The Last Resort (22 page)

“I’ve thought a lot about what you must think of Jack. About how hurt you must be. I do want you to understand that although I think he’s done something very wrong, I sympathise with him up to a point. He never had the privilege of a family who loved him just as he was—I think he truly, truly believes that the only thing in the world worth having, the only thing that makes sense, is money. I don’t think he knew any better than to do wrong.”

“I’ve thought about that,” I said heavily. “I’m starting to understand. It’s still hard, though.”

“It is,” he agreed.

There was a glimmer of warmth between us then, the warmth of a shared understanding. I no longer felt alone. At least, if nothing else, I had one other person in the world who understood the humiliation of being betrayed.

Was it selfish to be happy about that, I wondered?

We walked on, in pensive silence.

The route to Clifton Fourth, the beach to end all beaches if Shaz’s Lonely Planet was to be believed, was down hundreds of little stone steps, through dense, tall thickets that completely obscured our view of the ocean.

The shade of the milkwoods was a blessing after the shimmering heat of the pavement walk from Camps Bay, and I ducked under it gratefully, savouring the coolness as I followed Tam. I walked behind him without speaking. The day’s revelations hung heavy as a millstone around my neck.

By the time I alighted on the sand, I was exquisitely conscious of my fringe having cemented itself to my sweaty forehead. Somehow on the way down we’d lost Sharon and the others.

“Let’s find some shade,” Tam suggested, and he pointed out some high grey boulders near the water’s edge. “I’m sure they’ll be along soon.”

“OK,” I replied, not believing a word of it. Sharon had lost us on purpose, I was sure of it, and the thought made me brood with fury.

I sat down awkwardly, not knowing what distance was appropriate: after everything he’d told me, I wanted, irrationally, to put my arm through his and rest my head on his shoulder in a show of trust, to tell him how happy I was that I had him to talk to about Jack. But, instead, I sat perched in rapt attention, a respectable two feet away, looking out at the yachts that bobbed in the sparkling, sapphire-blue waves of the cove.

The silence that followed was tense. I sneaked some furtive glances at Tam. Did he feel as discomfited as I was with the brand-new intimacy that was apparently blossoming between us? And why
were
we discomfited? What was going on here?

“Do you want a lolly or something?” Tam asked, motioning towards the refreshment seller who was annoying some other foreigners further down the beach.

He had a Coke. I had a pineapple ice, because it sounded exotic. More tense silence (except for some obligatory slurping from yours truly).

“So,” I ventured, once I’d thoroughly painted my face with sticky, sugary melted lolly. “I guess I should ask you what I should have asked you last night.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

I stifled a sigh. “What did Jack really tell you about why we got married? What were his words?”

For a minute, Tam looked at me with an expression that was sort of wistful, his grey-green eyes narrowing softly. “What?” I asked, irritably, annoyed by how strangely naked I felt.

“Nothing,” he said gently, “it’s just . . . do you really want to know?”

My stomach sank. “Well, now I’ve
got
to know.”

He looked at me for another long moment, and I felt an embarrassed flush creep onto my cheeks. “OK,” he said, eventually. “You remember when I came round to the office to see him, don’t you?”

“How could I forget?” I said, cautiously. It wasn’t a good memory.

Then he looked thunderstruck. “Ava, I completely forgot about what I said to you that day. I’m so sorry.” He plunged his face in his hands.

“It’s alright,” I said, trying to wave the recollection away. (While trying to discreetly wipe my face with my sarong.)

“It’s not alright. It’s not!” He turned to me, pained, then bowed his head again to stare at the sand, then looked at me again. “I had no right—none at all.”

“I suppose,” I said, relenting. If he wanted to be sorry, I wasn’t going to stop him.

“This is so embarrassing.”

Nice that it’s not me saying that for once,
I thought. “Look,” I said, “just forget it. Tell me what happened.”

“Well,” he began uncertainly, scanning my face to check if I’d really forgiven him, “I already had—an inkling. I knew he was in financial trouble, and I’d heard him grumbling about the trust and how it was being kept from him unfairly.

“What he said then, which led to that row in the meeting room, was that he’d agreed to give you a portion of the payout, and that you’d carry on with the marriage for as long as it took. I thought that was a perversion of the whole thing, and I told him so. He maintained that he deserved what his grandfather left him, and that he couldn’t help that life wasn’t like it was in the Fifties—he said he might never marry, and then what would happen to the money?

“I told him he was simply cheating money out of an old man’s estate. And that no-one ever
deserves
an inheritance. He said all he was doing was letting Granddad’s true intentions shine through.”

He sighed. “Then it got really ugly. I climbed into him, asked him how Fenella would feel about him marrying you for money, since Alfie’d done much the same thing to her. He told me that only a bastard child could think family life was any better than a business transaction, that all people marry to gain something for themselves, and that I should grow up.”

He laughed bitterly. My heart gave a hard throb of pain—for myself, but mostly for him and what he had suffered.
Why are people so cruel?

“I suppose he was right, in a way,” Tam murmured. “After hearing that, you might understand why I thought I could humiliate you the way I did. But it doesn’t excuse it.”

“It does,” I said gently.
Thank you
, I wanted to add, because I felt that, in a mysterious way, Tam had done a better job of defending my virtue (such as it was) than my own husband had. Knowing that Tam was on my side made me feel a thousand times better.

“Tam,” I ventured, “I don’t understand how you got caught up in all of this. Why do you even talk to him? When he’s been so horrid to you?”

He sighed heavily. I caught a breath of his scent. Warm and dry as golden sand.

“A long time ago, I wasn’t a very good boy.” He smiled wryly. “It took me a long time to get my life together. I was in and out of boarding schools, always being expelled. Then after school, I went a bit nuts—gambling and that. That’s how I got this,” he said, motioning to his scarred lip. “I wanted to make something of myself, to be able to buy nice things for my mother, so she’d stop running after Alfie and humiliating herself over him, but I got in over my head.

“Long story short, Jack bailed me out. And me, with no prospects—well, I suppose I felt I owed him. I learnt how to do the books. Got quite good at it, actually. Of course, the problem is I’ve no qualifications; not even so much as a school-leaver’s certificate to my name. So I’m stuck working for Jack.”

He swirled his remaining Coke around in its can, then swallowed it all in an enormous gulp. “It’s enough to drive
me
to drink, come to think of it.”

“I flunked out of college,” I blurted. Then I blushed, again, but this time I could muster a little smile at the same time.

He grinned back, an unguarded, surprising gesture that made his serious face turn handsome instantly. “You’re sweet.” Mortified but inexplicably pleased, I blushed some more.

There was a very distinct heartbeat of silence while we looked at each other, basking in the sudden, welcome warmth.

Then, in another heartbeat, we broke our gazes simultaneously, and a shadow descended.
He’s Jack’s brother, for goodness’ sake,
I scolded myself.
Get a grip!

Tam coughed nervously before continuing. “Anyway, he sent me because I think you taking off like that really threw him. As far as I understand, he thought he had you under his thumb. I certainly assumed he did. I’m not sure he knew what to do—whether coming here would mess things up even more. So he wanted me to do some reconnaissance first. At least, that was how he explained it to me.”

“Hence you stalking me on the beach that day.” I’d nearly forgotten about that. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “I was supposed to check if there was another—another man involved.”

“I see.” That was just the kind of information I would have leapt at a few hours ago. Now it just sounded sordid. “Have you spoken to him recently? Does he know we’ve made contact?”

“I told him I’d seen you, and that I hadn’t taken you to the airport myself. He’d wanted me to do that.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He was pissed off. Especially when I said I couldn’t be completely sure that you were going to go back to him. I promised I’d check in with him last night, but obviously after we spoke I was in no mood to pick up the phone. No doubt he’s panicking by now.” Then he looked thoughtful. “I think if he knew for sure that you’d decided to divorce him, he’d be here himself. He was expecting you to come meekly back into the fold.”

Suddenly he laughed. “You know, we started out this conversation with me asking you a question, but I just spilled my guts instead.”

I traced patterns in the sand as I mulled it over, spirals within spirals. “There’s really not a lot for me to tell you, honestly. I just got taken for a ride, and that’s that, I think.” I felt brave when I said it.

“Are you going to go back?”

I paused before answering, afraid of what was coming next. Squeezing my eyes shut for a minute, I plunged my hand into the warm sand, trying to recall my summer holidays, childhood paradises where everything was simple and I never had to make my own decisions.

“I can’t go back. I’d be too embarrassed to look anyone in the eye ever again.”

I glanced up at Tam and found he was looking at me with what looked like tears in his eyes. But if they were tears, he blinked them away quickly. “I’m sorry this has happened to you, Ava,” he said, quietly.

“Me too.” I didn’t know what else to say.

It was weird to feel so close to him.

We looked out at the ocean for a bit, trying to decide where all this left us. The beach was filling up now. Scanning the broad expanse of glittering white sand, I caught sight of Sharon, who was watching us with obvious interest from the opposite end of the beach.

When she saw me looking at her, she started making humping motions at me and let her tongue loll out of her mouth like a drunk person having an orgasm.

I ignored her studiously.

Instead I thought about Jack, and poured sand between my hands, watching it flow through my fingers. Jack. Jack. Jack, the centre of the universe, the most important person in the world—being reduced to rubble before my very eyes. In a way, I wasn’t surprised by a word Tam had said. In another, I was more staggered than I had ever been in my life.

I couldn’t believe how my life had changed over the preceding six months. And now it was going to change all over again.

“Do you want to go for a swim?” Tam asked suddenly, breaking through my reverie, and then looked like he immediately regretted it. Did he have a miniscule Speedo on underneath his casual, beachy shorts? Or were they those shorts-that-are-actually-swimming-trunks?

More importantly, did I really want to expose my wobbly white bum to him? “Um,” I hesitated.

“You don’t have to,” he said, visibly embarrassed, “it’s just I was thinking of going and—I thought you might want to. Just a thought.”

What’s so embarrassing about having a swim?
I thought, irritated by how touchy we were both being. “Sounds good. Shall we—um—”

“Yeah,” he said, and we got up, clumsily, to remove our extraneous items of clothing, both acutely aware that this was an Embarrassing Situation. I took a deep breath before I dropped my sarong onto the sand. I wasn’t going to turn all bashful, I decided—I was on holiday and I had a right to wear a bikini.

He took his shirt off over his head, and got himself semi-stuck in it, and I had to pretend I hadn’t noticed while he wriggled, seal-like, in an attempt to extricate himself.

I couldn’t help noticing, while he was stuck in his shirt, that he had a lovely, smooth, brown stomach. Not too defined, not so he looked like a Mr Universe or something. Just pleasingly washboard-y. With obliques that pointed like arrows straight at his crotch, drawing my eyes inexorably downwards . . .

Stop it
, I admonished myself.

Once it was off, he did an admirable job of looking unruffled, though he had gone bright red. “Ready?”

“Ready,” I said grimly.

We marched resolutely down to the water’s edge. I got there first.

“Oh. My. FUUUUCK!” I yelped, and sprang immediately out of the surf and back onto the lovely warm white sand. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I chanted as I jumped up and down, trying to get the blood flow back into my throbbing, ice-cold feet. Then I recalled Peter telling us we had to remember we were holidaying on the edge of the Atlantic, in the path of the Antarctic currents, and not in the Med.