What I had found was a little golden label, reading ‘Bag Shot by Lisa Kirk’.
Like a business card, but more eloquent. I put it in my pocket and said nothing.
The signs had been there for some time and now I was able to read them.
I began a horrible regime of espionage. Whenever Peter was working late, or when he telephoned to say he had an unexpected meeting or a new client to see, I would slip up the well-swept shallow stairs to Lisa’s door. I would ring the bell and then tap on the thick swimmy glass but – funnily enough – she was never at home either.
On the evenings when Peter did come home I would listen. I had never been able to hear Mrs Bobinski moving around, but then I had never tried to. Now I could suddenly hear the faint creak of floorboards, the vibrating bass of her music, the click of a door closing. Lisa at home.
‘What’s wrong?’ Peter asked.
I know, but I’m not ready to let you know that I know. That’s what’s wrong.
I’m on the beach again, another day. The sea is very flat, aluminium-coloured under a high, hazy sky. There is no breath of wind. A sailing boat crosses the mouth of the bay, the masts bare and the engines drumming. A shadow falls across my book.
A tall man with a white shirt and loose trousers, and creased Moroccan slippers with squashed pointed toes. I can see a narrow crescent of suntanned foot, between the leather slipper and where the cuff of his trousers dips over the heel.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a copy of The Times here. Finished with it. Would you like it?’
Inglis man.
He holds out the folded paper and I am so surprised that I take it.
‘Thank you.’
‘Nice to know what’s going on in the world,’ he says. And then he moves on, diagonally across the sand to the margin of the silver water, where wet sand makes a khaki ribbon. I watch him walk along the water’s edge, into the distance. The paper had bled a smudge of newsprint on to my palm and fingertips.
In the end it wasn’t Peter I confronted. One evening when he was sitting in his armchair reading a report I left the flat and went upstairs to knock on Lisa’s door.
She had the grace to look startled and apprehension dawned in her wide eyes.
‘May I come in?’
She held the door wider and I marched inside. In the kitchen, with a yoghurt pot with a spoon stuck in it on the table – I felt that I was interrupting a child’s tea – I turned on her.
‘What are you doing with my husband?’
There are a dozen possible responses to a question like that. Innocence, affront, evasion, denial.
To her credit, Lisa only nodded quietly. After a moment’s thought she said, ‘Just what you imagine, I suppose.’
‘What does this mean?’
She pursed her lips and mournfully widened her eyes even further, a risible expression that was her attempt at high seriousness.
‘That we are in love with each other.’
I gaped at her for an instant, silenced by this mouthful of garbage. I remembered what she had said at the dinner weeks ago – oh yes, once I knew you – and how the airy assumption had infuriated me. But that was nothing compared with the ballooning rage I felt now.
What did this airhead know about love and what right did she have to claim Peter’s?
With one arm I swept the yoghurt pot and its spoon and assorted bits of crockery off the table. With one foot I kicked the red door of the TARDIS so that it shuddered. If Peter had been in our kitchen below he would surely have heard it. When I could speak I yelled at her, ‘Don’t talk such fucking crap. Don’t say another word.’
There was a mess of spilled yoghurt and broken crockery on the floor. But Lisa kept her eyes on me, and there was at last real shock and proper concern in her face.
I’ll teach you about feelings, you china doll.
‘You don’t know anything. You’ll never know anything about me or Peter. You are to leave him alone. To leave us alone. Do you understand?’
For extra emphasis I kicked the refrigerator again. There was a tiny dent in the lower corner of the door and my toes hurt.
‘Cary …’
Even in this absurd and undignified situation I could see how lovely she was with the light shining through her thin skin and the smooth flesh of her arms. Her thin fingers curled round the back of one of her uncomfortable chairs. Maybe she was contemplating how to lift it and bring it down on my head. Only she couldn’t have reached high enough.
‘Leave us alone,’ I repeated, with the anger starting to ooze out of me. I felt like a crumpled paper bag.
‘It’s too late for that.’
There was the confidence again, bred out of youth and arrogance. I wasn’t going to win. History decreed it.
What to do now?
‘I don’t care. It isn’t too late,’ I lied.
‘God, look. I love him and he loves me.’ Her words rang true now, suddenly, reality unleashed by my fury. Lisa Kirk wouldn’t let go. This wasn’t some monochrome Baz at issue; this was important to her.
But we weren’t just two alley cats fighting over a fish head, either. There was a third person involved in this. It was Peter who would determine what happened, of course. Briefly I felt the warmth of his familiarity around me, a security blanket. All would be well, because he had always made it well.
‘We’ll see,’ I said. I turned round and walked out of the kitchen, closed Lisa’s front door behind me and ran back down the stairs to our flat.
Peter was still reading. He hadn’t even noticed that I had gone.
I said nothing to him, not a word. I cooked supper and we ate together and watched the ten o’clock news. There was silence from upstairs. By being normal, I thought, maybe I could make everything normal. That shows how irrational I was.
There is a little covered souk at the centre of Branc.
I am lingering by one of the stalls, breathing in the scents of cumin and cinnamon. There are fat hessian sacks spilling out a dozen different spices and herbs, and heaps of glossy dates and dried figs. The stallholder is a fat man in a vast white shirt with a little striped waistcoat pinched around his shoulders. I am biting into the date he has passed to me to sample when a voice says, ‘I’ve got another Times, but not with me. I can drop it into the hotel later. If you would like, of course.’
Inglis man, again.
I turn round and we look at each other. He is wearing a loose shirt, pale trousers and the leather slippers. He looks ordinary, unremarkable, but familiar. He fits in here in the souk – unlike me – but I find that I can imagine him equally at home on a cricket pitch in Hampshire or in a restaurant in London.
‘Hello?’ he prompts. I have been staring at him.
‘I’m sorry. Thank you, that’s kind.’
‘Are you all right?’
The pretence seems more trouble than it’s worth. I say very softly, on an expiring breath, ‘No.’
‘No. Would you like to come and drink some coffee with me?’
Whatever my intentions might have been I find that I am following him. We duck out briefly into the white sunlight and cross a square to some tables under canvas parasols.
And