Gemini. Mark Burnell

Attwater shrugs. ‘He started on the street, but he outgrew it. Quickly, too. Milan was a rich man by the time Croatia started. He had a good business brain.’

       ‘What was he into? Drugs? Guns? Girls?’

       ‘Televisions.’

       As she has clearly anticipated, that stops me in my tracks. ‘Televisions …’

       ‘Cheap ones, Chinese made, imported from Hong Kong.’

       ‘Hong Kong?’

       ‘In the early eighties he made a contact out there. I don’t know who. But they started with TVs, then moved into other electronic goods: stereos, computers, cell phones. Some legitimate, some fake, all of them cheap enough to find a market in Yugoslavia. That was how Milan made his first fortune. But it wasn’t just financial. It was political, too.’

       ‘How?’

       She pauses for a moment to take a sip from her glass. ‘Okay. I’ll give you an example. On May 29th 1992 a shell killed sixteen people in a bread queue in Vase Miskina Street in Sarajevo. The next day, through resolution 757, the UN Security Council imposed a total economic blockade on Serbia and Montenegro. Total meant total, too. It covered all exports with the exception of medical supplies. Crucially, it included oil. Which Serbia needed desperately. In the end Serbia got round the problem by striking a deal with China, buying Chinese-bound imports at a premium, some of it paid for by barter. It was Milan who put that deal together, acting directly on behalf of Slobodan Milosevic.’

       Next I ask her if she thinks Savic is still alive.

       ‘I know he’s alive,’ she says. ‘I saw him last November.’

       ‘Where?’

       ‘Zurich. At the airport.’

       ‘Did you speak to him?’

       She laughs. ‘God no! I made damn sure he didn’t see me. I mean, I guess he could’ve died since then. But then you wouldn’t be here, would you?’

       When I phoned Carleen Attwater, I told her I was a journalist. She hasn’t said anything to challenge that since I’ve been here. She doesn’t need to. I can see she doesn’t believe me. Which means she has her own reasons for being so forthright.

       ‘Do you know where he is now?’

       She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

       ‘One last thing. Why didn’t you do something on Gemini?’

       ‘What do you mean?’

       ‘You’re a journalist. What a scoop Gemini could have been.’

       ‘Come on. More like a death warrant.’ It was worth a try. ‘I suppose so.’

       ‘Although that isn’t the reason I didn’t do it.’

       ‘Oh?’

       ‘I refrained out of courtesy. Milan knew that I knew about Gemini. The safest thing for him would have been to kill me. And that wouldn’t have bothered him at all, believe me. But he didn’t. He took that risk because he thought he understood me. That we understood each other.’

       ‘And did you?’

       ‘Absolutely.’

      Barefoot, dressed in scarlet Bermuda shorts and a primrose T-shirt, Karen Cunningham poured two glasses of chilled Pinot Grigio. Stephanie carried the glasses and Karen carried Fergus, her seven-month-old son. The garden was an oval of grass cushioned by well-tended flowerbeds contained within a fence. There was a mature cherry tree at the far end. They sat at a bleached wooden table in the shade of a large red and blue umbrella.

      Fergus, on Karen’s knee, gurgled then let out a high-pitched squeal of glee before grabbing a handful of her T-shirt and stuffing it into his mouth.

      ‘How’s it all going?’ Stephanie asked.

      ‘It’s wonderful. Knackering but wonderful. We’ve been very lucky, though. He’s been such a good boy. Do you want to hold him?’

      ‘I’m not sure.’

      The sentence slipped out before she could vet it. Karen had already picked Fergus up. Now she settled him back on her thigh. The baby smiled at Stephanie, then turned coy, dribble coming off a fleshy lower lip.

      Flushed, Stephanie said, ‘God, I’m sorry, Karen. That sounded awful.’

      ‘It’s okay.’

      Stephanie could see that it wasn’t. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

      ‘It really doesn’t matter. Actually, it’s rather presumptuous of mothers to expect …’

      ‘The thing is, I’ve never held a baby before.’

      Karen’s laugh was dismissive. ‘Come on …’

      ‘I’m serious.’

      ‘Never?’

      She supposed she might have held her younger brother or sister, but she didn’t know. Besides, they belonged to a different Stephanie. The one that Karen knew had no brothers or sisters.

      ‘Not that I can remember.’

      There was an awkward pause before Karen said, ‘Do you want to? I mean, if you’d like to … you don’t have to …’

      Stephanie thought of all the reasons she’d never held a baby and felt disgust more than regret. When the moment passed, Karen was offering him to her. Stephanie took Fergus and sat him on her lap. He squirmed a little, looked up at her and broke into another toothless smile. Warm and fat with wisps of gold hair, he clutched Stephanie’s wrist with podgy hands.

      ‘Did you tell Mark about the test?’

      ‘I couldn’t see the point.’

      ‘You must have thought about the possibility before that.’

      ‘Of course.’

      Stephanie had only ever allowed herself to consider the issue in the most conceptual fashion. Of all women, how could she bring a child into the world? More practically, she wasn’t sure she was maternally inclined. Considering the life she’d led, nobody could accuse her of an overdeveloped instinct to nurture.

      Mark was lighting a barbeque on the roof terrace – the last of the year, he said – the first oily flames dancing over the charcoal. Stephanie carried a tray of glasses across the decking to the table in the far corner. She put the tray on the table, picked up her glass of wine and plucked a bottle of beer for Mark from the turquoise cool-box.

      ‘What time did you ask them?’

      ‘Eight, eight-thirty.’

      There were six coming. True friends of his, friends-by-proxy of hers. But they felt real enough most of the time. With a warm evening sun on his shoulders, dressed in a loose navy T-shirt and a pair of faded knee-length cotton shorts, with his hair suitably dishevelled after an active hour in bed, he couldn’t have looked more relaxed.

      ‘You know who called today?’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Cameron Diaz’s people.’

      Said as though this was a common occurrence. Although it wasn’t that unusual. The practice in Cadogan Gardens did attract a number of high-profile clients. In her darker moments Stephanie sometimes wondered whether they were drawn by the quality of the treatment or by Mark himself.