The Spanish Promise Page 14

  ‘Thank you,’ she said briskly, snapping back to attention and holding her hand out for it.

  She waited until he was gone before opening it, but she already knew what it was: the offer and contract terms from Mateo Mendoza’s office. She read through it all: proof of identity forms, terms and clauses, non-disclosure agreements, all of which, if she accepted, Marina would be obliged to sign on the spot.

  She sat back in her chair, staring at the offer and musing upon it. Ten million euros was the kind of sum that would be life-changing for Marina, even though it wasn’t remotely within the parameters Mateo’s father had outlined for her and which possibly she had originally been aiming for. But ten million euros? Depending on how she chose to live, she could afford never to work again, to buy a place, travel . . . It was enough money to play with but not so much as to be dangerous; she could still keep her identity with a number of this size. It wouldn’t swallow her up and define her as it did to so many of her clients, like Lucy Santos for instance. As far as Charlotte was concerned, this offer would be the best thing that could ever happen to Marina Quincy but would she see that, or would her ambition render her blind to Charlotte’s persuasions? Would she see that the Mendozas were trying to buy her off cheaply?

  Her phone rang and she picked it up on the second ring. ‘Charlotte Fairfax.’

  ‘Charlotte? It’s Katerina.’

  ‘Kat, hi. I was literally about to call you!’

  ‘Well I saw your office had called and I didn’t want to miss you. I know how quickly you come and go from places.’

  ‘Sadly true. How are you?’

  ‘Very well, darling. It is a lovely surprise to hear from you.’

  ‘I know, it’s been – what? Two years?’

  ‘More like five.’

  ‘Five? Really?’ Charlotte tutted. ‘God, where did that go?’ But they both knew.

  Katerina laughed, her voice husky from a lifetime of cigarettes and rioja. Everything about her was flamboyant – her hair, her wardrobe, her zest for living. ‘Tell me, how have you been?’

  ‘Oh, you know – busy. Travelling a lot, here, there, everywhere.’

  ‘Yes, I have heard you are much in demand these days. Your name has come up at some dinners recently.’

  ‘Oh? Should my ears be burning?’

  ‘Always!’ Katerina laughed. ‘It is only good things of course.’ The circles Katerina moved in were richly bohemian in mix and her dinner parties were legendary, placing ambassadors next to burlesque dancers, next to teachers . . . Charlotte’s father had known her before he met her mother, back when he was a jet-setting bachelor, and Charlotte had often suspected they had been more than friends, at least for a while. She suspected her mother sensed it too, for she had always disapproved of what she called Katerina’s ‘high spirits’ and had firmly vetoed her father’s suggestion that she be Charlotte’s godmother. ‘I’m so sorry I cannot make your wedding next week. But tell me, what happened to the handsome devil that was your first husband?’

  ‘Oh, I’m afraid we divorced a long time ago.’

  ‘But, darling, why? He was the most beautiful creature I ever saw.’

  ‘Good looks were about all he had going for him.’

  ‘Tch, looks are underrated, if you ask me. All everyone seems to care about these days is personality and sense of humour. A man that makes you melt, now that’s where real happiness lies.’ She cackled away; her love of good-looking younger men unabashed and well documented. ‘Besides, I was still hoping you might convince him to sit for my students.’

  As well as heading up the Neo-Classical Art division at the Prado, Katerina also ran small but very highly regarded life-drawing classes in the loft of her sprawling home; and it was almost impossible to get in – Katerina’s policy was one out, one in, prompting people to remark in only half-joking tones that they’d happily kill for a place.

  Charlotte cracked a smile at the thought of the wayward Rt Hon. Julian Fairfax sitting for her – not because of the stripping off, he was wildly uninhibited, but of him sitting motionless for three hours. Three minutes would be their lot. ‘I’d let that one go,’ she grinned. ‘Unless perhaps you gave him a sedative first.’

  ‘Don’t put it past me, darling.’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘Actually, it’s your classes I wanted to talk to you about. I have a client who’s new to Madrid and she’s really struggling. I’m keen to get her back into painting again, it was her great passion but she gave up for the sake of her husband’s career; I think it would really help give her some focus and get her in with some like-minded souls.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Katerina murmured, knowing exactly where she was going with it.

  ‘I know it’s a total long shot, but I don’t suppose you’ve any spaces?’

  ‘Ha! As if! My God. Picasso himself would have to wait.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was a half-pause and then a sigh as though she was acting against her better instincts. ‘But for you, darling, anything. You know what your father was to me. I would deny him – and you – nothing. Tell her to come to the studio the day after tomorrow, eight o’clock.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great! Thank you, Kat, you are wonderful. Is it still the same address?’

  ‘Of course. And will you come too? Let’s have dinner after!’

  ‘I’ll be back in London by then. Ma’s working herself up into a frenzy for the final wedding prep so I need to be around.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Katerina said lightly. There was no love lost between the two women, though they kept a civil face on it. ‘Well listen, if you have time for lunch, drinks, coffee, whatever you can manage, call me. I’m dying to see you and hear your news properly.’

  ‘Well, I’m here on a priority project so I’m rather at the beck and call of the client at the moment but if I possibly can, you know I will.’

  ‘I know you will, darling.’

  Charlotte remembered something suddenly, something which had completely slipped her mind earlier. ‘Oh and by the way, before I forget – there was something else I wondered if you could help me with.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I saw a painting in the French Art gallery today. A small oil by Chardin. I wondered if you could find out anything about it – like how it came to be with you? Who sold it and when?’

  ‘I can certainly try. What is the name of the painting?’

  ‘Basket of Wild Strawberries.’

  ‘Okay. Is it important?’

  Charlotte bit her lip, holding her voice firm. ‘Only to me.’

  Chapter Ten

  Marina wasn’t at the apartment but Charlotte found her anyway, by chance, forty minutes later as she was walking towards the address supplied by Mateo’s report. She would have walked straight past the lavateria had it not been for the shouts inside. A man and woman were arguing, the man’s arms thrown up in the air as the woman furiously tore clothes from the drum of the machines and dumped them in her basket. It was sheer luck that Charlotte happened to glimpse Marina bent down behind them, behaving as though nothing untoward was happening as she pulled her own clothes free and stuffed them in her own basket. From the look on her face she was unperturbed by the warring couple beside her, merely rolling her eyes in a bored expression as the man’s waving arms knocked a shirt from her hands and she had to stoop to pick it up again.

  Charlotte watched from the distance, seeing the resignation in Marina’s movements; this was the only life she knew: hard, mundane, repetitive, small. It felt almost perverse to Charlotte that she should be standing there, not five metres away, with a letter in her bag offering this woman ten million euros, a one-way ticket out of this.

  Marina glanced up, as though sensing Charlotte’s stare, stiffening as she saw that she was indeed being watched. Charlotte instinctively held up her hand in an awkward wave but Marina simply tipped her head quizzically in return and continued pulling her wet clothes from the drum. Had she been expecting Charlotte later?

&nbs
p; She decided to wait for Marina outside – what she had to say was better said without an audience, particularly those two.

  Marina emerged several minutes later, red-cheeked from the dryers’ heat, the laundry basket wedged on her hip, but she didn’t approach Charlotte, instead walking in harried steps back down the street, her slippered feet slapping against the pavement.

  ‘Hey.’ Charlotte walked over and fell into step with her. She noticed the laundry in the basket was still wet. Couldn’t she afford the dryer?

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Marina asked sharply. ‘You said you would come to my apartment.’

  ‘And I was on my way there when I happened to see you in there. Why? Is there a problem?’ Was she embarrassed to have been caught doing her laundry?

  ‘This is harassment, you know that? A violation of my privacy. There are laws against this sort of thing, there must be. You can’t just keep turning up at my place of work, at my home, in my street.’

  Oh dear. This wasn’t the start she’d been hoping for. ‘But, Marina, we agreed to meet here tonight, remember? I said I’d be coming over.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have my details in the first place! I’ve already told you – I’m not who you think I am.’

  Charlotte was taken aback. What had happened to make Marina so defensive suddenly? Why was she so stressed? ‘Look, Marina, we’ve done this dance twice already. Don’t you think it’s time we cut to the chase? I’m here to help you, but we’re running out of time.’

  ‘But I don’t know what you want from me!’ Marina replied exasperatedly. She looked panic-stricken. Almost frightened.

  ‘Hey, I don’t want anything from you. I’ve got something for you . . .’

  Marina abruptly stopped walking. ‘Why? Why me?’

  ‘Because there’s someone you matter to.’

  ‘No.’ Marina’s mouth curled in a sneer. ‘I don’t matter to anybody.’

  Charlotte’s face fell at the bleakness of her words. ‘That’s not true. Please believe me – I am here because I’m trying to help you. Really, I am. Won’t you at least hear me out? I promise that what I have to say to you will be life-changing.’

  Marina stared back at her: defensive, aggressive. But the curiosity was beginning to tighten its grip again; Charlotte could see it glimmering weakly in her eyes: Charlotte’s sheer persistence, her job title, now this promise of an offer . . . Marina didn’t say anything further but she didn’t protest further either as she began walking again and after a brief hesitation, Charlotte hurried along beside her.

  They didn’t speak, lapsing into an accepted silence, Marina’s slippers slapping against the pavement as they walked. They went past a bar, the sound of shouts drifting out in punches as a football match blared inside; a ladies’ boutique with body-con dresses stretched over white plastic mannequins; a bakery with a beaded curtain at the door and a hole-in- the-wall pizzeria. A giant black and white mural of Cristiano Ronaldo had been spray-painted onto the corner building, the lower sections overlaid with the names of other players, Roberto Santos included in bright blue.

  Crossing the road at the T-junction, they took a left off the main drag onto a narrower street. It would be far too tight for cars to pass down – except perhaps an old-school Fiat 500 – but mopeds were parked nose-to- tail in a line along the bollards. The street was entirely in shade at this time in the early evening and flanked by older, umber-coloured buildings with wooden doors and wrought-iron balconies on the upper floors. A few trees softened the unremitting hardness of the urban block, as did the washing tied to some of the balustrades, and, on one balcony, an Atlético Madrid flag. But a collection of overflowing bins halfway down the street had attracted the attention of a stray dog, sniffing for scraps, and one of the ground-floor windows further along had been boarded up, shards of glass still peppering the ground.

  Marina stopped outside a tall arched door and fished for a key in her hip pocket.

  ‘Here, let me take that for you,’ Charlotte said, offering with her outstretched arms to take the basket. But Marina found the key and let them in, pointedly leading her up three flights of stone stairs with the basket still on her hip, silently reiterating both her independence and pride.

  The common quarters were clean albeit tired, with marks on the walls, some of the plaster missing in areas, and cracks like a crazy glaze spidering the paint. A bicycle was propped outside one apartment, several Amazon boxes stacked on the floor outside another; and a broken washing machine had been left on the half-landing two floors above, waiting to be taken away.

  ‘Is that yours?’ Charlotte asked, as Marina walked around it and put her key in the door.

  Marina looked over at it with disgust. ‘It had been threatening to die on me for months.’

  ‘There’s never a good time for them to break, is there?’ Charlotte mused. Marina looked back at her sharply, as though trying to gauge her tone, before letting them both in.

  Marina dropped the basket with a groan onto a small square elm table. ‘I expect you would like coffee?’

  ‘No, really. I’m fine,’ Charlotte demurred, feeling the oppressive heat in the flat. The last thing she wanted was a hot drink. A glass of rosé on the other hand. Oblivion . . .

  Was it really only three hours since she had been in bed with Nathan? Their bodies pressed together, fingers and legs intertwined . . .

  ‘You think I can’t look after my guests?’ Marina asked defensively, pulling a dirty t-shirt off the corner of a chair.

  ‘Am I a guest?’ Charlotte smiled, trying to soften her hostile mood. Inwardly she felt exhausted. Defeated. This meeting was the last thing she needed. ‘I did rather invite myself over.’

  ‘You said you have something to offer me,’ she shrugged, as though this was the payment in return. ‘I will get coffee. Take a seat.’

  Marina disappeared from the room, and as she wandered to the sofa, Charlotte took the opportunity to openly look around. It couldn’t have been more different from Lucy Santos’s home in the La Finca district just a few miles away – that had been all clean angles and space and light; this apartment was its polar opposite: dark, stuffy and cramped with low sloping ceilings. There was no air-con that she could see and one of the eaved windows looked painted shut; Charlotte had to resist the urge to try to open the other.

  She sat on the sofa – a sagging, green floral eighties chintz – carefully pushing a pair of kicked-off trainers further under the tiled-top coffee table with her feet. If the flat was basic, attempts had still been made to give it a homely feeling: there were handmade, coloured crocheted-doilies on a sideboard, funky embroidered LOVE cushions on the ecru armchair opposite, the beautiful, original floorboards were covered with a metallic purple shag rug. Several framed black-and- white and bleached-out seventies photos were arranged on top of a bookcase. This place certainly wasn’t unloved. Marina may not have much, but she had still made this a home.

  Charlotte heard the kettle coming to the boil and she sat forward, straining to see into the next room. Marina was only just visible from behind, efficiently arranging the wet laundry onto a clothes horse. Two minutes later, and she was back in the room, instant coffee poured into two glazed mugs and a plate of churros – taken from San Ginés no doubt – arranged on a small chipped plate.

  ‘Amazing, thank you,’ Charlotte smiled as the older woman sat down opposite her, no trace of a smile on her face. She looked worn out and brittle. ‘It’s lovely here. Have you lived here long?’

  Marina shot her a wry look as if to say, must we play this game of small talk? ‘My whole life. It was my grandmother’s first and my father grew up here too. I lived in my husband’s place for six years but when I found him in bed with another woman, I came back here.’ Her words were deliberately abrasive, intended to push Charlotte back.

  ‘Wow, so it really is home then,’ she said mildly instead. Charlotte picked up the mug but didn’t immediately move to sip from it. Her hostess was right; there really was n
o place for small talk here. ‘Marina, what if I told you, you could afford to buy this place outright – and I don’t just mean this apartment, I mean the entire building.’ Now she sipped the coffee, allowing her words to settle on Marina like a mist, spritzing her, waking her up.

  Sure enough, there was a pause. ‘I would say you were crazy.’

  ‘Would you? Even though you know what I do? Who my clients are?’

  ‘A private bank, you said.’

  ‘That’s right. And one of their clients wants to make a special offer to you. He is prepared to give you ten million euros.’

  ‘Ten— ?’ There was a stunned silence; Charlotte could almost hear it rebounding off the walls, until Marina threw her head back and laughed. ‘Now I know you’re fucking crazy! Why? Why would someone do that?’

  But Charlotte wasn’t smiling now. ‘It is being offered on strict conditions which I need you to hear and understand: the offer stands for today only, it is a one-off payment with categorically no scope for further negotiations or subsequent revisions. Furthermore, you can never apply to my client’s estate for more; acceptance of this sum would forfeit any future rights to either apply for or receive a gift, donation or bequest from my client’s estate. It’s very important you understand all that.’

  The laughter died on Marina’s lips, a look almost of fear creeping into her eyes. ‘. . . Who is this client?’

  ‘His name is Mateo Mendoza. You know his father, Carlos.’

  Marina recoiled, shaking her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlotte insisted, firm now. ‘We know everything, Marina. We know about your relationship with him.’

  ‘My r—?’

  ‘Señor Mendoza understands you are . . . special to his father. That is why he is prepared to be so generous. It is why he sent me to see you rather than one of his lawyers. He wants to make sure you will be well supported and guided in this – as I told you before, wealth can be a burden, particularly if it comes suddenly.’ She looked down at her coffee and then up again. ‘He wants the best for you and asks only one thing in return.’