When Louise was in the toilet, Hendricks asked Thorne how things were going. Work had been off limits all day and it was clear that he was not talking about Adam Chambers or Alan Langford.
'I think I'm getting on her nerves,' Thorne said. He looked at Hendricks and saw that his friend was not quite buying it. 'We're getting on each other's nerves.'
'You should try and get away,' Hendricks said. 'First chance you have.'
'Right, so we can get on each other's nerves somewhere a bit warmer.'
'It's about spending some decent time together, that's all.'
'Maybe…'
'You should do something about the living arrangements. Make it more official or whatever.'
'Have you written that best-man speech already?'
'I'm just saying, maybe Lou should get rid of her flat. Or you could sell both places and get somewhere bigger.'
They had been considering both of these options before Louise had lost the baby. But like a great many other things, changing their living arrangements had become something associated with the pregnancy, and, as such, was no longer talked about.
'It's just a blip, mate,' Hendricks said.
Thorne looked up and saw Louise walking back from the toilets. She looked tired and distracted, in no great hurry to return to the table, and Thorne suddenly understood the unconscious association he had been making in his head over the last two days. He pictured Louise sitting in her silver Megane, parked up somewhere and crying her heart out.
He thought: It's me.
Something she was stuck with or settling for.
A blip.
Hendricks leaned across the table. Said, 'My best-man speech would be hilarious…'
After lunch, they returned to the market and while Hendricks and Louise wandered in and out of vintage clothing shops and looked at retro furniture, Thorne walked back up the main road to the Electric Ballroom in search of second-hand CDs.
He browsed for a few minutes, then sent a text to Anna Carpenter: the series is called 'lie to me' and the actor is tim roth!
He was looking at the track listing on an Alison Krauss compilation when she called him back.
'You're a genius,' she said. 'That's really been annoying me.'
'I meant to tell you yesterday.'
'Listen, there's this pub quiz which a few of us go to on a Sunday night. I wondered if you fancied it.'
'A quiz?'
'It's a good laugh and we could do with you on the team, to be honest.'
Thorne stood to one side so that a fellow browser could flick through the box of Johnny Cash bootlegs. 'Sounds a damn sight more fun than paperwork, but I've got a ton of stuff I need to catch up on before tomorrow.'
'Come on! Two free pints for each member of the winning team.'
'I'd be rubbish anyway,' Thorne said. 'If it isn't music, football or obscure TV shows.'
'There's always stuff like that, and anyway it doesn't really matter if you don't know the answers. It's just a good night out.'
'I'd better not.'
'OK, well, call if you change your mind.'
Thorne said he would and with fifteen minutes to kill until he was due to meet Louise and Phil, he went back to the CD racks. He wondered why the conversation had made him so nervous, and if Anna was quite as good at spotting lies as she thought she was.
He had no paperwork to do. And he'd looked up the actor's name on Google.
On Fridays, if he fancied a night on the town, he would see Candela or one of his other girls. But Saturday night was usually reserved for the boys. The previous night, he and a few of the lads had taken one of the boats, motored out a mile or so on a calm sea, then dropped the anchor. Somebody had brought along a decent-sized bag of charlie, which got the party started, and they did a bit of business and necked red wine until nobody could talk sensibly about anything.
So, as was often the case, Sunday morning meant a long lie-in. Once he was vertical, a stumble on to the patio to drink tea and listen to one of the English-speaking radio stations. Then, when he was starting to feel vaguely human again, he stretched out by the pool to sweat out the over-indulgences of the night before.
He flicked through El Sur in English, a free newspaper that was delivered every week. There were details of a foiled ETA jailbreak on the front page, a few familiar faces in the local news section, but nothing that really grabbed his interest. Later, he would drive down to pick up the overseas editions of the Mail on Sunday and the News of the World. He missed the supplements, but enjoyed catching up with the sport and doing the crosswords.
He had books of crosswords and sudoku in every bog in the place; they kept his mind sharp.
The breeze made reading the newspaper tricky, so he reached for a paperback that had been sitting beside his bed for several months, that he had picked up at the airport on his last trip across to North Africa. It claimed to be a 'gritty gangland thriller' and promised to 'pull no punches'. It sounded like just the thing to take his mind off what was happening in the real world.
He needed a laugh.
It was the same with most of the films. All that million-miles-an-hour geezer-garbage the bloke who used to be shacked up with Madonna churned out. Gangster chic, or whatever they called it.
Gangster shit, more like.
He supposed it was entertaining enough, if that's what you were looking for, and it certainly gave him and the lads a few good giggles. But it was about as true to life as Lord of the effing Rings
…
The book was much as he expected – sharp suits and sawn-offs – at least those few pages he read before the words began to blur and he felt himself drifting away. He flattened the sunlounger and pulled the towel over his head. There was an old Rolling Stones song on the radio and the sucker-thing slurped and ticked as it hoovered the bottom of the pool, and when he woke up an hour later, his head was thumping.
He kept the towel on his face and lay still. He was desperate for something to drink but unwilling to get up and walk to the kitchen, or even shout through to the maid who was pottering around inside. It was hot and white behind his eyes, the sweat was slick on him, and the worry turned to anger as the sun crept higher in the sky. His mood became sour and murderous when he thought about what was happening, the moves he was being forced to make.
So much trouble over a few poxy snaps…
Somebody had it in for him, that was clear enough, but finding out who might not be so straightforward. So, as well as trying to sort things out back in the UK, he'd put the word out locally. There were a few in the frame: a town councillor he'd maybe squeezed a little too hard; a Moroccan supplier who thought he was being underpaid; a jumped-up used-car dealer from the Midlands who'd arrived six months before and had been put in his place when he'd tried to throw his weight about. There were those, and more than a few others who might have resented his closeness to their wives and girlfriends. Any one of them could have sent the pictures, stirred up trouble.
Of course, it would help if he could see the bloody photographs. Then he might have a better idea about who was playing silly buggers. One way or another, he'd find out eventually and get it sorted, but until then it was all about damage limitation.
Fortunately, he'd always been good at that.
He tried his book again, but it got no better, then deciding the paperback was good and heavy if nothing else, he hurled it at the sliding doors as hard as he could. It thumped against the glass and dropped to the deck. He lay there watching as a few of the scattered pages were picked up by the breeze and blown towards the water.
They bought cakes from a patisserie on Camden Parkway and took them back to Thorne's flat. Louise dug
