Mind Game

RECORDING NO: 4 DATE: 15 December TIME: 7:30 am SITUATION: Coral headland overlooking ocean SENSORY CONTEXT: Visual: magnificent seascape, early morning sun; Auditory: waves breaking on reef; Olfactory: fresh salt COGNITIVE CONTEXT: Minimal cognitive activity EMOTIONAL CONTEXT: Happiness, sense of peace, relaxation SOMATIC RESPONSE: None FACIAL RESPONSE: Musculature relaxed GLOBAL VIEWPOINT: Optimistic, unconcerned, free ACTION IMPULSE: None A Chinese guy once told me that deception is like boiling a frog. Drop it in scalding water and it will leap out immediately. But start cold and it will never notice the rising temperature. You can fool all the people all the time if you do the groundwork slowly. It just takes patience: inching the temperature up, degree by degree, until the victim is cooked. Cara knew how to boil a frog. The first thing I ever heard her say was just one small piece of the groundwork: "I have never stayed with the same guy for more than a week." How do you answer that? "Hello," she added, looking up as I walked through the door. A quick smile, almost colluding, crossed her face. It was a finely balanced smile, drawing warmth from chestnut eyes and raising delicate muscles around her cheekbones. None of the others seemed to notice me. Piers' face, marked in devilish black-white patterns by the flicker of the candle, was fixed on hers. He was desperate to come up with some clever remark. But his creativity failed him and he simply said, "Challenge." "Aren't you going to welcome your guest first?" Piers flicked his head round briefly and nodded at me. Irritated at the interruption. Captivated, for sure. "Well?" "True." The girl leaned across the table and helped herself to two red chips from the pile in front of the host. There was a brief silence. Duncan broke it. "You shouldn't admit to that kind of thing. I was about to invite you to dinner, but it hardly seems worth it for a mere week." The girl smiled, her eyes laughing at the joke but acknowledging the serious message behind it. "Maybe I'm just waiting for the right man," she said. I left my bottle on the drinks trolley and filled a glass from the jug. Piers had been mixing cocktails again. In five years he wouldn't remember a single one of his tutors, but he'd still be on first-name terms with every off-license manager in Oxford. "Sorry I'm late," I said, aiming the apology mainly at Jenni. Leaving her alone in this company for an hour was hardly the kindest thing to do to a friend, and her face was already showing the strain. She sat two places away from Piers, holding a half-full glass and a half-empty hand of chips. I recognized the floral print dress from the last time I'd got her invited to a party. It still looked painfully cheap, even tacky in this circle of denims and pullovers. Piers was in black Versace jeans and black polo neck. When he stood up and held out a stack of chips I noticed an unusually strong smell of aftershave. "Thirty quid. Reds are one pound each, blacks are two." "You've got to warn me earlier next time you want to fleece me. I thought we were just going to get drunk." I tried to make it sound light-hearted. "You've got to not care about thirty quid. You're a big boy now, with a nice big student loan." I grinned to show I didn't care and went to sit by Jenni. Her mouth was already set in a defensive grimace. I whispered some hollow assurance and slipped aMacDonald, Hector is the author of 'Mind Game' with ISBN 9780345440235 and ISBN 0345440234.