CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The Ghosts

 

 

THE BRANCHES HAD elongated their shadows across the ceiling, and juddered back and forth in the wind. The rains were coming again.

When the storm hit, the ceiling turned into a glittering waterfall. I rose and watched the reflection of the rain sluicing down the windows. There was no point in trying to get to sleep. Even though Mateo had acted for my sake, I was unable to shake off the conviction that I had been repeatedly and deliberately lied to. It was as if I had been watching a play in which everyone had a carefully rehearsed part, performed for an audience of one.

When I was nine years old, my mother had told me that the world was not waiting to see what I did. That it would go on around me, without me, and nobody would care if I was there or not. After that I put it to the test a few times and thought that she was right – no matter how I behaved, nothing changed. Puberty altered all that. Suddenly everything had a consequence. I saw that life was a domino pattern waiting to be tumbled, one piece hitting the next, and that once it was set in motion there was no way to put the parts back in place.

I went down and boiled hot milk for cocoa, then sat drinking it in the kitchen that smelled of lavender and warm bread, watching the pair of them: Mateo sitting at the table, tapping at his iPad and frowning, Bobbie playing some kind of complicated card game that required her to lay out the pack according to the constellations. I listened to the wind and rain, and said nothing. Rosita came in and went out with some plates, a walk-on part in the unfolding dumb-play around me.

At one point the power glitched and the lights flickered out. Neither Mateo nor Bobbie even flinched. When the power came back they were in exactly the same positions, Mateo tapping away, Bobbie carefully laying down cards, as if they hadn’t noticed a thing.

‘Did you see that?’ I asked.

‘Hmm?’ Mateo looked up and studied me, then smiled vaguely. ‘No, what?’

Later he stayed downstairs watching a loud science fiction movie with Bobbie. I let him put her to bed, heard him turn off the TV, heard him head for the distant kitchen where I knew he would make one last cortado, heard his creak on the stairs and his clothes falling to the floor, felt his warm hands close over mine in bed.

And still I knew I had been lied to.

The next morning began with one of those glorious skies that set a blue luminescence over the world. By 8:00am it was already too hot for an autumn day, and the wind had fallen away, allowing the heat to settle across the landscape.

I sat at breakfast while Rosita served eggs, tostadas and coffee, as she always did on a Saturday, and I could feel the conspiracy of their smugness. I would do as I was told, and I could be kept in the dark just as much as those poor dead creatures in the other rooms. They would stay there, and we would stay here, and so long as nobody upset the order of things we’d just go on as before, as people always had in this house. This damned house.

I silently watched Bobbie engrossed in the buttering of her toast, carefully taking the butter all the way to the corners, something Rosita usually scolded her about because the Spanish never seemed to put butter on their bread while tomatoes were available. Mateo was in faded blue jeans, an Ajaxx T-shirt and Adidas trainers, his weekend uniform, every bit as graceful as his weekday suit. Bobbie had tied her hair in perfect braids.

‘Are you okay?’ Mateo asked solicitously. ‘You’re very quiet this morning.’

‘I’m fine,’ I lied. ‘I thought we’d all go into Gaucia today. To go as a family for a change.’

Mateo looked pained. ‘Oh honey, can’t you go? I promised Jerardo I’d give him a hand. Some more branches came down in the night and we need to get them clear of the paths. To be honest, I think the garden is getting a little too much for him.’

‘Then we should let him go and bring in some new help. He’s far past retirement age.’

‘We couldn’t do that, he’s always been here with the house. He’s spent most of his life here.’

‘I forgot, the house must come first. Well, he can carry on living here on the premises, like Senora Delgadillo.’

He gave me a strange look. ‘What’s got into you this morning?’

‘Forget it,’ I said, rubbing a patch of dry skin on my forehead. ‘I didn’t sleep well.’

‘I need to finish my essay,’ said Bobbie. ‘It has to be posted on Monday morning, remember?’

‘So it has,’ I said. ‘Well, there’s always something.’

Bobbie’s new school was giving her assignments that would bring her up to speed for the new term. I hadn’t been to the school and met the governors; Mateo had taken care of that. At least, that was what he had told me.

‘So, are you okay to go into Gaucia with Rosita?’ It felt as if Mateo was pushing me.

‘You never come with me anymore. I can’t remember the last time we all went together.’

‘I know I’ve been away a lot, but that’s finished now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well,’ he turned and sent a secret smile to Bobbie, ‘I thought about what you said and you’re right, there’s no point in making myself sick. I cancelled my final New York trip. The new guy’s already started in Madrid, so he can take my place. I emailed him this morning and he agreed to take over.’

‘You mean it?’

‘Sure I mean it. Work-life balance, right? We sort that out and everything else falls into place.’

I was so surprised that I could find no voice. I cleared my throat. ‘Okay. If you’re sure. If it doesn’t get you into trouble or anything.’

He ruffled Bobbie’s hair. ‘Of course I’m sure.’

I glanced over and noticed that Rosita was listening. ‘Maybe we could go somewhere, just for a few days, the three of us. We haven’t been away together for ages. It’ll be our last chance before Bobbie starts her new school.’

Mateo hesitated for a split second, just long enough for me to notice. ‘Yes, sure. As soon as we’ve got this place straight. And I’d have to give head office a month’s warning notice.’

‘But she starts school in two week’s time, how can we go anywhere?’

‘Oh, we’ll figure something out, I’m sure.’ He grinned at Bobbie and she lowered her fork long enough to grin back, the tostada packed in between her teeth. It was as if they were sharing some private joke at my expense. Behind them, Rosita bustled out triumphantly with the dishes.

I grew increasingly angry. I’d had enough of the house, and them. I pushed away from the table and booked a taxi into Gaucia.

As I made my way up the hill, I could see Alfonse on his terrace, painting. Hearing the taxi turn he looked over the rail and gave me a wave. ‘My dear, this is a nice surprise. I thought I’d scared you off for good. Come on up.’

He was smearing thick cyan onto a canvas with a palette knife, and kept comparing the results to the view. If the picture was a landscape, it was an extremely abstracted one. Beside his spattered paint-stand stood a coffee pot and a brandy bottle. ‘Which is it to be?’ he asked. ‘Let’s start with coffee. You look done in – are you alright?’

‘I keep asking myself that,’ I replied. ‘Has anyone heard from Celestia?’

‘Not a word, it’s all very peculiar.’ He poured thick cortados, adding milk from a sun-warmed steel jug. ‘The police don’t seem to care. They’re used to ex-pats behaving strangely. Her neighbour’s family have taken over her house. I see them sitting on the porch and they wave to me as I pass, quite brazenly.’

‘What do you think happened to her?’

‘She didn’t take off for London, that’s for sure. She hated the place.’

‘Alfonse, if I tell you something, can you make sure it goes no further?’

‘Honestly, Callie, who am I going to tell? Apparently I’m a recluse.’

I sipped my coffee and looked out over the landscape. ‘Celestia came to the house the night before she went missing. She wanted to try and “read” the place – she said she had a gift for understanding such things.’

‘Oh God, why is it that old women always go loopy? I suppose she told you about her run-in with the law back in Blighty. Maria’s just as bad, forever sloshing holy water about and seeing omens in flocks of birds. What happened?’

‘If I tell you, promise you won’t think me crazy?’

‘Go on, then.’

‘She saw the ghost of Elena Condemaine dragging her husband’s remains – we both saw her. The storm put the lights out, and when they came back on, she’d gone.’

‘Dear God. Was she driving?’

‘No, she came in a taxi, but no-one’s ever traced it. The distance is just about walkable – but not for her, and not in the rain.’

‘The cops think she missed the edge of the ridge somewhere around here, and ended up in the drink.’ Alfonse set aside his brush and smeared a dab of paint with his thumb. ‘If they’re right, she’ll never be found. Not that anyone wants to find her. It suits them all that she’s gone missing. Of course, Maria and her coven think she was snatched by the Devil for saying rude things about the church. They presume she was an atheist.’

‘She told me she was raised as a Catholic.’

‘Because you can’t believe in the supernatural without faith? Well of course women can believe any bloody thing. They rewrite the world to suit themselves. I don’t suppose we’ll ever get to the truth of it.’

‘I did see someone,’ I insisted. ‘We both saw her.’

‘And I suppose when you looked again in the morning, there was nothing.’

‘I’m trying to make sense of it all. It’s there, right in front of me, but every time I concentrate it vanishes. ’

Alfonse laid a paint-crusted hand on my wrist. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, I’m not poking fun at you. Tell me, how are you keeping?’

‘I suppose it appears we’re all well,’ I said. ‘Bobbie’s about to start boarding school in Marbella.’

‘Then I hope we’ll see a little more of you. Your visits are most welcome. I suppose you heard that Jordi left town.’

‘No, I was about to look in on him. Did he go to Cadiz?’

‘No, in the end he decided to take a position in the library of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He assured us he would be in touch once he’d settled into his apartment, but I don’t suppose we’ll ever hear from him again.’

‘It seems like everyone is going,’ I said, unnerved.

‘It always feels like that in small villages,’ said Alfonse. ‘Eventually you just get left with the ghosts.’