The Spanish Game

22. Barajas

He is touched that I go all the way to the airport with him, but I want to make sure that Saul boards a plane. His flight is delayed, so we drink coffee for an hour in the arrivals lounge and he buys me a paperback of Ripley’s Game, in Spanish, at the newsagent. Later I see that Ripley’s wife is called Heloise.

At the security checks we embrace briefly but he continues to hold my arms when we break off.

‘It’s been good to see you, mate. Really good. I’m glad things have worked out. So just look after yourself, OK? Don’t do anything stupid.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You know what I mean. You’re missed in London. Don’t stay here for the rest of your life. This is not where you should be.’

‘I like it here.’

‘I know you do. It’s a great country. And Madrid is a great city. But it’s not home.’

He releases my arms and picks up his bags one by one from the trolley.

‘Saul?’

‘Yes?’

I am about to apologize for all my suspicion, all my tricks and paranoia, but I don’t have the guts. Instead I just say, ‘Good luck with everything,’ and he nods.

‘Everything will be fine. We’re still young, Alec. We can start again.’ He is grinning as he says this. ‘Don’t you think that everyone deserves a second chance?’

‘Absolutely. Have a good flight.’

And as soon as he is gone, waving just once before passing through into departures, I feel a great sense of loss. How long will it be before we see one another again? How long before I can go home? I have to find a bar and order a whisky to lift the gloom of sudden solitude. It feels as if I wasted his visit to Madrid, as if I misjudged Saul’s intentions and kept him constantly at arm’s length. He didn’t leave just one day after getting back from Andalucía because of Heloise. He didn’t leave because there was no connection with Julian or Arenaza. He left because something elementary in our relationship had shifted: what was once there is lost, and there was nothing Saul could do to get it back. The Alec he knew as a younger man is now a different creature, a creature whose true nature has been revealed. And if a friendship no longer gives you pleasure, then why remain loyal to that friend? Getting a cab back home I conclude that Saul will now move into a different phase of his life, just as I have done in mine. It’s ridiculous, really, speeding along the motorway in the taxi and thinking that, in all probability, I will never see my oldest friend again.