‘What?’
‘Nothing, and this time I really mean it. Love to Tom, and Jonny. I’m off.’
I stared at my silent phone as if I expected a Santa Claus lookalike to appear on the screen. But he didn’t, only my wallpaper, an image of Charlie on the beach. I turned back to my son. ‘Sorry,’ I told him. ‘Susie Mum sends her love.’
‘That’s nice. He’s an emir,’ he declared, solemnly.
‘Who is?’ Susie’s fey dream had erased our previous conversation.
‘Uche’s dad,’ he said, patiently. ‘Uche says that’s the same as a prince. He doesn’t have a palace, though, just a big house in Lagos. He’s very rich. He has an oil company, and he exports tobacco and clothes and all sorts of stuff.’
‘Does he now? It’s a pity about Uche’s mother. Does Uche talk about her?’
‘No. I asked him about her, but he said she’s dead, that’s all. I don’t think he likes to talk about her. I understand that.’
That surprised me. ‘You like to talk about your dad,’ I pointed out.
‘Only to people I know really well. I never talk about him with anybody else.’
I hadn’t appreciated that; or maybe I simply hadn’t noticed it. With me, the subject is usually off limits, absolutely when Tom’s around, and all my friends know that. All my friends, including Shirley Gash. She was bearing down on us, coming from the general direction of the clubhouse. And she wasn’t smiling.
‘What have you done with him?’ she demanded.
‘Done with who?’ I replied, ungrammatically.
‘Patterson,’ she barked. ‘Who else? Where the fuck did the two of you go?’
This was not Shirley-like behaviour and Tom did not take to it at all. I felt his shoulders tense under my arm, and he seemed to grow an inch or so taller. I gave him a little squeeze, to restrain him; the lioness and her cub, roles reversed.
Not that I was best pleased either; astonished, and instantly irked. ‘Would you calm down, woman,’ I told her sternly. ‘And don’t use that language around my son. Now what are you talking about? Why should I have done anything with him?’
‘You went off together, didn’t you?’ she challenged, her chin stuck out.
I stared at her. ‘Don’t be bloody daft,’ I exclaimed, barely stopping myself from shouting, and forgetting my own interdict about language.
‘Come on! We were up on that stand, the three of us; I turned round and you two had buggered off!’
As soon as I recalled the scene, I could see where she was coming from. ‘Yes,’ I countered, fiercely, ‘but not together. I had a phone call; I got down from the stand to take it, then I had to leave in a hurry. But Patterson had gone by that time. You were so wrapped up in ogling golfers that you didn’t notice, so don’t get on to me if you can’t keep track of your bloke. Okay!’
I knew that it was anxiety as much as anger that had made her snap at me, so I wasn’t surprised when her face crumpled and she seemed to fold in on herself. It wasn’t a pretty sight; I’d never seen her looking so old.
‘Hey,’ I said, friend and counsellor once more, ‘what’s this? Don’t panic, Shirl; everything has an explanation. Have you looked for him?’
I had to wait for her to blow her nose on a tissue before she answered. ‘I’ve been looking for both of you ever since. I thought. . I thought all sorts of things, but mostly that you’d gone off to follow the golf on your own, ’cos I would have held you back, being old and slow. I looked for you all over the bloody course, then when Jonny started I went back to his match, but you weren’t there. .’
‘That’s right,’ Tom confirmed. ‘She asked me from across the rope, at the third hole, if I’d seen you. I told her I hadn’t. I was worried too, Mum,’ he added. I hadn’t considered that possibility: bad mother.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ I said contritely. ‘I should have taken time to tell you before I left.’
‘Why did you go?’ The question came in stereo, from him and Shirley, simultaneously.
‘Someone needed my help,’ I told them, ‘but that’s not important. Tell me where else you’ve looked.’
‘In the clubhouse,’ Shirl replied, ‘in the tent with all the clothing and golf club stands, in the bars, everywhere save the gents’ bogs. I looked in the car park too, and when I couldn’t see your jeep anywhere, I thought. . Well, I won’t tell you what went through my mind.’
No, you’d bloody well better not, the guy’s twenty-five years older than me, went through mine, but I let it stay there.
‘You didn’t look hard enough,’ I retorted. ‘My jeep never left. Your imagination was probably running so wild by then, you didn’t want to see it.’ Actually I’d parked it alongside a big Callaway truck to catch some shade through the day, so it wasn’t a surprise that she’d missed it. ‘What about your car?’ I asked, although I was sure that I’d seen it when Alex and Jorge had dropped me off.
‘Still there,’ she confirmed. ‘I looked for that too.’
‘Then on the face of it, he should still be here. Phone him,’ I instructed.
She took out her mobile and obeyed. I watched, and saw hope go quickly from her eyes. ‘Straight to voicemail,’ she murmured.
I frowned, then turned to my son. ‘Tom, I want you to do something for me. Go to the emergency medical centre. You know where that is?’
‘Sure, beside the bar tent.’
‘Good. When you get there, ask whether they’ve treated an English gentleman for anything. You know Mr Cowling, so describe him, and say that he was wearing grey trousers and a blue blazer with gold buttons. Then meet us back at the clubhouse, in front.’
‘Why are we going there?’ Shirl asked.
‘To check the gents’ toilets, or have them checked for us.’
We did, courtesy of the club manager, who despatched a bag boy to look for a locked cubicle with an unresponsive customer inside, but came up blank.
‘He’s gone,’ Shirley wailed, as Tom reappeared, shaking his head.
‘Come on, girl,’ I cajoled her, ‘hold yourself together.’
‘How can I? He’s fucked off and left me. He’s been taking the piss, Primavera, all this time.’
I had to admit, if only to myself, that the same possibility was beginning to gain ground in my list of possible causes for Patterson’s absence. ‘If he has gone,’ I asked nobody in particular, ‘how has he done it? Let’s assume that he isn’t hiding among the trees waiting for it to get dark.’
‘But what if he is? What if he’s had an accident? There are snakes here, Primavera.’ My robust pal was verging on hysteria. I didn’t want to call out the National Guard, but. .
‘He was wearing nice sensible shoes, so forget the vipers,’ I said. ‘Let’s try to answer my last question.’
‘He could have got a taxi,’ Tom pointed out.
‘Are there taxis here?’
‘A lot. Some of the players and most of the caddies use them to get back to their hotels, and the crowd do as well.’
‘Then let’s see if we can find some.’
‘I’ll show you where they are.’
He led us to a compound, alongside the spectator car park. I hadn’t noticed it until that moment. Most of the crowd had gone, but there were still plenty of people around, tournament staff, media and as Tom had said, competitors and their aides. There were a dozen cabs in a line waiting to be picked up. As we approached I saw Lena, Lars and their kids sliding into one, then being driven off.
The lead driver in the rank beamed at me expectantly as we approached. ‘Sorry,’ I said, wiping the smile away with a word. ‘I need your help,’ I continued, in Castellano, then switched to Catalan, knowing that Shirley doesn’t speak a word. ‘My friend here may have been robbed. Earlier on today she met an Englishman, a middle-aged man, in the shopping tent. He said he was on his own, like her, and a fan of golf as she is. He was very nice, very plausible, they talked and they had a drink together, on the clubhouse terrace. After a while, he asked her if she would like to have lunch with him. She said she would, he went to book a table and he never came back. It was some time before she looked in her bag, but when she did she found that her money was gone, and her credit cards and some very valuable rings that she had taken off because her fingers were puffy in the heat. We’ve spoken to the police; they said “Tough” as they do. Our only hope is that he might have used a cab to get away. Can you help us. Did he?’