Quintin Jardine - Alarm Call

I decided to push things along a bit, before she unravelled again. ‘Where did you meet him?’

‘You reckon you know me that well?’ she shot back, bitterly. ‘You just assume it was a man. Primavera’s in trouble, so the cause has to be some bloke’s pants hanging on the bedroom door. Is it that easy to diagnose?’

‘You said that you met a man. Where did that happen?’

‘Gleneagles Hotel,’ she answered, her short-lived feistiness going out of her with a great sigh. ‘After a couple of years, I decided that I had to see my parents again. So I quit my job, and headed north. It was good for a while, but all they did was hang about the house all day, so in the evenings I’d go along to Gleneagles for a drink. I went on my own, but the staff knew who I was, so they didn’t worry that I was a high-class hooker or anything.’

‘Did anyone else think that?’

‘Gleneagles isn’t that sort of place, Oz. Most of the time I just sat, read the magazines in the lounge and people-watched. Occasionally there would be a man there on his own, and we’d say hello to each other, but it was always very proper. Even when I met him, it was all above board.’

‘Name of?’

‘Wallinger; Paul Wallinger, bastard that he is.’

There was so much pure hatred in her tone that even Susie was startled. I try to listen to both sides of an argument before taking sides, but I knew right then that I didn’t like Mr Wallinger.

‘What was his story?’

‘We met in the cocktail bar, my usual hang-out: I was on my third Bacardi, and just getting nicely relaxed, when he came in from the dining room, tall, dark-haired, tanned, clean-cut.’

My wife glanced at me. ‘I know someone else who answers that description.’

Prim went slightly pink. ‘To tell you the truth, that’s what made me give him more than just one glance; he does have a passing resemblance to Oz. He didn’t as much as look my way, though. He sat down at another table and ordered a Macallan, then he picked up one of the posh magazines and started to read it. Still he never even looked in my direction. That must have stirred my vanity, for when he glanced around to catch the waiter’s eye, I made damn sure that mine got in the way too.’

I knew that scene. ‘So you pulled him,’ I suggested, ‘not the other way around.’

‘Oz,’ said Susie, from the side, ‘just shut up, will you?’ Prim shook her head. ‘No, it has to be admitted, I pulled him, or at least I started the pulling. I brought it all down on my own empty bloody head.’ She drained her glass.

My wife glanced at it, and at her own, by way of instruction: so I went off and refilled them. ‘Thanks,’ said Prim, as she took her fairly heavily iced-up Bacardi and tonic. (I didn’t want her getting too drunk and maudlin.) ‘I never thought I’d see you house-trained.’

‘And I never thought I’d see you crying into your cocktails, so tell me how it happened.’

‘Okay. That was how we met, casually, two respectable, lonely strangers in a very respectable place. He moved over to my table and we started to talk. He told me that he was American, a stockbroker working in London, and that he was in Scotland playing some classic golf courses. I told him that I was a nurse, and that I was visiting my parents, who lived locally.’

‘No more than that?’

‘Not at first; that night we just talked about Gleneagles, about Scotland, about the courses he was playing.’

‘All about him?’

‘Yeah, I suppose. I might have said a few things about my job, but that was all.’

‘So you didn’t tell him you were a millionaire divorcee, just to get his interest.’

‘No! I told you.’ She turned on me. ‘Listen, if you’re going to interrogate me like this I’ll stop right now.’

‘No, you won’t: it’s why you’re here. But I’ll shut up, if it makes it easier for you.’

‘It will. I’ve been bottling this up for a while: you’re the first people I’ve told about it, so just let it come out, please.’

‘Okay, I promise.’

‘Thanks. Right, where were we? Yes, talking that first night. As I said, it was all very bland, and after a while, I said I had to go. He thanked me for my company, as a gentleman would, then he asked if I came to Gleneagles often. When I told him that I did, he asked if I’d like to have dinner with him the next night, and I told him that would be nice.’

She took a sip of her weak Bacardi and made a face. ‘As it happened it was nice. We had a very pleasant evening, and I’m sure that he never asked me a single thing about myself, until right at the end when, out of the blue, he said, “Why do you stay here?” I asked him what he meant, and he replied, “Don’t think me presumptuous, but obviously you’re bored here, just filling in time.” That took me completely by surprise. I suppose I protested a bit, but in the end I had to admit that he was right. It was then that I told him that I’d just been divorced, and that I’d come home to reassess, as I put it. I still didn’t mention your name, though, and he didn’t ask me anything about you. Instead he told me that he’d just gone through the same experience, and was having difficulty coming out the other side. Next thing I knew, I was sympathising with him, telling him that there was a life afterwards and that it would all work out okay.’

‘Did you. .?’ I began, in spite of myself.

She cut me off short. ‘I didn’t prove it to him there and then, if that’s what you were going to ask, but the next evening we had dinner again. I stayed for a bit after that, and all the next night. He was due to leave that morning: I suppose I would have said, “Thanks and goodbye,” and given him a page in my scrap-book, but it didn’t work out that way. Instead he asked me if I’d like to do something impulsive, and go with him to London, there and then, for a couple of weeks, to see how it worked out. He caught me at just the right moment. I thought about Auchterarder with him gone, that big barn of a house and my preoccupied parents, and I said, “Why the hell not?” So I went home, packed, said my farewells to Mum and Dad, without telling them where I was going, then went back to Gleneagles and to Paul. He had a hire car to take back to Edinburgh: I got a seat on his flight and by that evening we were in his place in Kensington.’

She paused for breath and Bacardi. ‘Only it wasn’t his place: it was a serviced apartment in a block that catered for business clients, the sort of accommodation you might take if you were coming into town for a few weeks’ work. None of the people I met there were British; they were a mixture of Americans, Germans, Japanese and Chinese. He told me that his wife had taken him to the cleaners in the settlement, and he’d taken it on as a short-term measure till he got back on his feet. But it didn’t really matter as far as I was concerned. I was in London, it was exciting, Paul was considerate and charming and I had my life back.’

‘Doing what?’ I asked.

‘That’s a good question,’ Prim admitted. ‘Now that I look back on it, I was doing nothing. Paul would go to work every day, Monday to Friday, and I’d shop. Either I’d walk down to Harrods, or I’d take a taxi up to the West End. Occasionally I’d do something cultural for the sake of it, maybe the National Gallery, or the British Museum, but mostly I hung out in Selfridges, or I’d take the Tube up to Liverpool Street and meet Paul for lunch in a wine bar. The couple of weeks grew into a month, and it all sort of went on from there.’

She smiled, wryly. ‘We stayed in the flat for three months, enough time for me to realise how poky it was and to want something better. When I said this to Paul, he made a face, and said he couldn’t afford it. I remember laughing, and telling him not to worry, that I could. That was when I told him who I’d been married to and how much I’d got in the settlement. So we went house-hunting and found a nice two-bedroom flat in Battersea, a riverside development near Chelsea Bridge that looks up towards Westminster. All my money was invested at that stage, but I bought it on a mortgage till I could free some up. We moved in straight away, and it was wonderful. I was back on track, I had a nice, kind, loving man, a great lifestyle in an exciting city. What more could I want?’