“YOU’RE FUCKING BARMY,” I tell her. “I mean.”
Her fingernails trail slowly down my spine and she kisses the lobe of my ear.
“You’ll get us both done before you’re finished. I mean for a start, how are you going to get out of Hamburg?”
“By going.”
She digs her nails in, just a little pressure.
“Oh yes?”
“I go, I spend half a day telling Monika what I want, then I fly down to Palma. Three days later I go back, approve or disapprove, then I fly back to London.”
“Great idea,” I tell her. “Only say something clever happened like Gerald’s old mum darkening out and he wants you back quick and he tries to get in touch with you? That’d be fucking favourite, wouldn’t it?”
“That old string bag’s never going to go.”
“Don’t be thick on fucking purpose.”
“Well,” she says. “I won’t be telling Gerald where I’m staying. I never do. And in the event of unforeseen circumstances he’s hardly likely to send Interpol round looking for me.”
“No, but he knows where Monika is, doesn’t he?”
“So he knows where Monika is, but Monika doesn’t know where I am, and if he gets in touch with her, I’m sussing out different sources, aren’t I.”
“And of course, Gerald wouldn’t let anything like a bit of suspicion cross his mind.”
“Look,” she says. “Let me tell you about Gerald. Gerald thinks he’s Mr. Wonderful. He’s so convinced of that fact that even if he lived forever like his old mother, he wouldn’t believe it, it wouldn’t occur to him that I’d jeopardise my life with him by so much as even sharing a lift with a feller.”
“And what about me? What about the times him and Les have been away and left us to look after the job ourselves? Nothing’s crossed his tiny mind about those times, I suppose?”
“No,” she says. “You’re one of the workers, aren’t you? And Gerald’s never read Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
I give her the look and the pressure from her fingernails is renewed and she says:
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. You’re Gerald’s blue-eyed boy and you fucking well know it. He knows how the business couldn’t survive without you even though he may not think it. He makes out that the opposite is true, so that he can save his face; that all the time Les and him are doing you favours. So can’t you see nothing ever’d cross Gerald’s mind as far as you’re concerned?”
I shake my head. “You’ve lost me,” I tell her. “But what’s the fucking difference? You’re not coming, whatever you say.”
“Too right I fucking am,” she says, and the finger nails begin making fresh indentations.