He frowned and scratched his cheek before saying, ‘I’m not sure. He’s never mentioned anything about a wife. We just play together. We aren’t close. Sorry – I can’t help you there.’
I later found out that Omar and Rolando had been best friends for fifteen years and knew all there was to know about each other. Rolando hadn’t wanted to answer my question in case he contradicted something that Omar had told me, so he’d just avoided it. It was the same for all the band members: they would have laid down their lives for each other. They were a long way from home, and they depended on each other, so economy with the truth over romantic interludes was second nature. It was behaviour like this that gave Latin musicians their reputation (but they also have a reputation for steadfast loyalty, and that’s true as well).
I circulated, chatting to people I knew, while Omar hovered by my side doing his bodyguard impression. As the party broke up, we went back to Harry’s Bar and I knew that I was happy with Omar beside me. Everyone was watching us and wondering, Will they? Won’t they? because his pursuit of me was good gossip in our orbit.
In the early hours of the morning he walked me home to my flat and I was amused because he did that gentlemanly thing of constantly moving so that he was between me and the road. I tried to explain to him that the tradition derived from days when ladies didn’t want their beautiful gowns to get splashed by passing carriages, which was hardly likely to be a problem in modern-day Singapore. First of all, I had left my beautiful gown at home, and secondly, the roads were bonedry. I’m not sure he understood my explanation, delivered in a mixture of French, English and sign language, like an elaborate game of charades.
Shortly after that he kissed me for the first time, which was nice. More than nice. He remained a perfect gentleman, though, dropping me back at the flat I shared with Belinda and Tetsu, and asking if he could see me the next evening. He gave me his phone number and taught me how to greet the person who answered the phone: ‘Quiero hablar con mi mulato lindo.’ I repeated the phrase until I could say it to his satisfaction, and we kissed one last time before he headed off down the road, turning to give me a wave as he left my sight.
He and the band members loved it when I phoned the next day – I thought I was greeting them and commenting on the wonderful day; in fact I was asking to speak to ‘my beautiful mulatto’!
Nevertheless, the next night I was right there when Omar played his set at Fabrice’s and he gazed straight at me as he sang many of the numbers. When he was introducing the band, he went through all their names, then at the end said, ‘Allì tienes a la mujer que tiene mi corazón encadenado,’ and I knew without being told what that meant. I had his heart in chains. From then on he said it every night I was there.
The evening after we’d slept together for the first time, he walked off stage in the middle of the Cuban Boys’ set and came over to kiss me, which was incredibly romantic. Our friends in the audience cheered and clapped. I blushed, because I embarrass easily, but I loved it at the same time.
Neither of us had much money, but it didn’t matter – we were living in a beautiful city, had some great friends, and both of us had jobs that we loved and would have paid for the privilege of doing. We had the added advantage of being welcome guests at most of the places we wanted to go. (It seems silly, but business is business and I was more welcome than Omar because I could publicise the venue.) We would talk in odd words and phrases we’d picked up of each other’s language, supplemented by whole sentences when Rolando or someone else was around to translate for us. After the Cuban Boys’ set at Fabrice’s, we would go for breakfast at the market or pick up some food from the 7-Eleven in Orchard Road, then walk home together in the early morning light. It was lovely, despite the fact that I sometimes had to go straight to work without any sleep.
I had a book of Chinese horoscopes in my room and Omar asked me when my birthday was, then worked out that I was born in the Year of the Rabbit, so from then on he called me ‘Rabbit’. That was his pet name for me. He was born in the Year of the Ox, so I didn’t do the same.
We had a fantastic two weeks together, full of music and city lights (and I guess the food and wine didn’t hurt the atmosphere). At the beginning of March a neurology appointment I had booked in Brighton meant I had to go to England. Omar and the band were going to Indonesia for a month to do some gigs at a club in Jakarta.
As we parted on that night in early March, he said to me, ‘See you in a month, Rabbit.’
My life was perfect. I was doing things I loved in a new and exciting city, and I’d just met someone who made the sunniest day a little brighter. I was living a dream, but I didn’t really realise how lucky I was. I took it all for granted. I guess I felt entitled to everything life could offer. As I boarded the plane, I couldn’t wait to get back and carry on living my wonderful life.
Chapter 2 Wading through Honey
The reason I had a neurology appointment was because I’d been noticing my body behaving a bit strangely over the last year or so. There were lots of little things – nothing major – but they seemed to indicate something odd was going on.
The weirdest incident had been in August 1994, when I’d collapsed in the street back in Yorkshire, where I lived at the time. I’d spent the day walking around Leeds city centre with an American friend called Greg, who was thinking of moving to the UK and wanted to explore what kind of work he might be able to get. We’d walked for miles into recruitment companies and coffee shops. Greg needed to get a feel for the city as well as the jobs. On the way back, when we were only a couple of hundred yards from my home in Bradford, all of a sudden my legs gave way beneath me and I collapsed on the pavement.
‘What’s going on? Did you trip?’ Greg stretched out an arm to help me.
‘I don’t know.’ I grabbed his hand and tried to pull myself up, but my legs wouldn’t take my weight: they were weak and unresponsive. ‘Isn’t that strange?’ I felt silly more than anything else. Greg was super-fit, and although I knew I’d been getting a bit out of condition, I hadn’t thought it was quite that bad.
‘Can’t you get up?’
‘I just need to rest a while and then I’ll be fine.’ At least, I hoped I would.
‘Try again,’ Greg coaxed me, concerned and more than a little embarrassed to be seen with a woman who was sitting in the gutter on a busy main road. People passing clearly thought I was drunk.
I summoned all my strength, clung on to Greg’s arm and tried to haul myself up, but my legs still wouldn’t support my weight. An image of the Billy Connolly sketch in which he imitates a Glaswegian ‘rubber drunk’ flashed through my head. I had rubber legs, it seemed, without a drop of booze having passed my lips.
‘It’s no use,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to call a cab.’
Greg seemed glad to be given something to do. Before long he was helping me into the back of a local cab. Two minutes later Greg and the driver got me into the house by holding me on either side and more or less carrying me until I was ensconced in an armchair in my front room.
‘You have to see a doctor,’ Greg insisted. ‘That shouldn’t happen. Shall I phone for someone?’
‘If you want to do something useful,’ I told him, ‘make a cup of tea.’ A universal British cure-all.
We sat and drank our tea and talked about the job opportunities Greg had found, and a few hours later my legs seemed to be back to normal, so I brushed aside all his nagging about doctors and tests and making a fuss. I’m an arrogant sod and prided myself on my physical prowess. I’d completed