I tried to protest that I wasn’t a holiday kind of person. That working in a country where the sun shines and the weather is balmy (Alicante didn’t suffer the same bitingly cold winters as Madrid; in a lot of ways I preferred it there in the winter when the tourist hordes had gone and the locals reclaimed the streets) was as good as being on a permanent holiday.
Gabriella was having none of it. She handed me the tickets for a week’s stay in the five-star, all-inclusive, ultra-luxurious White Sands Hotel, and told me to go and have a good time.
Which was why I found myself standing on the balcony of Room 608, musing on the day’s cancelled wedding, remembering my own, thinking that Spain was a beautiful country and I now regarded it as home, but that the Caribbean was probably the most idyllic place on earth. You couldn’t actually live here, I thought, as I gazed at the setting sun disappearing into the silk-blue sea in a ripple of pink and gold. It was far too beautiful for everyday life!
I sat down in the plump cushioned recliner, stretched my lightly tanned legs out in front of me so that they caught the final rays of the sun and flicked through a copy of Hola! to catch up on the Spanish gossip.
It was because I was reading in Spanish that I didn’t at first realise that the people on the balcony next to me (who I couldn’t see properly but could make out as blurred images because all of the balconies were separated by walls of glass blocks) were talking in Spanish too. And it was the Spanish of Madrid – Castellano – not Latin American Spanish which might have been less unusual in this part of the world. It was strange to hear Spanish at all; most of the guests at White Sands were American or British, with one or two Germans; and so, when I heard my second language I tuned in to what they were saying.
It was a woman’s voice speaking, bright and cheerful, bubbling with enthusiasm.
‘We are so lucky!’ she was exclaiming. ‘Seems we got the right end of the deal for once.’
Her companion, a man, was obviously still in the room because I didn’t catch his reply though I could hear the timbre of his voice.
‘. . . and this is so great,’ she continued. ‘Look at the views. Much, much better than the other place.’
I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. She was hanging precariously out over the balcony, peering down into the colourful tropical gardens below. I could see her profile as she swept her long dark hair from her face – a perfect face, with smooth olive skin, long dark eyelashes and high cheekbones. She reminded me of Letizia Ortez, the elegant and ever more glamorous woman who’d married the Crown Prince of Spain and who was a regular cover girl for all of the gossip magazines. The woman next door caught sight of me and grinned. Her lips were rose-bud pink, her mouth wide and generous and her eyes chocolate brown. Then she drew back and called to her companion again.
‘Do we have time before going out, Nico?’ she asked.
Nico. My heart hammered in my chest at the familiar name. Nico.
Well, obviously not my Nico. Nicolas Juan Carlos Alvarez, who had told me he loved me and that he would have married me if that was what I wanted before storming out of my apartment in Madrid and never coming back. I moistened my suddenly dry lips. Nico, who had been such a wonderful lover and who’d made me feel wanted and cherished but who wasn’t really the man for me because I was still somehow in love with Tim. Or (at that point) the idea of Tim. After Nico left me, he started going out with a friend of mine, Barbara, who’d always fancied him. I’d met them once together when Tim had come to Madrid and it had been horribly embarrassing. I don’t think their relationship lasted but I never heard from him again.
Nico. The name brought the memories flooding back. Isabella querida.
I shook my head. Nothing to get in a knot about. Wherever Nico Alvarez was these days, and whatever he was doing, it certainly wasn’t hanging out in the White Sands Hotel with a Spanish beauty.
‘Pilar, let’s go!’ Suddenly he was on the balcony too because his words carried clearly to me although his body was distorted through the glass blocks. ‘We can’t be late. They’ll move us out of here if we are.’
My heart was beating even faster. For a moment it had sounded just like him too, a rich, deep voice. Musical. Nico had been musical. He played the guitar with some friends and they often got bookings in hotels around the city. He also wrote jingles for advertising companies. But his real job was in the pharmaceutical industry. He came from a family of doctors. He was the only one who didn’t practise medicine.
‘Pilar!’ He laughed. I didn’t know what Pilar had done, but I could imagine it was something to do with kissing him. And maybe more than that.
I shook my head again. It didn’t matter what they were doing. But I wished I could get the unexpected memory of Nicolas Juan Carlos Alvarez out of my head.
They weren’t at dinner. I was shown to my usual table in the corner of the restaurant overlooking the underwater-lit sea and from which I could observe everyone else. Once or twice since I’d arrived at the hotel I’d eaten with other guests – there was another woman here on her own and I’d joined her one evening, though I hadn’t been able to get a word in edgeways as she’d recounted her life story as the private secretary to an industrial magnate; and there’d been a sweet American family who wanted to take me under their wing and were horrified when I didn’t join them every evening. There was a second solitary woman who (according to Dee, the private secretary) was a famous novelist who was doing some research on the island. Fancy, Dee had said, we could all end up between the pages of a book! I shuddered. I couldn’t bear the thought of my life ending up between the pages of a book. In fact I liked being alone, reading my own book, eating my dinner and drinking a couple of glasses of ruby-red wine. I used to hate being by myself in public places but now I was used to it. And, as I often told people who called me solitary and worried about me, there was a world of difference between being on your own and being lonely. Sometimes you can be lonely in a crowd of people. Sometimes I’d felt lonely even with Tim beside me. I wasn’t lonely now.
Tonight I nodded at the tall coloured guy who had been one of the guests at the aborted wedding the day before; smiled at an elderly lady who was also on her own but who’d made it clear that she didn’t welcome company; and managed to avoid catching the eye of the talkative private secretary. But there was no sign of the Spanish beauty and her Nico.
Then the waitress came to take my order, telling me that due to circumstances beyond their control there was no fresh lobster that night, and frowning as she said so. I didn’t care. I ordered the Caribbean salad followed by wahoo and steamed vegetables. Then I opened my book and lost myself in the fictional world I’d brought with me.
Night life at White Sands was fairly limited. After dinner people gravitated towards the piano bar where the conversation was general and where card games or backgammon were often played. I wished I was any good at either but I wasn’t. I tucked myself into a huge bamboo chair, read a little more and then chatted briefly to a girl who I’d seen around the hotel and always in the company of her elderly parents but who, tonight, was on her own in the bar and was reading the same book as me.
We exchanged a few comments about the book (a kind of crime caper novel) and then she told me that she had some things to do. As she left the bar I saw Pilar walk by. She was wearing a black silk bustier and a calf-length red silk skirt overlaid with a delicate pattern of flowers in black lace. She’d pulled her hair into that severe, tight bun favoured by flamenco dancers which served to highlight her wonderful cheekbones and her almost aristocratic beauty. She was tall and slender and, despite the precarious height of her heels, moved with the grace of a dancer through the crowded bar. There was no sign of her companion. I looked at my watch. Almost eleven. Things generally wound down by midnight, and although I was used to the much later night-life of Spain I was getting used to it.
I closed my book and finished my drink.
It was starting to rain. Actually it seemed to rain e
very night on the island around this time; fat, hot drops of water that instantly soaked you to the skin.
I hurried along the wet path and let myself into my room. As abruptly as it had started, the rain stopped, but I knew that there would probably be one more downpour before the skies cleared again. I changed out of my wet clothes and into a casual beach dress, then opened the patio door and stepped on to my balcony.
Cigar smoke wafted from next door. I don’t know much about cigars (my asthma means that I hate smoke of any description) but I knew that Nico occasionally smoked an expensive Romeo y Julieta after dinner. I had no idea what cigar was being smoked on the adjoining balcony, but once again the image of Nico imprinted itself on my mind.
This is ridiculous, I muttered to myself. Nico Alvarez is in Madrid. Thousands of miles away. And if you were ever to meet him again, how likely is it that it would be on an island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. Get a grip, Isobel!
But I couldn’t. I kept thinking of him. I’d been thinking of him all through dinner and all through the evening in the bar, even while I buried my nose in my book and chatted to the girl called Gala. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Isabella querida.
I’d treated him very badly. As badly as any man had ever treated me. I’d never quite got over the guilt I felt about Nico. The memories were flooding into my head now. Our first meeting near the Retiro park, where he’d paid for my café solo because I’d forgotten my purse. Going to an Irish pub with him. Listening to him playing at the Lux Hotel. Falling in love with him.
Damn it, I muttered savagely to myself, I hadn’t fallen in love with him. I’d fallen in love with the idea of someone as wonderful as him. It was completely different.
There was a sizzling sound and another waft of smoke and I realised that he’d extinguished the cigar. Then the sound of his patio door opening and closing again. He’d obviously gone to bed. With the beautiful Pilar.
He couldn’t be the same Nico. But it worried me that I seemed to want him to be.
I went back into my own room and closed the door. But I couldn’t let it go. I kept thinking about him and wondering if by some incredible chance . . . But so what if it was him? He was with Pilar, wasn’t he? And what did we have in common any more? Why would I want to talk to him? To be friendly, I reminded myself. To let him know that I’d grown up. To apologise again for not having told him about Tim. To tell him I’d once loved him.
I thumped the cushion on my chair. I most certainly wouldn’t tell him that! I hadn’t loved him. I’d used him. I might have loved him if I hadn’t been Tim-obsessed. But that was all in a different lifetime and with a different Isobel. I was older now. More sensible. And – despite what people thought – not flaky.
This was what I told myself as I stepped out on to my balcony again and leaned over the rail, as precariously as Pilar had done earlier that evening. I was trying to see into the room next door. My reasoning was that if by some extraordinary chance Nico Alvarez was there, I wanted to know. I didn’t want to bump into him around the pool or at the beach and be taken by surprise. I wanted to be ready for him. And so I needed to know who the man in Room 607 actually was.
The light was on in the room but I couldn’t hear anything. Nor could I see any movement through the heavy drapes which covered all but a sliver of the window, the sliver from which the thin slice of light gleamed. I thought about it for a moment, then swung myself out over the pastel blue and white wooden balustrades of my room and grabbed hold of the rail of the balcony next door. I swallowed hard as I glanced downwards. If I fell I’d probably break something. White Sands wasn’t a single building and the rooms were dotted around the green hillside so that none was more than one storey high. It wasn’t that far to fall really, but it would be directly into the succulent cactus plant below. I tightened my grip on the wooden rail. I definitely didn’t want to fall into the cactus plant.
It started to rain again. I swore softly under my breath and hauled myself up on to the balcony of Room 607, and stood on the wet tiles panting slightly. I realised that what I had done was incredibly stupid and foolish and that if the occupants of the room came out on to the balcony for any reason I would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. I also realised that there was no possible way that Pilar’s companion (husband, fiancé, lover – who knew!) was the Nico I’d known. So I would basically be standing on the balcony of a complete stranger’s room and he would probably call the police and God only knew what would happen to me.
The rain beat down even harder. There was no way I could get back to my own room while it fell in its relentless torrent. I slicked my wet hair back from my face and prayed that it would stop soon.
Then I heard the sound of someone at the patio door. I slithered across the wet balcony and tried to fold myself into its darkest corner while my heart fluttered like a trapped bird in my chest. The door opened. I flattened myself against the wall and told myself that everything I’d always believed about not being flaky was wrong. I was incredibly flaky. And this was my flakiest stunt yet.
The man stood in the open doorway looking out at the rain. I couldn’t see him properly because the light from behind him meant that he was in silhouette. I sure as hell hoped he couldn’t see me either. I think I closed my eyes, just like I used to do as a kid when Dad played hide and seek with me. I always supposed that if I couldn’t see him he couldn’t see me either. He usually let me win. Maybe if he hadn’t I would have realised that closing your eyes isn’t a great way of hiding from anyone!
There was a sudden exclamation from the man in the doorway. I allowed one eye to open slightly and then I groaned as I realised he had seen me and was walking towards me. I wondered what the jail sentence was for prowling on guest balconies at five-star hotels. And I wondered how I’d manage to explain it all to Gabriella.
‘Qué hace? What are you doing?’ he asked angrily.
I opened my eyes a little more.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said helplessly in Spanish. ‘I got the wrong room.’
‘The wrong room?’ He stood in front of me. The two of us stared at each other. I couldn’t believe it. I opened my mouth but I couldn’t speak.
‘Isobel?’ He sounded as gobsmacked as me. ‘Isabella?’
Isabella querida.
‘Hi, Nico.’ My voice came from miles away and sounded unaccountably bubbly and cheerful and completely insane. ‘How are you?’
‘Isobel,’ he said again. ‘I do not believe it. Why are you here?’
‘Same as you, I suppose,’ I said breezily. ‘Holiday. Though I’m on my own and I saw your lovely Pilar earlier. She’s gorgeous.’
He stared at me as though I was an alien from another planet. As though I’d materialised in front of him, a life form he didn’t quite understand.
‘Isobel, why are you here, and on the balcony of my room?’ He frowned again. There were more lines around his eyes than I remembered, but even in the blackness of the rain-filled night, they still smouldered. There was more grey in his hair too, around the temples. It made him look distinguished.
‘Isobel?’ He was waiting for me to answer, and although I knew that I was supposed to be quick-witted (everyone in the Alicante office thought so), I really couldn’t think of a single sensible thing to say. I cleared my throat.
‘I heard a noise,’ I told him unconvincingly.
‘But of course you would hear a noise,’ he said. ‘This is my room. I am in it. There would be a noise.’
‘Well, yes . . .’ My heart was thudding in my chest now, in a mixture of fear and embarrassment and shock. ‘So everything’s all right then,’ I said as brightly as I could. ‘Excellent. I’ll just be getting back.’ I walked over to the balcony and – despite the still-teeming rain and the threat of the cactus below – threw my leg over it.
‘Isobel! For heaven’s sake, stop! You will fall.’
‘Not at all.’ I was getting good at sounding breezy.
‘Please.’
He bounded across the balcony after me and caught me by the wrist. His dark, dark eyes stared into mine. I blinked.
‘Well, if you insist,’ I said reasonably, ‘you can let me out through your room.’ Though what the gorgeous Pilar would have to say about a drowned rat woman walking through her bedroom was absolutely beyond me.
‘Isobel, I . . .’ He stared at me as I clambered back on to his balcony. ‘I am sorry, but I am at a complete loss. I don’t understand why you are here.’
‘Like I said, a holiday,’ I told him. ‘And, gosh, Nico – it’s lovely to see you again, and maybe we’ll catch up in the bar or something, but now I’d better get back to bed.’
And with that I marched through the open patio door and across Room 607 (my eyes flicking towards the queen-sized bed, though I didn’t see any sign of Pilar at all) and out of the door before he had half a chance to stop me.
Naturally I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Of all the places I might have expected to meet Nicolas Alvarez again, here in this hotel had to be right at the bottom of the list. Because, and despite what I’d told Julie about Alicante being four hundred kilometres away from Madrid, I had often wondered what it would be like to bump into Nico there. Strolling down by the marina, for example. Or sitting on the beach. Or shopping in the Corte Inglés. I had wondered and imagined it and thought about it from time to time but I always pushed the thoughts to the very back of my mind because – well, because I didn’t want to think about Nico any more.
That passing whim stuff. That ‘loving him but being in love with Tim’ stuff. It’s only partly true. I had loved Nico when I lived in Madrid but I was afraid to admit it, even to myself. Nico had baggage in his past too, you see. A failed relationship with a girl called Carmen which bugged the hell out of me because he kept a photo of her on the shelf in his apartment. I didn’t want to commit to Nico knowing that he was still in his heart committed to Carmen. (The fact that he’d gone out with my friend Barbara afterwards was irrelevant. As far as I was concerned Carmen was the issue when I’d been dating him.) And he was too damn nice to me. I didn’t trust him. I was used to Tim, who hadn’t been quite so nice. Back then, I was a bit of an emotional mess. And seeing Nico again had made all of those conflicting emotions come back.
From The Heart Page 9