Alec Milius Spy Series Books 1 and 2: A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game. Charles Cumming

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘Perhaps,’ I say, nodding. ‘But not to the extent that you’ve been through it.’

      ‘It’s not so bad,’ she says. She is attempting to come out of her contemplative mood into something more positive. ‘In a lot of ways, I’m lucky. Fort’s great, you know? He’s so smart and funny and laid-back and wise.’

      ‘Oh yeah, he’s great.’

      ‘Hey,’ she says.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here for me when I needed you.’

      ‘That’s all right. Don’t mention it.’

      In a single fluid movement, she stands and crosses the room to where I am sitting, crouching down low in her thick Highland socks. Before I have had time to say anything, she has wrapped her arms around my neck, whispering, ‘Thank you, you’re sweet,’ into my hair. The weight of her is so perfect. I put my hand lightly on her back.

      She stops hugging first and withdraws. Now we are looking at each other. Still on her haunches, Katharine smiles and, very softly, touches the side of my face with her hand, drawing her fingers down to the line of my jaw. She lets them linger there and then slowly takes her hand away, bringing it to rest in her lap. There is a look in her eyes that promises the impossible, but something prevents me from acting on it. This is the moment, this is the time to do it, but after all the thought-dreams and the longings and the signals coding back and forth between us, I do not respond. Before I have even properly thought about it, I am saying, ‘I should get a cab.’

      It was pure instinct, something defensive, an exact intimation of the correct thing to do. I could not spend the night with her without jeopardizing everything.

      ‘What, now?’ She leans backward and her relaxed smile disguises well any disappointment she may be feeling. ‘It’s not even eleven o’clock.’

      ‘But it’s late. You’ll want to–‘

      ‘No, it’s not.’

      I don’t want to offend her, so I say, ‘You want me to stick around?’

      ‘Sure. Relax. I’ll fix us a whisky.’

      She gives my knee a squeeze and I simply can’t believe that I have just let that happen. Just kiss her. Just give in to what is inevitable.

      ‘Okay, then, maybe just a quick one.’

      She stands slowly, as if expecting me at any moment to pull her down onto the sofa. Just the action of her moving releases that exquisite scent as she turns and walks into the kitchen. I hear Fortner’s frozen Volvic falling into glass tumblers, then the slow glug-glug of whisky being poured onto ice. The noise of her moving quietly around on the polished wooden floor fills me with regret.

      ‘You take water in it, don’t you?’ she asks, coming back in with the drinks.

      ‘Yes.’

      She hands me a glass and sits beside me on the sofa.

      ‘Can I ask you something?’ she says, taking a sip of her whisky straightaway. It is as if she has plucked up the courage for a big subject while she was in the kitchen.

      ‘Of course.’

      Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, she tries to make the question sound as easygoing as possible.

      ‘Are you happy, Alec? I mean really happy?’

      The question takes me by surprise. I have to be very careful what I say here.

      ‘Yes and no. Why?’

      ‘I just worry about you sometimes. You seem a little unsettled.’

      ‘It’s just nerves.’

      ‘What d’you mean nerves? What about?’

      It was a mistake to say that, to speak of nervousness. I’ll have to shift the subject, work from memory.

      ‘I was joking. Not nervousness exactly. I’m just in a constantly fraught state because of Abnex.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because of the pressure to do the best job that I can. Because of the feeling of being watched and listened in on all the time. Because of the demands Alan and Harry put on me. All that stuff. I’m so tired. It’s so easy to get locked into a particular lifestyle in London, a particular way of thinking. And right now all I seem to worry about is work. There’s nothing else.’

      Katharine has tilted her head to one side, eyes welled up with concern.

      ‘You’ll get the job, won’t you?’

      ‘Probably, yes. They wouldn’t spend all that money training someone just to chuck them out after a year. But it still hangs over me.’ I take a sip from the whisky tumbler and a slipped ice cube chills my top lip. ‘The truth is I have this deep-seated fear of failure. I seem to have lived with it all my life. Not a fear of personal failure, exactly. I’ve always been very sure and certain of my own abilities. But a fear of others’ thinking that I’m a failure. Maybe they’re the same thing.’

      Katharine smiles crookedly, as if she is finding it difficult to concentrate.

      ‘It’s like this, Kathy. I want to be recognized as someone who stands apart. But even at school I was always following on the heels of other students–just one or two, that’s all–who were more able than I was. Smarter in the classroom, quicker witted in the playground, faster on the football pitch. They had a sort of effortlessness about them which I have never had. And I always coveted that. I feel as though I have lived my life suspended between brilliance and mediocrity, you know? Neither ordinary nor exceptional. Do you ever feel like that?’

      ‘I think we all do, all the time,’ she replies, lightly shrugging. ‘We try to kid ourselves that we’re in some way distinct from everyone else. More valuable, more interesting. We create this illusion of personal superiority. Actually, I think men in particular do that. A whole lot more than women, as a matter of fact.’

      ‘I think you’re right.’

      I have a longing for a cigarette.

      ‘Still,’ she says, ‘I gotta say that you don’t seem that way to us.’

      ‘Who’s us?’

      ‘Fort and I.’

      ‘Don’t seem vain?’

      ‘No.’

      It’s good that they think that.

      ‘But are you disappointed to hear me say these things?’

      She jumps at this: ‘No! Hell no. Talk, Alec, it’s fine. We’re friends. This is how it’s supposed to be.’

      ‘I’m just telling you what I feel.’

      ‘Yes.’

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