Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

Inside, the house was furnished in the traditional way but the walls of the hallway and drawing room were adorned with large brightly painted pictures of Brazilian scenes. Most of the flat surfaces supported weird and exotic sculptures, which seemed to combine Amerindian and modern abstract styles. It worked. They filled and brightened what would otherwise have been large, cold, English rooms.

It was the first warm weekend of the year, and most of the guests spilled out of the drawing room into the back garden to get acquainted with the spring sunshine. The back of the house was much less austere than the front, with a terrace and an arbour and tulips everywhere. A barbecue was going strong. Waiters in white jackets dispensed champagne cocktails, which were eagerly grasped.

‘I hate these things,’ Kate whispered to me. ‘I missed the last two because I said Oliver was ill, but Jamie insisted I come to this one.’

‘Why don’t you like them?’ I asked. ‘The people seem nice. Friendly.’

‘Oh, they are. But they all work so much on top of each other, I always feel like an outsider.’

‘There are other wives here, aren’t there?’

‘Oh, yes. Trophy wives and trophy mistresses. The wives are the ones with the wrinkles.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘You’re feeling pretty cynical this afternoon.’

‘Just look round.’

I did. There were, indeed, lots of beautiful women fluttering around. Expensively dressed, carefully made-up, the perfect complement to their wealthy husbands.

‘I see what you mean,’ I said. We sipped our champagne.

‘Who did you go with to Brazil?’ Kate asked, surveying the crowd.

‘Oh, a woman called Isabel Pereira.’

I could feel my face reddening ever so slightly. Of course Kate caught it. The heat intensified. I had been rumbled.

‘Oh, yes?’ she said, her hazel eyes shining wickedly. ‘And which one’s she, then?’

I looked around, and saw Isabel standing on the far side of the group of guests, picking at a chicken leg. ‘She’s over there.’

Kate stood on tiptoe to get a better look. ‘Very nice. Are you going to introduce me?’

‘Um...’ How to get out of this? I looked at Kate. She wasn’t going to let me escape. ‘It’s not like we, you know...’

‘Not yet, anyway,’ said Kate. ‘Come on. Let’s talk to her.’

We pushed our way through the crowd to Isabel. She was wearing a deep-green silk trouser suit, which looked simple but very expensive. She was talking to Pedro in Portuguese.

Her face lit up when she saw me, or I thought it did. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking. I introduced her to Kate.

After a few moments, Ricardo appeared. With him was a striking, dark-haired woman, wearing a short black dress that accentuated her figure. And it was quite some figure. Her face was tanned a deep brown, and she had eyes and teeth that flashed black and white. Gold glinted from her ears, her neck and her fingers.

Ricardo bent down to kiss Kate on both cheeks. ‘How nice to see you,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you could come today. Is Oliver well?’

Ricardo’s voice held polite concern, and also the barest hint that he knew that Oliver had always been well. I kept a straight face.

‘Oh, yes, he’s fine,’ Kate answered brightly.

‘Nick, I don’t believe you’ve met my wife,’ Ricardo said. ‘Luciana, this is Nick Elliot.’

‘Hallo,’ she said, in a husky, almost cracked voice, holding out her hand to shake mine. ‘Are you Jamie’s friend?’

‘That’s me, I’m afraid.’

Ricardo turned to Kate. ‘Of course, you must have known Nick for quite a while.’

‘Nearly ten years. In fact, I’ve known Nick for longer than Jamie.’

‘Oh, really? You met at Magdalen?’ Trust Ricardo to remember my college.

‘No, the Cowley Road.’

Ricardo laughed. ‘I remember it well. Was Brett’s Burgers still around when you were there?’

Kate smiled. ‘It certainly was.’

‘Well, we can’t quite compete with that. But grab yourself a burger, or anything else you’d like.’ He waved towards the barbecue, rather incongruously tended by two men in white coats. ‘There’s some good red wine somewhere about, or you can stick to champagne if you prefer.’

He noticed Kate’s glass half filled with water. ‘Or there’s a man somewhere with elderflower pressé. Try some. It’s good.’ With that he drifted off.

‘How the hell does he know about Brett’s Burgers?’ I whispered to Kate. ‘He wasn’t at Oxford, was he?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘But he knows everything. And I mean everything. You’ll get used to it.’

Then Kate turned to Isabel, and Luciana to me. ‘I hear you had an unpleasant first visit to my country,’ Luciana said. She stood very close to me. Although she was well made-up, I could see the lines round her mouth and eyes. They were hard eyes. But at this range her chest was impossible to miss by any heterosexual male over the age of twelve.

I scrambled my brain into order. ‘Yes, it was. But Rio’s a beautiful city. The most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Are you from there?’

‘No, São Paulo. But my father had business interests in Rio, and we have a house there. My brother spends much of his time there now.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Oh, I’m not sure. Francisco calls himself a financier, but I don’t know what that actually means. I have two others — one runs the family businesses in São Paulo and the other is a candidate for the state government.’

So, Luciana had a brother called Francisco who was some kind of financier. Interesting.

‘Don’t you miss Brazil?’ I asked.

‘Of course I do. And I go back quite often. But what can you do? I met Ricardo when we were young, in America. We were in love. We got married.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not so bad. And I have my business.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Interior decoration. I have clients in London, Paris, New York. Normally they are from Latin America. They want to decorate their houses with things that remind them of home. I like to create a sophisticated modern interior with a Latin theme. Something that reflects the personality of the Latin in northern Europe. You saw the drawing room?’

‘I did. I liked it. You couldn’t do something with my flat, could you?’ I said.

‘I’d love to. But I’m afraid you couldn’t afford me.’ She grinned teasingly at me over the rim of her champagne glass.

I blushed. I couldn’t help it. ‘Yes, well,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I’ll stick to Ikea and Dulux.’

She laughed. ‘Tell me what you saw in Rio.’

So I told her. And I told her honestly, about the favelas, about Cordelia’s shelter, about the kids who had attacked me. She listened. She was interested. She certainly wasn’t stupid. I was flattered to have such a beautiful, sophisticated and, let’s admit it, voluptuous woman hanging on my every word.

Suddenly I was interrupted. ‘ Oi, Luciana, tudo bem? ’

Isabel leaned in front of me, and kissed Luciana on both cheeks.

‘ Tudo bem,’ she replied. ‘You know, Nick, obviously.’

‘Yes, we’ve just come back from a trip together,’ Isabel said.

‘Oh, you went together, did you? You didn’t say it was Isabel who showed you all this, Nick.’

It was true I hadn’t. I shrugged.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to him,’ Luciana said, flashing me a coy smile, and she drifted off to entertain someone else.

‘It looked like you two were having an interesting conversation,’ said Isabel.

‘We were, actually.’

‘She was all over you. She’s old enough to be your mother.’

‘No, she’s not.’

‘She’s forty-two.’