this afternoon for the new restaurant on Shirland Road. I am positive he can be persuaded to stop off – if you fancy a quick skate. Or how about a monkfish? Anything but cashews if you follow my drift, Mr –’
‘No, Roy, no thanks. No fish just now. In fact, it’s nothing to do with food. I just need you to keep a look out for me.’
‘Keep a look out?’ Up went two Schickelgruber brows.
‘Yep. And don’t worry, we can come to some sort of arrangement about fees or whatever.’
He looked alarmed. ‘I can’t leave the shop. You know that.’
‘No, no, no,’ I said, hastily. ‘I don’t want you to. I just need you to watch out for this woman who might –’
‘Let me stop you right there, Mr Jackson.’ He raised a palm and smirked. ‘The subject of women is one about which I can truly say – hand on heart – that I know nothing at all. Whatsoever. Nor, I might add, do I intend to waste any remaining God-given attempting to learn. There’s no sense to it, Mr Jackson. Nothing about women adds up. You always end up running the business at a loss – if you follow me. No, no,’ he waggled an index finger, ‘it doesn’t bother me to say that I have known only one woman in my entire life – and that was my wonderful wife, or I should say ex-wife, Roy’s mother. And ever since she decided that she was better suited to the Spanish … climate … well, I’ve not involved myself with the matter, beyond the exchange of seasonal niceties, of course. So I’m afraid if it’s advice you’re after, you have come to the wrong man, Mr Jackson. Now Roy Junior on the other hand, I have to say, he does appear to know a thing or two about the ladies and I’m sure that –’
‘Roy, let me stop you there. I appreciate what you’re saying, I really do, but you’ve jumped the gun a bit. All I am asking is that you keep an eye out for someone – and let me know if she’s with anyone when she comes in. With a bloke, I mean.’
The doorbell jingled. I swung round. Another customer passed behind me and set off towards the frozen goods at the back.
Roy lowered his voice. ‘Oh – I see. Right you are, Mr Jackson. No problem. You just want me to – shall we say – gauge the status – partner or otherwise – of a young lady whom you have reason to believe might be a customer of mine. Well, that’s easily done. I can always tell what stage a couple have reached by the level of attention they pay to their food purchases. They start off not really giving a monkey’s derrière about what they eat – excuse the Frog – but, gradually, their interest deepens as it begins to take over from you know what – until eventually, after a bit of time, they’re both obsessed by ingredients.’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘It’s when they start asking for fresh herbs you know that things have ground to a halt in the bedroom department, as it were.’
I stood back to allow the other customer access to the counter. Six hundred litres of Diet Coke, two bottles of rat-slayer wine, two litres of death-bastard vodka, four tubs of ice-cream, chocolate sauce, chocolate sauce, a box of chocolates, some chocolate slabs and four more tubs of chocolate ice-cream. She was around twenty-two and wearing her make-up to look as though she wasn’t wearing any make-up.
She shrugged ruefully. ‘We’re having a girls’ night in.’
I nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’m impressed.’
She mistook my tone for sarcasm and shook her head – men! – as she helped Roy wedge things into his too-flimsy blue plastic bags. I held open the door for her and returned to the counter.
Roy leant forward, conspiratorially. ‘So what does she look like, then, this young lady I’ve to keep an eye out for?’
‘She’s in her middle twenties, I think, Roy, five foot seven or eight, slim, blondeish hair – cut sort of expensively scruffy, just on the shoulder. You’ll know her: she’s extremely pretty and she’s –’
‘Got a great set of pins.’
It was my turn to look alarmed. ‘I was going to say she’s caught the sun. But yes. Yes, now you come to mention it, Roy, she has a great set of pins …’
Roy nodded sagely. ‘Oh, just because I don’t get involved doesn’t mean I’m not an armchair enthusiast, Mr Jackson. No – no. In fact, I know exactly the woman you mean. And what’s more, I wouldn’t be lying to you if I said I saw her yesterday. Didn’t come in here, mind, but she had her lunch over the road. Wears shorts and nice blue dresses and such – yes?’
‘Yes! That’s her! She was at Danilo’s? Yesterday?’
‘Yes. Seen her a few times now you mention it. But she was there yesterday sure enough for a couple of hours. I thought she was waiting for someone. Kept on looking around.’
Third, I went to see Carla.
For a short street, Formosa offers a number of dining options: an Italian café, an Italian delicatessen and an Italian bistro. Not exactly a dramatically contrasting range of world cuisine, you might argue, and hardly the cheek-by-jowl array of ethnic diversity that London is supposedly famous for. But nonetheless, over the last couple of years, believe me, I have come to savour their fine distinctions.
Danilo’s, the bistro, is a second home of sorts. I am very good friends with the owners: Danny himself, and his wife, Carla, the Madonna of Little Venice, whom I adore and for whom I would do anything. Dark-haired, late forties, high cheekbones, disdain about her mouth, but with boundless compassion in her eyes – the mother I never had.
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