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"Don't think I don't know what you're doing!" she screamed. "You've been deceiving me from the start! You knew I didn't know about the quarries. You knew I'd never get a building permit. You and your brother, you've been manipulating me for months!”
By now, she was shouting, but she didn't care. The rain was getting harder. Saul was gazing at me with a strange expression.
"And all that charade about wanting to meet my boyfriend. What was that about? You knew damned well who he was the whole time. What do you think you're doing, fucking around with people's lives? What do you want from me?”
She suddenly realized she was getting more and more incoherent and stopped dead in her tracks. It struck her that they were both soaked to the skin. Saul had a jacket, but it wasn't much protection. As for her, the thin cotton shirt and trousers she wore were plastered to her body and her hair was hanging in wet ropes down her shoulders.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'll go now."
"Over here," he said, taking her arm again. "I've got the car."
He was gripping her arm like steel. She was in no state to resist. He ushered her into the BMW and closed the door. He got in the other side, but made no move to start the engine. Instead, he leaned back against the door and looked at her. The rain drummed like bullets on the roof of the car and slid like a flood down the windows.
"So, let me get this straight. I agreed to sell you the house with the intention of deceiving you, defrauding you, and, err, ripping you off, generally."
Put like that, it sounded ridiculous. She went red.
I met his eyes. His ironic tone was making me doubt myself. I strove to keep my composure.
"You were calculating that you could buy back the property for less than I paid when I found out about the quarries, or when I failed to get the building permit."
"They've refused the building permit?"
I nodded. He looked at me more closely.
"What else has been happening to you? You look terrible."
"They also say I can’t live there. It’s a safety violation until the work is done properly, which gets back to quarries and permits and nonsense.”
"There are other houses in this town," he said quite gently.
"That’s hardly the point, now, is it? I shouldn’t be having any of these problems."
He started the ignition. "Do up your seatbelt please."
"Where are we going?"
"To my house. There are things we need to talk about, and I'm tired of sitting here. I'm also tired of being wet."
He glanced in the rearview mirror and pulled out into the traffic.
"No,” she barked suddenly, attempting to get out even as the car rolled forward.
“Jo! Don’t be crazy. I’m no harm to you.”
“Paul told me he would buy the property back from me, cover my losses,” she said, abandoning her escape attempt. “I suppose that was a lie too.”
"Did he?" Saul replied, glancing at me. "What else has Paul been saying?"
"He said he would buy the building permit too."
"Jesus Christ!"
He ran a hand through his hair. It was longer than when she had first seen him. It suited him better. It was strange that she would even notice such a thing.
"Look, Jo, that building does not belong to my brother. It's not company property. It belongs to me. As you would know if you'd bothered to read the contract you signed," he added pointedly. "Paul has no say at all in who buys it, who sells it, or anything else about it."
"Oh," she replied, feeling confused and somewhat embarrassed at not having read the contract fully, especially considering the situation at hand.
For the rest of the way to his house, they did not speak. It was still pouring rain, and visibility was bad. Saul concentrated on the road. Jo thought about Paul and wondered what any of this meant. It still made no sense.
Halfway there, she began to shiver. Saul glanced at her without comment and put the heater on. She wondered, apprehensively, what they were going to talk about. She seemed to have misjudged him rather badly.
The rain did not let up. They got another soaking on the way from the car to his front door, arriving as two drowned rats. His place was enormous. A spacious hall led into a vast living room with three double windows overlooking a perfectly pedicured garden. She looked around in awe. She stood in a room bigger than the whole house he had sold her.
At each end of the room was a marble chimney piece surmounted by a vast mirror. It was the only concession to the room's nineteenth-century origins. The rest of the furnishings were decidedly modern. There were shelf units and a large octagonal dining table in some kind of dark wood, and huge white linen couches at the other end of the room. The walls were a subtle shade of grey, and the doors were painted taupe.
