They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

28 22 July 2007 — Looking back

‘Fear?’ I replied.

‘If you spend six years as an interrogator in my country, where perhaps the police aren’t quite so concerned with being as gentle with suspects as they are here, you learn to read fear in someone’s face. Not nerves, not worry, fear. Real, raw fear. Understand me? It’s what I see in your face.’

Somewhere near where I was sitting, but it might have been a hundred miles away, I heard the rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat of the roulette ball, then silence. My throat felt tight, my mouth dry. At that moment our cocktails arrived, in proper Martini glasses I was pleased to note. Both contained a large green olive on a stick. And as all proper Martinis should be, the glasses were filled right to the very brim, the drink almost slopping over the top.

Nicos raised his and we touched glasses with a distinct, classy crystal chingggg. I took a sip. It was dry, cold as ice, and almost instantly it made me feel happier and more confident, as this drink always did. And it made me like Nicos even more. But at the same time, I was a little wary. He seemed almost too good to be true and one lesson I’d learned in my life so far was to trust your instincts — if something seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.

‘That fear you see is a monster called Albazi who is after me over a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-pound gambling debt that I’ve managed to rack up. There. I’ve said it. I’ve not told a soul this, you understand. And I’m not really sure why I’ve just told you.’

Could he be working for Albazi? Or was I just completely paranoid, given the shit I was in?

‘I think you’re a hard lady, right?’

No one had ever called me that before, and I wasn’t immediately sure how to take it. Compliment or criticism? But the way he was looking at me made me smile. ‘Maybe.’ Then, what the hell, I don’t know where it came from, but something popped in my head. I took another sip, a bigger one this time, then held my glass out towards him, like I was challenging him to a duel, and said, ‘You are right, I’m hard. I drink cocktails made from the tears of my past lovers.’

He studied me in silence for some moments, as if absorbing this very seriously. Then he studied his glass, slowly twirling it around by the stem. ‘I never realized before, the reason Martinis are so potent. Now I’m educated, thank you.’

He smiled. We touched glasses again, then he looked at me carefully, as if I was a page of a newspaper he was reading and, finally, said, ‘So, Sandy, what are we going to do with you?’

It’s strange how you get feelings about people, but in that simple line, I knew, for sure, he was on my side and had nothing to do with Albazi — he wouldn’t even know the Albanian existed. It felt so good to say my problem out loud to someone who didn’t know me, someone who wouldn’t judge me, someone who had been through some deep trauma themselves. A weight was lifting from my shoulders, and I was feeling a little safer.

I looked at my glass and there was barely enough of the clear liquid nectar left to cover the olive. Had I drunk the whole thing already?

It had gone to my head. And in a very nice way. I drained my glass. Emboldened, the alcohol doing most of the talking, I replied, ‘The first thing we are going to do with me is teach me how to be hard to find. Unless you have a problem with that?’

‘You want to be hard to find?’

I nodded.

‘You want to disappear?’

‘Perhaps. How would I start?’

‘You start with your digital footprint. May I see your phone?’

‘Well, there’s two actually, the second one I only got this week.’

I pulled them from my handbag and handed them to him. The second phone was my secret phone, the one I’d bought to see me through my leaving Roy. I called it phone B. I hadn’t wanted Roy seeing any messages from Albazi and phone B was just for my eyes.

Nicos asked me to enter my PINs for him. I did so. For some moments he concentrated on the first phone in silence, bringing up what looked like a variety of menus. Then he pulled out his own phone, laid them side by side, and concentrated fiercely. I heard the occasional beeps. He repeated this process with the second phone. Finally, he handed the phones back.

‘What were you looking for? A bug?’

‘I’ll explain.’