pool. That was all she needed to say. If Domingo wanted to come back in an hour and give Simon a message or a number to ring, that was up to him. If Simon wanted to spend the rest of the honeymoon on the phone to Sam Kombothekra or the Snowman, if he wanted to catch the next available flight home and scuttle back to work instead of staying in Spain in a beautiful villa with Charlie . . . well, luckily someone had invented a wonderful thing called divorce.
‘You phone, no Simon,’ said Domingo. ‘Sister Olivia. You come now, you phone on my house. She much upset, crying.’
Charlie had already started to run. All her thoughts – divorcing Simon, loving him, hating him – had fallen away, leaving only one word in her mind: cancer. Olivia had survived the disease years ago, but Charlie had always secretly feared it might come back, no matter how many times her sister had assured her that wasn’t the way it worked. ‘If it doesn’t come back within five years, then, officially, it can’t ever come back,’ Liv had insisted. ‘If I’m unlucky enough to get cancer again, it’ll be a new cancer – not the return of the old one.’
Liv wouldn’t ring unless it was serious, not after hearing Charlie describe what she’d do to anyone foolish enough to intrude on her and Simon’s privacy. Tell nobody where we are – nobody – unless it’s life or death. Or someone determined to give us a very large amount of money.
Life or death. Had she made this happen, by using those words?
Somehow, she made it into Domingo’s wooden lodge. He had to punch in the number for her and put the phone in her hand. He touched her shoulder briefly before leaving her alone, closing the door behind him. No doubt in his mind that the news would be bad; no doubt in Charlie’s either.
‘Liv? Is that you?’ All she could hear was sobbing.
‘Char?’
‘Calm down. Tell me.’
‘I think I’ve messed up my life.’
‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’
‘I’m going to have to leave Dom. I’ve slept with someone else. More than once. Don’t be angry with me for ringing. I had to talk to you – I feel as if I’m going mad. Do you think I might be?’
Charlie rubbed her swollen eyes and sank into the nearest chair – a round wicker thing, like a large tilted picnic basket on legs, covered with a blue and red tartan wool throw. She waited for her heartbeat to catch up with her brain. Terror still had her in its grip – a monster that needed to be wrestled into submission. A monster you created yourself, out of nothing. Needlessly. Had she done the same thing with Simon’s walk? He’d tried his best to convince her that it was nothing to do with not wanting to spend time with her. ‘I’m not used to never being alone,’ he’d said. ‘I only need half an hour, maybe an hour – then I’ll be back.’ Was that unreasonable? ‘I’ll probably even miss you while I’m gone,’ he’d added grudgingly, eyes down, as if the admission had been extracted from him under duress.
‘Here’s the deal,’ Charlie said, once she was calm enough to speak. ‘I’ll talk to you for five minutes – only because I’m relieved. I thought you were going to tell me Mum and Dad had dropped dead on the golf course.’ I thought you were dying. I thought my marriage might be over.
‘You’ve never liked Dom. You must be doubly relieved.’
‘Do you want to waste your five minutes on a fight?’
Silence.
‘How’s the honeymoon?’ Liv asked eventually.
‘Fine, until you phoned. Well, fine-ish.’
‘Why “ish”?’
Charlie lowered her voice. ‘We’ve had sex a grand total of once.’
‘Is that so bad? It’s only Monday.’
Charlie had given this some thought. If it happened again tonight, then it wouldn’t be so bad. If not, that’d be two consecutive nights without – how could that be anything but a disaster? If Simon didn’t make a move when they went to bed later, Charlie didn’t think she’d be able to put a brave face on it as she had last night, when he’d turned his back on her and been asleep within seconds. Was that why she was so jumpy, so ready to assume the worst? Today had more pressure on it than an ordinary Monday should have to bear.
‘It’s as if he thinks we shouldn’t be doing it,’ she said tearfully. ‘He . . .