‘Lucy!’ he says, beaming, getting to his feet, sucking in his tanned stomach, trying to cover up the fact that at forty-eight he no longer has the gym-sculpted physique of the thirty-eight-year-old man she’d escaped from ten years earlier. He pulls the earpiece from his ear and heads towards her. ‘Lucy!’ he says again, with added warmth, his arms outstretched.
Lucy recoils.
‘Michael,’ she responds circumspectly, moving away from him.
He takes his outstretched arms to Marco instead and gives him a bear hug. ‘So you told her then?’
Marco nods.
Michael gives him a mock-withering look.
‘And who is this?’ says Michael, turning his attention to Stella who is clinging to Lucy’s leg.
‘This is Stella,’ says Lucy. ‘My daughter.’
‘Wow,’ says Michael. ‘What a beautiful little girl. Lovely to meet you, Stella.’ He offers his hand for her to shake and Lucy resists the temptation to pull Stella from its path.
‘And this is?’ He peers down at the dog.
‘This is Fitzgerald. Or Fitz for short.’
‘For F. Scott?’
‘Yes, for F. Scott.’ She feels the small shot of adrenaline: the memory of the question-and-answer sessions he’d once subjected her to, to show her that she was stupid and uneducated, unworthy of him, lucky to have him. But there had always been something small and hard and certain at her very core reminding her that he was wrong, reminding her that one day she would find her escape and that once she did she would never ever look back. And now here she is nervously answering his questions, about to ask him for money, almost back where she started.
‘Well, hello, Fitz,’ he says, scruffing the dog under his chin. ‘Aren’t you a cute little guy.’ Then he stands back and appraises Lucy and her little family. It’s the same way he used to appraise Lucy when he was considering the possibility of punishing her. That knife edge of time that could end with a laugh and a hug or could end with a broken finger or a Chinese burn.
‘Well, well, well,’ he says, ‘look at you all. You are all just adorable. Can I get you anything? Some juice?’ He looks at Lucy. ‘Are they allowed juice?’
She nods and Michael looks up at the maid who is hanging behind in the shade of the terrace at the back of the house. ‘Joy! Some juice for the children! Thank you! And you, Lucy? Wine? Beer?’
Lucy hasn’t had a drink for weeks. She would die for a beer. But she can’t. She has to keep all her wits about her for the next half an hour or so. She shakes her head. ‘No, thank you. Juice would be fine for me too.’
‘Three juices, Joy. Thank you. And I’ll have another beer. Oh, and some potato chips. Those, erm what are they called, you know, with the ridges? Great.’
He turns his gaze back to Lucy, still playing it wide-eyed and boyish. ‘Sit down, sit down.’
He rearranges the chairs, they sit. ‘So,’ he says, ‘Lucy Lou, how the hell have you been?’
She shrugs and smiles. ‘You know. Getting on with it. Getting older. Getting wiser.’
‘And you’ve been out here, all this time?’
‘Yup.’
‘Never went back to the UK?’
‘Nope.’
‘And your daughter … her father? Are you married?’
‘Nope,’ she says again. ‘We lived together for a couple of years. Then he went back to Algeria to “visit family” about three years ago and we haven’t heard from him since.’
Michael winces as though Stella’s dad’s disappearance was a physical assault upon her. Too ironic to bear. ‘Tough,’ he says. ‘That’s tough. So you’re a single mom?’
‘Yes. I am. Very much so.’
Joy returns with a tray laid with a carafe of chilled orange juice, three glasses on paper coasters, crisps in small silver bowls, tiny paper napkins, straws. Michael pours the juice and passes the glasses to each of them, offers them the ridged crisps. The children pounce on them eagerly.
‘Slow down,’ she hisses.
‘It’s fine,’ says Michael. ‘I have packets and packets of the things. So, where are you living?’
‘Here and there.’
‘And are you still …?’ He mimes playing the fiddle.
She smiles wryly. ‘Well, I was. Yes. Until some drunk English dick on a stag night decided to snatch it off me and then made me chase him and his mates around for half an hour trying to get it back before tossing it over a wall. Now it’s being repaired. Or at least, it has been repaired. But …’ The insides of her mouth are dry with dread. ‘I don’t have the money