‘Yes, I do,’ she enthused, her voice hoarse with excitement. ‘But I haven’t spoken the language for many years.’
‘You never forget a language like Spanish.’
‘No, I think you’re right,’ she agreed, drifting on the music in his voice that seemed to call her from the misty shores of the far-distant past. ‘What do you do?’
‘Shipping.’
‘Ah, the Armada.’ She laughed.
‘Something like that,’ he replied indulgently. ‘Please let me give you my address so you can send me the bill.’
‘Bill?’
The bill, for the dry cleaning,’ he said, frowning at her in amusement.
‘Oh, yes, the bill.’ She giggled, watching him smile and feeling her stomach turn all over again. ‘Do you live in Polperro?’
‘No, just passing through.’
‘Oh.’ She sighed, trying to hide her disappointment. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘With friends.’
‘Sightseeing?’
‘Yes.’
‘How strange,’ she recalled, shaking her head. ‘I met Ramon sightseeing too.’
‘Who’s Ramon?’ he asked.
‘Another life,’ she said, brushing it off and smiling through the memory. ‘I took him around the old caves and smuggling haunts. The places you can’t find in guidebooks.’
Diego’s eyes twinkled with interest. ‘Really?’ he said, then grinned at her from under his thick Spanish eyes. ‘I’m afraid I’m following the map.’
‘You mean, your friends aren’t showing you around?’
‘They don’t have time, they work,’ he said, watching her mouth curl up at
‘If you want a guide, I could show you some of the places very few people know about. I grew up here, you see,’ she explained.
‘I would be honoured,’ he replied, kissing her hand and bowing.
She gave him a wide, carefree smile before she was distracted by Arthur’s insistent waving from the other end of the pub. ‘Oh God!’ she sighed irritably. ‘I completely forgot about him. Don’t worry,’ she responded to his inquisitive frown, shaking her head. ‘Meet me here tomorrow at eleven.’ He nodded in understanding and raised an eyebrow, unable to believe his luck. He had noticed her rings and her husband’s concern. He was Latin after all.
Diego was surprised by Helena’s enthusiasm for an affair and imagined she had had many. She drove him around the coast and allowed him to make love to her on the cliff in the car overlooking the sea. Later she invited him home to her house where she took him to her bed. She enjoyed the firm way he handled her, the confident way he kissed her, the sensual way he caressed her. She closed her eyes and demanded that he speak to her only in Spanish, then she projected her mind across the waters and across the years to a time when
The first time Arthur had trouble turning the tap in the shower he had been surprised. Helena always left it dripping. The second time he was perplexed. The third time his intuition told him that another man had used it. He leant back against the wall to steady himself as his heart plummeted to his feet. In the last few days Helena had been friendlier, happier, she hadn’t snapped at him or ignored him. She had embraced him with fondness and quite obviously guilt. He let the hot water pound onto his skin, drowning out the screaming in his head that refused to give him peace to think rationally.
He had believed her detachment to be rooted in her anxiety over her troubled child. Worrying about Hal had become a full-time occupation. He hadn’t understood it as a symptom of her waning affection for him. He worshipped her. Sex had never been a problem; they had loved and laughed together in bed even during the difficult times. He was sickened at the thought of her giving herself to another man. He was wounded by her blatant rejection of him in spite of all his efforts to please her.
He wondered who it could possibly be. But Arthur wasn’t stupid. He wished
he were because it was all too easy and therefore too painful. He had noticed her talking to the dark foreigner in the pub. She had returned to the table crimson-faced and distracted. She had kept looking over at him, watching him, lowering her eyes coyly when he returned her stare. Arthur hadn’t liked it, but he had indulged her. There was nothing wrong with a harmless flirt if it made her feel happier, more attractive.
She had left with Arthur in a buoyant mood and talked all the way home in the car. Usually she stared bleakly out of the window responding to his attempts at conversation in monosyllables. But he hadn’t suspected anything. He hadn’t imagined she could be so devious.