Seven
April 20th
Ellis bank balance: ￡28,467.12
With the furniture heaped into the centre of Alex’s bedroom, the ugly reality of the walls was exposed, reminding Mark of his childhood bedroom. A wardrobe had been hiding a foot-wide section of wall so pockmarked it looked as if someone had painted over bubble wrap. Mark scratched at the patch with a fingernail: a shower of paint fluttered to the floor. He surveyed his tools – mostly borrowed from David – the neighbour’s advice ringing in his ears. ‘Don’t scrimp on the prep, lad. Get rid of the old before you start with the new.’
Mark picked up a stiff bristled broom he’d found by the pool and swept it across the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut, coughed, and spat out flecks of debris, then shook his head, sending a white dandruff-like cloud round the room. Mark gripped the brush, closed his eyes, held his breath, and ran it up and down the wall, snorting as dust filled his nostrils. He half-opened his eyes. The grey floor tiles were speckled with flakes of paint, and a sooty cloud hung like a mist from the ceiling. He put a finger on his tongue, scraped off a fleck of paint, then swept a hand over the wall; most of the paint was gone. Surely that was enough.
He levered open a can of paint, poured a generous slug into the orange plastic tray David had lent him, picked up the roller brush, sweeping it back and forth in the paint until the sleeve was full and, dripping splashes of magnolia, advanced on the wall.
The following morning, Mark was crouched over, his backside sticking up, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He shifted his tennis racket to a backhand grip, and scuttled sideways, crab-like. The ball sailed past in a flash of yellow.
There was a shout from the other side of the net. ‘Turn your feet into position first, then move.’
Mark grunted, clenching the handle. This Tim man seemed to be playing to win. Why serve an ace at your pupil? Mark lined up a ball against the side of his shoe and swept it up with his racket, stuffing it into the pocket of his shorts.
‘Is this all you do?’ he asked.
Tim stopped at the service line. ‘I help out at the bar, but yeah, mostly I train.’
‘Can you earn enough teaching tennis?’
‘I live at home. I only need money for fun.’
‘Don’t you want to get married, have kids?’
‘Not yet.’
‘But what about when you do? Shouldn’t you be saving for a deposit on a house?’
The sound of laughter floated across the net. ‘You sound like my mother. If I come into some money, I’d like to buy a house, but there are plenty of rich girls to shack up with.’
They rallied for another sweaty thirty minutes, their conversation reduced to grunts and groans, then Tim led the way to the elevated platform of the clubhouse overlooking the tennis courts, and beyond those, to the track leading up to Villa Anna. A woman sat at a table under a sunshade. When they got closer, the woman pushed her sunglasses into her short bleach-blonde hair, then stood up, putting a hand on Tim’s arm, fluttering her eyelashes at Mark. She was average height with a smiley, rounded face and high cheekbones, dressed in faded cropped jeans and a tight blue T-shirt. Her tanned limbs contrasted with the pale clothes. She wore sun-washed pink trainers and a gold chain around her ankle. Mark guessed she was in her late twenties.
‘Coffee, guys?’
Tim arched an eyebrow at Mark.
‘Espresso,’ Mark said, tucking his racket inside its case, and hanging it on the back of a chair. He took a towel from his sports bag and wiped his face and arms. ‘I’m not used to this heat!’ He scrubbed the sweat from the back of his neck. ‘Is that your girlfriend? She’s very attractive.’
Tim sniggered. ‘Gorgeous, isn’t she? Let’s say, my sometimes girlfriend. Fran is huge fun, but she’s not known locally as the limpet without good reason. Enjoy your espresso. Gotta go. Next pupil.’
Fran brought his coffee, and Mark sat listening to the pop of tennis balls punctuated by occasional clinks as one hit the fencing. This expat life was glorious. No one knew why he and Emily were here; he wasn’t going to invite his son’s sarcastic barbs, nor suffer jibes from Emily’s uber-rich friends, some of whom paid more tax each year than he was trying to save! He missed seeing his mother, but he would persuade her to visit. This was going to work. After five years they could go home, and he’d pick up his career and Emily her social life, their marriage rejuvenated.
Mark closed his eyes and let the hot sun soak into his skin, relishing the prickles of sweat on his forehead. Fingers massaged his shoulders and he straightened, opening his eyes to find Fran smiling down at him.
‘Does that feel good?’ she asked in a husky voice.
‘But not right,’ Mark said firmly.
It was a long time ago, but Mark had strayed. Early in their marriage, he’d been seconded to the New York office for two months. The bank was advising an American client on a hostile takeover of a London listed company, and Mark was the expert on the intricacies of the Blue Book of Takeover Rules , on hand in the client’s time zone. He and Emily parted badly, rowing for weeks before he left. Mark felt rejected, claiming Emily was allowing a toddler to alter their relationship. The affair with the young American lawyer advising on the same deal had been exhilarating, spurred on by the adrenaline from the takeover battle.
On returning to London, fizzing with the combination of victory and illicit sex, he regretted putting his marriage at risk and ended the affair, resolving to live with his guilty secret. His lover wasn’t easy to shake off though, and one evening, while Mark was in the shower, Emily answered his phone. She was angry but forgave him. Mark still lived with the lingering fear that, one day, he might do something that would cause her to seek solace elsewhere. Especially now. Now that he was failing to deliver the tsunami of money she was accustomed to, would she too seek revenge for a past slight?
Mark returned to the villa with a confident swagger. He turned into his driveway and stopped. A black chain was blocking his way. He spun around, searching for a culprit. David was sitting in a deckchair running a tape measure over a length of wood. Mark could hear a strimmer in Tommy’s garden, and a yapping dog from his own.
‘David?’
The older man plucked a pencil from behind his ear. ‘Yo!’ he called out, marking the piece of wood.
‘Do you know anything about this chain?’ asked Mark, stepping briskly over the knee-high obstacle.
There was a guffaw of laughter. ‘Ask Tommy.’
‘Seriously?’ Mark felt his neck tighten. ‘We were only round there for drinks last night!’
‘Seriously.’ David nodded.
‘Right, we’ll see about this.’
He marched through Tommy’s open gates. His neighbour, in shorts and T-shirt, was waving a strimmer underneath a fig tree. Mark could see Tosca darting up and down the fence line, growling and barking as she ran.
‘Tommy . . . Tommy !’
The roar of the strimmer stopped. Tommy spun round.
‘A word,’ spat Mark.
Tommy put down the tool and removed his orange protective goggles.
‘Did you put that chain across my drive?’ demanded Mark, trying to keep his voice calm.
‘Might have.’ There was a sly expression on Tommy’s face.
‘Why?’
‘To show you what it’s like to be inconvenienced. Stop the bloody dogs barking, and it won’t happen again.’
Mark was incredulous. ‘Don’t be silly, man. The dogs don’t bark unless there’s something to bark at.’ He took a few breaths, felt his heartrate slow, then said, ‘Now let’s be reasonable men. I won’t say anything more about this if you promise me that’s the end of it. You’ve made your point.’
‘When the dogs are not barking, I’m a very reasonable man.’ Tommy grinned.
Mark raised his voice before he could stop himself. ‘Oh, grow up.’
‘No, you grow up,’ snarled Tommy, squaring up to him.
Through the haze of fury, Mark heard two female voices. Toni’s mop of curls danced as she ran towards her husband. ‘Tommy, inside this instant,’ she said, as Mark’s ears tuned in to Emily: ‘Mark, a word, please. Now!’
Later, a breeze blowing through his open office window, still bristling from the encounter with Tommy, Mark logged onto the banking portal. Setup costs – including fifteen thousand euros to inject the damp walls – had taken its toll. He looked at his cashflow projections and gulped; Mark hadn’t been overdrawn since he was a student, but with a run rate of ten thousand a month, the Ellis buffer was a bit shaky. They needed London bookings; each night netted four thousand. Three nights, and the couple would be cashflow positive even before his noddy fees. Three paltry nights a month was hardly a punchy sales target. Mark massaged the London income and watched the bottom-line switch from red to a reassuring black. Reminding himself that the estate agents were confident both houses would soon be under offer, he opened a different spreadsheet.
Being a tax exile was proving challenging, and the paperwork was astonishing. Today’s struggle was to compress work and social commitments into ninety days. Anyone can be in the UK for ninety days without being liable for UK tax; if either Mark or Emily exceeded their personal 90-day limit, it would catapult them both back into the UK tax system. Records had to be kept, every trip home documented, which was ironic; as tax exiles, they would be completing time sheets like a jobbing worker. He played around with assumptions, cracked the problem, and went in search of Emily.
Outside, Mark shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. He spotted Emily sunbathing on the lower terrace and trotted down the steps, catching a blast of the sweet coconut smell of sun lotion; this was a holiday for her, really, he thought. It was a small house, and they mostly lived outside, so there wasn’t much housework.
Emily lowered her book and said sarcastically, ‘Come to apologize?’
Mark loosened his tie. ‘The man is a menace.’ He felt his chest tighten. ‘And if I see that chain again ...’
‘Enough!’ said Emily. ‘Why not take a swim, cool off?’
He wasn’t tempted, too much to do.
She waved her phone at him. ‘Alex has met someone in Sagres and wants to bring her to stay. He needs to hire a car, or you could arrange for them to be collected?’
An image of their cashflow swam before his eyes. ‘Why can’t they hitch?’
She swatted a hand at him. ‘Don’t be so cheap. We can’t be that poor yet, surely?’
He perched on the end of her lounger, his back to the sun. ‘Alex isn’t a child. He can pay for himself.’
Emily pouted. ‘He can’t. He has no money, and I don’t like him hitching.’ Her voice softened. ‘Come on, it’s not fair to expect him to change overnight, this isn’t his fault!’
‘Until we sell the houses—’
She cut across him, sitting up and jabbing a finger in his face. ‘Oh, do shut up. I’ve come out here, haven’t I? I’m doing my bit. Who cleaned the pool this morning?’ She swung an arm at the washing line strung between two carob trees. ‘Who did the laundry? Alex has no idea you’ve got money problems, so unless you’re ready to confess that you’ve been sacked, you should thank me for keeping your sordid secret and running this house.’
His shoulders sagged, his stomach clenched, and he closed his eyes to ward off the memory of that humiliating morning three months ago.
‘All right.’
He was rewarded with a smile. ‘Thank you.’
Mark handed Emily the template he’d brought out, designed to record all trips home. He ran his fingers through his hair. How direct should he be? He needed her buy-in before she ate too far into her allowable ninety days, but his wife had been livid when the restriction was first explained, claiming he had hoodwinked her.
‘I think I’ve managed to squash everything into fifty days.’
Emily dropped the timesheet, sat up, and glared at him over the rim of her sunglasses. ‘You told me it was ninety!’
Mark raised his hands in surrender and spoke softly. ‘Stop! It’s a total of ninety days. You get ninety, I get ninety, but they don’t have to be the same days. I need forty – the maximum I’m allowed to work there as a non-UK taxpayer – for business. I’m sure you’ll use a different forty to see your girlfriends, and hairstylist, and whatever else you do in London.’
Forty days each for solo trips, that was the best part of three months apart, a gradual reacquaintance rather than a shotgun remarriage. ‘So, that leaves fifty for our joint social life in the UK,’ he explained.
She lay down, sliding her sunglasses back up her nose with a finger.
‘So, our joint social life ... we’ll ...’ He glanced up. Emily was scratching an arm as he tailed off. ‘... want to go back for Christmas ...’
‘These wretched mosquito bites really itch.’ He watched her rake her fingernails across her skin, leaving red weals along her arm. ‘Gosh they’re sore as well as itchy now,’ she moaned.
‘Well, stop scratching!’ he snapped.
She let her arms fall. Mark bit his lip to stop himself laughing at the sight of his wife pinning her arms to her side. He fixed his eyes on her. ‘The numbers balance if we head back on a ferry mid-November.’
‘Have you finished painting Alex’s bedroom? He didn’t say anything last time, but we can’t have his new girlfriend sleeping in there with peeling paint.’
He stood up, offering her a hand. ‘Step this way, madame. I did it yesterday.’
She pulled a face. ‘In one day?’
Mark trotted up the stairs, Emily at his heels, a dog in her wake. He opened the door to Alex’s bedroom, letting out a strong smell of paint. Emily pushed Mark away playfully. He propped himself against the doorway watching her back.
‘Mark,’ she said, a note of concern in her voice.
‘Yes.’
‘You did sand down before you painted?’
‘Sand?’
She turned to face him. ‘Yes, you’re supposed to sand off the old paint, fill any holes, let that dry and then sand again ...’ She pulled a face, waving a hand at the wall. ‘Otherwise, the new paint just flakes off.’
Emily picked up Tosca, hugging the dog to her chest and dropping a kiss on each ear. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she said, brushing past him. ‘Come on, my precious. Let’s get you a nice meal.’
Mark couldn’t bring himself to look at the walls. He groaned and shut the door.