I go back inside and close the door. At the centre of a long coffee table of dark polished wood there’s a leather folder, the front of which is embossed with Swallowtail’s logo: a capital S composed entirely of tiny butterflies. I’m too hungry to look at everything properly now, but I pull out a couple of information sheets, fold them and put them in my bag. I can read them over lunch.
The casita’s second bedroom is almost identical to the one I slept in last night, except the colour scheme is blue and silver, not red and gold. The effect is less dazzling, more calming. I sit down on the edge of the bed. A corner of the little terrace pool is visible through the window, which probably explains the choice of blue for the décor in here.
I could divide my nights between the two rooms – more resort maths – but even as I have the idea, I know I won’t do it. I already think of the red and gold room as mine. Patrick, if I told him this, would say this is my whole problem – that I grow attached to things too quickly.
I don’t like the idea of this beautiful blue and silver bedroom going to waste for two weeks, so I make a decision: this is where I’ll do my thinking. Every day I’ll spend at least an hour in here, sitting on this bed, or maybe lying on it, actively focusing on my situation and working out what I want to do about it. The rest of the time – when I’m out and about in the resort or when I’m in my red and gold bedroom – I won’t feel obliged to think about my predicament at all.
Having made this resolution, I feel happier and lighter. I go and get my handbag from the lounge area, open it, pull out my scan photo and take it back to the blue room. My twelve-weeks-pregnant photos of Jess and Olly were grainy and hard to decipher, but this one is much clearer. If I had to guess, I’d say this one’s a boy, and – though no one who hasn’t seen the photo would believe it – he looks as if he’s raising one eyebrow.
I know that’s impossible. He’s the size of a passion fruit, and months away from having eyebrows. Or is twelve weeks a small lemon? I can’t remember. Only women who are pregnant for the first time obsess about which fruit most closely resembles their growing child at each gestational stage.
I hold the photo in both hands for a few seconds, then put it down on the bed.
My third baby. I am in Arizona, on holiday with my third child. The idea makes me smile.
That’s enough blue-room thinking for now. I pick up the scan photo and return to the lounge, where I notice straight away that something is different. There it is: today’s mail – a white square on the floor by the casita’s main door. It definitely wasn’t there before. I feel a spurt of anxiety in case it’s a letter explaining that I can’t stay here – Riyonna wasn’t authorised to be so generous on the resort’s behalf – or, even worse, a note from Hairy Chest Man, who has somehow found out where I ended up.
Thankfully it’s neither. It’s a printed note on a square card that has Swallowtail’s embossed logo in the top left corner: ‘If you would like fresh orange juice delivered to your casita each morning, please press the button by the side of the door so that the light comes on. No need to wake up early! We will leave your juice in a cool-box outside your door. Thank you!’
What button? I look and see that there are three. One has a picture of a maid holding a vacuum cleaner, and another has the same picture with a big red line through it. The third has a picture of a glass with a straw in it. I press it, and it lights up with an orange glow.
Wow.
I put the scan picture back in the safe pocket of my bag, zip it up, check I’ve zipped it securely, and head out into the hot afternoon.
Swallowtail’s main restaurant is called Glorita’s and has as many tables outside as in. I’ve picked one on the terrace that has an amazing view of Camelback Mountain. A large white parasol protects me from the glare of the sun. I’m about to start looking through the options when a black-haired young man with flawless olive skin appears by my side. ‘Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Felipe, and I’m going to be taking care of you today.’ He smiles and holds out his hand. I have no choice but to tell him my name, though I wish I didn’t have to. Lovely though he seems, I only want him to bring me some food, not become a lifelong friend.
Ugh, I know what this is. It’s my Englishness. It’s going to embarrass me for as long as I’m in Arizona. At home I’m considered normal – no one in Hertfordshire wants to get pally with the person who delivers their lunch – but the minute I set foot in a friendly country like America, I’m uptight and stand-offish.
To compensate for my cultural deficiency, I smile at Felipe till my jaw aches and tell him I’m nearly thirteen weeks pregnant. It’s his fault for asking if there’s anything I don’t eat. ‘Oh, how adorable,’ he says. He waves at my stomach. ‘Hello, Cara’s baby! Welcome to Arizona!’
Tears prick the backs of my eyes. The idea that, after me, the person happiest about my pregnancy is a complete stranger who can’t really care either way – who is nice by default, because it’s his job – makes me so angry, I want to yank the red cloth off my table and send all the cutlery flying.
Thank goodness for sunglasses. Maybe the guests at all the other tables are also crying behind their dark lenses.
Felipe has views about what I ought to eat and drink, and he sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about. On his advice, I order Swallowtail’s signature blueberry and oat smoothie, and a casserole of butternut squash, chorizo and sweet creamed ‘grits’, whatever they might be.
While I wait for both to arrive, I look at what I brought with me from the folder in my casita. The two sheets of paper I picked out at random turn out to be a map of the resort and a list of activities available. There’s enough here to keep anyone busy for three months at least: guided hikes, canyon jeep tours, an ‘Art for Beginners’ intensive two-week course, tennis lessons, guided meditation, stargazing, vinyasa yoga, Native American flute workshops, a ‘Vortexes and the Sacred’ seminar, an Ayurvedic medicine course …
The list goes on, in tiny print, filling up both sides of the page. There’s a new-age theme to a lot of the options. I’m pretty sure, now I come to think of it, that I read something on the website about Arizona, and Swallowtail in particular, being some kind of spiritual … hub. Or something that meant hub – that’s not the word they used. Normally any whiff of that sort of thing would have put me off. Instead, I found myself thinking that maybe this was somewhere that could lift the spirits – even of those of us who wince at the word ‘sacred’ and want nothing to do with vortexes.
At a table on the other side of the terrace, a blonde middle-aged woman wearing a white lacy kaftan, black shorts and high-heeled black sandals says to her companion, ‘The best choice – absolutely the best, always – is a gay man.’ The teenage girl she’s with hisses, ‘Ssssh! Can you not shut up? What is wrong with you?’
Must be a mother and daughter. American. I smile as the mother shakes out her long, loose, platinum blonde hair and says in an even louder voice, ‘I could shut up if I wanted to. I don’t want to.’
Hah. Take that, teenage tyrant.
I wonder why the girl isn’t at school. Maybe she’s eighteen or older, and just young-looking for her age.
Or the opposite. Maybe she’s an ancient-looking two years old, and cries when she spills fizzy drinks on her cuddly toys …
Were they father and daughter, the man and girl in the hotel room? I assumed so, but I didn’t hear her call him ‘Dad’.
Felipe’s food and drink recommendations are not entirely successful. The smoothie is the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, but I don’t much like the sweet creamed grits. Luckily, I’m hungry enough not to care.
Felipe looks crushed when I reject his next piece of advice, which is to order the Signature Chocolate Trio. It’s apparently a life-changing dessert, and Felipe tries to suggest that my baby might benefit from having it even if I wouldn’t, but I stand firm, promising to have it after dinner one night instead. Eventually he concedes defeat and brings me the bill to sign.
I’m desperate to see the swimming pool, but as soon as I see it, I’ll want to leap in, and I should probably digest my lunch first. While I do, I can tackle the least fun item on today’s agenda: sending a message home.
The idea makes me swallow hard. A message means a reply.
Coward.
What if I’ve done something irreversible and lost my family forever? I thought this as I booked my plane tickets and made my reservation at Swallowtail, and the voice in my head insisted, You have no choice. You have to get away from them.
Having done what I’ve done, I have no right to miss Patrick, Jess and Olly, and no right to feel guilty – that’s just a way of kidding myself that I’m a better person than I am. And I have a duty to make contact now, whether I want to or not.
I leave Glorita’s and follow a sign to reception. Nothing looks familiar. I pass a fenced-off yard that’s clearly the resort’s club car depot. Peering through the slats of a white-painted fence that’s meant to block the area from the guests’ view, I see a group of men and hear them talking and laughing: the drivers, waiting to be summoned to transport those who would rather not walk.
Am I lost? Should I ask one of them to drive me? The resort map in my bag proves useless – or rather, I’m useless at interpreting it – but I want to walk even if I end up taking a longer route, so I pick a random direction and keep going.
Reception ought to be over here somewhere …
I cheer quietly to myself when my navigational instincts are proved right. There it is: the main hotel building’s semi-circular façade. Riyonna waves frantically as I walk into the red marble lobby, apparently made ecstatic by my arrival. Her fingernails have changed colour overnight: from eau-de-nil green to pale lilac. I hope she’s not about to leap out from behind the desk and hug me. Thankfully she’s dealing with another guest, so I have some degree of protection. An elderly woman is busy giving her a hard time.
No free upgrade to a casita for you, angry old lady.
‘Are you listening to me, Riyonna? Well, then don’t look over there! I’m right in front of you.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs McNair. I was—’
‘I was right. And now I’ve been proved right, I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it.’
The woman must be in her eighties. She’s wearing a blue shirt, maroon corduroy trousers, brown sandals over tights the colour of burned toffee, and a hat that’s nothing more than a white visor attached to a strap that goes round her head, with a buckle fastening at the back. She’s white, at least in theory, with hair dyed the exact colour of an aubergine and a tan the same shade and texture as my brown Laura Ashley sofa at home.
I must buy some sunscreen: factor 50. There’s no way they won’t sell it here. Opposite the reception desk is a shop. Through its open door I can see woven rugs, turquoise and reddish-brown earthenware pots, silver jewellery featuring bright gemstones, wooden painted flutes, inflatable floating things for children to use in the pool. Sun protection cream must be in there somewhere.
The strident old woman’s neck and arms are lean and sinewy. They look as if more than the usual number of muscles have been stuffed into them. As she berates Riyonna, gesturing wildly, the muscles twist and ripple beneath the chapped, creased surface of her skin. She needs at least a bottle of moisturiser rubbing into her. Maybe that’s why she’s come to Swallowtail. There might be a signature massage at the spa that offers de-leatherisation.
‘Mrs McNair—’ Riyonna tries again.
‘No one believed me!’ The old woman throws up her arms. ‘Least of all you! I said it was definitely her. Definitely Melody! Did anyone listen? No. No one ever does. You all think I’m loony-tunes.’
‘I absolutely do not think that, ma’am.’
‘Yeah, you do. I don’t care. I know what I see, and I know what’s true. And last night I saw her running. Melody, running. Long dark hair flying out behind her. How come she can run all of a sudden? Can my cousin Isaac run? Let me tell ya, he can’t even walk!’
‘Your … your cousin Isaac?’
The confusion on Riyonna’s face suggests that Mrs McNair has introduced a new character. Melody is the subject of the conversation, whoever she is; what does Cousin Isaac have to do with it?
‘So, now that we know for sure, are you gonna call the police?’ Mrs McNair demands. ‘Tell ’em I saw Melody running away in the middle of the night? Tell ’em she had that creature with her? She was with her boyfriend! You don’t think he’s her boyfriend? How do you know? He could be anyone! Are you going to call the police? I’ve been right every time. Every. Single. Time.’
‘Every time? Do you mean like last year? Is that what you mean?’ Riyonna speaks to her gently. I sense that she’s choosing each word with great care.
‘Ye–es.’ Mrs McNair sounds unsure now. Then she makes up her mind. ‘Yes! Last year, and the year before, and the other years. All the times I’ve seen her.’
‘But Mrs McNair, you see a different child every time,’ says Riyonna patiently. ‘They can’t all be Melody, can they?’
‘They are!’
‘Do you remember the year you said a boy was Melody?’
I quite like the name. Melody Burrows. For a girl, obviously. Mrs McNair might believe in calling boys Melody but I don’t. That kind of thing may work in spiritual Arizona but it wouldn’t go down well in Hertfordshire.
‘I don’t care!’ Mrs McNair snaps at Riyonna. ‘People can alter their appearances. There’s no doubt in my mind. I saw her with that creature – which means I have proof now! So! I’m going to do something about it.’
It sounds as if there might be a tragic story of some sort associated with the old lady’s delusion. If I wait to speak to Riyonna, I’m bound to end up hearing all about it, and I don’t want to. I can’t listen to any stories about bad things happening to children.
I sigh and look around for someone else to ask about the business centre.
The shop. Whoever’s in charge there will know, and I can buy some sun cream. As I walk away from reception, I hear Mrs McNair say, ‘So are you gonna call the police? Tell me if you’re not and I’ll call ’em myself. I’ll tell ’em I saw Melody last night, no doubt about it.’
The woman behind the counter in the shop, instead of directing me to the business centre, rushes off into a back room with a promise to find somebody called Mason. The way she said his name gave the impression that if she were only able to produce him, he would solve all my problems and possibly those of the world at large if he had any time left over.
I wait to be disappointed, and am pleasantly surprised when she returns with a tall, fair, bespectacled young man who hands me an iPad mini in a red leather case, its front embossed with Swallowtail’s logo, and tells me I can keep it for the duration of my stay. ‘You’re all hooked up already – full and fast internet access whenever you want it. No need to put in any codes or anything.’
Like the girl on the terrace at lunch, Mason looks as if he could be anything from sixteen to twenty-five. ‘Also?’ he says. ‘It’ll give you directions for getting around the resort. If you …’ He holds out his hand, and I pass the iPad back to him. ‘If you go here, see, you can put in an address anywhere at Swallowtail, and it’ll tell you which way to walk. If you want to switch off spoken directions, you press here – then you’ll just get the on-screen directions. There’s no need to walk – you can always send for a club car, wherever you are, and all in-resort transportation is entirely free of charge – but some of our guests do like to walk, for the exercise or to see the beautiful scenery.’
‘Yeah, that’s me,’ I tell him. ‘So, if I type in “Pool” it’ll take me to the pool? That’s where I want to go next.’
‘Oh! No need to type in anything at all.’ Mason sounds shocked, as if I’ve suggested I might try to climb to the top of Camelback Mountain in my flip-flops. ‘Wherever you want to go in the resort, click here and you’ll get the drop-down menu. See? All the swimming pools are listed.
’
‘Ah, right. Yes.’
‘Let me do it for you this first time. Which pool is it you want? The spa pool is adults only, which means no under-sixteens. Or you could go to the lap pool, or The Pond – that’s our eco-pool with a completely natural cleaning system, no chemicals added. Or the family pool?’
‘Oh. Um …’
‘Have you tried out any of our pools so far?’ Mason asks, inspecting me closely.
‘No, not yet. I arrived late last night and I’ve mostly been asleep since then.’
‘Good to know,’ he says. I scour his face for an indication that he was being sarcastic, but he seems sincere. ‘In that case, I’m going to recommend you start at the family pool. It’s the biggest one with the best views, and there’s a fantastic poolside bar and restaurant if you find yourself in need of refreshments. If I say so myself, there are no better cocktails to be had in all of America.’
He has to be joking. Weirdly, he doesn’t seem to be.
‘There’s an at-seat service, so no need to get up if you’re relaxing. Just press the button on the side of your sun-lounger and a waiter’ll come take your order. The pool is L-shaped, and both bars of the L are eighty feet long.’
I nod. I’ve seen the photo on the website. I’m keen to see the real thing, if only Mason would stop describing it to me.
‘There’s also a hot tub with a cold plunge pool next to it. Drinks can be served to the hot tub – again, you just press a button. Towels are provided free of charge. Does all of that sound good?’
I’m tempted to roll my eyes and say tersely, ‘It’ll do, I suppose.’
‘Wonderful. Great,’ I say instead. ‘The family pool it is.’
‘And you want to walk there?’
‘Yes.’
Did You See Melody? Page 4