She came to a halt, turned and trudged back towards the house. Alfonso watched her, bemused, but she didn’t have the energy to make up an excuse as to why she had fled.
‘Hola,’ he said, as she reached him. He had grown fatter since she’d last seen him; braces were holding up his stained work trousers.
‘When did they go?’ asked Anna, out of breath. ‘The men who were here?’
‘Last night,’ he said. ‘Made some noise about it.’
‘And Mr Ruiz?’ she said.
Alfonso nodded. ‘Gone, gone.’
He changed the subject, to a motorbike race that had passed through the mountains the previous weekend, terrifying his animals. Anna listened politely for a few minutes before excusing herself, saying she had to get back to town.
‘You coming back to live here now?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Anna. ‘I don’t think so.’
She surprised him – and herself – by giving him a kiss on the cheek.
When he had gone, she locked up the house, leaving the key under a plant pot, and left the gate open. Then, before getting back into the car, she picked up the For Sale sign by the gate and flung it into the bushes.
As she drove away, she thought again about the lavatory seat. Almamy’s ‘We are sorry’ text – perhaps it referred to them taking it. Where would it end up? Being flogged in the flea market for a couple of euros, or in an antiques shop in Madrid, hugely marked up, to be bought by another couple like her and Michael?
Or maybe they didn’t take it to sell, but to use. She remembered what Mickey had said, about how cruddy the toilets at the greenhouses were; how luxuries such as paper and soap appeared only when the owners knew the inspectors from the supermarkets were coming, and were removed immediately after. The men knew what they were going back to when they left the finca; maybe the seat was an impulse steal, something they could bring back with them that would make a material difference to their everyday lives. Or perhaps it was a joke, to make their roommates laugh: a souvenir of their weird luxury hiatus.
She carried on down the mountain road. Alfonso turning up like that had relieved her of the opportunity to say goodbye to the finca ceremoniously. But what would she have done? Appreciate the valley one last time, savouring the restless shift of light and cloud, the way that strata on the rocks twenty kilometres away would in a blink be obscured – everything shrouded but the finca’s own land, making it feel like a castle in the clouds? Gaze poignantly at the wisteria planted by the front door, still in its infancy, that she’d now never see smothering the front of the house? Run her fingers over the finca’s shelves and mantelpieces, caressing their nicks and dings, the evidence of her ancestors that had made the wood so valuable to her?
Or should she have walked through the almond grove, brushing past the blossom, and stood in front of the borehole, unceremoniously gouged out of her land? Then followed its piping snaking over the hill to the vast plastic ocean it was feeding, which was in turn the lifeblood for thousands of men who risked death to work in the greenhouses, growing the lettuce to fill those puffed-up bags in Tesco Metro.
A memory came to her, of that awful weekend with Farah and Kurt, just before Michael left. They’d gone for a walk, Michael had ignored her, and Kurt had lectured them about the ingenious ancient irrigation system in the mountains established by the Moors from North Africa. ‘Of course, water is an Islamic symbol of paradise,’ he’d said.
As she mindlessly manoeuvred down the hairpin bends, Anna thought about her past, present and future homes – the finca, the bar, London – and what she would do now. By the time she hit the coast road, she knew.
‘OK, I’ve got a plan,’ she said.
She was circling the fountain in the square, on the phone to Derek. He was having lunch with Mattie; from his description she guessed they were at the fancy restaurant in town, the one with the terrace where she and Michael had eaten bisque to celebrate buying the finca. Mattie must have suggested it. Anna admired her audacity. She imagined Derek looking down the menu, doing slow calculations in his head as he recalled the euro exchange rate he’d seen at the airport, and trying not to wince.
‘You’ve got one hundred and fifty thousand pounds – that’s right, isn’t it?’ Anna continued on the phone, buzzing. ‘Forget Tommy’s villa; you can have the bar and the finca. You wanted a bargain – this is the deal of the century. Seriously. And no estate agent’s fees or anything. And I’ll go back to London with the money.’
She thought he might say, for form’s sake at least, that he didn’t want to live here without her; that spending time with his daughter was one of the attractions of coming to Spain. But he didn’t.
Instead, he said, after a pause, ‘Yeah, a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. That’s what the estate agent said.’
‘What?’ said Anna. ‘Your studio in Manchester – you haven’t actually sold it?’
‘No, not yet. Wait a sec.’ She heard him say to the waiter, ‘So it’s still twitching on the plate’ before he came back onto the line.
‘Yeah, so . . .’
‘Why did you come over here to look at properties if you haven’t sold your place?’ she interrupted. ‘Karen and Tommy think you have the money.’
‘Well, I’ve put the flat up for sale,’ he said, huffily. ‘The bloke reckons it’ll be snapped up.’
‘Dad,’ said Anna, actually stamping a foot. ‘You do realize that property isn’t selling anywhere? You know what’s going on? And even if you were lucky enough to get an offer, these things take months and months to go through?’
‘Yes, course. I’m not thick.’ He gave a dry little laugh; trying to keep his tone light in front of Mattie.
After a strained pause, Anna said, ‘Look, never mind. I’ll leave you to your lunch.’
She hung up and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to block out the disappointment. She felt like a mole scrabbling towards the surface after months underground, and discovering the earth had been paved over. She sat, slumped, as if she were already a pensioner, fit to join those pottering about around her, lending the place its slow metabolism.
She spotted Rose amongst them, and raised her hand in greeting. Rose made her way over and sat beside Anna at the fountain, giving a small oof of relief as the weight came off her feet.
Rose was always nicely turned out but especially so today, with an old-fashioned ruby brooch on her camel coat, and hair newly set.
‘Where’s David?’ said Anna. ‘Inside making you lunch, I hope.’
Rose glanced at her.
‘Oh no, my dear,’ she said, with kindness. ‘He’s gone.’
For a brief, stupid moment Anna thought Rose meant her husband had bailed out, followed the exodus of Brits back to the UK. But then she realized.
‘God,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Anna held Rose’s arm and listened to her explain that David had had a fatal stroke in bed a fortnight earlier, and Rose had woken up next to his body. He was cremated shortly after. They’d both agreed they wouldn’t have a burial or be repatriated: mortuary costs were so expensive here.
‘I wish I’d known,’ said Anna.
‘Oh, I didn’t want to bother you,’ said Rose. ‘Every time I saw you, you looked so busy, rushing around. Besides, it was going to happen soon enough. To one of us. I just wish it had been me.’
There wasn’t a hint of self-pity in her tone. Anna looked at her, smiling faintly as she looked out towards the promenade. She’d been in Rose and David’s apartment; it was as uninspiring and sparsely furnished as hers. Not a place to live alone.
‘What are you going to do now? Will you go back?’ said Anna.
‘Oh, no,’ Rose said, surprised. ‘I’ll stay here.’
‘Why?’ said Anna, bluntly.
‘It’s nice to have the sun.’
And the way she said it, it made sense.
They sat in silence, feeling the warmth on their faces, hearing the gentle cir
culation of people around them. Then, Anna noticed something and stiffened. A figure crossing the square at a different tempo, striding with a sense of purpose and shouldering a large sack as if it weighed nothing.
Paco. Anna shrank behind Rose, nose grazing the fabric of her coat. He was coming down the west side of the square; she couldn’t bolt to her apartment without crossing his path. After half a minute, she glanced up.
He was nearly at the other end of the square. From the back, the red writing on the sack was visible: arroz. She watched as he reached the promenade and disappeared down the beach steps.
Arroz. Rice, for his paella. He was still in business. The police hadn’t arrested him after her tip-off. Or, if they had, it hadn’t gone any further.
‘I have to go,’ said Anna to Rose. ‘Please do let me know if you need any help,’ she added, uselessly.
She gave Rose an awkward hug and set off in the direction of the police station, her anger at the sight of Paco rising to full boil within a few strides. But, before she reached the end of the square, she had slowed down. She couldn’t go to the police and demand to know why they hadn’t arrested Paco. Her tip-off had been anonymous, and a strong instinct told her that she should not unmask herself as his accuser. The man had power: that was clear. She thought of Richard being beaten up after trying to muscle in on the beach hawkers. The attacks on her bar. The sense that anyone who interfered with the Africans was warned off.
And then she thought of something else, something she had never properly investigated, and changed her course to Jaime’s flat.
He was in his car, looking at something on his phone. Anna tapped softly on the window. He jumped, and opened the door to speak to her. Instead, she went round to the passenger seat and got in beside him.
‘Hey, so I’ve been asking around about the graffiti but no luck,’ he said. ‘No one knows who did it. But it looks a bit better now, no?’
‘Muchas gracias,’ she said. ‘It was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.’
Jaime smiled quizzically, and Anna remembered that some thoughts were best left unspoken.
‘All good with you?’ she said, awkward now. She looked away from his face, down towards his shoeless feet. His socks were bright white, and shone in the dim footwell.
‘Pretty good,’ he said.
‘Listen, there’s something I wanted to ask,’ she said. ‘What do you know about Paco?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean – you told me that everyone knew Paco. Do you know what he does? Apart from sell paella?’
‘You mean the Internet cafe?’ said Jaime.
‘Not that,’ said Anna. ‘I mean . . .’ She didn’t want to mention the migrants, not yet. ‘Does he have a connection to Simón Ruiz? Does he work for him? Or the other way round?’
‘Well, yeah, they’re connected,’ said Jaime, after a pause. ‘Paco’s his uncle.’
El Tio. Boss. Uncle.
Astonished, Anna looked at him. ‘That true?’
Jaime nodded.
‘Why do you ask?’
Anna looked away from his long, unknowable face.
An air freshener in the shape of pine tree dangled from the rear-view mirror. He hadn’t divulged whether Simón and Paco had a business relationship. Was that intentional? Was it an open secret in town that Paco helped to supply the men who worked in Simón’s greenhouses?
She opened her mouth to ask and then stopped. She was afraid of the answer: that he might shrug insouciantly, or get defensive and close ranks. He might tell her that she was an outsider with no idea of how things were done here. That the men were necessary for the economy, and did work no Spanish were prepared to do. The Africans wanted to be here; Paco got them across; Simón gave them work. What was wrong with that? And if he said any of those things then she would think differently of him, and what was clear-cut would be muddied.
So, instead, she said, ‘Listen, Jaime, I’m going home. To the UK.’
His face shifted.
‘Not because of some fucking graffiti?’
‘No, not because of that. Other things. I just need to go back. But, um, thank you for your help, and – everything.’
She felt suddenly bashful.
‘When are you going?’
‘I’m not sure yet. Soon.’ The question deflated her, reminding her of the practicalities. ‘I have to work out what to do with the bar, and now my bloody dad has turned up and wants to live here.’
‘If he wants to live here, can’t he buy it off you?’ said Jaime.
‘Tried that,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t actually have any money.’
‘Maybe you should just swap,’ said Jaime. ‘You want to be there, he wants to be here.’
‘Yeah,’ said Anna, thoughtfully. Then, after a pause, she repeated herself, emphatic now. ‘Yeah. Yes!’
She reached to open the passenger door. ‘I have to go. But if I don’t see you again then thanks, and good luck with it all. With the business and everything.’
‘Yeah, well, you too.’
They hugged across the gear stick, and Anna got out. As she closed the car door, a thought came to her, and she stood still for a moment, digesting it. She smiled to herself, and then took her phone from her pocket and leaned down to the window.
‘You know, I haven’t got your number,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’ He told her and she typed it in. Then she said goodbye and started walking, then running, down the street.
Walking through to the restaurant’s terrace, Anna was irrationally pleased to see that even though the place was near empty, Derek and Mattie had not been seated at the prime corner table, but squeezed onto a small one near the back, next to an empty lobster tank that was still backlit and bubbling with oxygen, as if that would disguise the lack of actual crustacean.
Not that they looked as if they cared in the slightest. Mattie was indelicately attacking a pile of profiteroles, her long hair grazing the chocolate sauce, whilst Derek sucked on a pint and watched her admiringly. He was still wearing those jeans, Anna noticed, but now with the addition of socks under his loafers, presumably to conceal his alarming ankles from Mattie; like putting up a poster to hide a patch of damp.
Mattie began one of her voluble greetings and Anna smiled briskly in return. On the way over she’d planned to ask Derek for a word in private, but now realized that it might actually help her to do it in front of Mattie. She crouched down beside her father.
‘Listen, Dad, I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘You give me the key to the Manchester flat. I’ll give you the keys to the bar and the apartment. And that’s it. We’ll just swap.’
‘Oh, I love it!’ said Mattie. ‘So neat!’
Derek looked sideways at Anna.
‘She’s right, Dad, it’s completely neat,’ said Anna. ‘I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before.’
She could see Derek struggling to work out what was happening, and whether he was being offered a good deal, without saying anything that might harm his chances with Mattie.
‘Look, come with me a sec,’ Anna said. ‘Excuse us, Mattie.’
Derek reluctantly stood up, taking his pint, and she led him out to the front of the restaurant. They stood beside one of the pair of cracked plaster lions that guarded the entrance.
‘This is all a bit sudden,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Anna impatiently. ‘But what do you think?’
‘But what’s your place valued at?’ he said. ‘The estate agent said I could get . . .’
‘Never mind all that,’ she said. ‘This is the best way.’
‘I need to think about this.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she said, desperately. ‘You want to be here, I want to be there. I get an apartment, you get an apartment. Plus a bar thrown in, too.’
He was uncharacteristically quiet. His skin was already the colour of tea, after only a few days here.
‘You mentioned your house too, before . . .’
‘No,�
� she said. ‘Not the finca. The bar and the apartment. It’s a good deal. A great deal.’
‘Just do this for me,’ she said. ‘Please. We can sort out the legal stuff later.’
He glanced back at the restaurant, towards Mattie.
Anna looked at this ageing man who just happened to share her genes, who had given her so little, beyond her bone structure.
‘Actually,’ she said, quietly, ‘it’s the least you can do.’
She paused, and then found herself continuing, saying more than she had planned.
‘It had an effect, you know. You not being there. Not being interested. It’s happened now, and I’m a grown-up and I know we’re all imperfect and make mistakes. I’m not trying to make you feel bad and beg for my forgiveness, but I want you to know that. That it had an effect.’
Derek met her eyes briefly before looking away, towards the traffic-clogged coast road.
‘You know the Manchester flat is titchy, don’t you?’ he said, finally. ‘One room, really.’
‘I don’t care.’
They stood there in silence, for a moment.
‘And the bar? What do I do with that?’
‘You’ll work it out,’ she said. ‘It’s easy. You’ll like it. All the paperwork is there, under the bar. You can ask Sweeney if you need help. I’ll leave the keys for you in the shop opposite.’
‘You’re going now?’ he said, alarmed.
‘Not right now. But soon,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow.’
She gave him a kiss on the cheek, both sides, and then once more, continental-style. He smelled of shower gel and lager.
‘Come and visit, yeah?’ He clutched her arm. ‘Even though I’m a hopeless old fucker?’
‘Yeah, course,’ she said.
She smiled at him, for quite possibly the last time, and then he turned and went back in to Mattie.
Back at the apartment, Anna looked at the bulging bin bags slumped against the walls; the scoured bare surfaces. She was basically packed up already. On the way back from the restaurant, she had called Marie-Anne and asked her to book a one-way ticket back to Gatwick the following morning, on the earliest available flight.
Under the Sun Page 23