“Ah. Yes. In Italian also we have this.”
Then there was a little silence between them. He had seemed pleased to receive her call. She was doing her part, wasn’t she, to encourage him? Or at least not to inadvertently discourage him. She wondered what he was doing, as they spoke. She knew he had found a room not far from Dagenham East station, where his landlady in a B & B served him the full English every morning, but that was all she knew about his accommodation. She also knew that he boarded the train each day and spent that day attending his English classes as well as getting out and about in London. But that was it. She could picture him taking his meals alone, but then she wondered why he would be alone. He was an affable bloke. He wanted to learn. He would know he couldn’t learn by maintaining himself in some kind of isolation. He was practising his language skills somewhere. Perhaps that was what he’d been doing when she rang him and at this very moment his impatient language partner was sitting across from him waiting to carry on as they had been doing moments before she’d rung him. And then there was the question of what carrying on actually might mean, no matter the language being practised.
She mentally slapped herself across the face. Bloody hell. Just thank the man, for God’s sake.
She said, “Actually, I was ringing to thank you for the flowers. Dead unnecessary that, but thank you all the same. And to reply, more or less, to the note. I agree, Salvatore. We ought to meet. I could do dinner. Not here. I mean, a restaurant. Should I dig up a place? Not Italian, of course. I wouldn’t do Italian. But Indian’s easy if one likes curry. It’s on me, by the way, as you paid last time.”
His reply caught her entirely by surprise. “Flowers?”
“Late this morning was when they came. Brave of you to send them to the Yard and all that. They could’ve been munched by some X-ray machine going through security. Anyway, thanks. I’ve brought them home and they cheer the place up.”
“Ah. Yes,” he said.
“You’ve not seen my digs but, you c’n trust me, they’re in bloody desperate need of cheering, they are.”
“I am happy, then,” he said. But he sounded off.
There seemed to Barbara only one reason for this. She said, “I’ve rung you at a bad time, right? There’s someone with—”
“No, no. I am quite alone. I’ve had dinner nearby and am doing a walk.” He cleared his throat. “It has done hot, this month? This was what I did not expect. I always thinked . . . no, thought, yes, thought the English have very bad weather. But this is similar to Lucca in summer.”
“Without Lucca’s atmosphere,” she said.
“True,” he said. “This is very true.” And then, in a rather hesitant voice, “Barbara, to me it is pleasing to dine with you. But it would not be right if I let you—”
“No arguing, Salvatore. I am treating you.”
“This means . . . ?”
“I’m paying and you’re not arguing.”
“Yes, I understand. But I must not—”
“Don’t be bloody-minded about this. It’s probably not the Italian way, but it’s my way.”
“It is the flowers,” he said.
Which was when the penny dropped. Or perhaps, better said, it was when the anvil dropped. On her head. Barbara said, “Oh.”
Salvatore’s reply was gallant. “It would not be proper for me to take credit for such a gesture. You have another admirer who has sent you flowers.”
She felt a bloody stupid fool. She wanted to sink straight through the floor and keep going till she hit the centre of the earth. She managed to say with a laugh, “Good Lord. Another? They’re beginning to come out of the woodwork, they are.”
He picked up on this as a gentleman would do. “You must take care, then. Soon you will be covered in flowers.”
“Which’ll wreak bloody havoc with my allergies.”
They laughed together. Barbara kept up the pretence for another very long minute. For his part Salvatore seemed to do the same.
BRIXTON
SOUTH LONDON
When Winston Nkata arrived at Loughborough Estate, he sat in his car for some ten minutes, adjusting the seat to recline a bit, using the headrest, and closing his eyes. He was dead knackered. Who, he thought, would’ve predicted that watching footage from a plethora of CCTV cameras would have affected him in such a way that it seemed his head was splitting in two? In other circumstances, what he would do was swallow two paracetamol tablets and wait for relief and hope it would come quickly. In other circumstances, he would have retreated to his bedroom and sunk directly onto the mattress with his head embedded in the pillow. He might have joined his parents for dinner later. He might not have joined his parents at all. However, aside from being free to swallow as many tablets as he liked, he could do none of this. He had no bedroom at the moment, and having brought her to his parents’ home, he couldn’t avoid seeing to Monifa. All he had was these few minutes, and he would take advantage of them.