I had been riding high, and then suddenly I wasn’t. Belfast Confidential, the crusading news/vacuous celebrity magazine I inherited from my late friend Mouse, had given me a glimpse of the good life, and then the bitch of an economy had snatched it away. My tendency to burn bridges hadn’t helped. Print media was dead and everything on the web was free; nobody was prepared to pay for what I did best, which was putting a spanner in the works. I was trying to reinvent myself, and Patricia thought she would give me a hand by chucking me out of house and home. Thirty-three minutes after I left, she’d changed her Facebook status to single. I would have changed mine to couldn’t give a fuck if there had been a fucking button that allowed me not to give a fucking fuck.
Now here she was crossing the Lisburn Road, barely a hundred yards from my office, and entering the Shipyard, my city’s most prestigious restaurant, looking fantastic for forty-two. Patricia, not the restaurant. She wore her hair long, dyed brown, and her clothes tight. Even the contempt of familiarity couldn’t prevent me giving her the kind of once-over I normally reserved for strangers. She looked hot, and she knew she looked hot. She was bad to the bone.
I said, ‘Are you going somewhere later?’
‘No, I’m having dinner with you.’
‘Oh. Right. It’s not exactly dinner, it’s only gone five. Is there a mid-afternoon equivalent of brunch? Not quite dinner.’
‘High tea? Does it matter?’ She smiled. I tapped my upper teeth and nodded at her own. ‘Lippy?’ she asked.
‘No more than usual.’
She rubbed at her teeth. There was nothing there, but that wasn’t the point. She would be wondering if everyone she’d spoken to since she left home had noticed her mistake. Of course she wouldn’t have called it a mistake. She’d have called it a faux pas. She had developed certain airs and graces while the money was good at Belfast Confidential, and now that it was gone, she was still trying to hold on to them.
‘Better?’ she asked.
I pointed to a different tooth. She rubbed some more. In marriage, it is the small victories that are important, particularly as the larger ones are hard to come by.
And we were still married. Just about.
She said, ‘So to what do I owe the honour? Last time we ate somewhere as plush as this . . . come to think of it, we’ve never eaten somewhere as plush as this.’
‘A small celebration.’
She raised an eyebrow. Before I could continue, a waiter arrived at our table and asked if he could get us a drink.
I said, ‘White wine, please.’
He said, ‘Perhaps a Chardonnay or a Sauvignon Blanc?’
I said, ‘Don’t confuse me with science. White wine, and something for the mother.’
He kind of half laughed, in that patronising way waiters do, forgetting for the moment that they are fucking waiters. Patricia ordered a Smirnoff vodka and Diet Coke and said, ‘I hate it when you do that,’ as soon as he’d left.
‘Do what?’
‘The smart-alecky belittling thing.’
‘You used to love it.’
‘In fact, no. I just used to have a greater cringe threshold. So what are we celebrating?’
‘I have a client.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Well, that’s good. And you thought of me?’
‘Well, I thought you’d be interested. And a problem shared is a problem halved.’
‘Why would I want half a problem?’
‘Because I always appreciate your input. And I want you to understand what I’m trying to do here with this business, and bear that in mind when it comes to me paying my share of the upkeep on our house, which I am currently struggling to do.’
‘That’s not my problem.’
‘You threw me out.’
‘Only because you’re a useless waste of space.’
‘Well clearly not any more. I have a client.’
The waiter returned with our drinks. He asked if we’d had a chance to peruse the menus.
I said, ‘It says soup of the day without specifying what it is.’
The waiter’s eyes flitted down to my shoes and back up. ‘It’s quail eggs and shark fin with ginseng,’ he said. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. ‘It’s eighteen pounds fifty-six.’
I nodded. ‘Is that with a bap or without a bap?’
‘With,’ he said.
‘We’ll have the soup, as a main course.’ I smiled across at Patricia. ‘She’s worth it,’ I said.
Patricia smiled. He turned away. I called him back.
‘Sir?’
‘Just one thing. Is the bread Ormo?’
Patricia shook her head. The waiter was only about eighteen and hadn’t the foggiest notion of the old advert I was joking about.
When he’d gone, Patricia said, ‘Ordering for me? You’ve never done that in your life before. I think I like it.’
I sipped my wine. She mixed her vodka and gulped.
‘So,’ she said, ‘what’s the nature of your problem?’
‘Jack Caramac.’
‘As in . . .?’
‘The very same. Someone kidnapped his four-year-old son. But only for an hour or so. Sent him back with a note suggesting he shut the fuck up. The father, not the son.’
‘About what?’
Trish nodded, and for a moment concentrated on the tablecloth. More than a decade ago, during one of our regular splits, she had become pregnant to a ginger man, and had a gingerish son. We got back together, and I grew to love him, and then because I got involved in more foolishness, he died. For me, the sense of loss had faded with the years, but the guilt never would. Trish had no guilt, and professed not to have blame. But she had. It was bleeding obvious.
‘Has he gone to the police?’ she asked.
‘Of course not. He spends half his show ripping into them; he’s not going to go crawling to them for help.’
‘So he came to you?’
‘He came to me.’
‘As a kind of last resort.’
‘As the next best option.’
‘So what’re you going to do?’
‘What do you think I’m going to do? Investigate. First thing tomorrow.’
Our eyes met over our drinks. There had been a lot of water under the bridge, not to mention alcohol. We had always been connected, and we always would be. There had been love and loss and love again, and there had always been lust. Things would come around; they always did. We knew exactly how to push each other’s buttons, in a bad way and a good way.
‘Investigate to what end?’ Patricia asked. ‘I mean, I know you’ll probably find who’s responsible, but then what?’
‘Then the ball’s back in Jack’s court.’
‘Won’t that be . . . unsatisfying? It’s like doing all the foreplay and then someone else comes in for the money shot.’
Our eyes met.
‘Where did you even hear that term?’
‘Oh, these long lonely nights, what’s a girl to do?’
‘Well the last few months of our relationship, Scrabble seemed to be the answer.’
The soup came, and maybe later we would as well.
It wouldn’t mean anything. It would be another pull on the auld roundabout and we would only know where we truly were with us when it stopped.
She said, ‘I’m glad you’re doing this, really. You need a new start.’
‘Professionally,’ I said.
After a suitable pause, she nodded.
‘Don’t be getting yourself into anything too dangerous.’
‘I don’t plan to.’
‘Jack Caramac, he’s a pain in the arse, a lot of people would want to harm him. But it’s not good when kids get involved.’
‘I know. I’ll find out what’s going on. More importantly, this soup tastes like cack.’
‘It surely does.’
‘And it’s probably worth mentioning now that Jack would only employ me on a results-based basis.’
‘You’re telling me in a not very roundabout way that I’m paying for this cack-based soup.’
‘’Fraid so.’
We nodded at each other over our bowls.
None of this was a surprise to her.
I said, ‘How many years is it since we last did a runner?’
She said, ‘Too many. But in these heels?’
‘Definitely,’ I said.