Under the Sun

by Lottie Moggach

  It was the only theory that made any sense; all this time, the woman had been watching her and constructing a false narrative. But in that case, why would she send Anna to the Plaza del Sol?

  ‘He is a hypocrite,’ the woman had said. So Simón must be up to no good, too.

  After paying up, Anna still had some time to kill. She wandered aimlessly around a nearby minimart, finding herself faintly repulsed by the amount of booze on offer; half of the aisles were devoted to bottles. Finally, it was almost six, and Anna got back in the car and drove towards the Plaza del Sol. She passed the steep road that led to the urbanization where Tommy and Karen lived. Derek was going up there later, to check out their villa. He might even be up there now. She still hadn’t fully absorbed the fact that he was here.

  The coast road was relatively busy. The driver in front of Anna activated their windscreen washers instead of indicating: the classic tic of the freshly arrived tourist in an unfamiliar hire car. Anna overtook the spray with the impatience of a local, only to be trapped behind a vast, fume-belching truck loaded with a jumble of red and green plastic chemical containers. She’d been stuck in a similar position many times before, but now Anna looked at the truck properly and saw there were workers in the back, too. Several pairs of arms were visible, gripping the side for balance.

  Eventually the truck turned off, heading towards an unseen greenhouse. A minute later, Anna reached the entrance to the Plaza del Sol.

  As she passed by the rust-stained girder and entered the colonnade of immature trees leading to the complex, it occurred to Anna that she didn’t know where she should be heading; she hadn’t asked where the woman lived. But – of course – if the woman had also seen Tommy and Anna from her window, Simón must be using the same spot.

  Anna parked up on an unobtrusive side street near the cul de sac, and sat in the car for a moment before slowly getting out and easing the door shut. She’d never been here alone before. The complex appeared as eerily barren as ever, its aborted buildings and shuttered shops as dead as its neat squares of brown lawn and dry water features.

  But today, after her conversation with the gift shop woman, the place had a silent charge. As she walked slowly up and down the pavement, she felt observed by ghosts living in the shadows of the buildings. Before, those dark window cavities had seemed to her like open mouths, caught in rictus alarm at their eternal incompletion. Now, they felt like eyes.

  She fought the urge to jump back into her car and flee. To distract herself she thought about Jaime, about how he helped to build the Plaza del Sol in its glory days, when the place was alive and full of potential. Before they knew they were building a ghost city. She imagined him here, surrounded by cranes – ‘the national bird of Spain’. Lowering breeze blocks into place. Switching on the cement mixer. Carrying one end of a clutch of reinforcing steel rods, the same ones that now protruded guilelessly from the tops of the least-finished buildings, reminding Anna of Sherbet Fountains. Cracking jokes with his work mates and then, on his lunch break, getting out his phone, making plans to meet his friends at the bar that evening to spend those 500-euro notes.

  She stopped pacing and sat down, leaning her back against the wall. To her right she had a direct view of the parking spot but there was still no sign of Simón, nor anyone else. The ever-present wind sent bits of rubbish skittering down the pavement.

  Opposite her was a wall of graffiti: a riot of tags and phrases and drawings, twisted and colourful, in striking contrast to the plain concrete and straight lines around them. Some of the writing was well-designed, uniform. Once, in her old life, she’d known hundreds of typefaces by sight.

  Her gaze rested on one particular word, Ojo! This, she knew, meant, ‘watch out!’ But it was more the design that caught her eye. The pink and red script was almost identical to that used on her shutters.

  It was 6.10pm. The wind had died down and the streets were deafeningly quiet. It seemed impossible that anyone else would turn up, that this silence would ever be broken. Ten more minutes, she thought, and she’d leave.

  Then – the sound of a car. A low, expensive purr – but in those bald boulevards, it was impossible to be discreet. Anna pressed herself against the wall as a BMW pulled up, one bay along from where she and Tommy used to park. From her crouched position, she could see into the back windscreen.

  The driver’s window was open and she saw a short, tanned forearm, with a prominent watch, resting on the side of the car. He turned to speak to his passenger and she saw Simón’s profile in the gap between the seats. Even from a distance she could see that he was smiling. Properly smiling, his teeth exposed – not the means-to-an-end stretch of lips displayed when she first met him, when he wanted the finca. He laughed at something, and then leaned forward towards his passenger. They kissed.

  The passenger was tall; it looked awkward. Anna squinted and looked harder, curiosity struggling with her embarrassment at the prurience. It was hard to make out any identifying features. Then, the two profiles broke off from kissing and the passenger’s own arm emerged from the window.

  A black, male arm.

  The passenger lifted his hand to touch Simón’s face. The men laughed again and then started to kiss properly, and Anna’s discomfort became unbearable. She got clumsily to her feet and ran down the street, away from the BMW, sticking close to the wall, although there was no real need. She drove out of the complex, adding her own tyre marks to those of the joyriders.

  Safely out on the coast road she slowed, her head a whirr. The fact that Simón was gay was not that shocking in itself. Yes, he had mentioned a family – and there had been that picture of him and his wife online – but since when did that ever stop anyone? But – was the man Simón’s employee? Was he spending his days bent double in the greenhouses, sodden with sweat, earning a couple of euros an hour, before sneaking off in his boss’s air-conditioned car for a secret rendezvous? She thought of Mattie telling her that the men would do anything for a work permit.

  But the pair had looked relaxed and happy. In the admittedly short time Anna had watched them, she hadn’t seen any sign of coercion.

  Maybe the man wasn’t an employee. Maybe he and Simón had met in a club in Barcelona, or on a website. Maybe he was a high-powered businessman, too. Was she being racist, assuming that the black man was poor, and that a relationship between a white man and a black one had to be exploitative?

  One thing Anna felt sure of, though, was the fact that Simón would not want this affair to be public knowledge.

  A horn blast made her jump, and the car behind aggressively overtook. Anna realized she was driving far too slowly and pulled into the verge. It was then, when the engine was off and she was still, that she realized how she could use this information. The woman in the gift shop thought she was helping Anna by revealing Simón’s secret, and she was – just not in the way she thought.

  Anna took out her phone and composed a text.

  I saw you with that man, she began – and the phrase triggered the memory of her altercation with Simón in front of the bar. I know what you did with that man, she’d told him, meaning the body on the rocks. And Simón had stiffened, briefly, before relaxing again as she explained.

  She continued – in the Plaza del Sol, and I have photographs. Unless you leave my property immediately, I’ll send them to your wife and display them all around town.

  She moved to ‘send’, then hesitated. The image came to her of Simón with his boyfriend in the car. Hearing his phone buzz, untangling himself to check it. Then his smile dropping as he stared incredulously at the message. For a second, her desire not to spoil the moment overcame her loathing of Simón. She thought of the fact he didn’t spray pesticide in the faces of his workers; what counted as being a good employer out here. Then, she thought of his lies to get the finca. His arrogance about gouging out her land without permission. And what if the man didn’t want to be in his car? She pressed ‘send’.

  Her system flooded with nausea
ting adrenaline. To distract herself, she called Derek. He told her he was up at Tommy and Karen’s. They’d just shown him around the villa, and now Karen was making some tapas.

  ‘Where are you?’ said Derek. ‘Come over!’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Are you sure they won’t mind?’

  ‘You don’t mind if my dear daughter drops by, do you, Karen?’ she heard Derek say.

  Anna couldn’t hear Karen’s reply, and imagined her tight smile of assent.

  ‘Yes, come over!’ said Derek, back on the phone. ‘What number is this, mate?’ Anna heard Tommy say something.

  Anna said she’d see him in a minute and hung up. As she started the engine and headed towards the urbanization, she felt pretty sure that this was a terrible idea, but she couldn’t bear to spend another moment alone.

  12

  She swung the car up the steep road to the urbanization, passing under an arch with peeling paint and a security booth that Tommy had told her was now permanently unmanned, acting like a decoy owl. A colonnade brought her to a fan of roads lined with identical white and yellow villas; beyond them was a cluster of taller apartment buildings in the same colours. A sign directed her towards the pool, the doctor’s, the minimart, the cafe bar. Coming straight from the Plaza del Sol was surreal, like seeing a skeleton fleshed out. This is what the other place was supposed to be: only by an accident of birth had this one survived.

  But it was only just surviving. Anna had been here only once before, at the beginning of her time in Marea. Then, her visit was soundtracked by lawn-mowers and leaf blowers and sprinklers, the shrieks of children in unseen pools. ‘Thriving’ was perhaps too strong a word – many of the properties were holiday rentals and lying empty, with overgrown gardens and dusty ironwork – but there had been life here. Now, there was no noise from children, no trikes in the yards. This place had the air of a retirement village that, unlike the caravan park, wasn’t replacing its residents when they died.

  That first visit, Anna had come for dinner at a couple’s villa – this was back in the day when such invitations were routine, and she accepted them. Before she started seeing Tommy. Her memories of that evening were of an unseasoned chicken chasseur and gossip about the power-drunk ‘urb’ president, who had introduced a load of new rules. Cars had to be moved every week so that the road underneath them could be cleaned, and those not complying would be towed at the owner’s expense. Children were forbidden to splash in the communal pool. All awnings had to be white, and no washing could be visible from the street.

  Listening to this, Anna had wondered why they’d all chosen such a restrictive, homogenous existence. She hadn’t understood then that, despite their bitching, equality was the attraction here. Life was on a level playing field; the old class system was irrelevant. No one at the dinner had seemed particularly interested in what Anna had done before moving to Marea. During a break in the conversation, she’d found herself offering up an unsolicited autobiography: something she’d never done before, not even with Michael’s maddeningly indifferent friends. She name-dropped that she’d gone to the RCA, had once (briefly) worked for Saatchi and Saatchi, and that she’d lived in central London. People listened politely enough, but didn’t follow up anything she said, and soon she fell silent.

  Later, as they ‘sat soft’, the female half of the couple had said to Anna, quite kindly, ‘In Marea, it’s about what you are, not what you were.’

  That couple were long gone, back to the UK. Anna couldn’t even think of their names. She remembered their villa, though, and how it looked identical to 108, where she’d now arrived. High gates; two storeys; white stucco trimmed with mustard yellow; doors and windows lined with black security grilles. In the front yard, Tommy’s Rover was parked next to an impeccably clean built-in barbecue.

  She gave herself just a moment to speculate on what must be going through Karen and Tommy’s respective heads at the prospect of her arrival, before ringing the bell. Tommy answered, almost instantly.

  ‘Well, hello!’ he said, loud and avuncular. He was wearing a chunky blue V-neck jumper she didn’t recognize – a hand-knitted job. He gave her the briefest air kiss before turning back inside.

  ‘Hungry?’ he said brightly, over his shoulder. ‘Karen made tapas.’

  He led her through into the kitchen diner, a room familiar to Anna from photos on the website. Large and well-equipped and neutrally decorated, it was one of the property’s selling points. Karen and Derek were sitting at the table. Derek leaped to his feet and gave her a kiss. Karen was in pastels. She smiled in Anna’s direction, but didn’t get up.

  ‘Would you like something, Anna?’ she said evenly. ‘There should be enough.’

  ‘Oh no, no,’ said Anna. ‘Thank you.’ She sat down at the table, wondering again what the hell she was doing here. On the table was a small leg of jamón, clamped for carving on a stand, alongside a gingham-lined basket of bread and a platter of machine-sliced cheese. There were napkins and crystal glasses and place mats and coasters, even though the glass table meant there was no need for them. Soft classical music played from a little square stereo on the sideboard.

  A jamón leg like that must have cost thirty euros and no one really used those stands here – they were the equivalent of a tureen or a decanter, brought out only at special occasions. Derek might not realize that, but Anna did, and Tommy and Karen knew she did. Anna felt embarrassed at the sight of it, to be witnessing such a naked attempt to impress. God, don’t go to all this effort for him! she wanted to say. The bottle of rosé at his elbow is more than enough.

  Karen was looking at Anna, her fingers rubbing the stem of her glass, and what she was thinking could only have been clearer if she had stood on her chair and bellowed it: was Anna here to scupper their sale, or to claim her husband?

  ‘What a gorgeous house,’ said Anna, attempting to allay one of those fears. ‘Stunning.’

  Karen blinked. Derek poured Anna a glass, oblivious to the tension around the table.

  ‘I’m hearing about the wonders of golf,’ said Derek. ‘Your man here has been quite lyrical.’

  ‘And I was just telling your father how we’re going to put in a borehole, to water the grass,’ said Karen. ‘Tommy found someone who says he might be able to help. He’s putting it to the urb committee next week.’

  Tommy was standing by the fridge, and ostentatiously avoided Anna’s glance. So that’s why he had been so keen to get Simón’s number: not to help her out, but to pick Simón’s brains on irrigation methods. She looked at the bulky, sandy-haired bloke fiddling with the ice-cube machine, and saw a total stranger. A novelty magnet on the fridge beside him read: Golf diet: Stay on Greens.

  ‘You know, I’ve never been here before,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I’d love a little tour.’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Tommy quickly, moving towards the door. Anna didn’t dare look at Karen.

  He led her into the hallway.

  ‘Guest bathroom,’ he said, gesturing towards an open door. Anna peered in obediently, playing the role she had given herself. Corner bath. Vanity unit. A line of flowery tiles. She followed him into the living room. Two neat leather sofas, three angled cushions apiece. A bookshelf with a short row of Patrick O’Brian novels. A bowl of golf balls sat on the glass coffee table. Anna remembered hearing about Tommy and Karen’s evening strolls around the course, collecting stray balls to sell back to the club. The walls were dominated by several large studio portraits of their daughter and grandchildren. Dozens more framed family photos lined the cabinets.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Anna. Tommy, stiff with nerves, said nothing, and led her through the folding doors and onto the back terrace, out of range of the kitchen. They stood a few feet apart, looking out over the golf course. The light was waning, the sky peachy. A lone couple in their whites were picking their way around the dun-coloured grass.

  ‘Looks pretty bad,’ she said, gesturing at the course. ‘I can see why you’d want a borehole. How m
uch is Simón charging you for it?’

  Tommy looked at her for a moment. His cheek twitched.

  ‘I did ask him about your place, of course,’ he said, ‘but he said there was nothing he could do. I tried, darling, I really did. And then I thought, whilst I was there . . .’

  Anna watched him bluster, his desperation not to be seen as a bad guy making him stumble over his words.

  ‘There’s no need for this,’ she said, cutting him off, and then turned back inside, not waiting for him. Back in the kitchen, Derek and Karen still sat at the table, Derek upending the last dribble of wine into Karen’s glass, even though it sat untouched.

  ‘How exciting to be an actor,’ Karen was saying politely, hands clasped on her lap. Anna guessed Derek had been telling her his Diana Rigg story.

  ‘Listen, I’ve got to go,’ said Anna. ‘Dad, call me later.’

  She turned to Karen.

  ‘It’s a lovely house, Karen. And, by the way, I read your memoir. Every single page. I think it’s really good. Really informative.’

  Karen looked up at her, and Anna saw the tension seep out of her face. Then she nodded and gave Anna a hint of a smile.

  Anna drove back and parked beside the bar. It was coming up to 9pm, but the square was deserted. No one sitting on Sweeney’s terrace. No teenagers at the fountain. Even the little permanent flashing train outside the gift shop was powered off. Where was everybody? The thought of the text she had sent Simón resurfaced, and she felt her ribcage contract with apprehension. How had he reacted? Was he up there now, smashing up the finca? Was he waiting for her in one of those silent side streets, his engine turned off?

  Her throat felt as if she had swallowed clots of dry turf from Tommy’s golf course; she was in dire need of a drink. Lifting the bar’s shutters halfway, she unlocked the front door and went inside. The room smelled funky, like blocked drains. Maybe the Environmental people were right to close her.