The Blue Guide (22 page)

The woman disappears, seemingly without having come herself, though I imagine she's gone to the shower to carry on what she's begun. I look up at Carlotta, and we burst out laughing.

‘You want go find her?' says Carlotta. ‘Invite her up to the suite?'

My face falls. ‘Carlotta,' I say, ‘I thought you understood from yesterday –'

‘OK, OK,' she says, hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I know you not into that. I sorry.'

She stands up. ‘I think I go for a Jacuzzi,' she says. ‘You come?'

I shake my head. If Carlotta wants to stay down here for a while, I think I might take the opportunity to do a little more snooping.

‘I need to pop upstairs,' I say, making a show of looking at my watch. ‘I left my bag up there, and I'm expecting an important call from the States in about ten minutes. I'd better run and get it. I'll be right back.'

‘Sure,' she says, pulling a towel around her and stepping out into the cooler air of the changing room. ‘I not going anywhere. Here my door swipe.'

I enter the suite like a thief, breath held, on tiptoe, heart thudding away. It's ridiculous, when Carlotta knows full well I'm here, if not why I'm here. But I feel like I'm betraying her confidence in me, over a bunch of stupid suspicions.

The bedroom doors are open and I walk in, survey the scene for a moment. It's all neat and tidy: I wonder how Paco and Carlotta live at home, without a maid to clean up after them, to take their discarded underwear and empty glasses away. Or do they have a maid at home? Where, in fact, do they live? In a swanky modernist pad in the middle of Madrid, or on a country estate away from the paparazzi? I know nothing, I realise, about these people with whom, on the surface, I have become so terribly intimate.

I walk over to the bed, sit down. Perhaps, I think, there are some things that are better off not known. Perhaps I would be better just walking out of here right now, walking out of Paco and Carlotta's lives for good, paying them back the money for the days I haven't worked. Getting on with my wonderfully humdrum life, forgetting that our paths ever crossed. Yet something inside me is burning to find out the truth.

I lean forward and pull open the bedside drawer, and my mouth falls open. There, inside, alongside what I saw the last time, are a handful of photographs – photographs of me naked, on the heath with Carlotta yesterday, legs spread for her. Spread for her alone, or so I thought.

It's not me who's doing the betraying here. Carlotta told me she wouldn't even get prints of the pictures we
took, that she would hide them away on a CD where no one would ever have access to them, for her own delectation. I'd never have posed for her if I'd known she'd do this. Anyone could see them – the maid, the butler – and I'd be a laughing stock. But I don't know them. I'm more worried about Paco. They're far from hidden from him. How much does he know about me and Carlotta? What
is
this weird little game that they're playing?

I call down to the spa, have the receptionist convey a message to Carlotta that I've had to leave on urgent business, will call her later. Outside, I cross Langham Place and walk briskly through Fitzrovia and into Bloomsbury. Despite my pace, I have no idea where I'm headed; all I know is that I need to walk, get some air inside me, give myself some space to think all of this through.

I thread through the University of London buildings and across Russell Square into ‘Dickensland' – Dombey Street, Doughty Street and, further south, Lincoln's Inn Fields. There are few people about, and I grow more calm. I've always loved this part of London, the feeling of history and tradition pressing down on you. On a whim, I drop in at Sir John Soanes's Museum, where there's an eccentric collection of paintings, statues, furniture and other objects amassed by the late architect, in a maze of secret staircases, rooms within rooms, hidden panels and distorting mirrors. It's a universe unto itself, and for two hours I manage to lose myself entirely, forget all about Paco and Carlotta. When I come out, the early-evening sunlight dazzles me, and the thought of them returns with renewed savagery.

I walk back onto Kingsway and then I realise where I am and I walk down to Aldwych, follow that across the Strand into Lancaster Place, and with my back to
Waterloo Bridge stand and look up at the green dome that shelters the room in which Daniel and I had our first memorable encounter. In my head I hear the lyrics to one of my old favourites, ‘Mood Indigo', written by Duke Ellington and sung by countless artistes, including Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra. Breaks my heart whichever version it is.

I wish so much I could wind time back, sort things out with Daniel, never have anything to do with Paco and Carlotta. Life was simple then: more boring, maybe, but at least nobody was messing with my head.

I'm certain, now I've walked and walked, that Paco and Carlotta know about my respective affairs with them. Worse, I think they may have even planned them, or colluded in them at the very least, as a way of titillating each other, keeping their passion alive. There's no way I can repeat these accusations to their faces, separately or together, but there must be a way of putting my theory to the test.

By the time I get back to my flat, I've given up trying to think of a way of outwitting Paco or Carlotta, of tricking them into revealing their intentions, and all I want to do is sit down and cry. So that's what I do. One hour, two G&Ts and several cigarettes later, all cried out, I've
packed my holdall and am calling for a cab to take me to the station. Afterwards I telephone my mum, tell her I'll be in Brighton by eight, that I'm going to need to stay over for a night or two.

‘Don't worry,' I say at her concerned tone. ‘It's really nothing.'

I'm not sure why I'm going to Mum's, given that she's the last person in whom I would confide anything relating to my recent activities. She's always been pretty liberal, but I think there are certain things that parents are better off not knowing about their offspring. All of a sudden, however, I just cannot bear to be in the same city as Paco and Carlotta, and Mum's place is within easy reach. Since she and Dad got divorced when I was fourteen, she hasn't remarried and still lives alone in what was my childhood home, which means that I am lucky enough to still have the bedroom I had as a girl. I suspect that part of the pull that ‘home' is exercising on me right now is to do with the thought of sleeping in my old bed, surrounded by some of my most treasured possessions and old toys. I've lost my bearings and need to anchor myself in a comforting reality, to find my way again.

In the train, I doodle in the condensation on the window beside me with my finger, replaying in my mind everything that's happened over the last few days, trying to gain a new angle on events, to see things that I must have missed, to which all the sex must have blinded me. Is there something I could have done to stop all this? Sure, there were moments even prior to the incident in the Glass Bar when something Carlotta did surprised me, wounded me a little – most notably, the way she boasted to me of her and Paco's sessions after she'd taken me as her lover and knew that I might be hurt by her talk, even while it turned me on. If she
did
know that I was fucking Paco too, which seems increasingly likely, then this vaunting behaviour becomes something more sinister. Carlotta really was playing mind games with me. Yet is there any way I could have guessed that between them they were cooking something up, an unholy stew of which I was the main ingredient?

I think about Paco. Perhaps, I ponder, he more than Carlotta should have awakened my suspicions. The way he came onto me so forcefully, then backed off, summoning me but never really engaging with me even when, physically at least, our intimacy couldn't have been greater. That time after I went to his suite after being let down by Daniel, for instance – the sex couldn't have been more cursory, more devoid of emotion. The same goes of the time in the dressing room, now I come to think of it. It didn't occur to me at the time, but it was like his dancing on the stage just minutes before – physical fireworks but a failure to connect with the other party, with the audience, with me. Everything was happening in Paco's head, in Paco's body, and nothing else mattered to him. That he was staring into his own eyes in the mirror says it all.

No, I don't think Paco has ever really wanted me, and why should he? What have I got that a thousand groupies don't, that supermodels and actresses don't, that Carlotta doesn't? I was a fool to think there could be something. The only real attraction I have for him must be that I'm sleeping with his wife, so that when he's fucking me he can follow the traces of her on me. I'm a map of where Carlotta has been, a trail for him to follow, a new angle on a familar theme.

For Carlotta, I think the passion for me has been more real, more rooted. Either that or she truly is an outstanding actress. But I imagine that wasn't really
part of the plan. Carlotta, I suspect, was the instigator of all this. She's a realist who knows how hard it is to keep your man, especially in showbusiness circles, where beautiful rivals are throwing themselves at him day and night. She's been keeping things spicy by introducing a new element into the game, a fiery pinch of chilli with which they could tickle each other's taste-buds. Who's to say I'm the first to have fallen into this role?

At Brighton I head out to the station forecourt, looking for Mum's battered old Mini Cooper. It's well overdue for the scrap yard, but she doesn't really use it for anything more than trundling around Brighton these days, so I suppose it may last her a couple more years. She's not well off, bless her – she works as a paediatric nurse and, after Dad buggered off to Australia with his bit on the side, she struggled to bring me and my brother up without any help. I'm not sure I've ever really thanked her enough for all the sacrifices she made. As I climb into the passenger seat and lean over for a hug, I wonder if I should maybe buy her a ticket to the Caribbean with me.

She runs her hands over my hair, then brushes it back from my face. ‘You look tired,' she says. She'll try to worm it out of me rather than ask any direct questions.

I nod, avoid her eyes. ‘I've been overdoing it,' I say as she turns away and starts up the engine. It wheezes and whirrs like a a bronchial old man. ‘Took too much on.'

‘Sounds like you need a holiday.'

I smile. ‘I've been thinking the same thing,' I say. ‘I just need to recharge here for the night. If I'm at my flat, I can't get away from the telephone, from my emails, from the long list of things that need doing. A
good night's sleep and I'll go back and clear the decks and book a holiday.'

I might be avoiding the subject, but as I'm speaking it becomes clear to me that I'm talking sense. Tomorrow I am going to sort my life out – excise the cancer of Paco and Carlotta, and spend the remaining week of their booking frying on some tropical beach. If Paco – or his lackey Fenella – make me pay back the money for the days I won't have worked, then so be it. I'll sling it on my credit card and worry about it later.

On the way back to her house, Mum pulls up by a row of shops and jumps out, returning a couple of minutes later with two steaming newspaper wraps of fish and chips. The acrid smell of vinegar wafts up, piquing my eyes and nose, making me realise that I'm ravenously hungry. I haven't eaten since this morning in the park with Carlotta. Mum selects first gear and the Mini lurches away from the kerb with effort, but we don't go far – she finds a parking spot further up the road, and we sit eating our supper with our fingers in the darkness of the car, looking out at the waves churning in the night.

We talk about my brother, about my gran, who's been in a nursing home since losing her marbles a couple of years back, about some trouble Mum's been having at work with a new manager. As I listen to her small everyday concerns, I feel the universe resume its familiar contours around me. Life has been continuing as normal while my own existence was ambushed by chaos. There's an ordinary world still out there, just waiting for me to rejoin it.

A shrill noise from my mobile makes us start. I look at the little screen. It's the witch. I narrow my eyes. It's as if she was tuning into my thoughts. Oh no you don't,
I almost hear her say. She's not going to let me escape her clutches that easily.

I don't want to give Mum food for thought by killing the call without answering, so I bring the phone to my ear and press the green button. ‘Hello?' I say, in as composed a tone as I can manage.

‘'Licia, where
are
you?' says Carlotta.

‘Oh hi,' I reply coolly. ‘Didn't you get my message?'

‘Yes, but I thinking you would have called by now. It's been hours.'

‘I know, I'm sorry. I got a bit bogged down.'

‘Hmmm,' she says sulkily. It sounds to me like she's bored.

‘Wasn't Paco supposed to be coming back early tonight?' I say.

‘Yeah,' she sighs. ‘But then he get a dinner invitation.'

‘Didn't you want to go too?'

‘No. I hate all that. All the flattery, the ass-lickers.' I hear her light a cigarette, take a sip of something. ‘So what we do tomorrow?' she says. ‘How about those galleries we not get to?

I hesitate. ‘Look, Carlotta,' I say. ‘Something's come up. I've had to go to my mum's place and I won't be back in London before tomorrow evening.'