Secrets of Spain Trilogy

by Caroline Angus Baker

  “I can walk the children to school.”

  “No, Mummy has been driving us,” Giacomo said to his soon-to-be stepfather. “Mummy is too tired to walk us. And it’s cold.”

  “Cold and dark in the mornings,” Luna muttered to herself. “Not the sun, sex and sangria lifestyle that lures people to Spain.”

  “I think the phrase is sun, sand and sangria,” Cayetano said to her with a smile.

  “It took more than sand to lure me here,” she said with a cheeky grin.

  Cayetano watched her; her mind wandered far away and she grinned to herself. Luna was thinking of her first husband. Again.

  “How long are you visiting this time, Caya?” Enzo asked.

  Cayetano had only been gone for a week. Right after celebrating Luna’s birthday, he needed to go back to Madrid for a meeting at Rebelión, the family bull breeding farm. “I live here,” Cayetano replied. “Or are you kicking me out?” He watched the two little redheads giggle. “I can stay until the weekend. Would you like to come to Madrid and stay with me?”

  “For the weekend we can,” Luna said.

  “Can’t you just skip school for a week and come and stay out at Rebelión while I train?”

  “I have a job here,” Luna said. “And the kids need to go to school. They are lucky to get as much time off as they do now. Las Fallas, Valencia’s biggest fiesta of the year, is coming up and they need to have their final fitting for their Saragüells outfits on Monday. We can’t just disappear into the Madrid countryside to watch you prepare for a bullfight.”

  “And Mummy gets her fallera dress,” Enzo added. “She looks so beautiful.”

  “For the price of having the bloody dress made, I had better be the most beautiful fallera ever,” Luna complained. “Over €2000 to wear a dress for just a few days during the fiesta.”

  “You are marrying the star bullfighter of the show, so of course you will be the most beautiful woman there,” Cayetano joked.

  “The city of Valencia is the star of Las Fallas,” Giacomo said. “But bull killing is fine, too.”

  “Bullfighting,” Cayetano corrected the boy. “It’s about the performance, not the kill.”

  “Then don’t kill them at all,” Enzo said.

  “It’s a bit early for the anti-bullfighting speeches,” Luna said. “We need to get you gentlemen to school.”

  “I’m not even dressed yet,” Cayetano said.

  “I don’t need you to help out. I can manage fine without your help.”

  Cayetano wandered back into the bedroom and got himself dressed. That was the problem. They still lived apart, despite being about to get married. The arrangement wasn’t working. They couldn’t live two lives like this; Cayetano a bullfighter in Madrid and Luna a bicycle mechanic in Valencia. Cayetano had two future stepsons, and he didn’t do enough for them. Luna had just upset him, and she hadn’t even noticed. It was time for his future family to move to Madrid with him.

  As he forced a warm shirt over his head, he heard the doorbell ring. Who the fuck comes over this early? He ran his hand through his wavy black hair, but before he had a chance to exit the bedroom, he heard Luna down the hallway, opening the door to Darren. Hijo de puta. Son of a bitch. It still grated Cayetano that Luna’s boss was also her ex, of sorts. Every time he went home to Madrid, Cayetano worried this so-called best friend would try to get into Luna’s heart. Luna’s protests that nothing was going on didn’t help.

  “Hey,” Darren said as he stepped inside and pulled off his hat, his blonde hair all messy. “Not too early to visit, I hope?”

  “Never,” Luna said as she shut the door. “Shit, I thought you weren’t riding today? Was I supposed to be meeting you?”

  “No, it’s a scheduled day off, my mechanic extraordinaire. But, at just before 6am, the fucking UCI random doping guy banged on my door. I had to give a sample. There went my day off and sleep-in.”

  “Professional cycling is a sport full of dopers,” Cayetano scoffed. “It must be exhausting for UCI doping control to chase you all around.”

  “I can assure you that it isn’t pleasant to take a piss in a cup, in front of the stranger who pulled you from your bed. Most of us are clean cyclists, who get over the hills by hard work, not drugs. Drugs in cycling are portrayed incorrectly. Yes, once upon a time it was embroiled in doping, but not anymore.”

  “But none of you can be trusted,” Cayetano shot back.

  “Hey, plenty of Spaniards have been caught doping, but you don’t hear of us Australian riders getting caught.”

  “Does that make you clean, or just lucky?” Cayetano watched Darren pause. The tall, lean athlete loved to cause trouble. But with his broad shoulders and muscular torero physique, Cayetano could flatten the skinny hill climber. Why hadn’t that day come yet? Because his beautiful New Zealand fiancé was the gentle type.

  “Consider yourself lucky that you aren’t tested to see if you’re cheating when you’re in the bullring against a soft opponent.”

  “Nothing soft about the bulls I face in the corrida.”

  “I heard bulls are drugged to make them slower. That way you, in your sparkly little outfit, can wave your red dress at the animal in safety.”

  “That’s enough for today, boys.” Luna raised her hands to each of them. “Why don’t we get some coffee.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I was going to ask if you wanted to go out for churros and coffee after we take the boys to school,” Darren replied.

  “You came to take my children to school and then take my woman out?” Cayetano asked. “How often does this happen while I’m away?”

  “Often enough,” Darren smirked.

  “It’s Las Fallas,” Luna said. “You need to be out and about as much as possible during Las Fallas. And, just for future reference, that was your one and only chance to call me ‘your woman’ without getting a kick.”

  “In three months, you will be my wife, and it won’t matter.” Cayetano looked straight at Darren. “My wife.”

  “Yeah… that,” Luna said slowly.

  Cayetano frowned. “Sí, that. I will take the boys to school.”

  “I will stay here then,” Darren said. “I have something I need to discuss with my bike mechanic.”

  “Just when I thought I was getting a day off,” Luna sighed.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s serious. Have you turned your laptop on this morning?”

  “No, why?”

  “Good, because we need to talk and you need to hear it for me.”

  “Now I’m worried,” Luna said as the boys came down the hallway into the entrance way, their school bags ready.

  Yeah… that. Not the most inspiring thing for Luna to say about their upcoming wedding in Madrid. Things weren’t working out how Cayetano had planned. Sure, Luna had accepted his proposal a few months ago, but since then she had changed on him. Life was up in the air, and it wasn’t even about the bodies they had found at Escondrijo, Luna’s Valencian farmhouse, a month ago. Or even about the adjustment that being with him made to her sons’ lives. It was the negative pregnancy test Luna had taken after he had got his hopes up about having a child. Luna had been relieved that she wasn’t pregnant, but Cayetano felt crushed. Since his Christmas time proposal, Luna had carried on with her life in Valencia, when Cayetano wanted her to move to Madrid with him. He had a massive bullfighting season ahead and couldn’t keep going back and forward between the cities all the time. But when he looked at Luna’s job, working on Ciclo Comunitat Valenciana’s bikes for the European racing season, she couldn’t pack up and leave her life. Giacomo and Enzo had stable lives, something so fundamental to Luna. Cayetano and Luna had three months until their wedding, and surely she would give in and move then? Plans had to be made. She would want to come and take her place in the Beltrán family, where she belonged, as his wife. They had just done a round of interviews for the glossy magazines in Madrid, all about the doomed love story of their grandparents, Cayetano Ortega and Luna Beltrán,
in 1939. It also covered the Cayetano Beltrán Morales and Luna Montgomery-Ortega story in 2009, and their romance and impending nuptials. It had been an orchestrated photoshoot in Madrid, putting to rest many rumours. Rumours about Cayetano and Luna having an affair, his acrimonious divorce from María Medina Cruz and the suggestions of his bullfighting retirement. Luna seemed happy enough to participate then. Perhaps she wasn’t happy.

  Cayetano stood at the doorway of Giacomo and Enzo’s classroom, their dripping little umbrellas in his hand, and waved them goodbye. They say love conquers all, but getting the girl of his dreams seemed a whole lot more complicated than he expected.

  ~~~

  Darren had already gone when Cayetano went back inside Luna’s cozy apartment. She stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, looking out at the rain that fell over the Turia riverbed park. The paths had turned into little rivers; the soil wasn’t prepared for the uncharacteristic rain. “Are the boys okay?” she said without turning to face him.

  “Fine, happy and dry.” Cayetano shrugged off his coat and wandered over to Luna. He went to put his arms around her, but paused when he saw her expression. She had been crying. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nada. Algo. Nothing. Something. Fuck… I don’t know.”

  “What did he do? Fucking Darren…”

  “No, no,” she dismissed him and turned around. “Darren didn’t do anything. It’s what he told me.”

  “What?”

  Luna sighed and sat down on the arm of the navy leather couch next to her, her shoulders slumped. “It’s not your problem. You have enough going on with work, and whatever…”

  “This is what was bothering me while I took the boys to school. Your problems are my problems, preciosa. We met, what… seven months ago… but we’re a couple. We’re getting married, we are meant to be together, to talk… and be a family…”

  “I’m aware of all that. There are so many bloody demands on me.” She swept her long black curls back from her face and yawned. Her ice-blue eyes didn’t sparkle as they used to, not too long ago. “But, please, not today. No more pressuring me to move to Madrid. No more arguing that I should give up work. No more reminding me how much I disappoint you by not being pregnant.”

  “I’m not disappointed by you. It’s me. I’m the guy who can’t fulfill life’s most basic requirement and get you pregnant.”

  “That’s a bit of a simplistic way of looking at it, Caya.”

  Cayetano shrugged. “We already have two children. And I have fabulous news. The private school that is near Mamá and Papá’s home, in La Moraleja, they can take Giacomo and Enzo straight away. We can move out to the suburbs, and then the twins can go to one of the best schools in the country.”

  “The suburbs? Of Madrid? When was that the plan?”

  “My parents and grandparents will move out to the farmhouse at Rebelión, and we can live in La Moraleja, out of the central city. I can rent out my apartment in Barrio Salamanca to my sister Sofía, since she is looking for a new place. You can sell this place like you planned, but we can keep Escondrijo in the hills here. We can live together… as a family… in Madrid.”

  “And you planned all this without talking to me first?”

  “I just…. I assumed… I had to wait until the school called me back before I told you…”

  “The boys go a perfectly good school here in Valencia.”

  “A state school. Preciosa, that school will never give the boys what they need. They are so bright; a state school can’t give them the education they deserve.”

  “I know you went to a private school, but the school here has been brilliant so far. And you know what else? We are welcome there. The boys made friends there. I’ve made friends there. That’s how we joined the Las Fallas club. This is our home. I thought the arrangement we have is advantageous for us both.”

  “Both of us going back and forth between here and Madrid? Are we going to continue that after we get married? Assuming you actually want to marry me.”

  “Of course I want to marry you.”

  “Really? It doesn’t feel like it sometimes.”

  “Why? Because I haven’t moved to Madrid? I hate Madrid, it’s so boring! Why can’t you move to Valencia? I can’t even plan my own wedding because your mother is doing it all! You would think that Inés is the bride herself!”

  “Mamá is only trying to help.”

  Luna just shook her head. “Whatever. Maybe I should give in and just fall into line with the Beltrán family and forget my whole damn life.”

  “What’s wrong? Is it because you’re tired?”

  Luna looked up at the desperate man in front of her. “I love you.” She watched his gorgeous face break into a smile. “I want to marry you. I don’t want a wedding. There’s a vast difference between a marriage and a wedding. You suggested we get married in Cuenca, just us and the kids. Whatever happened to that idea? Suddenly, it’s hundreds of people in Madrid, with media interviews about it.”

  “We have had three new sponsors want to come on board since I proposed to you. I’m the face of a big business. Unfortunately, being a bullfighter is not the biggest part of what I do. It’s endorsements and appearances and public speaking… not to mention Rebelión and the bull breeding business that runs out there. Everyone is looking to me to take over the company full-time soon. I have to be in Madrid. Business isn’t going well, and it’s up to me to make it all work… for everyone in the Beltrán Morales family, not just me.”

  “But I can’t cope with any of that.” Luna didn’t have a moment to try to hold back the tears that appeared.

  Cayetano sat down on the couch and pulled her onto his lap while she cried. He gave her a moment to let it out before trying to help. “Preciosa, por favor, hablar conmigo. Please, talk to me.”

  “Something has happened, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Darren came to warn me. It’s about Fabrizio.”

  “What about him?” Cayetano brushed her hair back from her face to see her cheeks covered in tears. It hurt to see her so upset when it was about her late husband. He couldn’t imagine how heavy that weight was to carry.

  “It’s what you said earlier, about cyclists being drug users. You aren’t the only one who believes the sport to be full of dopers.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean it. I just don’t like Darren. He makes it too easy for me to give him grief.”

  “During Fabrizio’s riding career, there was an Italian expression, pane e aqua. Bread and water. A rider who wasn’t injecting EPO or steroids, or cortisone, or blood boosters, or all of those, may as well have been on bread and water because he would never win against the drug users.”

  “But Fabrizio did win. He won the Tour de France, didn’t he? And lots of other events?”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  Cayetano’s face clouded with a frown. Don’t say it. Don’t suggest anything. “Goes to show how great he was, doesn’t it?”

  “Everyone knows there is a cycling omertà.”

  “The code of silence?”

  “If we all kept our mouths shut, no one would get caught using drugs.”

  “There is no room for drugs in sport.”

  Luna sniffed and nodded. “You’re right,” she said with a steady voice. “There is no tolerance for it, not between the riders or the fans. But five years ago, ten years ago, things were different. Even the governing body turned a blind eye. Everyone felt under pressure to dope or lose.”

  “Did you know anything?”

  “Yeah, I did. I tried not to hear things, or see things while working with the cyclists. It’s easy to pretend it’s not happening. But I was married to one of the biggest European riders in the sport at the time, and he was Italy’s best rider. That gave me more insight than any other mechanic. No one can win a grand tour, like the Tour de France, on their own; they need a whole team of riders to get them there. You need all your riders in top form. So much is at stake, entire careers, millions of Euros.
But Fabrizio promised me that he wasn’t using drugs. He swore to me that while the others were doing it, he wasn’t. I said that if his domestiques, his lesser riders that helped him, were doping, then he had their guilt on his hands. Fabrizio worked so hard to win. He did so much. We made so many sacrifices. I never saw him use drugs, never saw a needle mark on him. The team doctor gave out EPO and other drugs as if they were free candy. Everyone was using and could beat the system. Fabrizio was under pressure, and he said he wouldn’t dope, but he knew the others on the team needed it in order to win.”

  “Was Darren using?”

  “He says no. His results would suggest he is telling the truth. He was a domestique, and he never finished in the front of the pack, always back somewhere in the peloton. Darren was bloody lucky to keep his position on the team. Being best friends with Fabrizio did him a lot of favours.”

  “But why has this all come back now?”

  “The cycling omertà is dead. After Spain’s Operación Porto in 2006, exposing how team doctors gave out drugs to cyclists, the tolerance of the practices plummeted. The sport has cleaned up, other than a few individuals making bad choices. The operation annihilated the previous Valencian cycling team. We are back, as an all-new team and there is so much to prove. Now, as cyclists either get caught using drugs, or retire from the sport, stories get told. Biographies get written to prolong their earnings from the sport. Over time, more stories of Fabrizio Merlini and his sophisticated blood doping practices are coming to light. Soon, they could be public knowledge, and he won’t be able to defend himself.”

  “But Fabrizio never returned a positive drug test, did he?”

  “No. Operación Porto didn’t find him, or anyone on his team, guilty of anything. That was the first year that Tomás took over as manager, and insisted on clean riders, just as Fabrizio did. But then Fabrizio was run over that same year.”

  “So, who is talking about Fabrizio?”

  “Before Marco was his team leader, Fabrizio cycled for an Italian team run by a vile man. A man who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. He has just split from his wife, and she is doing a tell-all book about her husband. In it, she claims to have had an affair with Fabrizio and witnessed his drug use. It will be out in a few months.”