-black suits and sodden stares.

'Thirty number-one seats, food you die for,' Dima is bellowing. 'You wanna do that, Gail? Come join us? Watch the game like a lady? Drink champagne? We got spare. Hey, come on, Professor. Why the fuck not?'

Because Hector told him to be hard to get, is why the fuck not. Because the harder he is to get, the harder you'll have to work to get him, and me with him, and the greater will be our credibility with your guests from Moscow. Pushed into a corner, Perry is making a good job of being Perry: frowning, doing his diffident and awkward bit. For a rank beginner in the arts of dissembling, he's putting on a pretty good turn. Time to help him out all the same:

'The tickets were a present, you see, Dima,' she confides sweetly, touching his arm. 'A good friend gave them to us, a dear old gentleman. For love. I don't think he'd like us to leave our seats empty, would he? If he found out, he'd be heartbroken' – which was the answer they'd cooked up with Luke and Ollie over a late nightcap of malt.

Dima stares from one to other of them in disappointment while he regroups his thoughts.

Restlessness in the ranks behind him: can't we get this over?

The initiative is with the poor bugger in the field…

Solution!

'Then hear me, Professor, OK? Hear me once' – his finger jabbing into Perry's chest – 'OK,' he repeats, nodding menacingly. 'After the game. Hear me? Soon as the goddam game is over, you gonna come visit us in hospitality.' He swings round to Gail, challenging her to upset his great plan. 'Hear me, Gail? You gonna bring this Professor to our hospitality. And you gonna drink champagne with us. The game don't end when it ends. They gotta do goddam presentations out there, speeches, lotta shit. Federer gonna win easy. You wanna bet me five grand US he don't win, Professor? I give you three to one. Four to one.'

Perry laughs. If he had a god, it would be Federer. No dice, Dima, sorry, he says. Not even at a hundred to one. But he isn't out of the wood yet:

'You're gonna play me tennis tomorrow, Professor, hear me? A rematch' – the finger still stabbing at Perry's chest – 'I gonna send someone round find you after the game, you gonna come visit us in hospitality, and we gonna fix a rematch, no pussying. And I'm gonna beat the shit outta you, buy you a massage after. You're gonna need it, hear me?'

Perry has no time for further protestation. Out of the corner of her eye, Gail has observed the tour guide with the silvery hair and red brolly detach himself from the group and advance on Dima's undefended back.

'Aren't you going to introduce us to your friends, Dima? You can't keep a beautiful lady like this all to yourself, you know,' a silken voice says reproachfully in pitch-perfect English with a faint Italian accent. 'Dell Oro,' he announces. 'Emilio dell Oro. An old friend of Dima's from way, way back. So pleased.' And takes each of their hands, first Gail's with a gallant downward tip of the head, then Perry's without one, thereby reminding her of a ballroom Lothario called Percy who cut in on her best boyfriend when she was seventeen, and nearly raped her on the dance floor.

'And I'm Perry Makepiece and she's Gail Perkins,' Perry says. And as a light-hearted footnote that really impresses her: 'I'm not really a professor, so don't be alarmed. It's just Dima's way of putting me off my tennis.'

'Then welcome to Roland Garros Stadium, Gail Perkins and Perry Makepiece,' dell Oro replies, with a radiant smile that she is beginning to suspect is permanent. 'So glad we shall have the pleasure of seeing you after the historic match. If there is a match,' he adds, with a theatrical lift of the hands and a glance of reproach at the grey sky.

But the last word is Dima's:

'I gonna send someone get you, hear me, Professor? Don't walk out on me. Tomorrow I beat the shit outta you. I love this guy, hear me?' he cries to the supercilious Armani kids with their watery smiles gathered behind him, and having enfolded Perry for a last defiant hug, falls in beside them as they resume their amble.