Good at Games (34 page)

Suzy paid a visit to the Alpha Bar the next day, between appointments. Leo, on the phone when she was shown into his office, looked startled to see her. Baxter, who had been sprawled, half asleep under the desk, let out a yelp of welcome and scrambled to his feet. Whining with delight, he buried his head lovingly between her hands and wagged his tail so hard he almost lost his balance on the polished oak floor.

Now this is what I call a coincidence—
woof woof.
We were only parked outside your office the other night! Did you recognize my bark on the phone when he called you to stop you from making out with that other fellow? Did you realize that was me?

“What are you saying, hey? What's this all about?” cooed Suzy, delighted by the welcoming volley of barks.

Leo sent up a private prayer of thanks that she couldn't decipher what Baxter—the blabbermouth—was evidently busy telling her.

“He's wondering if you'd like to take him for a five-mile run. No, Baxter, she wouldn't, so leave it, OK?”

“Oh, darling, I'm busy. Otherwise, of course I would.” Regretfully, Suzy sat down and unwound her scarf. Smiling across at Leo—who for a completely mad moment had thought she was calling
him
darling—she went on, “It's just a short visit, but I was passing by, and I wanted to let you know I'm feeling a lot better. After the episode with the box buried in your garden,” Suzy explained, because Leo was looking mystified. “When I blubbered like a baby all over you.”

Leo nodded briefly. As if he could ever forget. “Well, I'm glad.”

“I met Merle Denison.”

“Merle? Good grief. How is she?”

Suzy ran through the events of the previous astonishing day. She told Leo all about the letters and managed not to cry once.

“So you see? All those years of feeling unloved were for nothing. A big waste of time. Poor Mum—can you imagine how she must have felt? God, when I think what she had to
go
through.”

“So everything's sorted out now,” said Leo.

“Except Lucille's disappeared.”

At the mention of Lucille's name, Baxter let out another series of yelps.

That's the one! Lucille! Where the buggering hell has she gotten to, anyway? Calls herself a dog walker and I haven't seen her for
weeks.

“I know, darling. You miss her, don't you? I do too.” Suzy gave his hairy ears a sympathetic rub. Sadly, she confided, “She's gone away and left us and it's all my fault. And it's just
killing
me not being able to say sorry.”

Leo wished she'd fondle his ears like that.

He coughed, dismissing the rogue thought, and said, “Actually, I do know where Lucille is.”

“You're kidding!” Suzy's green-gold eyes widened in astonishment. “Really? Oh God, this is so brilliant,” she squealed, “I can go and see her and grovel on my knees until she forgives me! I'll go this afternoon, the moment I finish work! Is she here in Bristol?”

“Um, not quite.” Leo was doing his level best not to smile. “She's staying in a little place called Grand Baie.”

“Grand Bay? Is that in Newcastle? Close to Whitley Bay?”

Good grief, thought Suzy, what on
earth
made Lucille trek all the way up there?

“Not quite,” said Leo. “Actually, it's in Mauritius.”

* * *

“Bloody Mauritius!” Suzy exclaimed, seizing the brochure she had picked up from the travel agent that afternoon and spreading it open on the kitchen table. “Can you believe it?”

“It's where her family is from,” Jaz pointed out reasonably. “It looks nice.”

“The jewel in the Indian Ocean, it says here! Emerald-green water…and Grand Baie is known as the Mauritian Cote d'Azur… Ha! So much for me thinking it was next door to Newcastle. I've never been to Mauritius,” Suzy said indignantly. She looked over at Jaz. “Have you ever been to Mauritius?”

“Who knows?” Jaz shrugged; in his alcohol-sodden past he had visited plenty of places he had no memory whatsoever of visiting. “Maeve? Have I ever been to Mauritius?”

“No.” Maeve's tone was consoling. “You're thinking of Tasmania.”

“Right.” Jaz broke into a grin. “Of course. Silly me.”

“It's so unfair,” Suzy wailed, bursting with frustration. “When Leo said he knew where Lucille was, I thought, Brilliant, I'll go straight there. If she'd been in Newcastle I'd have driven up to Newcastle,” she fretted. “But Mauritius…I mean, for God's sake, what's Lucille thinking about? She could hardly
get
any farther away than that! And I can't take any time off work… Dammit, all I've got is her address. There isn't even a phone number…”

“Write to her.” Maeve was ever practical. “Make photocopies of all those letters your mother wrote to Merle and send them off to Lucille with a nice letter from you.”

“They'll take ages to get there,” Suzy grumbled. “Anyway, it's not the same.”

“Maybe not.” Maeve shrugged. “But it's a start.”

“Oh, this is horrible!” Suzy banged her fist on the kitchen table. “I can't wait that long. I want Lucille to forgive me
now
.”

“Stop whining.” Jaz sighed. “You sound like a spoiled brat.”

“Veruca Salt,” Maeve said helpfully.

Suzy stared at her. “What?”

“The spoiled brat in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
. That's her name. Veruca Salt,” Maeve declared happily. “You sound just like her.”

Suzy tossed back her hair. “Oh, thanks a lot.”

Jaz was enjoying himself immensely.

“Sometimes,” he reminded Suzy, just to annoy her, “you have to sit back and be patient. Let things happen at their own pace.”

“
Ouch!
” Maeve let out a bellow of pain.

“Sorry, sorry.” Suzy sighed. “I was trying to kick Jaz.”

* * *

The fringed ends of Lucille's turquoise cotton sarong flapped in the warm breeze as she made her way along the beach. There were new beads in her hair, pink and lilac and silver ones that glittered in the sunlight and danced around her shoulders with every step she took. Reaching the water, she unfastened the sarong and let it fall onto the sand, stepping away from it and carrying on, without pausing, into the emerald-green sea.

Her golden-brown body was flawless. She was wearing a pale blue bikini. Within seconds she was swimming, heading for the diving raft moored a hundred or so feet out in the middle of the bay.

Jaz retreated behind his dark glasses once more and took a swig of iced mineral water from the bottle in his hand. Reaching Grand Baie last night, he had checked into one of the five-star hotels overlooking the ocean and had been tempted to go searching for Lucille right away.

But it had been midnight, and the flight from Heathrow had lasted twelve hours. Absolutely exhausted, and aware that he might not be looking his best, Jaz had reluctantly changed his mind and crashed in his room instead.

This morning, following a long cool shower and a change into clean clothes, he had set out with butterflies in his stomach and a terrifying amount of hope in his heart to track Lucille down at the address she had given Leo.

She was out, he discovered, when he arrived at the tiny rented room above a souvenir shop in one of the village's dusty backstreets. The white-haired Mauritian woman who ran the shop told him he'd missed Lucille by ten minutes but to try the beach.

So he had.

And he'd found her, spotted her almost at once. Although, as yet, she hadn't seen him.

It was hot, up in the mideighties already, and Jaz was still dehydrated from the flight.

Not to mention nervous. He had, after all, set himself up here in pretty spectacular fashion. Let's face it—it could go horribly wrong.

He really hoped not, but it might. That was the trouble with women; you never knew what the hell they were likely to do next.

Making his way over to the nearest beachfront bar, Jaz ordered another mineral water and sat gazing out to sea, watching Lucille in the distance, diving from the wooden platform and splashing around in the sparkling azure water like a playful dolphin.

Shit
, thought Jaz,
I still don't even know what I'm going to
say
.

I need words. The right words.

Can't
think
of any.

At the other side of the bar, two girls in matching parrot-pink bikinis giggled and nudged each other. It was, it was Jaz Dreyfuss. His blond hair was shorter, but it was definitely him. And his lips were moving; he was actually talking to himself—that was what years of excessive drinking did for you, ended up shriveling your brain.

Jaz, not even aware that the two girls were watching him, tried to imagine saying casually, “Lucille, hi, fancy bumping into you here.”

Ugh.

Or maybe, jokingly, “D'you come here often?”

Jesus.
Awful.
He shook his head in disgust. Why did this have to happen to him now? He was never usually at a loss for words.

Ha! If only Suzy could see me now. She'd never let me live this down.

“Drugs,” one of the girls whispered to the other. “See how twitchy he is? He's only drinking water because he's high as a kite on drugs.”

“Ah, it's a shame; he'd be really good-looking if only he didn't twitch so much.”

“Yeah. Still, wonder if he'd like to buy us a drink?”

Dry-mouthed and oblivious to the attention he was receiving, Jaz watched Lucille swim effortlessly back to the shore and emerge sleek and glistening from the water. Reaching for her turquoise sarong, she shook it out, spread it on the dry sand, then sat down on it and lay back in order to enjoy the sun.

Now what?

Go over to her.

I can't, I just can't.

Don't be such an idiot. Get over there. You've come all this way… What's the worst that could happen?

You mean apart from her telling me to piss off?

“He's out of it. Completely out of it,” hissed the first girl, slurping the last of her drink up through the straw and making a noise like a gurgling drain.

“Hang on, he's moving… He's standing up… Aaargh, I think he's coming over… Don't look, don't look…”

“Excuse me,” said Jaz, and the two girls swung their blond heads around in unison and apparent surprise, grinning and chorusing, “Yes?”

But Jaz, humiliatingly, wasn't addressing them. Instead, leaning across the bar and pointing, he said to the bartender, “Could I borrow that?”

The bartender, who was Mauritian and didn't recognize Jaz, shot him a deeply suspicious look. “My guitar? You want to borrow my guitar?”

In the evenings he did Elvis impersonations for the tourists. It bumped up his tips—and his appeal—no end.

“Could I?” Jaz asked politely. “Would you mind?”

“I don't know.” The bartender hesitated, sounding doubtful.

Swiftly, Jaz reached into his wallet. Having only arrived last night, he couldn't remember for the life of him how many rupees there were to the pound. Waving a handful of five-hundred-rupee notes, he said, “Just for a few minutes? Please?”

The bartender pocketed the notes before the gullible tourist came to his senses and managed to figure out just how much money he'd handed over—basically, enough to buy a dozen new guitars
and
a boat—and said, “Don't damage it, OK?”

“I won't,” promised Jaz.

That is, unless Lucille used it to batter him senseless.

“Oh Jesus, the guy's a complete fruitcake,” hissed the second blond. “He's actually going to try to play us a
song
.”

Lucille, her eyes closed, listened to the ultrasoft
slap-slap
of the waves breaking on the shore. Flexing her bare feet, she felt the silver-white sand, as fine as powdered sugar, sift between her toes. In the distance she could hear children playing, and farther along the beach a family was enthusiastically engaged in a game of volleyball. As the sunlight played on her eyelids, Lucille listened to the insect-like buzz of a monoplane flying overhead. Out to sea, a couple of Jet Skis began to rev up. And somebody behind her had switched on a radio…

Every tiny hair on the back of Lucille's neck prickled to attention as she recognized the song being played…or, more accurately, the bare bones of a song she knew almost as well as she knew her own name.

I need to let you know

I can't let you go

You leave me with no alternative…

Oh my God, my God
, thought Lucille, beginning to tremble uncontrollably. It was just a voice and a guitar. Jaz's voice. So he'd gone ahead and recorded the song after all. Without her.

You see it's our affair

And I can't bear to share

Your love—yours to take and mine to give

Because I'd die, I'd die, I'd die for you

If you asked me to

You're my angel, my miracle, my reason to live…

Slowly, slowly, Lucille sat up. Who was she trying to kid?

There was no radio playing behind her.

She turned and gazed over her shoulder, following the direction of the music, until she traced it to the tiny circular beachfront bar with its palm-leaf roof underlit by fairy lights and two of its bar stools occupied by an apparently matching pair of blonds in bright pink bikinis.

And there, sitting at the far end of the bar, was Jaz. He was wearing a crumpled white shirt and his favorite pair of battered old Levi's, and Lucille's heart flipped over like a pancake at the sight of him. No matter how hard she'd tried, she hadn't been able to stop herself thinking about Jaz. And now, like some stupendous miracle, he was actually here.

The next moment her stomach contracted with fear as it occurred to her that one of the bar stool blonds could be Celeste.

It took ten seconds of concentrated squinting before Lucille was able to relax, having convinced herself that it was OK, neither of them were Celeste. Not unless Celeste had spent the last week and a half getting hair extensions, tattoos engraved around her belly button, and a mega boob job.

* * *

Barely able to breathe, let alone sing, Jaz watched Lucille head toward him. The guitar wasn't great, but it was adequate, and anyway his fingers knew the chords by heart.

As Lucille moved closer she joined in, her voice husky and hesitant at first, then gaining in confidence as Jaz reprised the chorus. Then, at the other end of the bar, he heard a girl's voice complain loudly. “So how come she knows the words? I've never heard that song before in my life.”

Breaking off abruptly, Jaz slid off his bar stool, passed the guitar back to the bartender and—when she reached him—took Lucille's hand.

When they were out of earshot, Lucille said, somewhat shakily, “Bit of a way to come, isn't it, just to play one gig?”

“I'm particular about my audience.” Jaz couldn't help it; he reached out and touched her cheek. She really did have the most flawless complexion in the—

“Don't.” Lucille flinched away. “You mustn't. Just because we're here. It's still not fair.”

“Celeste's gone.” Jaz felt the corners of his mouth begin to twitch uncontrollably. It was no good; every time he thought about it, he wanted to laugh. “She ran off with Harry.”

Lucille's eyes widened in amazement.

“You mean…
Suzy's
Harry?”

“It's a luurve thing, apparently. They couldn't help themselves. Suzy's furious because it's left her looking like a jilted fiancée. Oh, and Celeste never was an alcoholic—it was just her way of getting to know me. And a lady named Merle Denison came looking for you. She spoke to Suzy and cleared up all manner of problems. I've got a letter here for you, by the way. From Suzy.” Digging in his back pocket as he spoke, Jaz rattled on nervously, “So anyway, she's
much
happier now, and she'll be happier still when you forgive her for being such a belligerent, jealous cow.”

“Crikey,” said Lucille when he finally paused for breath. “Did I just climb out of a Badedas bath?”

Jaz smiled. “I know. A lot's happened. Here's the letter from Suzy.”

He handed over the crumpled emerald-green envelope. Lucille gazed at it, then at him. “You came all this way to deliver a letter?”

“I've felt pretty mean, to tell you the truth. Suzy's been blaming herself for your disappearing act. She thinks it's all her fault.” Tilting his head to one side, Jaz realized he had to stop wondering what on earth he was going to say, and just go for it. “You shouldn't have run away, you know. What happened between us was never meant to be a one-night stand. I loved you…I
love
you,” he persisted, his voice beginning to break. “And OK, I didn't know how I was going to end it with Celeste, but that's all over now, I don't have to worry about her anymore. There's nothing to stop us being together. You and me. I mean it, Lucille…don't look at me like that, I'm
serious
.”

He was, he really was. A lump the size of a table tennis ball sprang into Lucille's throat, because Jaz was always laughing, joking, and teasing those around him. The one thing he could never be accused of was being serious.

God, what a mess. It meant so much to hear him say it, but she still couldn't let it happen. Oh well, may as well be honest. He'd come a long way. The least she could do was tell him the truth. “Suzy would never forgive me.”

Jaz looked astonished. “
Forgive
you? What for?”

“You…and me,” faltered Lucille.

“I'm sorry. I don't get this at all. Why not?”

God, talk about embarrassing. Unhappily, Lucille shrugged and mumbled, “She just wouldn't, OK? She'd absolutely hate it.”

“This,” Jaz declared, “is complete nonsense. Either that”—his dark eyes narrowed—“or a last-ditch excuse.”

How could he think that? “It's true!” Lucille blurted out. “She
told
me.”

“Right.” Jaz yanked his phone out of his shirt pocket and dialed a number. “We'll just see about that, shall we?”

“Oh God,” wailed Lucille, “you can't call her! This is
sooo
embarrassing.”

“Not nearly as embarrassing as flying halfway around the world to ask someone to marry you,” said Jaz, “and being turned down flat.”

Lucille gasped. “You haven't asked me to marry you!”

“Only because you haven't given me the chance… Hello? Suzy? Hi, it's me. Listen, I've got something I need to ask you.”

In Bristol, Suzy shouted, “Jaz, where the bloody hell are you? Have you any
idea
how worried we've been? Are you drunk? Did you go out on a bender? Have you been arrested? Jesus, I've been going out of my mind… Are you calling from a police cell?”

“Hang on, calm down. Stop yelling at me,” protested Jaz. “Of course I haven't been drinking. What on earth made you think that?”

“You said you were off to an AA meeting,” Suzy bellowed at him, “and you offered to drop my letter to Lucille into the mailbox on your way there. Except that was two days ago and there hasn't been a word from you since. So what I'd like to know is what the fuck do you think you're
playing
at?”

“Relax, I'm fine. Now listen,” said Jaz, winking at Lucille and realizing that he no longer had to worry. “If I told you I was in love with another girl, would you be jealous?”

“What?” spluttered Suzy. “Jealous? Jesus, why would I want to be jealous?” Suspiciously, she added, “Are you sure you're not drunk?”

“Absolutely sober, I promise. Now, how would you feel if I told you the girl I was in love with was your sister?”

Suzy's screech nearly perforated his eardrum. “JULIA? NO! NO, NO, NO. This has to be a JOKE. You can't POSSIBLY BE IN LOVE WITH JULIA!”

Calmly, Jaz said, “Other sister.”

“Lucille? You…and Lucille…?” Suzy sounded dazed.

“Would you be furious?”

“I don't get it. Furious about what? Jaz, is this some kind of joke? Are you really in love with Lucille?”

“If you hate the idea,” Jaz said gravely, “I'll forget all about it.” Ha!
As if.
“Won't even mention it to her. I'd hate to be the cause of trouble between you and Lucille.”

“Jaz, are you mad? I'd love it if you two got together! God, that'd be so fantastic.”

She'd
love
it, Jaz mouthed at Lucille.
Fantastic.

“So you wouldn't mind,” he double-checked with Suzy, “if I asked her to marry me?”

“OF COURSE I WOULDN'T MIND, YOU BIG IDIOT,” Suzy roared in exasperation.

“And you'll tell Lucille that?”

“I promise.” With exaggerated patience, Suzy said, “As soon as she gets back from Mauritius,
if
we ever get her back from Mauritius. I'll tell her the very instant she steps off the plane.”

“I'm sorry, I can't wait that long. Here.” Smiling at Lucille, Jaz slid his free arm around her bare waist, pulling her toward him. “Tell her now.”