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Anselo had revised his vision of hell. It was not a crammed, sweltering bus ride but this: sitting at the kitchen table of the Italian villa in which you are supposedly spending a relaxing holiday, watching your wife’s ex-lover, whom you loathe, tell stories that make everyone else laugh uproariously. Everyone. Including your wife.
He guessed he had to believe in God now, Anselo thought, or at least the kind of deity that relished seeing the punishment fit the crime. Well played, you karmic bastard. Well played.
Look at the smug, shallow sod. Telling tales of being right-hand man to some famous producer in Hollywood. It was the kind of stale cliché job, Anselo felt, that only a man with as little substance as Marcus Reynolds could possibly do without his soul shrivelling to dust. Hollywood was the natural place for him. He was the type of man that you could turn side on and see that he was nothing but a painted façade propped up by a piece of untreated two by four.
As the litany of the man’s shortcomings sped along its track, Anselo was dismayed to feel righteousness jostling for a window-seat position with envy. Marcus Reynolds had not a care in the fucking world, thought Anselo. He had money and privilege and the freedom to come and go when he pleased. He had no responsibilities, no ties. No doubts about his place in life. No guilt. And perhaps that last, more than anything, was why Anselo hated him.
Anselo had guilt. It was there because he had come home very late and he couldn’t justify any of the time he’d spent away. He’d made the work phone call, which had led to three more phone calls to track down missing tradesmen. But that had taken him all of an hour, not the whole day. He could have sat in a quiet room at the villa and made the calls – he had not needed to catch the bus to the nearest town and sit in a café. He had not needed to catch the ferry from there into Como and start walking around. He had not needed to duck back around the corner when he spied Chad and Michelle up the street, peering in shop windows. He had not needed to retreat into the bar of a side-street hotel in the hopes that it was the last place Chad and Michelle would go. He certainly had not needed to say yes when the attractive Italian woman with the Gucci sunglasses and the short white dress that showed off her exceptional legs asked if she could join him.
Not that he’d actually done anything except buy her a grappa, thought Anselo. He’d sat by the ferry terminal for a good hour afterwards to clear his head. And he almost felt like he had it straight in his mind. But then he’d come home to this . . .
To be fair, Darrell’s expression when he’d finally come through the kitchen door was exactly what Anselo had been hoping for – a mix of entreaty and relief. She had been worried by his absence. She thought it was her fault, after this morning.
Which, Anselo admitted a little reluctantly, is exactly what he’d wanted her to think. He’d wanted to make a point. And why not? A relationship has two people in it, doesn’t it? Two people giving and taking equally. He’d tried that morning to get close to her and she’d rejected him once again. He knew he hadn’t been perfect, but he could say with all honesty that he’d been doing his bit for bloody ages, and now it was Darrell’s turn. It was time she started giving to him.
Anselo saw Darrell smile at something her loathsome ex had said, and an idea flashed into his head: if Darrell had an affair with Marcus Reynolds, it could make one chunk of Anselo’s personal guilt go away.
Like a Glasgow bouncer, Anselo’s mind threw the thought out on its arse. There was no way he’d lose his wife to this smarmy, arrogant fucker. The man had the morals of a liver fluke. And yet everyone else was lapping it up. Was Anselo the only one who could see he had all the charm of a flatworm?
Marcus was now relating a story about having to find someone prepared to administer cocaine to an ageing film star in the style of her choosing, namely, to blow it up her backside through a straw.
‘You’d be amazed,’ he said, ‘at how many willing contenders there were. I suppose it is a little more interesting than pumping gas. Though in many ways not dissimilar.’
Everyone laughed again. Anselo picked at the cold pasta on his plate. Michelle had brought home a giant lasagne from a deli in Como, and she and Clare had made a salad. Michelle, Anselo had gleaned, had also brought home Marcus Reynolds. Clare, who had been in the shower when Marcus had made his entrance, asked Michelle to describe again how they’d met.
Clare looked as if she couldn’t quite believe it, either, thought Anselo. But for her, it was only a credulity-stretching coincidence. For him, it was a living fucking nightmare.
‘It was at the deli counter,’ said Michelle. ‘I wanted cheese, so I pointed at one and said formaggio and the deli man decided I knew Italian and began to tell me all about it. Fortunately, after cinque minutes of cheese rave, he realised he’d just wasted his breath because he stopped and glared at me and said ‘Non capito’, and I had to confess that he was one hundred per cent correct. At least, I think he was.’ Michelle turned to Marcus. ‘Non capito means “useless foreigner”, doesn’t it?’
‘He was hurt,’ said Marcus. ‘He was serenading you with cheese, and you spurned him.’
‘And then, in surly tones,’ Michelle went on, ‘he asked me how much I wanted, and I forgot the Italian for ten and had to ask Chad, who, of course, gets as far as uno and is flummoxed. So, I held up all my fingers and the cheese man pretended he had not a clue what I was on about. Prickio. But then I was saved by Mr Polyglot here.’
She smiled at Marcus, who said, ‘Good thing, too. The queue was turning ugly.’
‘I thought you were Italian,’ said Michelle, ‘until you spoke to me in English and I realised you were a posh freak.’
Anselo saw Marcus catch Darrell’s eye and grin. ‘Your friend has made her views on the merits of the English upper class quite clear,’ he said.
Darrell said, ‘Not without reason. I still remember your mother’s garden party, meeting Major Blunderbuss and the woman who was Horse and Hound magazine’s Debutante of the Year. Your mother wasn’t sure to which species she was meant to most appeal.’
‘Major Blunderbuss?’ said Marcus.
‘Something very similar,’ said Darrell. ‘I’ll swear by it.’
Anselo did not like the smile they exchanged. Too intimate, too collusive. He picked up a lettuce leaf and began to shred it.
‘You still haven’t told me how you figured out who he was,’ said Clare to Michelle.
‘I grilled him,’ said Michelle. ‘I insisted on knowing exactly what flavour of posh freak he was, and when he broke under my questioning and confessed that his father had been a duke, I said, “Blow me down, a friend of mine once shagged the son of duke”, and things slotted into place from there, so to speak.’
Clare gave Marcus the kind of look a wife might give her husband after pulling a red G-string out of his car’s glove compartment. Ready to hear his rationale; already disbelieving it.
‘A duke?’ she said.
‘As in – of Wellington,’ said Patrick, who by Anselo’s count was onto his sixth beer.
Marcus, Anselo noted, was also drinking beer. For some reason, Anselo found this the most annoying quality in a list that was now so long, it could possibly be the girdle Puck intended for round the Earth. Shakespeare had some excellent lines: “I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways.”
‘Yes, thank you, Simon Schama,’ Clare was saying to Patrick. ‘I’ve grasped the duke concept. It’s the “son of” concept I’m struggling with.’
‘It’s true,’ said Darrell. ‘Marcus’ father was a duke, but he wanted to stand for Parliament, and back then they wouldn’t let dukes be MPs, so he gave up the title.’
‘You remembered that?’ said Marcus.
Anselo saw Darrell blush. ‘It’s not a story you hear every day,’ she said.
‘And you two were dating?’ Clare glanced between Marcus and Darrell.
Darrell was annoyed, and for good reason, Anselo thought. Clare was making no attempt to hide her incredulity that a man like Marcus Reynolds would want to go out with a girl from New Zealand, who wrote romance novels and had no connections or pedigree at all.
That kind of shit annoyed Anselo, too. Being looked down on as second rate, no matter what you did or what you achieved. Being judged by standards that had nothing to do with anything but who gave birth to you. That pissed him off no end.
He had a brief burst of compassion for his wife. It ended when Clare said, ‘Is he the one you went to The Anderson hotel with? When you borrowed my Matthew Williamson dress?’
Darrell blushed again and nodded.
‘Very nice dress, too,’ said Marcus, taking a swig of beer. ‘When you stood with the light behind you, it was transparent.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Patrick. ‘I know the one you mean.’
‘I’ve worn that dress quite often,’ said his wife, ‘You might have mentioned this earlier.’
Patrick looked puzzled. ‘Why?’
Charlotte appeared in the doorway that linked the kitchen to the living room.
She seemed reluctant to come any closer. Anselo didn’t blame her. If he had his wits about him, he would have thought of an excuse to scarper by now.
‘The children are in bed,’ she announced.
‘Great.’ Patrick stood up and pulled out a chair for her. ‘Come and find out if Tom Cruise really is gay.’
‘No, thank you.’ Charlotte’s tone was coolly formal. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I must catch up on some reading.’
Patrick blinked at the empty doorway, one hand still on the chair back. ‘Maybe I should have had that shower, after all?’
‘My, she’s being Miss Priss tonight,’ said Michelle. ‘She reminds me of the school librarian in that porn movie, who removes her glasses and pull the hairpins out of her bun, then makes the beast with due backs with the captain of the football team.’
Marcus made a choking sound.
‘Beer go down the wrong way?’ Michelle patted him on the back.
‘Mitch?’ said Chad. ‘When have you watched a porn movie about a librarian?’
‘Never, now that I think about it,’ said Michelle. ‘Maybe it was a Van Halen video.’
Smiling, Chad got to his feet, and dropped a kiss on top of his wife’s head. ‘I’m going to read Harry and Rosie a story,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen them all day.’
‘Choose wisely!’ Michelle called after him.
‘Rosie adores Where the Wild Things Are,’ she explained to the others, ‘but Harry has to cover his eyes when the monsters turn up. And while Harry loves the ending of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Rosie is of the strong opinion that the caterpillar should explode from eating all that food. With suitably grisly sound effects.’
‘Hard to tell what Tom likes.’ Patrick popped the top off another beer bottle. ‘I thought I got a laugh out of him with Dr Seuss once. But it was probably wind.’
Anselo waited for Clare’s rebuke, but apart from a brief, pointed glance at her husband’s seventh beer, she said nothing. Anselo had no time to wonder why – Marcus was smiling across the table at Darrell again.
‘And you have a baby boy, I gather?’ he said to her.
‘Yes.’ Darrell’s cheeks were pink again, but whether with pleasure or embarrassment, Anselo could not tell. ‘He’s just over three months old.’
‘I’d love to see him,’ said Marcus.
An involuntary sound of protest escaped Anselo. Everyone at the table turned to look at him.
‘He’s asleep,’ he found himself saying. ‘We shouldn’t disturb him.’
‘Oh, come on!’ said Darrell. ‘Cosmo could sleep through a nuclear warning and a full symphony orchestra playing The 1812 Overture. With cannon.’
‘It’s all right.’
Marcus’s reassuring tone was all for Darrell, Anselo noted. He might as well not exist.
‘There’ll be another time,’ Marcus added.
Not if he had anything to do with it, thought Anselo, immediately. But then he saw Michelle beaming, and knew that his influence, as usual, would be none.
‘Marcus is minding his sister’s flat in Como for another three weeks!’ she said. ‘While she’s off on some homo-erotic pilgrimage to Lesbos.’
‘She’s at an art convention in New York!’ said Marcus, with a laugh.
‘How dull.’ Michelle poured another glass of wine. ‘My version’s much more interesting.’
‘Your sister’s a lesbian?’ said Patrick. ‘Charlotte’s sister’s a lesbian, too.’
‘Yes, I—’ Marcus paused. ‘Yes, that’s right. About my sister.’
‘I could never be a full lesbian,’ said Michelle. ‘Half a lesbian, no problem – I appreciate a pretty face, a nice pair of boobs. But the whole tongue and groove thing? Dining at the Y? No way, Fanny-Mae.’
Patrick’s expression was struggling to decide if it should be appalled or amused. Finally, he said, ‘I bet you expect it, though!’
‘Patrick?’ said Clare in a singsong of warning. ‘Was that really necessary?’
‘Men are different,’ said Michelle. ‘Men are like Labradors. They’ll eat anything.’
‘O-K.’ Clare held up her hand. ‘Let’s move on. Let’s talk about what we plan to do tomorrow. Pretty as it is, I, for one, am a little laked-out. Shall we all catch the train into Milan?’
‘Oo, yes! Milan!’ Michelle clapped her hands. ‘I can practise my Italian. Listen. Prada. Dolce. Gabbana. What’s the Italian for “and”?’ she asked Marcus.
‘E.’
‘Dolce e Gabbana,’ she said. ‘I’m getting better already!’
‘It’s a bit of a trek for the kids, isn’t it?’ said Patrick.
‘The children can stay here,’ said Clare.
‘Again?’ said Patrick. ‘That’ll be two whole days in a row we’ve left them with Charlotte.’
Clare gave him an even look. ‘That is what we pay her for.’
‘Yeah, but . . .’ Patrick stopped.
‘Come on,’ said Michelle. ‘You want to see the duomo, don’t you? And spin on the bull’s testicles? It’s not a real bull,’ she added. ‘Their testicles are almost impossible to spin on.’
‘Yeah, all right,’ said Patrick.
But he did not, Anselo observed, look happy. He had a moment of empathy for his older cousin. They both needed to feel more in charge of their lives.
‘Why don’t you come with us?’ said Michelle to Marcus. ‘You can be our guide and translator! You have a Latin name! You’re perfectly qualified!’
‘That’s a tremendous offer,’ he said, smiling. ‘But I will have to decline.’
‘You have plans?’ said Michelle. ‘Plans, schmans! Ditch them!’
‘Can’t be done, I’m afraid,’ said Marcus. He got to his feet. ‘Thank you for dinner. I enjoyed meeting you all.’ He caught Darrell’s eye. ‘And renewing old acquaintances.’
He bent and kissed Michelle on both cheeks. ‘Goodbye.’
‘That double-kissy thing!’ she said. ‘So freakishly English!’
Marcus moved round to do the same with Clare. She did not bat an eyelid, Anselo noted. Marcus shook Patrick’s hand. Next around the table was Darrell.
If he kissed her, thought Anselo, he would plunge his hand into his chest and rip out his heart. And then he would make him eat it. Raw.
All Marcus did was smile. ‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that son of yours is a delight.’
‘He’s a bit little to be anything at the moment,’ said Darrell. But she was smiling, too.
Now it was his turn, thought Anselo. What would Marcus do now?
What Marcus did was briefly nod. And then he was gone. Anselo breathed out for what felt like the first time in hours.
‘I cannot believe it!’ said Michelle to Darrell. ‘You got to shag that! You lucky bitchio!’
Anselo would kill him a thousand and fifty ways. Even then, it wouldn’t feel like enough.