‘Me, I can smell dinner,’ said Grace, changing the subject. ‘And I’m starving. I feel like I haven’t eaten since breakfast.’
Jérôme grinned. ‘After what you said I thought I’d ask Charlotte to make something for us. She’s a very good cook. Doesn’t touch alcohol but loves food. We’ve got foie gras, lobster and everything. She was trained in Paris so she knows just how fastidious French people like Gui and me are about food.’
‘Which makes me wonder why so many of them bother to come to Guadeloupe at all,’ I said. ‘You’d think that this was a place to be avoided.’
Jérôme led us into the dining room.
‘It’s cheap to get here,’ he said. ‘That’s why. The French government subsidises the air fares and the cruise prices to make sure the tourism industry here is thriving. It costs a lot more to travel from London to Antigua. That way they think they can keep the locals happy. More or less. And it satisfies those French who want some winter sun but are too cheap to go to St Barts.’
‘Why didn’t you come here in the first place?’
He grinned. ‘You’re staying at Jumby Bay and you need to ask? Guadeloupe has got nothing like that. Besides, my dad lives on Antigua. There’s all that and there’s Sky Sports. Jumby Bay has got Sky. And that means football on the telly. Whenever you want it. Almost.’
I had to admit he had a point there.
Charlotte served a superb dinner which put us all in a very good mood. And afterwards Jérôme made us some excellent coffee and then helped us to some of Gui’s vintage Armagnac. He was a good host like that but probably a bad house-guest for the same reason.
‘So,’ I said, ‘are you ready to travel back to Barcelona with me and face the music?’
‘I’m still a bit worried about my dad. But yes, I am.’
‘That’s good. I’ll try to send a text to them tonight and have a private jet sent here within twenty-four hours to fly us back to Spain.’
‘Good luck with that,’ said Jérôme. ‘Sending a text, I mean.’
‘You’re right. Perhaps I’d better call them from the hotel. Look, I have to go back to Antigua to collect the rest of my stuff from Jumby Bay. I’ll do that first thing in the morning and then be back here to fly to Spain with you, tomorrow night. I’ll tell them, in confidence, about your father and arrange for you to have some compassionate leave as soon as possible. You can take your medical, do the press conference and be back here to visit your dad in a week or two.’
‘In the meantime, don’t worry,’ said Grace. ‘I’m quite hopeful that as soon as Antigua’s director of public prosecutions has had a chance to review the police evidence they’ll see this was a clear case of self-defence, and agree with my submission that this doesn’t warrant a murder charge. Once that has happened I’m very confident that we can get your dad bail.’
‘Thank you. Both of you.’ He shook his head.
‘What?’ asked Grace.
‘I feel such a fool, really,’ he admitted. ‘To have overreacted in the way I did. It’s just that I’ve grown very close to my father.’
‘Forget about it,’ I said. ‘A lot of people would probably have done the same as you. I’m very close to my own father, myself. If he’d been facing a murder charge I’m not sure I could have left him to sweat it out on his own.’
‘I’ll come with you, Scott,’ said Grace. ‘Back to Antigua.’
I looked at her narrowly. ‘Maybe you should stay here in Guadeloupe. It might not be such a good idea for Jérôme to be on his own too much until he’s on his meds again.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ said Jérôme. ‘Really. You don’t have to worry about me, Scott. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Good. I’ll come here in a car from the airport and pick you up myself. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
On our way out of the door again, Jérôme took my hand and held onto it tightly. There were tears in his eyes and for a moment he seemed unable to say anything. I squeezed his hand back and smiled.
‘I just want to say thanks, Scott. Thanks for helping me like this, man. I don’t know what I’ve have done if you hadn’t turned up.’
I shrugged.
‘I guess that you’d have carried on staying here. This is a nice house. It’s very comfortable. You’ve a fine cook here in Charlotte. And there’s a copy of my book as well. I really don’t know what else anyone could ask for.’
26
I kissed Grace and then her fingers, still inky from the night before and smelling strongly of me. Taking advantage of our last chance for a fuck before I flew back to Spain, neither of us had had much sleep. Every time I’d opened my eyes I’d climbed on top of her bones.
‘I’m exhausted,’ she admitted. ‘You must be, too.’
‘I’ll sleep on the jet,’ I told her. ‘In fact I’m kind of banking on that. It’ll be a good way of escaping from Russell Bore’s half-baked theories about the future of global capitalism.’
‘He means well.’
‘So did Robespierre. Seriously though, how much influence do you have with your cousin? Because someone needs to tell him to button his lip for a while. Catalans are a generous-hearted people but they don’t much like it when people start telling them where to get off. There’s a good reason that Spain had a civil war.’
‘I’ll speak to him.’
‘Do. And while you’re at it tell him to lay off the hookers and the weed.’
‘Yes. I will. I must say the gun thing still worries me a bit.’
‘You can leave that to me.’
We left the hotel and went to the airport in Pointe-à-Pitre to get on the Diamond Star I’d chartered for a return flight to Antigua. It turned out that Guadeloupe’s airport had the best mobile signal on the island. As soon as we were there I started to receive texts and missed call messages. Most of them were from Jacint Grangel at Barcelona, Charles Rivel at PSG and Paolo Gentile, but there were one or two from Louise Considine, in London. To her I sent a text saying that I missed her and that I was looking forward to coming home: both of which were true. I’d already spoken to Jacint from the hotel, the night before.
It was a bumpy flight that had us both groaning like a couple of pensioners on Blackpool’s Big Dipper, and I was glad I’d hired a twin engine light aircraft; there’s something about having two engines instead of one that reassures me — even if they are propeller engines.
When Grace and I landed in the airport at St John’s and had recovered our nerves we said our goodbyes in the terminal.
‘I’ll see you in London,’ I told her.
She said nothing for a moment.
‘The FA? My disciplinary charge? Remember?’
‘No.’ Grace shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘What do you mean? I’m going to need your silver tongue, Grace. My own has a habit of getting me into trouble. That and my thumbs. But I’ve taken your advice and binned my Twitter account. I should have done it months ago. It’s been nothing but grief.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘the last few days — they’ve been nice, very nice, but frankly I’m going to have my hands full preparing my uncle’s defence. In spite of what I told Jérôme back in Guadeloupe, there’s still a long way to go on this one. Any optimism you might have heard from me was calculated to help you get him back to Spain for his medical. Until the DPP says that this is a case of manslaughter he’s still facing a capital charge.’
‘Yes, I had wondered about that.’
‘Before you spoke to him last night you asked me to back you up and I did. Not because I was anxious to please you, Scott, but because I don’t see that anything’s helped by him staying here. So, let’s just agree that we had a great time and leave it at that, can we? Maybe you’ll come back here to Antigua and maybe you won’t. We’ll just wait and see, okay? For the record I hope you do. But I think I told you I wasn’t looking for anything serious right now. And I meant that. I might not have mentioned this before but I’m thinking about going into politics and I don’t want anyone on the island thinking that I’m not a serious person. Which it could easily look like if I go to London to defend something as trivial as your sexist tweet.’