She huffed again. ‘He had his reasons for not making it to the restaurant on the first occasion,’ she said. ‘Layla and I agreed that they sounded plausible, if not particularly indicative of technological competence.’
‘So I understand. From Layla.’ I wanted her to know that my daughter and I shared information in a grown-up fashion, unlike certain people I could mention.
‘I didn’t tell you at the time,’ she said. I could tell from her voice that she had turned to face me. ‘Because if you recall,we’d had a little falling out. And you had specifically accused me of dating “unsuitable” and “mediocre” men – if I remember correctly.’
‘I had.’
‘And I was concerned that you may have felt that Roger fell into one of those camps, possibly both.’
‘Yes. A reasonable assumption,’ I said, flicking on the windscreen wipers to combat the sleety rain. ‘But he turned out to be a good egg after all?’
There was a period of silence broken only by the wipers thudding across the windscreen.
‘Well, the thing is,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m not really sure.’
‘How so?’ Jesus, it was like pulling teeth.
‘I decided it was worth giving him a second chance. If you remember, we’d gotten along famously online, prior to his non-attendance at Estrella’s, and he was terribly apologetic about that. And once he got back in touch, we were back to messaging each other just as we had in November and he mentioned that he was heading back over to Spain for the New Year because he has a little villa out there. In a place called Nerja. It looked delightful in the photos he sent.’
‘Mum,’ I said, feeling a sense of impending doom. ‘You didn’t send him any money, did you?’
‘No! Heavens, Harriet. What sort of fool do you take me for. Of course I didn’t send him any money!’
I breathed out a huge sigh of relief. ‘Okay. Carry on.’
‘Anyway,’ she said crossly. ‘He invited me out there for a few days.Escape the winter, is what he said. Plenty of room for me to stay. No need to share beds and what have you, unless all parties agreed.’
‘All parties?’ I said, imagining some sort of pensioner orgy – Roger’s villa as the Playboy mansion. ‘Were there other people invited? Other women?’
‘No other women, no. But it turns out that two of his friends were due to arrive the next day. Business associates, he described them as.’
‘Staying in the same villa? Odd that he didn’t mention it earlier?’
‘Yes. Quite. Anyway, he paid for my flight, British Airways, Business Class.’
‘Ooh. Nice.’
‘Yes, the outbound journey was quite the treat. Shame I had to go budget for the flight back but there we are. Anyway, he met me at the airport with a bunch of flowers.’
‘Gosh, okay.’ I had been totally assuming that the punchline to this story was that Roger the Dodger had indeed dodged my mother for a second time and simply not turned up to the airport, but it seemed I was wrong. ‘Go on.’
‘And he had his driver collect us. All very gallant, took my luggage, held open all the doors for me, bottle of Cava on ice and two champagne flutes good to go…’ I could tell from her tone that she was warming to the story now, enjoying the suspense.
‘But…’
I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye. ‘But… Something felt off.’
‘Somethingfelloff?!’ I said. ‘Fell off him?’ The mind boggled.
‘No,’ she said with forced patience. ‘Somethingfeltoff.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, he was wearingterrible loafersfor one thing.’
‘Right.’
‘And a cravat. It’s only con men who wear cravats and loafers in my experience Harriet.’
