Under the Sun

by Lottie Moggach

  She tried the light switch but it just clicked fruitlessly. The dishwasher and TV lights were off, too. A fuse must have gone. Or had she been cut off?

  Never mind; there was enough light to see the bottles. She needed something to soothe her throat. She grabbed three mixer bottles of juice from the shelf, prised the lids off and downed them one after the other, the warm, thick, over-sweetened liquid providing some relief. She was just reaching down for another when there was a hideous jarring noise and the room started to darken.

  It took her a moment to realize what was happening: someone was wrenching down the shutters from the outside. It was all over in a couple of seconds. Looking across to the door, mouth fallen open, she glimpsed a pair of dark trousers before the shutter smashed against the ground and the room was plunged into blackness.

  ‘No!’ Anna shouted, and then, panic rising, ‘No, no, no, no!’

  She lurched for the wall, knocking over a stool. When her hand touched the stucco surface she groped around for the light switch, gasping with relief when she found it: in that moment of terror she’d already forgotten it didn’t work. She pressed it again and again, desperately, and then stood still for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut as she willed herself to calm down. After several deep breaths, she placed both hands on the wall and started to inch her way towards the door. Her fingertips ran over obstacles – the dartboard; the small, greasy shades of the useless wall lamps – until she touched glass and, finally, the open door. Steadying herself on the door frame with one hand, she reached out with the other to find the shutter. Then, when she had her bearings, she bent down and grasped the bottom of the shutter with both hands. There was no indoor handle, and only her fingertips could get a weak purchase on the ridge of corrugated metal. She tried to heave it up, but it didn’t budge.

  After a few more attempts she started hammering on the shutters with her fists.

  The metal reverberated as she hit it again and again, its ridges bruising her knuckles. Then, after what felt like hours, she heard a sound from the other side and froze, fists in the air.

  ‘What’s that?’ said the voice.

  ‘Open the shutter, I’m locked in!’ Anna shouted.

  After a lengthy pause the shutter started to rise laboriously, accompanied by heavy sighs. As they inched up, the darkness started to leaven, and looking down Anna could see first a bunch of spindly, furry legs, and then some stout, pale human ones clad in walking sandals. Then, some narrow doggy faces, dark eyes gleaming, tongues hanging out. Then a green corduroy skirt and an oversized blouson-type jacket, arms straining with the effort of lifting the metal.

  ‘The whole square could hear you,’ said Caz, panting, as she and Anna came face to face.

  ‘Someone locked me in,’ said Anna. Shock had made her as short of breath as Caz.

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’ said Anna.

  Caz pursed her lips.

  ‘Maybe it fell down by mistake,’ she said. ‘Or one of the local lads did it for fun. They get bored, you know. My bin was stolen last week.’

  Anna nodded distractedly, looking over Caz’s shoulder, eyes darting around the dark square as if the culprit might still be lurking. A boy had appeared, doing skateboard tricks against the side of the fountain. The sound jarred.

  Then, the delayed shock of being trapped in the bar, those few minutes of panic in the blackness, overwhelmed her. Faced with Caz’s doughy lack of sympathy, she sat down heavily on the terrace.

  One of the dogs started to lick her fingers, and she turned her palm to its raspy tongue. She felt movement at her side, and looked up to see that Caz had sat down beside her, bare legs planted apart.

  ‘Are you having a breakdown?’ Caz said.

  Her voice was flat: she could as well be asking Anna for a straw for her red wine and lemonade.

  Anna looked over at Caz. Her head was slightly bowed, and Anna saw the parting in her hennaed hair was sunburnt, like a scar. The dogs had settled on the ground around her, one with its paws primly crossed.

  ‘With what happened before,’ Caz added, still not looking at her. ‘That iss-ue.’

  Anna stared at Caz, astonished, as it came to her that on one afternoon, a long time ago, she’d sat in this woman’s front room, fumbling to open the box of tissues on the coffee table, and told her things she’d told no one else.

  ‘You were called Caroline,’ said Anna, more to herself. ‘And your hair’s different.’

  Caz shrugged yes.

  ‘You never said so,’ said Anna. ‘All this year.’

  ‘The guidelines state that when therapist and client meet outside the therapy room, the therapist takes their cue from the client,’ said Caz, atonally.

  Anna couldn’t think of what to say. The two women sat together in silence, looking out over the square. A paper napkin escaped from the ice-cream parlour skirted about in the breeze. Caz’s hands rested in her lap, and Anna noticed the little gold watch on her wrist, at odds with her eccentric hiking attire. She wondered whether Caz had bought it for herself, or if it was a gift from an old lover – a relic from a happier, richer life pre-Marea, as were the laughter lines like receding ripples across her cheeks. Anna scratched the coat of the mangy little dog, digging her nails under its fur.

  ‘He came to see me too,’ said Caz, after a pause.

  Anna looked up.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your boyfriend. He came to see me too.’

  Surely not. Michael and Caz inhabited different universes. The thought of them sharing the same room was impossible to imagine, let alone Michael confiding in Caz; paying for her advice.

  ‘When?’ asked Anna.

  ‘About the same time as you did.’

  ‘Before or after me?’

  ‘Before,’ said Caz. ‘And after. He came . . .’ She paused, to count in her head. ‘Four times.’

  Anna stared blankly at the ground in front of her, sifting through memories. When had he gone? When he said he was going to the neighbouring valley to catch the light? When he said he needed to drive to the big town to find a particular kind of size 4 paintbrush, and that he might be some time? When he professed a new interest in football, and went down to the bar by himself to watch it? Was he really going to sit in Caz’s apartment, on that hard vinyl two-seater sofa, in front of that thoughtlessly shrink-wrapped box of tissues?

  ‘What did he say?’ she asked.

  Caz remained silent, as if bound by the ethics of the profession she was entirely unqualified for.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ wheedled Anna, nudging her with sudden familiarity.

  ‘He was upset,’ said Caz, finally.

  Anna realized that she was gripping her own wrist so tight that white bones glowed under her bruised knuckles.

  ‘He didn’t actually talk about you that much,’ continued Caz. Anna snorted. Even from a distance, Michael could still squelch her. ‘It was more about him. His issues.’

  ‘And what were his issues?’ asked Anna, conscious of how pathetic it was that she had to ask.

  ‘Relationships and that,’ said Caz, who appeared to have overcome her reluctance to divulge. ‘He said they always have a good start and then it all goes pear-shaped. He starts hating the woman for the same reasons he liked them at first. No – contempt was the word he used. He says it happens every time. With you it lasted longer than with the others.’

  Anna stared at a discarded fag butt squashed between the tiles. So she, Anna, could have been anyone. Maybe the pattern was repeating itself right now, and, a thousand miles away, Satine was staring numbly at the exposed brick wall of her Hackney flat, trying to work out what she’d done wrong.

  ‘He said he found it unbearable to be perpetually exposed to another person,’ Caz said, eyes narrowed in recall. ‘And that love couldn’t survive that.’

  It did sound like the kind of thing Michael would say.

  ‘He couldn’t sit down, kept pacing around the room,’ Caz co
ntinued. ‘The man downstairs complained about the noise.’

  ‘Did he say anything about me?’ asked Anna.

  Caz glanced at her, with what could have been pity.

  ‘He said you were nice,’ she said. ‘He said it wasn’t really about you.’

  They sat in silence for a bit longer. Anna wondered why she didn’t feel more affected by the news.

  ‘Caz, why did you become a counsellor?’ said Anna, finally. ‘I mean, you’re not qualified or anything, are you?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Caz. ‘But I had a . . .’

  She stopped, and, for the first time since Anna met her, she seemed vulnerable and hesitant. ‘. . . An issue when I was young. Your age. Talking to someone helped me.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Anna. ‘Your bad time, I mean.’

  ‘Why are you apologizing?’ said Caz. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘It’s . . . just a turn of phrase,’ said Anna, suddenly tired. ‘I’m sympathetic, I mean.’

  Caz stood up. Their moment of unlikely connection was clearly over. The dogs scrabbled to their feet. Still sitting, Anna looked up at her. Caz’s forehead creased as she looked around the square.

  ‘This place,’ she said, as if to herself. ‘I should have gone to Dubai.’

  She set off across the square, the dogs clustered around her. Anna watched her until she disappeared down a side road. Whilst they’d been talking, the boy on the skateboard had gone, and the square was again deserted. The streetlamps barely punctured the darkness and, on the sea side, the palm trees cast unfamiliar man-sized shadows. Beyond them, in the blackness, the murmur of the waves sounded alien and sinister.

  Her phone buzzed, making her jump. She opened her texts with an unsteady finger.

  Not Simón. It was her dad.

  Agreed on Tommy villa! Got good deal. And staying another 3 days. Karen changed flight for me. Viva Espana!!

  Anna scrambled to her feet and ran up to her denuded apartment. Locked in, she climbed into the Frank chair and bunched up tight. For once, she saw the point of the grilles on the window. Breathing deeply, she tried to clear her mind, in what she hoped was an approximation of meditation. After some minutes, when her heartbeat had slowed to a tenable rate, she relaxed her grip on her knees. She tried to absorb the events of the last few days but her mind buckled under the weight. Instead, in her head a parade of men encircled her – Paco, Simón, Derek, Tommy, Michael, Jaime, Almamy, moving faster and faster, until it was as if she was at the centre of a zoetrope. Her slide into unconsciousness was interrupted by a buzz from her mobile, and with a start she was upright, all her senses alive again.

  She didn’t recognize the number. The text read: We are gone.

  Then, as she was staring at it, another came through, from the same number.

  We are sorry.

  13

  She woke just after noon, with a start, and within three minutes was out of the apartment, car keys in hand. As she leaned down to unlock the car, she glanced back at the bar and stopped, her key in the door. The PUTA had been obscured by a neat, long rectangle of black paint, large enough to censor the word but not quite covering the tops and bottoms of the letters.

  Anna looked at it for a moment and then smiled, before getting in. Jaime; it must be. She detected his hand in the judicious use of expensive paint, and his attempt to make the cover-up as neat as possible. As she edged through town, she thought of him, a near stranger out there in the darkness, spray can in hand, bandana over his mouth, and decided that this was the nicest thing anyone had done for her. Never mind Michael’s sheaves of delicate little love notes, sketched over rye toast and espresso: they were no match for a blob of industrial black paint, hurriedly applied in the dead of night.

  Stopped at the traffic lights, Anna took out her phone to text Jaime her thanks before realizing she didn’t have his number. She drove on, up the coast road and through the greenhouses. Lorries were parked outside, having delivered the day’s workers. As ever, the opaque walls of the structures gave little hint as to the industry within. Now, though, she noticed the little shacks and lean-tos dotted around, limpeted onto the greenhouses. Mickey lived somewhere like that. And it struck Anna that if Almamy and the others had abandoned the finca, they would be spending tonight in one, too.

  ‘We are sorry,’ the text had read. As she drove past the greenhouses, Anna shouted in their direction: ‘It’s not your fault!’

  She wound up the mountain road; passing through the tree tunnel, the light in the car dimmed and goosebumps sprang up on her bare arms. She opened her window to breathe in the fresh scent. Approaching the finca, she passed the unmarked entrances to properties; dogs alerted their never-seen owners to her presence. These people knew her comings and goings with the precision of a factory timesheet but, apart from Alfonso, she’d never fraternized with them, and now she never would. They didn’t care who they shared their mountain with, as long as there was no intrusion on their lives.

  But hadn’t they felt the same, she and Michael, when they’d first arrived? To live up here was to choose to become an island; to clearly signal that all you needed was some land, a view and each other. If you craved community, you’d live down in the urbanization. But how could any relationship survive such isolation? She thought about what Caz had told her, about how her familiarity bred Michael’s contempt. If she hadn’t been so unhealthily in thrall to him, she might have felt the same way. These unknown couples, who lived down those unmarked turnings – maybe they secretly hated each other too. Or perhaps they just had realistic expectations. Never mind nourishing each other’s souls – perhaps it was enough if your partner replenished the wood shed without having to be asked.

  At the finca, she parked up on the verge. During the drive, she’d done a fair job of keeping trepidation at bay but now she had turned off the engine, it flooded her system, threatened to undo her. She forced herself out of the car, and walked over to the gate. It was ajar, the padlock on the ground. The sign with her phone number on it was propped back up; that must have been how Almamy had got her number – if, indeed, the text had come from him.

  The space beyond the gate was empty. No BMW. No pick-up truck.

  She stood still for a few moments, listening to her breathing. It was the only sound around. The light was pellucid today, and, above the house, the horseshoe mountain looked particularly arid and inhospitable. The sky was vast, cloudless and empty; no eagles circled on the currents. The weeds in the front garden had turned yellow; the rosemary bush looked even larger. She imagined it encompassing the house, like the innermost circle of a maze.

  The house shutters were closed. Anna started down the path, hearing the gravel crunch underfoot. The washing line now sagged empty. As she crossed the path down to the terrace, she looked towards the almond grove, and stopped at the sight. The trees, so impoverished a week ago, were now topped with a froth of white and pink blossom. It was a magical spectacle that lasted only a brief few weeks at the start of spring, and made the valley look as if it had been scattered with candy floss. The traffic on the road increased markedly during the blossom season, due to day-trippers from the coast. After a couple of weeks the flowers would be replaced by green shoots, signalling the start of spring.

  On the drive up, Anna had wondered whether she should go and look at the borehole. Now, gazing over the blossom, she decided she wouldn’t. A delicate curtain had been drawn over the sight.

  She carried on, to the front door, and stopped. Dead quiet. She turned the key in the lock, pushed it open and turned on the light. The sitting room was intact. The furniture had even been moved back to an approximation of its original position. She stepped into the centre of the room. The men’s belongings had all gone but the place hadn’t been cleaned; the floor was gritty, surfaces unwiped, rugs pulled roughly back into place. Bits of paper and empty packaging sat on the table and shelves. It was, she thought, in the same condition you would leave a hotel room in if you were madly la
te for your plane.

  A valve opened, and tension seeped from her. She looked at her possessions: the books, the lamps, the paintings in their artful little clusters on the walls; the pile of Michael’s sketches on the sideboard, now as curled and discoloured as autumn leaves. At last, she had got her house back. But the place had lost its potency. Glancing around the room, she felt as unmoved as she had when looking at Michael’s photo on his website. She saw it through a stranger’s eyes: it was no longer her home, just a house full of objects. The table was just a table, rather than the delivery device for that fateful letter; the sofas were just sofas. Either her tenants, or time, had leached the place of its associations.

  She walked into her bedroom. The duvet had been pulled roughly over the bed and its innards poked out of the bottom of the cover, which hadn’t been closed properly. She couldn’t blame her departed guest for not bothering; the cover was fastened with tiny, affected mother of pearl buttons rather than poppers.

  In the bathroom, an empty bottle of shower gel lay in the bottom of the bath. The grouting between the smashed tiles was grimy. The bin hadn’t been emptied; inside were scrunched-up tissues and the intimate detritus of five strangers. Someone had, finally, thrown away that long-dead bunch of wild flowers on the sill.

  There was something different about the room, and it took her a few seconds to work out what. There was more white than usual. Then, she saw: the square mahogany lavatory seat had gone. She stared at the bare bowl.

  She heard a vehicle crunching across the gravel of the driveway. She snapped out of her reverie and shot through the sitting room and out of the open door like a rabbit, towards the almond grove. She’d almost reached the protection of its blossom clouds when she glanced over her shoulder and saw it was only Alfonso. He was standing beside his truck, looking in her direction.