Two children were playing some form of hopscotch on the stony ground outside the cafe. I thought it looked quite fun.
‘If someone died when they were young,’ I said to Natasha, ‘would they be able to talk to you, or would they always stay the spirit of a baby?’
Natasha put her drink on the table. She was chic, in a navy blue top, with huge sunglasses and tiny shorts, and wedged sandals that I wouldn’t have been able to walk in. I loved to look at her. She was like a person from a magazine.
She seemed to be poised and in control of herself all the time. I knew she must be sad about her dad, and incredibly upset about her mother in hospital thousands of miles away, but she never showed it. Not at all.
I looked around. Apart from the children and their parents, there was a woman on her own, across the square, who was drinking something flamboyant and alcoholic, and there were two men dressed in black with glasses of lager.
‘Good question,’ said Natasha, pushing her sunglasses up on to her head and smiling. ‘Great! So, this I do know because I asked Walter a while ago. I saw a story in the paper back home about a kid dying of one of those terrible diseases, and I wondered the same thing. Turns out that if it’s a small child they’ll grow into their spirit. They actually have the best of it, which I think is good, since if they’re sick, they have the worst time here in the physical world. They become their best selves in the spirit world. I’ve spoken to a few now. They’re the wisest, most gentle people you’ll ever encounter.’
I smiled into my drink. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of Sofie and Hans-Erik.’ For some reason I needed to blink back tears. The very idea of them gasping for breath. It was the ultimate horror.
‘Hey,’ said Natasha. She took my hand. ‘You know, I hadn’t even thought of that. I’m so sorry. They’re your brother and sister. It’s a horrible thing to think about. I know you’ll be with them at the end. You know, they might just get to grow up in a world of gas masks until we get things back under control. They might even be the ones who fix it.’
I managed to smile. ‘Yes. Though I’ve never been sure what the gas masks are meant to do. In the war they were to protect from poison gas, weren’t they? But now it’s not about filtering things out. It’s about there actually not being anything to breathe.’
I was so glad I could say things like this to her.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. But it might be OK. It still might.’
The woman walked past us, taking her empty glass back into the bar.
‘Hola,’ she said, giving us a big grin as she went. Up close she was older than I’d thought, with bright orange hair.
‘Hola!’ said Natasha. She turned back to me. ‘Not to change the subject, but this place is great, isn’t it? I like the way a woman can drink cocktails on her own, and there’s children playing, and those guys aren’t giving us any hassle.’
‘It’s nice just to sit here and watch things,’ I said.
‘It is.’ Natasha nodded. ‘But you can’t just sit and watch things happen. You have to do them too. So. I want to talk about Zoe. Your first task was going to that party, and you looked so cute and so did she. What are you going to do about her?’
I sighed. The children were jumping around and giggling.
‘I’ll go home at the end of this month,’ I said, ‘and I’ll meet up with her. I don’t know. She still won’t be single.’
‘You need to be more proactive, Libby Lewis.’
‘How, though?’
‘I’ll teach you some things. Also, dump that Max boy. He’s no good for you.’
I was stung by that, but decided to ignore it. She didn’t know him. I saw Natasha’s eyes flick to the children, and then back to me.
‘You speak Spanish,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘I’m doing it for A level.’ She looked blank. ‘Exams you take at the end of school, if the world doesn’t end before then.’ I realized that she was about to try to make me talk to the kids, so backtracked. ‘I’m not great at the speaking part, though. I have to pretend to be a character called Carmen or I can’t talk to anyone. I’m better at reading and writing. Also, it turns out that when you speak to people, they talk back really fast and it’s hard to understand. Anyway, you speak it better than me.’
‘Oh yeah,’ she said, ‘but just because I’ve spent time in Mexico. I mean, my Spanish probably sounds strange to these actual Spanish people, so you must have a more authentic Spanish-Spanish accent than I do. But the upshot is, we both get by. Come on then. Watch this.’
She walked over to the children. They looked receptive as she crouched down and started talking in fast Spanish that I could only just follow.
She got some coins out of her pocket and started doing a magic trick. I stood back a little way and watched her showing that the coins had disappeared. The children squealed with laughter as she pulled one out of the little boy’s ear and handed it to him, then took the other out of the girl’s wild hair and gave it to her.
The adults were looking over and laughing. I thought children shouldn’t be speaking to strangers, but I supposed that, as teenage girls, we looked safe enough.
‘Gracias,’ their mother called over when it was over, and Natasha was back at our table.
I looked at Natasha and she looked at me. ‘That was amazing!’ I said. ‘It was so cool!’
‘So,’ she said. ‘Want to learn some tricks? I’m not saying Zoe will be swayed by you grabbing a coin out of her hair, by the way. Just that this will make you more confident. Let’s call mastering this task four.’
I nodded.
The late sunlight was golden, and the shadows were long. The four of us sat on the terrace. There were two bottles of wine on the table, one of each colour, and a bottle of Prosecco. Natasha had a glass of red wine, and so they offered me one too.
‘Can I have some of that instead?’ I pointed to the Prosecco.
‘Sure thing.’ Mum popped the cork, poured some into a tumbler and passed it over.
‘Thanks,’ I said, and sipped it. I liked the bubbles in my nose, but the taste was harsher than I had expected and I put the glass down. I kept expecting Mum to announce that she was teetotal with her new lifestyle, but so far that was very much not the case. Mum and Sean drank wine every night. I didn’t think they’d had a day off since we found out about the Creep. If life somehow carried on, they would have to stop, but for now it really didn’t seem to matter. Lots of people were drunk, a lot of the time. Mum and Sean’s version was mild compared with the things that were going on out there, in the wild, wild world.
I picked the tumbler up again and took a tiny sip. Prosecco was easier to drink than wine, and it didn’t stain your lips and teeth, though red wine suited Natasha. She was like someone in an old French film. I thought of myself drinking red wine from a mug not so long ago. Sitting on a wall. Leaning in to kiss Zoe, and then running off home when her girlfriend turned up.
I had done that because of Natasha. I had been humiliated and miserable when I got home, but now I was glad it had happened. She had made me be brave: I felt she held the key to something big.
‘Libby has something to show you.’ Natasha smiled her witchy smile at me. I knew I couldn’t be shy with my actual family, so I nodded. I could do this. I psyched myself up and remembered what she had told me. It was like acting. Almost all the ‘magic’ was really confidence. And confidence was what I needed.
I took a deep breath and assumed my persona. I was going to be Juliet Capulet, if she hadn’t stabbed herself, had got over Romeo and somehow become a street magician in Southern Europe.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘See these coins? Can you check that they’re normal?’
I handed them to Mum, who indulged me by taking and scrutinizing them. She passed them to Sean, who pretended to bite one. They gave them back with nods of agreement. These coins were normal.
This was part of the misdirection. Of course they were normal. The trick had nothing to do with the normality or not of the coins. It would not have worked better if the coins had been secretly chocolate, for example.
‘So,’ I said, ‘we’re going to make them vanish. Here we go.’ I put one coin on the table and held out the other one. ‘This is real genuine magic,’ I said. ‘It’s a gift we have in this family: unfortunately it’s on the Lewis side, so neither of you can do it. I’m going to make this coin vanish, and who knows where we might find it?’ As I spoke I hid the coin in my hand, between the base of my thumb and my little finger. ‘Oh, look! It’s gone. Where could it be?’ I pantomimed looking for it, and then did an exaggerated oh there it is! face and pulled it out of Mum’s ear (or rather put my hand next to her ear and produced it).
They applauded, even though it was the most basic magic trick there had ever been. I did it with the other coin, finding it in Sean’s beard.
‘Good work!’ said Natasha. ‘Let’s teach you more. This is fun.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’
‘So this is what you did today?’ said Sean. ‘Magic tricks?’
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘And we swam in the pool and went to the cafe.’
He laughed. ‘Are you bored or is it OK?’
‘This is great, Sean,’ Natasha said. ‘Seriously great. It’s the most perfect little paradise. I love it.’
‘It is,’ said Mum, sipping her wine. ‘But, you know, if you girls want to go further afield and see more of the world, then you should. Get a bus to Madrid. Or beyond. Don’t feel you have to stay here with us. Natasha, you’ve come thousands of miles to be here. You should see more of Europe. I know you said you were staying a week or so. Well, don’t feel that you’re tied to us.’
I looked at her hard, but she did seem to mean it.
‘OK,’ said Natasha. ‘I actually want to go to Paris. I’ve always wanted to. Libby, do you fancy coming with me?’
Mum laughed. ‘Natasha! You would fit right in. You’re every inch the Parisian.’
‘Mum,’ I said. Sean was looking at her in the same way I was. ‘Are you serious? Would you let me go to Paris with Natasha, without you?’
‘With some rules attached,’ she said. ‘Yes I would. Because these are strange times and you’re not a little kid any more. I can remember the way I felt travelling in my youth. There’s nothing like it.’ She turned a tight smile on Natasha. ‘And you’re an experienced traveller, and I believe you’d take care of her, though she’ll hate me for saying that.’
I did hate her saying it.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’d like to go into Madrid to start with. Why don’t we go tomorrow?’
‘Do it,’ said Mum. ‘Good idea.’ She had lit some incense at the other end of the terrace, and it smelled terrible, as if someone had thrown toilet cleaner on to a bonfire. I had a feeling she had her own reasons for wanting us to go, but I couldn’t imagine what they could be.
‘Well.’ Natasha turned her bright smile on me. ‘Let’s do it! We can go and look at that painting you like. And see the city. What a contrast to here! We’ll have a fabulous day.’
‘Perfect,’ I said.
‘Would you two like to come?’ Natasha said in a polite voice.
‘Absolutely not,’ said Sean. ‘You go for it.’
Natasha reached under the table and squeezed my thigh. I patted her leg.