Quintin Jardine - On Honeymoon With Death

Prim was in the living room when I came downstairs; a mug of instant lay, waiting for me, on the coffee table. ‘So,’ I began, ‘tell me all about Elanore.’

‘She’s recovering well from the surgery,’ she replied. ‘They decided to hold off on the chemo for now: they’re going to give her time to regain a bit more strength. I had a long talk with the surgeon who operated; he’s as optimistic as he could be under the circumstances.

‘He thinks he got it all, and he thinks that the follow-up treatment will minimise the risk of spread, but he can’t say for certain.’

‘Worst case, what could happen?’

‘She could develop another tumour, maybe in the liver or colon, and that in time would be that. I prefer to think of best case, that she has full remission from the thing and dies of old age.’

She sipped her coffee as I settled on to the sofa beside her. ‘What about you, now? What did you and Susie get up to?’

I looked at her, poker-faced. ‘What do you think?’ I replied. ‘We shagged each other senseless.’

Prim laughed. ‘I’d know if you had,’ she said. ‘You’d have bags under your eyes and you’d be tripping over yourself with guilt.’

‘You can see though me in a second, can’t you?’ I murmured.

‘You better believe it. No, really, what did you do?’

‘Saw the sights, ate well; that was it. I told you about going to Barcelona on Friday. We did Pals as well and some of the other sightseeing places.

‘One very odd thing did happen, though.’ I told her from start to finish of Gabrielle’s arrival on the previous morning, and of the strange story she had to tell. As it unwound, I watched her expression become more and more indignant.

‘Do you mean to tell me that the girl’s father sold her to a pimp, as if she was livestock?’

‘Exactly so; and she turned up here looking for Capulet, so that he could give her the once over, make sure the sailors hadn’t given her the clap, or anything like that, on the way across, then put her to work. The poor wee lass is completely innocent. She really did think she was going to be a cocktail waitress.’

‘Can we find her father, Oz? Can we trace him and report him to the Filipino police?’

‘We won’t have to; your old boyfriend’s taken her under his wing. He’s going to arrange her repatriation through the Philippines consulate. When they hear the story, I’m sure that Papa Palacios will get what’s coming to him.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ Prim frowned and chewed her lip; that mannerism always means that she’s about to come out with something. It didn’t take long.

‘Darling,’ she murmured. ‘Have you considered that if the girl was sold out of poverty, it might not be the kindest thing in the world to send her back to it?’

‘The thought did flutter across my mind, my jewel, to be followed by another. What the fuck’s it got to do with us? I’m not, we’re not, sending her anywhere. We just happen to have bought a house that seems to have been used as a dropping-off point for prostitutes on their way to long-term horizontal employment.

‘I’m as angry as you are about what happened to the kid. But I’m chuffed that we’ve saved her from a life of shame, as the Daily Star would put it. What more can we do?’

She turned on the full persuasive power of her baby blues; until that time, that would have been enough. ‘Couldn’t we give her a job?’ she suggested.

‘Don’t be daft. Give her a job as what?’

‘I don’t know. A live-in maid, something like that.’

‘But we don’t need a live-in maid! We’re not going to live here full time. What would she do while we’re away?’

‘Look after the place for us?’

‘God! Prim, you’ve never even met Gabrielle. She’s a nice kid, sure, but she’s a kid nonetheless. She’s too young to be given a responsibility like that.’

‘Did you tell Shirley about her? Maybe she’d take her on.’

‘Sure, and I’ll bet Lionell would give her a job as well, cleaning his brushes. Prim, the best is being done for her; Fortunato has her and he’ll make sure that she’s sent home under better conditions than she came here. The Philippines is a modern, developing country; she’s not simply going to be given back to her father so he can sell her again.’

‘Mmm,’ she muttered, ‘maybe you’re right. Still, I think I’ll phone Ramon just to make sure she’s still all right.’

‘Why?’ I asked her. ‘Don’t you trust him with the kid?’

She flushed. ‘Of course. I just thought that maybe he and Veronique could use a nanny. That wee Alejandro’s a handful.’

‘Too much of a handful to give to a sixteen-year-old. . If she is sixteen, that is. No. Take my word on this and leave things as they are.’

She looked reluctant to do that, but I knew that in the end she would.

‘We’ll see,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Do you have any other strange stories to tell me? Anything else I’m going to find out about?’

I hadn’t planned to raise the subject, but I knew that there was a better than even chance that someone else would, the bulk of the ex-pat community having been witnesses at Frank and Geraldine’s cocktail party.

‘Well there is one thing,’ I began. ‘Someone bust Steve Miller’s nose at a drinks do yesterday afternoon. He was boasting too loud about one of his conquests, and a guy took violent exception. Guess who the guy was? Guess who the conquest was?

‘Why didn’t you tell me you fucked him after I left?’ I looked her in the eye as I asked her.

It took her a while to answer me. When she did, her voice was small, not hers at all, someone else’s, that of someone uncertain and insecure. ‘Didn’t think it was any of your business.’

‘You’re right. It wasn’t.’

‘Who told you?’

‘He did, in effect. He told everyone else too, round the Barnetts’ pool, when he started talking about you getting horny in Madrid. But most of them knew about it anyway, I suppose.’ She stared at the coffee table. ‘You couldn’t stand the guy, Prim, any more than I could. Did you hate me that much, that you let him. . into you?’

Her face flushed again; I thought I could feel her shaking, beside me on the couch. ‘Yes,’ she yelled, silence-shattering.

‘At the time I did. You were such a calm, cruel bastard when you told me you were leaving me for Jan; cunning too, the way that you seized on my friendship with Davidoff as a counterweight for your conscience. . if you had one at all.’

‘A bit more than friendship, I remember. You told me so yourself, in some detail; about the two of you. “He was my lover”, I recall you saying, only a few days ago.’

‘No, it wasn’t!’ she snapped at me. ‘It couldn’t have been any more than it was.’

‘If he could have, you would have.’

‘No! Oz, he was very special, to you too. And he was very sad, and very old. It was nowhere near the same as you and Jan. You just chucked me to one side and you went back to her. Not out of the blue either. I knew that you’d got together again in Edinburgh before that, when you went back on business.’

She paused. ‘You were pretty late admitting that too. And you didn’t have to anyway; I knew for sure at the time, as I told you.

‘I found a credit card slip, from Laing the Jeweller. A gold necklet, as I remember.’ She laughed, short and shrill. ‘I actually thought you were going to surprise me with it. Oh you surprised me all right. Too fucking right I hated you! Too fucking right I had Steve Miller!

‘Good old Steve. “I say,” ’ she mimicked. ‘ “One size fits all.” ’

‘What?’

‘That’s what he used to say; when we were in Madrid. “One size fits all!” It was a sort of a war-cry with him, as he was struggling into his condoms. . Not that he was talking about them. God, he’s so crass, and God how you deserved it.’