Finding You (2 page)
Authors: Giselle Green
And we laugh, too.
‘Roberto was able to expedite things for us, honey. It really is true. We’re going home.’
Home. Blackberry House on the outskirts of Richmond. The place where we used to live together as a family but which I left way back at the beginning of August after Hadyn was lost and Charlie and I had split up over it. That was eight months ago now. Can it really be eight months? When I left it, I never expected to return to it again, not with my family intact.
And yet, this is exactly where we’ll soon be headed.
‘It’s fantastic; the best news in the world. We’d better start thinking about how we’re going to handle things ...’ He’s right, of course. As soon as we get back, there’ll be any number of curious people, both official and unofficial, just waiting to barrage us with questions.
What happened that day that you found him
, these people will ask me again, all those same questions that I have already answered so many times before;
who said what and who went where and what did the police do and when and how did you actually get him back?
And oh, I am so tired of talking about it all.
Never mind what has passed. In a few brief days, this will all be over. All these terrible months, they will be gone. Already, my memory is becoming a haze and a blur around the events of the last year and a quarter, and I wish now I could bury them all so deep in my mind that I never had to think of them, ever again. We have Hadyn back in our custody; the authorities have accepted at last that we should be allowed to take him home.
‘We couldn’t have hoped for more, could we?’ I look at Charlie’s relieved, slightly shocked face and I know he’s barely taken it in, just like me. Good news can come as such a shock sometimes. Hadyn has been gazing at us both intently all the while, and I smile at him now. But the minute he sees me pay him any attention, he just looks away. He is self-contained, I think. He is with us and yet ... sometimes he seems so very alone.
‘Once we get home to England,’ Charlie squeezes my hand, ‘everything can go back to how it should have been.’
‘I hope so, Charlie.’ When I see the sadness in his face, I curse myself because I just can’t say it. Why can’t I bring myself to say what I know he’s longing to hear; that yes, of course everything will now revert to how it was before any of this horrible episode ever happened? That our lives will now go back to how they should have been.
I don’t know why. But I can’t say it.
2 - Charlie
‘We’ll be
fine
.’ Julia leans across the open car window, her face bright, still buzzing from the earlier news that we’re free to go. I’ve just dropped her and Hadyn off at the market where she wanted to browse—
one last chance before we leave here,
she said, but now that we’re here, I don’t know ... The place is packed out, milling with cars and people.
‘I want to pick up something nice for when you finish your shift at the hospital tonight,’ she insists. ‘Something to celebrate our departure.’ Then she pulls a rueful face. ‘What rotten timing, eh? In all the months we’ve been here, you’ve not been asked to help out once, and now ...’
Now I’ve been requested to assist with the re-attaching of an infant’s digits following a nasty accident at her home. It’s a favour to the family. The girl is my sister-in-law’s niece. A lack of consultants has meant a delay that might compromise her chances. I know Julia understands.
‘Me being there to assist saves transferring the child to a facility a lot further away, honey. They were also talking about there being a chance that they couldn’t save her fingers, but I’ve seen the x-rays and it’s perfectly do-able. I suspect they knew I’d be able to do it, too.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘Your reputation precedes you, Charlie.’ I can tell she’s both pleased and displeased by this; proud that I am so well-regarded, and at the same time a little jealous, maybe, of the attention my work sometimes requires that I must give to everyone else?
‘Any idea what time you’ll get back from Malaga?’
‘What time?’ I shake my head, glance automatically at the clock on the dashboard. There’s a long queue on the only route out of here and I’m due at theatre in two hours—
what time am I even going to get in
? ‘I couldn’t tell you, honey. But whenever it is, I can’t go straight home tonight.’
‘You can’t?’ Julia smiles tentatively, hoists our son up a little higher on her hip.
Not tonight. She does that funny thing she does with her mouth when she’s trying to hide her disappointment. I shake my head, lay my hand apologetically over hers where it rests on the window frame.
‘Not coming home early to celebrate, then?’
‘Afraid not, hon. Roberto’s asked me to meet with him after work. We’re going out on his boat.’
‘What, today?’ She’s disappointed. She lowers her face so I won’t see it, rummages in her bag for Hadyn’s beaker. ‘Why does your brother want you to go out with him
today
?’
Good question. Today of all days, I think wearily, when the news we’ve just had would have been the perfect excuse for us to end up in each other’s arms tonight. She wants it. I want it. More than she knows, but ...
‘We won’t be here in Spain that much longer,’ I remind her gently. ‘Rob’s been hankering to take me out in his new boat ever since I got here.’ There’s a small silence while she takes that in, that I’m choosing my brother over her. Regretfully, I shake my head, and now Julia straightens. The sunlight catches her hair, picking up hints of auburn. If the spell of good weather continues till we leave in the next few days, she’ll have a sprinkling of freckles over her nose, which I find charming but I know she hates.
‘New boat, new
house
... Roberto’s bought a lot of shiny new things in the last year and a bit, hasn’t he?’ she muses, and I see that her mood has changed. She’s cross, isn’t she? She lifts her chin a fraction. ‘That new job of his with the town council must be proving a lucrative one.’
‘If it is and he’s happy, then ... I’m happy for him, J
.’ Not just lucrative for him
, I think, remembering how hard Rob’s worked to get us out of Spain as fast as it might be done. If he’s used his position to help us out, she shouldn’t knock it, should she?
‘I’m grateful for what Rob’s done for us, J. He’ll have needed to ... call in a lot of favours to help us get going out of here so soon.’
‘So
soon
?’ she says doubtfully. ‘We have been here since December.’
‘You have no idea, honey. Really.’ This is Spain. Has she forgotten we are not in England, that things take a little longer here? That they take, in fact, as long as they take. And if you kick up a fuss, you’re more likely to get slapped down and sent to the back of the queue?
‘These matters are delicate, and Roberto’s had to stick his neck out for us. He’s done everything he could and I am grateful for the goodwill he’s shown. You should be grateful, too.’
‘Everything
is
all right isn’t it?’ She scans my face now. ‘I mean, there’s nothing ...’
‘Everything’s just fine, J.’ I hide a frown now. Roberto hinted at something earlier. Just hinted at it, but in my taciturn brother’s books, that’s almost as good as a full-blown confession.
We’ll meet up later. I’d like to hear how the op went, and ... there’s another matter. A little something that we need to speak about. In private.
‘Well,’ she concedes. ‘Okay.’ She squashes up a little nearer to my car as another vehicle squeezes past us. She shouldn’t stand holding Hadyn there for too long. There’s not much margin for error in these narrow streets. Too many people and motorcycles. There’s a second’s hesitation before she adds, ‘Do I take it that means you won’t be coming along to Lourdes’s son’s birthday party that we’ve all been invited to this evening?’
I blink.
A motorcyclist weaving his way in and out of the traffic zips right past her and my son now. He comes so close that I can smell the scent of his aftershave. He comes so close, he nearly knocks my boy right out of his mother’s arms, and when the sunlight catches his mirror it momentarily dazzles me. I curse him loudly, beeping the horn, and he looks back, wobbling but unperturbed. I take in a breath and then I turn to Julia.
‘No,’ I tell her quietly. ‘I will not be going to Lourdes’ house for Antonio’s party.’
‘You’re not?’
There is another moment’s silence while she processes this.
‘If you’re not coming, then I guess it means that Hadyn and I won’t have to go either?’ Her face is neutral. I have no way of knowing whether this means anything to her or not. ‘She’s ... she’s probably expecting you,’ Julia points out now a little stiffly. ‘I can’t see that your ex-fiancée will be all that happy if just me and Hadyn roll up.’ She’s right, but I’m not going to fall into that one.
‘She’ll be perfectly delighted to see you both,’ I tell her. ‘It’s a child’s party, so why wouldn’t she be? Besides ...’
Her eyebrows go up questioningly.
Besides, what
?
‘Lourdes will be expecting you,’ I finish limply.
‘Lourdes will be expecting
you
,’ she corrects.
‘Well, she isn’t getting me, is she?’ I give Julia a direct look and she stares at me thoughtfully for a while before breaking into a slow smile.
‘No,’ she says. ‘So ... when might
we
be expected to get you back?’
I pull an apologetic face.
‘Rob has made plans for us to go out fishing,’ I tell her.
‘Fishing? That takes
hours.
’ The disappointment in her voice is palpable. ‘What are you hoping to catch?’
‘My brother in a good mood,’ I admit.
‘Why?’ she wants to know now. The man with the parrots has set up his stall just on the pavement behind me; I can see him in my rear-view mirror. I can see Hadyn’s legs kicking a little; he wants to be let down now. He wants to go look at those parrots and there’s a big delivery truck about to come up alongside us on the road. He’s not going to be able to get by, is he?
‘Roberto in a good mood is always an asset, sweetie.’ I hesitate. How much to fill her in on? The truth is, I don’t want to go out on Roberto’s bloody boat. I hate boats.
Look
, my brother had said to me when I’d tried to get out of it;
say nothing to Julia. And I don’t want you to worry. We have to speak, okay? You come out on the boat with me later, where we’ll be away from all the women, and we’ll speak.
Speak about what? I’d pressed him on it, but Rob’s not one to be easily drawn. He never says much over the phone and I’d consoled myself with that thought, but his words had shot little bullet holes of doubt into my peace of mind. I knew that much.
‘My brother’s been asking me to take this trip with him since I got here,’ I return to Julia now. She’s heard him ask me a dozen times, she must have.
‘And as we hopefully won’t be in Spain for too much longer ...’ I glance apologetically at the truck driver stuck behind us in my mirror and he pulls a comradely face;
women .
.. he mouths at me.
‘Hopefully?’ Julia queries my choice of words. Because that’s what women do. They pick up on everything.
That’s also why I won’t be at Lourdes’ party later on. Frankly, it’s the last place I want to go right now.
I spread my hands.
‘Hopefully. Nothing is ever certain in this life, is it?’ I smile at her, feeling a sudden sadness, but the clock on the dashboard has moved on too far, too fast. I’ve got less than two hours before the pre-op briefing at Malaga hospital and the day is streaming out of my hands.
I indicate behind us with my head, and she sees the truck driver at last. He gives her an appreciative whistle as he streams slowly past us. He winks at me and says something in Spanish that I hope she doesn’t get. There’s a lot of things about my mother’s native country that Julia doesn’t get; the fact that Antonio’s party is something she will certainly be expected to attend, whether with or without me, is just one of them.
Exactly how my brother has wangled it to get us out of Spain as quickly as he has done is another one.
3 - Julia
After Charlie goes, I push Hadyn’s stroller down past all the stalls that are set up for a Friday market. Later on, on the way home, I meant to browse but right now, it’s a balmy spring morning, the sunlight bright in our faces, and I know Hadyn likes being pushed. As long as we keep moving, he won’t struggle to get out of the stroller. And as long as I keep walking, I can ignore the growing discomfort in my belly at the fact that Charlie’s done it again.
He’s arranged to go off to a meeting with someone else—
be
somewhere else—when he’d already committed to coming out with Hadyn and me later on. Oh, he’s got a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. Charlie always does. He is nothing if not reasonable. But, really, would it have been too much to ask that he spend the evening at home with us tonight? Even if it had not been for Lourdes’ blessed party—which I have zero desire to go to, and which we are only roped into because of his ties with her—he could have spent this evening with me, helping with the packing and the planning. We are leaving on Wednesday, for pity’s sake.
‘I can understand well enough why Daddy needs to honour his promise to help that little girl who needs her operation,’ I say to Hadyn, who isn’t listening. ‘But going out on a leisure trip with your Uncle Rob is not the same, is it?’
It’s hardly the same thing at all.
The man with his big wheeled fridge full of cold bottled water walks by, smiling back at us. I shake my head. No water today, thank you. Several people wave at us or call out in greeting as we go by. They’ve got to know us a little over the past few weeks and months, and we’ve gotten to know them. The woman at the fruit stall always calls me over to pass Hadyn a handful of grapes and a few segments of orange which he takes, but never eats. Today, her stall is piled high with ripe figs and bananas but when she stops us, it’s to hand over a couple of slices of a bright yellow sugar melon, wrapped in a greased brown paper bag.
‘
Para
tu hijo’
she says. For my son. She’s got a faint smile in her eyes this morning, and I wonder if she
knows
about us leaving. Or if I should tell her? Knowing the way this town works, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the jungle drums had been busy spreading the word already. While I’m still debating whether to say anything, a customer comes and she turns to serve him. I thank her and we carry on walking , the excitement of my news simmering like an untold secret in my belly along with the growing dissatisfaction that I’ve been feeling for the past half hour that Charlie’s just left me in the lurch over this evening’s party.
We pass on by the next stall—fresh fish—and then the familiar smell of
churros
frying in a deep oil pan wafts down enticingly from the barrow ahead of us. They taste like big, greasy doughnuts and my sister-in-law’s family all like to eat them for breakfast in the morning with lots of sugar. Charlie doesn’t approve of
churro
s, but Hadyn seems to love them, so I stop and buy him a round.
‘You won’t be eating these anymore once we leave Spain,’ I tell Hadyn. He turns his angelic face towards me. Although he makes no response to anything I say, I always get the feeling from something in his wide green eyes that he understands right enough.
‘You won’t, you know.’ I crouch down beside his stroller and touch his arm. ‘You have to say goodbye to this place, Hadyn. After today, we won’t be coming back here anymore.’ As I say it, I realise it is true, and now—along with the shimmer of excitement and happiness of going home—I feel a splinter of unexpected sadness that we will be leaving. I look up and breathe it all in for a moment, all the colours and the smells, the movement of the people and the beauty of it. Directly in front of us, the guy is setting up his stall with his two powder-blue parrots. He lets the tourists pose for a photo with his birds for a fee. From the next stall down comes the warm scent of leather, soft shoes and handbags, and now there is the bright, passionate strains of the
zarzuela
playing on Rafaela’s radio in the corner.
Rafaela is the girl with the long black hair that she always keeps tied back with a silver headscarf. She comes out of her little white tent now.
‘Good morning you two,’ she says in perfect English. She’s been studying languages at Bristol University but she’s back for the Easter holidays, and she spends her Fridays here, garnering trade for her grandma’s fortune-telling booth.
‘All on your lonesome today?’ From here, I can peek inside the white tent, and I see her
abuela’s
not there.
‘Just me,’ she grins. ‘I can do it, too, you know. Want to come in?’ She steps out of the way as if to beckon me in now and I can see the set-up inside. One small metal table and two folding chairs. A well-worn pack of playing cards. No candles. No incense burning. No pictures of the Madonna or anything remotely like it. They need to work a little harder on getting the atmosphere right, I think. The set-up in here is nothing like the time when I went to see that clairvoyant Silas when Hadyn was missing, I recall wryly. Now
that
was spooky. Silas brought my Nana Ella through and told me a few things that turned out to be so true. And at the time, reassuring. If it hadn’t been for what Silas told me, I don’t know if I’d have kept on looking for Hadyn as long as I did.
Still. I step backwards. I’m not looking for reassurance now, am I?
‘I’ll pass,’ I say, though a part of me wants to have my fortune told. Not because I believe Rafaela is a psychic, I tell myself—and bearing in mind that Charlie hates all this stuff anyway—but because she is young and friendly and she speaks English so well that I know I could spend a pleasant half hour just chatting to her. ‘I don’t really need to anymore, do I?’ I point towards my son, drowsing now in his stroller, and Rafaela smiles.
‘Apart from anything else,’ I confide, ‘we’ve just heard the news this morning that we’re finally going to be allowed home.’
‘I got the feeling as you approached that you could do with a reading today,’ she smiles confidently at me.
‘Did you?’ I waver. She’s good at this, getting bums on seats. Did she tell me she was studying Languages
and
Psychology, I try and remember now. I bet she’d be good at psychology, this Rafaela. She’s told me before that her ancestors were from Romany Gypsy stock and they have passed on the gift of the Sight, but I remember my dad’s friends in his younger, wilder days, and his Romany friends were all sharp as buttons. Clued in. They didn’t need to use any psychic powers to suss people out.
‘I did. Congratulations on the going home,’ she says. Rafaela’s fetched the cards out and she’s shuffling them thoughtfully. ‘But I always know when people need a reading.’
I laugh. She’s young and probably broke and the twenty-five Euros she’s going to charge me will no doubt be going towards her student expenses next year. Charlie can hardly protest at this, I tell myself. It’s not as if she’s actually going to be doing any contacting of the dead as he sees it. This one is going to be for ‘entertainment purposes only’ I’m pretty sure.
‘Go on, then.’ I duck in under the tent flap, pushing Hadyn’s stroller ahead of me. He’s sitting quite placidly today, almost falling asleep, and I sigh with relief.
‘Choose three cards, please.’
It does feel odd to be in here, though. I came in here for a bit of fun, to help out a student and have a little chat to someone in English, but the minute the tent flap is secured, the ‘Do not disturb’ sign hung up on the outside, Rafaela’s demeanour changes noticeably. For the moment, she’s no longer the lanky girl barely out of her teens with the toothy grin. She’s someone far older suddenly, with a gravitas and a poise that is beyond her years.
She takes the card that I hand her and holds the first one in her palms face down for a few moments, her eyes closed. The space inside the tent seems suddenly very tight and closed up to me. And I realise that I feel ... awkward. I feel strangely exposed, as if this young woman’s going to be able to see right through into the heart of me.
And I don’t want anybody to do that, today. She’ll see that—while I’ve got a smile plastered all over the outside—what I’m really feeling inside is a mixture of far more complex things.
‘This is a time to rejoice,’ Rafaela says, her voice faraway and different somehow.
Of course she’ll say that
. I shiver, involuntarily.
She’ll say that because I’ve just told her we’re leaving.
‘And you are rejoicing, but there is also a ... a fog, like a mist coming in over the sea. A confusion. A sadness. A loss.’
I stiffen. Sit up, alert.
‘You’re saying I have a loss coming?’
‘Not a loss coming,’ she corrects. ‘You are experiencing one. Right now.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I say in a small voice. Then, ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘There has been a fog,’ she repeats, ‘A fog that hasn’t let you see things as they are. I am getting the one word repeated, over and over in my head right now: illusion.’
‘Illusion?’ I feel my heart in my mouth. But she doesn’t mean the name, the woman who had Hadyn, she’s talking about the
experience
of an illusion.
Rafaela picks up the second card.
‘You are going to be shown things the way they really are, Julia. The fog you are experiencing now is going to lift. Be ready for it.’
Be ready? How can I be ready?
Be more specific
, I think. I’m not very good with people who just speak in metaphors all the time, it is infuriating.
But I am only here for fun
, I remind myself. I am not here to take any of this seriously.
‘He can see her, you know.’ Rafaela opens her eyes and her pupils seem wide, unfocussed in the dim light inside the tent. She’s turned slightly towards Hadyn, who’s still half asleep but who does, admittedly, seem preoccupied with one particular corner of the tent.
‘He can see who?’
‘Agustina, of course,’ Rafaela smiles. ‘She says she comes to him all the time. She’s blowing him kisses.’
I fold my hands in front of my lap now, reminding myself that it would be only natural for Rafaela to use whatever she already knows about us and our circumstances in order to get a ‘hit’.
‘I see,’ I say.
‘She thanks you, Julia. She is sending you blessings.’
I nod. ‘That’s very kind of her,’ I say. ‘Anything else?’
‘She is pointing to a statue of the Madonna. I don’t know
why
...’ Rafaela’s eyes crinkle up now, as if she’s having to concentrate very hard to get some celestial message. ‘I think she doesn’t want you to worry. Does this make any sense to you?’
‘Sort of,’ I concede. It does. But it is not proof that Charlie’s
abuela
is really here with us in this tent, talking to this dark-haired girl. Anyone in this town might have told her that the reason I had taken Hadyn to the beach the day he got abducted was to escape my faux pas over shattering Agustina’s precious statue of the Madonna.
‘She’s asking me why it is you are unhappy still?’ Rafaela has picked up the third card now and she’s holding it, not looking at me, but at some inner picture in her mind.
‘I’m not entirely sure what you mean. I
am
happy,’ I insist. God. This was a bad idea. I had no idea she was going to be going into all of this. I had expected some light-hearted banter about the possibility of wedding bells in the near future and how my life was going to settle down fabulously when I got back home. And maybe how Charlie was going to realise he needed to become a bit more attentive and stuff. But this. It’s all a bit personal, isn’t it? What if this girl goes round chatting to all her mates at the market afterwards, telling them that the English girl who found her child is still miserable? What’s that going to look like? How ungrateful does that make me sound?
‘She is sad. Because she is telling me that you are not happy. Not yet,’ Rafaela says with finality.
I cross my legs and take in a breath. What to say to that? Do I even answer it? She seems to have finished so I get up, hand over twenty-five Euros and thank her, move on out into the sunny morning again. My son is asleep, and although I had intended to browse, this time, I keep on moving. If I keep on going till I get right to the end, I’ll come to the little church of Santa Eulalia and I will go in there and I will light a candle. I need a bit of light. Because now I’ve had a chance to think about it, I know that Rafaela was right about that fog. That cloudiness in my mind that’s been preventing me from seeing the one thing I really have not yet wanted to see; that I’m unhappy because although I have my child back,
finding him
has only thrown something else into full relief.
The fact that I was right.
I was right, all along, all those long and lonely months when Charlie wouldn’t support me and his blessed family wouldn’t support me and even my own mother didn’t help me. And until all this happened to us, I had truly believed that, in Charlie, I had found a man who would love and support me through thick and thin. Someone who’d be there no matter what. A lover who wouldn’t just abandon me when the going got tough. And he didn’t live up to that, did he? Because in the end, I was alone and knowing that has left me with sadness that I just can’t shift.
Oh, I know I need to get over it, move past it. God knows, Charlie was full of remorse when he realised he should have stepped in much sooner, his family utterly astonished, and since then, they’ve all bent over backwards to help us. And yet, love Charlie though I do, I don’t honestly know if I
can
get over it.