Comeback Read Free Page B

parties,” Fred said, “drinking sake out of little wooden boxes instead of glasses.”
    The customs and cadences of Japan still flowed strongly in my head, barely overlaid by the month in Mexico City. It was always an odd feeling of deprivation, leaving behind a culture one had striven intensely to understand. Not exactly postpartum blues, but departing-from-post blues, definitely.
    The diners in the restaurant had gradually drifted away, leaving the four of us as the last to leave. Vicky and Greg went off to pack up their equipment and as a matter of course Fred and I divided the bill between us to the last cent.
    “Do you want it in yen?” I asked.
    “For God’s sake,” Fred said. “Didn’t you change some at the airport?”
    I had. A habit. Fred took the notes and handed me some coins in return, which I pocketed. The Foreign Office was permanently strapped for cash and our basic pay came nowhere near the level of status and responsibility given us. I wasn’t complaining. No one ever entered the diplomatic service to get mega-rich. Fred said he would run me back to the airport to save me having to pay for another taxi, which was good of him.
    Vicky and Greg returned, she carrying a large white handbag aglitter with multicolored stones outlined in thin white cord and he following with a large squashy holdall slung boyishly from one shoulder. We all four left the restaurant and stood for a while outside the door saying goodnights, Vicky and Greg making plans to find me the following day.
    On the wall beside the door a glassed frame held a sample menu flanked by two eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs of the singers, both taken, it was clear, a long time previously.
    Vicky saw the direction of my eyes and made a small sad moue, philosophical with an effort. Her likeness, a striking theater-type glossy with her head and shoulders at a tilt, bright light shining on the forehead, stars in the eyes, tactful shadows over the beginnings of a double chin, must have been from twenty years earlier at least. Greg’s no-nonsense straight-ahead smile had few photographic tricks and was very slightly out of focus as if enlarged from a none-too-clear print. It too was an earlier Greg, thinner, positively masculine, strongly handsome, with a dark, now-vanished moustache.
    Impossible to guess at Vicky’s character from that sort of picture, but one could make a stab at Greg’s. Enough intelligence, the complacency of success, a desire to please, an optimistic nature. Not the sort to lie about people behind their backs.
    Final goodnights. Vicky lifted her cheek to me for a kiss. Easy to deliver.
    “Our car’s down there,” she said, pointing to the distance.
    “Mine’s over there,” Fred said, pointing the other way.
    We all nodded and moved apart, the evening over.
    “They’re nice people,” Fred said contentedly.
    “Yes,” I agreed.
    We climbed into his car and dutifully fastened the seat belts. He started the engine, switched on the lights, backed out of the parking space and turned the car to the general direction of the airport.
    “Stop!” I yelled abruptly, struggling to undo the hampering seat-belt buckle so easily done up.
    “What?” Fred said, jamming foot on brake but not understanding. “What the hell’s wrong?”
    I didn’t answer him. I got the wretched belt undone at last, swung open the car door and scrambled out, running almost before I had both feet on the ground.
    In the passing beam of Fred’s headlights as he’d turned the car I’d seen the distant sparkle of Vicky’s sequined tunic and seen also that she was struggling, falling, with a dark figure crowding her, cutting half of her from my sight, a figure of unmistakable ill-will ... attacking.
    I sprinted, hearing her cry out shrilly.
    I myself yelled “Vicky, Vicky” in an attempt to frighten off the mugger, but he seemed glued to her like a leech, she on the ground and kicking, he close on her, hunched and intent.
    No sign of