Page 59 of The Little Porto Book Club

Socialising is downright baffling. Mother is always on about being a ‘listening ear’. ‘That’s nonsensical, what else do ears do?’

‘Promise me you’ll try your best to listen and not shut them down when they do chat.’

She has no idea how far my listening ears have been stretched over the last little while. ‘Promise.’

‘Do you think perhaps there’s a reason you all wound up there in a quiet little corner of Porto?’

‘Yes, because we’re introverts.’ All of whom have a particular set of skills to stop a friend committing murder, I leave that part out.

‘I’ll make us tea.’ While Mum potters around in the kitchen, my mind fixates on a niggle that is just out of reach. Something to do with this mysterious neighbour. I think back to the day in the library gardens, where Mum was blathering on while I was trying to hide behind her and scope out The Man in the Blue Beret. And then it hits me, she asked for my blessing! She’s been seeing this strange man for quite some time.

She returns with the tea as another, more worrying realisation dawns. I let out a shocked gasp. ‘What is it?’

‘Is Alfonso the creepy neighbour who is always running around naked?’

She bites her lip, but laughter spills out. ‘Not naked, querida, he had a towel on! And I wouldn’t call him creepy.’

I cup my face. ‘Oh God, Mother, why would you choose to date an exhibitionist? You’re better than that!’

‘He’s – he’s not an exhibitionist.’

I make a show of pulling a face. ‘Uh-huh.’

She waits, as if expecting me to solve the riddle of why the man runs along the landing in only a towel. Runs from our front door to … ‘Oh, Mother! How scandalous! You were meeting up with him while he was naked?’

‘To be fair, we were both naked.’

‘Oh, please do not paint me any more mental pictures. Call the therapist, tell them I’m on my way.’

‘Very funny.’

‘This is why your lipstick was smudged and your buttons done up wrong? Oh my God, I thought you were having some kind of breakdown but you were in fact having a dalliance with a strange man!’

‘He’s not a strange man.’

‘He is to me! And I have assaulted this man! Hit him square on the derrière with my metal drink bottle. As my new friend Zephyr would say: big yikes.’

‘Well, I’d love you to meet him.’

‘Baby steps, Mother, baby steps. And tell him he owes me a new drink bottle.’

One mystery successfully solved! And while it’s absolutely not ideal hearing the minutiae of my mother’s sex life, it’s nice to know she’s been able to move on after The Curious Case of the Husband Who Lied Twice.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Old Albert

After book club I’m always on a high. Who would have thought I’d find such great friends? I’m learning from them. Zephyr, so prickly, so combative, reminds me of my granddaughter back home. It’s a bit of fun riling her up. I’m an old man, stuck in my ways, I don’t see that changing soon. I will say, I’m glad I found book club when I did. Retired life is great, but I was missing something – human connection.

We retired to Porto on a whim. Relocated much later than planned – because I didn’t want to pull the trigger on leaving all I knew. My wife Marcella yearned for her homeland, her family, the culture she missed so much living back in the Midwest of America for too many years to count. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to come to Porto too. An adventure at our age! No work to slow us down. No alarm clocks. Nothing but long, sunny days stretching out in front of us. We’d sip port in a dimly lit little vinhão. Eat cheap petiscos until our bellies were full as the sun sunk over the Douro River.

A dream of orange-hued skies, the tinkling of my wife’s laughter as we got to the stage of our lives where we had time to enjoy it together. And we’ve done all that and more. My wife has reconnected with her family and friends and is having the time of her life. And I love them too, I do. Oftentimes there’s the language barrier, my Portuguese is still a work-in-progress, so finding the book club was the connection I didn’t know I needed. It’s something just for me. My wife kisses my cheek and goes and does her thing, and I go and do mine.

Without book club, I think I may have succumbed to a touch of homesickness, so for that I’ll always be grateful. It helps we’ve got a mystery to solve too. Although I fear our skills are not quite up to scratch, since we haven’t progressed very far. There’s been hardly any time to commit to my conspiracy theory research, but eh, maybe my wife was right about that, and it was a bad habit?

Solving this Lucinda mystery makes me feel young again, like I have a job to do. Even with young Zephyr by my side, teaching me about toxic masculinity, gaslighting and all that nonsense! Honestly, these kids have too much time on their hands. Still, I am getting quite the education and do have a soft spot for Zephyr. I hope she finds her place in the world, because I sense she’s a little rudderless, just like I was. Maybe that’s the beauty of what Viviane has created with book club, giving us introverts a soft place to land.

Chapter Thirty-Nine