Back at the house Kite took a shower and had time to think more clearly. Perhaps reporting the details of his conversation with Bijan was not as pressing as he first thought. It could surely wait until morning. If he walked all the way to the bottom of the garden to have a smoke, it would look suspicious. Best just to hide Bijan’s phone number among his belongings and show it to Peele in the morning.
‘What are you wearing?’ Xavier shouted.
‘Fuck knows,’ Kite replied, coming out of the bathroom.
‘Language, Lockie, please.’
Rosamund had emerged from her room wearing a brown pencil skirt, two-inch white heels and a bright pink blouse bolstered by shoulder pads. He had never encountered a woman of his mother’s generation with so much money and such good looks who dressed so disastrously. Behind her, enjoying his reflection in a floor-length mirror, was Luc, his Gekko hair oiled back, a pale blue shirt opened to the solar plexus. Kite turned around. Xavier was making the final touches to his Mud Club uniform of ripped blue jeans, white T-shirt and black leather jacket.
‘I see George Michael will be joining us again tonight,’ he said.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Xavier replied. ‘Very funny.’
‘You gotta have faith,’ Kite sang, and went into his room singing the chorus of the song, Xavier’s protests a faint murmur behind the closing door.
Kite dressed quickly, conscious of the meagreness of his own wardrobe, tonight comprised of a pair of Levi 501s, a navy blue sports jacket and a paisley shirt which had the potential to put Martha off him for the rest of her life. Flinging it back into his suitcase, he played it safe, recycling a button-down shirt from Gap which he refreshed with a spray of Right Guard after a quick sniff of the armpits.
‘Leaving in five minutes, everyone!’ Rosamund called out from the hall. ‘Wheels turning.’
Kite heard the same clatter of ice cubes which had heralded the arrival of Eskandarian two nights earlier. He quickly dried his hair on a towel, reaching for a tub of radioactively green Boots hair gel which he applied in a dollop to the fringe. By the time he had left his room, his hairstyle could be plausibly compared to a photograph Kite had seen of River Phoenix in Arena magazine. This was suddenly all that mattered. He wanted to look good for Martha.
She was already outside, waiting to get into the Mercedes wearing an off-the-shoulder blue dress that caused Kite almost to lose his footing when he saw her. She must have been aware of the effect she was having because even Luc and Eskandarian were staring at her in barely suppressed awe. Rosamund knew it too and offered Martha a pale pink pashmina ‘to cover your shoulders, darling’. Xavier emerged from the house smoking a cigarette and holding the black leather jacket over his shoulder like a male model prowling on a catwalk.
‘Will you be my father figure, Xav?’ Martha asked. Hana came out seconds later in a vanishingly tight black miniskirt, received the gasps she had doubtless been hoping for – including a gobsmacked ‘Jesus’ from Xavier – and climbed into Eskandarian’s Audi. Within a few minutes they had all left the house, Alain waving them off with a rake in one hand and a Gitane in the other.
‘What’s the deal with Hana?’ Xavier asked his father from the back seat of the Mercedes.
Kite was in the front trying to find a decent song on French radio.
‘Which one of your hits do you want to hear tonight, George?’ he asked. ‘“Careless Whisper”? “Club Tropicana”?’
‘She’s not allowed into Iran,’ Luc replied in French, talking across Kite’s joke. ‘Not dressed like that, anyway!’ He laughed as he indicated onto the autoroute. ‘They meet up when Ali is travelling. She’s nice, no?’
‘Bit young for him?’
Kite knew that Xavier was interested in her. At the beach his friend had said that Hana kept flirting with him whenever Eskandarian’s back was turned.
‘Seriously, man. By the pool, over dinner. Always catching my eye. She’s trouble. Not getting enough attention from the ayatollah. What am I supposed to do? Ignore that?’
‘Yes!’ Kite had told him firmly, and not solely because Xavier getting off with Eskandarian’s girlfriend had the potential to jeopardise his mission. He didn’t want his friend landing on the wrong side of Ali or, come to that, for Hana to be found at the bottom of the Mediterranean wearing a pair of cement boots fitted for her by Abbas. ‘That’s exactly what you’re going to do. Ignore that. She’s taken. You mess with her, you’re messing with the Iranians. Look what they did to Rushdie and that was just for writing a book.’
The Antibes nightclub was another place to which the Bonnard family had taken Kite – like the Farm Club in Verbier, the Royal Opera House for a performance of Swan Lake, the dining room at Claridge’s for Xavier’s eighteenth birthday – which he would never otherwise have experienced without their generosity. Luc had reserved a table in a lavish upstairs restaurant where, for the second time that day, his guests were treated to superb wines and exquisite French cuisine. It was Kite’s habit to compare the dishes on the menu – Poitrine de Veau Confite et Farcie aux Légumes du Soleil, Poupetons de Fleurs de Courge au Saumon Nappés, L’Abricot des Vergers de Provence – with their feeble equivalents on the menu at Killantringan: Soup of the Day, ‘Skipper’s Choice’ Seafood Pancake, Apple Crumble. Spending time in the South of France, shuttling between his bedroom and the swimming pool, drinking wine at outdoor cafés and flirting with Martha in five-star restaurants – he had begun to worry that he was being offered a final glimpse of a life which would soon be torn away from
