2cool2btrue (36 page)

Dad goes flying across the room, skidding over the floor, as he holds the side of his face. I’m desperately trying to get up to follow him but it’s like one of those bad dreams when you want to escape but your legs won’t do what you tell them to. I turn to give my attacker another good whack, anger now kicking in as well as fear but suddenly there are two of them—another thick-set guy in a white shirt and bow tie, also in his twenties. I lash out and get him with a good thump in the face. He simply flinches and says something to his mate which I don’t understand.

Still facing them, I manage to stagger to my feet and I’m just about to make a final run for it when one of them punches me hard in the stomach.

At least it feels like a punch.

I stagger back again. It’s a sharper pain now, like a terrible stitch. Oh, God, it hurts. Oh, fuck. My shirt feels warm and then cold and wet. I look down. Even on the black cotton I can see a dark stain. It’s getting bigger. As it drips onto my jeans it is clearly red. The pain is unbearable now. I hear someone crying out. Is it me?

Swaying on my feet, I look up at the two heavies. They are both standing back, staring at me almost enquiringly. But also frightened. Now
I’m
frightened. One of them is holding a knife. I feel very dizzy.

My legs seem to be giving way under me, I can’t control them. I’m sliding, falling and there’s no one to catch me my dad is over me I can see his face floating above me then there are more people someone screaming other people laughing laughing teeth and glasses of champagne and diamonds and people move around around faces coming and going above me Nora and my dad Barry for a moment shouting at the two heavies oh the pain fuck that hurts but now I’m floating gently downwards I can just feel the floor beneath me it’s the only firm thing what’s Piers saying now I can’t hear him someone has taken hold of my legs and they’re stretching them out I feel like my body weighs a hundred tons someone’s undoing my shirt no I don’t want to join in leave me alone to lie here and die they’re taking my jacket off that’s my Armani jacket my 2cool Armani jacket be careful with it you don’t want to damage it there’s Nora hallo Nora please get me out of here let’s go but I’m too tired feel heavy I’m tired so tired I just want to close my eyes and sleep forever.

A
huge, flat glassy eye stares at me, unblinking. The woman says something in Spanish that I don’t understand. I laugh and shrug my shoulders.

“No, gracias.”

Is that right? Must be. Wish I’d bought the phrase book. She holds up the fish enticingly, it’s tongueless, sharp toothed mouth lolling open between her cracked, reddened fingers. I laugh again and shake my head, frowning apologetically.

What am I going to do with such a huge fish? Take it back to the hotel? Put it in my suitcase? It does look very good, though. I’ve watched enough cookery shows over the years to know what to look for—the bright eyes, the shiny scales, the pink gills.

Piled on to the crushed ice are mounds of fish. I think I recognise red snapper, one particularly gruesome bastard must be an eel, I suppose, just from the shape of it—and that’s monkfish, I reckon. I certainly know the squid when I see them, grey and shiny and semitransparent, eyes drooping slightly with apparent boredom. Something about the way they’re piled on top of each other adds to the sense of casual abundance. Luxurious, somehow. Not a word I can use lightly. I find myself wondering how this woman is going to sell all this fish today. Still it’s only just gone one and the market stays open late, like everything else in Spain.

The next stall sells fruit and vegetables. Technicolor piles of them. Red peppers, tomatoes, onions, oranges, glossy purple aubergines, courgettes, or zucchini as they call them here, of course—everything bigger, fatter and juicier than I’ve ever seen before. A surfeit of taste and colour. Shamelessly exposing themselves. Looking gorgeous. Subtlety, reticence and discretion have no place here. More, bigger, every inch of every stall covered in them. Like cheap prostitutes garishly dressed, pushing their breasts out at the customers. Vulgarly seductive.

I almost want to stop and tell someone that I’ve just never, never seen so much gorgeous food in all my life, share my feelings with them.

There is a stall with nothing but olives, a little sign above every plastic container describing its contents. Why didn’t I bring that bloody phrase book? How many olives do you need, for goodness sake? This is ridiculous. In a second the man behind the counter swoops one out of a tub in a tiny sieve and offers it to me—salty, garlicky. Is that rosemary, too? Nora would probably know. It makes me realise how hungry I am. I have to buy some. With a combination of sign language, plus “si” and “no” at the appropriate moments I manage to buy a small pot of the ones I’ve just tasted.

I throw the stone down under the stall like everyone else does. This is not the place for politeness or niceties. This place is about big gestures. Even the floor is sort of alive, full of colours, shapes and smells—rejected fruit and vegetables, bits of paper, newspapers and magazines, cigarette ends, brightly coloured wrappers, half a hamburger bun, a lurid-coloured ice cream.

And the noise. People shouting, laughing, talking, haggling, someone singing, tinny pop songs playing out of a battered old radio hanging from an awning. Knives banging down onto counters as chickens are quartered, fish decapitated and vegetables chopped up for display. A cacophony of human life at its most energetic, all echoing up into the cast iron and glass ceiling. Someone shouts just behind my right ear and I scoot aside to let a guy rush past with a trolley full of boxes bursting with fruit and vegetables. Coming towards me is a middle-aged couple who are obviously English—the sallow complexions, the sensible dowdy clothes, the diffident manner in dramatic contrast to the raucous colour and racket around us. We smile a conspiratorial acknowledgement of pure joy at each other.

I buy some bread from another stall and choose a couple of small cheeses from the one next door. We could eat these at the hotel before we go out for dinner. That would be a nice surprise for her when she gets back. Or I could just chuck them away—it’s the buying, the being part of this amazing event that counts.

“I love markets, don’t you?” says a voice behind me. I spin round.

“That’s because you’re an economist,” I say.

Guy laughs.

“No, it absolutely is not. I just love the noise and life of markets. I thought if you came to Barcelona this was the one thing you should see. The Gaudi Cathedral is interesting in a slightly bizarre, surreal way and the view from the top at dusk is breathtaking, but this is the best thing about this city. No one should ever leave without experiencing the legendary Mercat de Sant Josep.”

We walk on a bit as Guy points out some of his favourite stalls, smiling and speaking in authentic sounding Spanish to the owners as he buys bits and pieces, offering me a piece of cheese and a couple of strawberries.

“Are you hungry?” he says after a while.

“Starving.”

“There’s a great tapas bar round here.”

“Brilliant.”

“Where’s Nora? Is she coming?”

“She’s shopping on the other side of the Ramblas. She’s going to meet us here later.”

“Oh, okay. I was hoping I might see her again.”

“She might come over later. She thought we’d better have some time to talk on our own first.”

“Of course.” Guy looks serious. “Charlie, I realise I owe you an apology.”

“What for?” I say smiling pleasantly.

Guy looks surprised.

“Well, for the whole 2cool thing.” He sees me smile and realises that I’m teasing. Nervously he smiles back.

“Don’t worry, I’ve forgiven you.”

“Have you?”

“Yeah. I think so. I mean it would be different if it had got serious, if I had been arrested or prosecuted. Oh, fuck, when I think of all the things that could have happened to me.”

“Actually they wouldn’t really. If I’d thought you could have been at real risk of conviction or anything, I’d have come back.”

“Thank you.” We stroll on a bit. “So you just let me sweat a bit.”

“I can only apologise, Charlie. It was a cowardly act.”

Guy’s formal phrase could be just Guy or it could be a way of avoiding the fact that he really does feel guilty. I let him think about it for a moment as we walk, passing a cheese stall where a spectacularly toothless woman in a head scarf is gossiping indignantly with the owner.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I say at last. “It was pretty horrible at the time but in fact all that happened to me in the end was that I grew up a bit. It was the end of my charmed life, I suppose.”

“How ironic, given that that’s what we hired you for,” smiles Guy. “Here we are. Look it’s only half past one so the Spanish haven’t even started lunch yet.” We take a seat each at a tapas bar in the middle of the market. The counter in front of us is packed with dishes and plates: there are golden crusted tortillas on display and various stews with fish, beans and great boney chunks of meat. Guy orders us both a glass of cava. “Try the tomato and zucchini tortilla,” he says, so I nod at the woman looking expectantly over the counter at us.

“I have to say I think I was most pissed when you rang on my dad’s mobile and then hung up when I answered.”

“Oh, that. God, that was a bit of a shock, I must say. Sorry, I panicked but I just couldn’t think of anything else to do but hang up.”

“Why were you ringing him?”

“I wanted some advice, wanted to know how to get out of this. Of all the people we’d roped into 2cool he seemed the most sensible. You look surprised? Well, perhaps not in his private life but in business he’s a very savvy operator, actually. I thought he might be able to help.”

“He lied to me.”

“He thought it was for the best, Charlie. It was agony for him but he thought that if he could just hang on the police would find nothing to charge you with, 2cool would be wound up and you’d be safely free from it all.”

I think about this. The pasta arrives and I’m distracted for a moment by the rich sweetness of the tomatoes, zucchini and peppers. All my senses seem to be heightened today.

“But you’ve forgiven him?” says Guy, sticking his fork into his own pasta.

“Yes, oh, yes. He is my dad after all. We had a long talk.”

As if he hardly dares broach the subject Guy says:

“You had quiet a near miss that night.”

I shudder as the memories come back. Sometimes I sort of savour my near death experience and other times I find myself reliving the memory involuntarily. I had a nightmare again on the flight over. It was my usual one. I was lying on the floor of that kitchen, the heavies looking over me and other people, fat, old, naked people were laughing and stabbing me. Women in stilettoes stamping on my face, urging each other to get my eyes as I tried to defend myself. “Oh, well done, Jennifer!” said one. “Again, Annabelle, you nearly got him.” Their voices so vivid. I cried out but in a second Nora was leaning over me, pressing my head into her neck under her chin and kissing my hair.

“So you got out safely in the end,” says Guy, obviously as a cue for me to say more.

“Yes,” I take a mouthful of cava. “Yes. Someone had called the police. People were rushing out, in a panic. Desperately trying to get dressed, so I’m told. Nora said two young officers arrived thinking it was a domestic or something. Apparently they were just open mouthed by what they saw—and
who
they saw.”

Guy smiles at the thought.

“But anyway, they found me. I was unconscious by then, I’d lost quite a lot of blood. An ambulance came. My dad and Nora came to hospital with me. I had an emergency operation and they stitched me up,” I say quickly, trying to avoid dwelling on it in case the memories come flooding back again, here and now. I reach down to my abdomen and feel the strange roughness of the scar. A new feature on the familiar landscape of my body, a new part of me.

“You’re all right now then?”

“Oh, yeah. Wanna see?”

“Erm,” says Guy looking slightly alarmed.

“I’m only kidding,” I say and hit at his arm affectionately. “It’s my war wound.”

“No more swimwear ads, then?”

“No, thank goodness.”

We eat for a moment and then Guy says:

“So Nora never wrote up the story.”

“No.”

“Really? That’s incredible—it was massive.”

“Oh, don’t you start. That bloody phrase! Yes, it was, is, but not for Nora. She promised not to mention my dad but there was also a little problem, with the whole story, a little technical problem.”

Guy looks confused.

I smile and roll my eyes.

“Nora’s camera. She, um…” I laugh.

“What?” says Guy. “What was it?”

“She forgot to put any film in.”

I turn and look at Guy. He bursts out laughing and within seconds we can hardly sit on our stools, tears running down our cheeks. The Spanish around us stop their shouted conversations to look over at us.

“You’re joking,” says Guy, wiping his eyes with a very old, dirty hanky.

“Yeah, the guy at the picture desk on the paper showed her how it all worked and gave her the film cartridge but she was so overexcited that night that she forgot to put it in the camera.”

“But they still had the story.”

“I know but the paper didn’t dare run it without the proof of the photographs. Can you imagine the risk? Nora’s word against the great and good from politics, finance, the arts and everywhere else—including the law. They’d have shredded her.”

He thinks about it for a moment.

“God, she must have been pissed.”

“Just a bit.”

“But you and her…”

Me and Nora. It still takes a while to get used to the idea after it being me and Lauren for so long.

“Yes, me and Nora. She came to the hospital with my dad and me. I was pretty well out cold by this time but later when I came round in the morning they were both there waiting by my bed.” I can visualise them sitting on hard plastic chairs in a corner of the room. The clean, antiseptic hospital smell is with me again. It took me a moment to realise where I was but the first thing that struck me was the way they were both asleep, Nora’s head on my dad’s shoulder and his head resting on top of hers. I watched them sleeping peacefully for a moment and then I tried to call them but my mouth was so dry that it hurt. Nothing came out but a kind of creaky gasp. I moved slightly. I felt exhausted. Then, remembering what had happened the night before, wondering if it was a dream, I reached down to where that intense, shocking flash of pain had been. I managed to push my hospital gown away enough to get underneath it. A bandage. Ow, it still hurt. Lifting my head up I looked down and saw a large white bandage on the side of my stomach.

I
had
been stabbed. Fucking hell. But I was still alive. Screwing up my eyes against the glare of the strip lights I looked around me. Everything else seemed to be working. I kicked my feet gently and then moved my other arm and felt a slight pull on my hand. Lifting it up to look at it, I noticed a tube, a saline drip, coming out of it. I tried to look at where this bit of technical equipment, this hospital stuff, was connected to me. More bandages. A small smear of blood along the clear plastic pipe. I felt slightly faint so I dropped my head back down on the pillow.

But the others were stirring now. Looking up again, I saw my dad blink and rub his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Nora was already looking across at me intensely.