The Spanish Promise Page 20

  ‘I like it well enough from here.’ She turned back to find him lying on the bed, his ankles crossed and hands clasped behind his head, watching her.

  ‘You’d love it.’

  ‘Frustratingly, I love you more.’

  ‘That’s because you’re a philistine. Anyone with any taste knows Florence is the most beautiful place in the world.’

  He arched his eyebrow in that way he always did when she was being provocative. ‘You’re only saying that because you’re too unimaginative to consider anything that wasn’t inculcated into you by your snob mother. Real aesthetes know that the most beautiful place in the world is anywhere that has you in it.’

  She let the compliment slide, far preferring the combat of the insult. ‘Unimaginative, huh?’ She walked towards him, letting her dress fall. ‘I’ll show you how imaginative I can be—’

  The sound of footsteps passing made her look up. Mayra popped her head in. ‘Please feel free to use the house, walk the grounds and explore the estate: there is the golf course on the western boundary, horses if you like to ride, tennis, and of course the spa: there is a masseuse on call should you wish for a treatment. Señor Mendoza entreats you to feel at home here.’

  ‘Thank you, Mayra,’ she nodded. ‘That’s very kind, but Mateo is sending the plane for me later. I have to return to London by this evening.’

  ‘But you are returning in the morning, I understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The housekeeper nodded and slipped away, as further down the hall a door clicked shut.

  She sat for a moment, wishing she could have a drink, something to take the edge off the morning’s revelation, but she got up instead. A shower would refresh her; travelling always left her feeling grubby. She walked into the en-suite, unbuttoning her blouse just as a door opposite opened – it had been all but obscured by a couple of fluffy robes hanging on it.

  Nathan stared at her, a towel thrown over his shoulder. ‘What the . . . ?’

  There was a moment of stunned surprise, followed by appalled understanding, and she watched as the unguarded look in his eyes was quickly veiled with cold hardness again. A Jack and Jill bathroom – how exactly was this supposed to work? Allotted times? A special knock?

  Nathan stepped back. ‘After you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She didn’t bother to politely protest and he didn’t bother to wait for it. And as she watched him retreat, she remembered her father correcting her when she was a little girl of a ‘common mistake’ – that it wasn’t hate that was the opposite of love. But apathy.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Charlotte walked down the hallway, her pale-blue lululemon yoga kit feeling anachronistically urban and millennial in the old dark house. She had no idea where the gym was but, as much as anything, this was a good excuse to explore. There was nothing else to do for the moment: Marina had texted from wherever she was in the estate to say her grandmother was resting and that she was staying in over lunch to keep check on her (Charlotte read that to mean they were both overwhelmed and hiding out in their rooms).

  As for Nathan, she had spied him from the bathroom window as she stepped out of the shower, out on a run, her eyes alerted more by the plumes of dust kicked up by his feet on a dirt track than his distant figure pounding through the shades of the far-off oaks.

  She had watched him until he had turned out of sight, heading deeper into the trees and towards some hills. He had always been a runner (although not – she thought – ever that fast), and at Cambridge he had deplored the lack of gradient and any sort of pitch against which to throw himself. But then he had always been something of an ascetic, clean-living and clear-eyed, associating the worth of reward with the degree of struggle first required. Perhaps that was why he had been so drawn to her in the beginning? She’d been his challenge, his struggle. They certainly had never made sense on paper. Everything about them was opposite – their backgrounds, their views, their taste in music and favourite foods – and yet face to face, it was as though their hearts were tethered as one, tied together like balloons on a string, pulling them along so that they could barely keep their feet on the ground, both of them running on tiptoes – until in the end she had broken free, torn herself from him, because he couldn’t help her in the way she needed; he couldn’t understand the one thing that determined everything in her world.

  Jogging down the stairs, she crossed over to the other side of the quad to which they had walked with Mayra earlier. Apparently the gym was in one of the two wings flanking it, but which? This wasn’t a hotel, it wasn’t like there were signs.

  Her phone rang as she popped her head in one doorway to her right and saw it was a drawing room: red velvet chairs, half-panelled walls, a wide fireplace and a worn tiled floor. No, not there.

  ‘Hello?’ she said quietly, switching left instead and finding a door that opened onto a covered veranda, the open garden beyond it, lawns rolling away into the distance and dotted with the shadows of almond trees. Nope.

  ‘What the hell is going on, Charlotte?’ Stephen asked, his voice strained; she could tell he was trying not to shout. ‘You’re not picking up your phone, you’re not returning calls.’

  She stopped walking in panic. Stephen! In all the upset of dealing with Nathan last night, she had forgotten to call and update him with her new arrangements. It had slipped her mind completely as she’d worked her way through another bottle of rosé, trying to forget the hardness in his voice and how readily he was trying to turn his back on her. ‘Oh God, I know, I’m so sorry, it’s been so frantic—’

  ‘Enough with the frantic! I don’t give a damn how busy your work is. We have got a hundred people arriving in a few hours to celebrate with us, and you are nowhere to be found. Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been? I’ve been going out of my mind. You were supposed to be back yesterday! No one could get hold of you – not your mother, not even Mouse.’

  ‘I know. I – I meant to call.’ She had turned her phone off for the flight.

  ‘So? What happened?’

  She closed her eyes. Nathan had happened. Her past had stepped into her present and sucker-punched her off her feet. She had left her phone in her bag and walked straight to the glasses cabinet, piled into a bottle of Mirabeau and tried to block out all the memories of Nathan, her father . . . ‘I promise, I’m leaving shortly. I just had to fly down here with the clients to settle them in but I’m—’

  ‘Fly down where? Are you telling me you’re not even in Madrid? Where the hell are you?’

  ‘. . . Andalusia.’

  ‘Anda—? Fucking hell, Charlotte!’ He never swore.

  ‘But it’s okay. I’m leaving again at five. We’re landing at quarter to six local time at City and I’ll have a car take me straight to the hotel. I’ll be there by seven.’

  ‘. . . Seven? This is bloody ridiculous.’ She could hear that he was speaking through clenched teeth, struggling to regain self-control.

  ‘Stephen, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

  He scoffed. ‘Make it up to me? Christ, don’t do me any favours! I had assumed you were glad to be marrying me. That you were happy about it.’

  ‘I am! I—’

  ‘Listen, I don’t know what’s going on with you at the moment but I can’t speak to you right now. We’ll talk when you get here.’ And he hung up.

  Charlotte stared into space, feeling the adrenaline race around her. Was there anyone she wasn’t at war with right now? She was at odds with the world, dislocated, alone.

  Walking slowly, she quickly rang her sister. ‘Mouse, it’s me.’

  ‘Fuck, Lotts!—’

  ‘Yes, yes I know, I’m dropping all the balls at the moment,’ she said wearily. ‘Please don’t you have a go at me too.’

  There was a pause, her feisty sister wrong-footed by her im mediate surrender. ‘Christ, now I’m really worried about you.’

  ‘I’m f—’

  ‘And don’t say you’re fine. I know when you’
re going off the radar.’

  Charlotte looked upwards, swallowing back the tears. If she so much as sniffed, her sister would know and the game would be up. Busted. ‘Listen, I’m flying back this evening,’ she said, concentrating on keeping her voice steady. ‘I’ll be at the hotel for seven so just keep Ma calm till I get there and then you can all shout at me. But can you do me a favour first – can you grab me a dress and some shoes for tonight?’

  ‘. . . Okay,’ her sister replied with a sigh. ‘I think I’ve got a set of keys. What do you want?’

  ‘I don’t mean back home. Ask Matty at Selfridges what they’ve got in that would suit.’

  Another pause. ‘You mean, you haven’t already got something lined up?’ She sounded incredulous.

  ‘Well I’d intended to get it sorted this week but there’s been no time.’

  ‘Lotts, it’s your wedding dinner! How can you not have got this sorted?’

  ‘Because it’s just a dinner.’ Her voice sounded reedy and thin. ‘I only need a dress to wear, that is all.’

  ‘But it’s supposed to be special! You should be excited.’

  ‘And I am.’

  ‘No, you’re the very definition of not excited. I’ve seen you happier taking out the bins.’

  Charlotte didn’t respond. They both knew she’d never taken out the bins. ‘Okay, I’ll be there at seven. Thanks for your help, I’ll see you later.’ She got off the call quickly just as the first tears fell. She wasn’t sure how much she could take. She felt pushed to her limits with wedding demands, work demands: Stephen, Mouse, her mother, his parents, one hundred guests, Mateo, Hugh Farrer, Marina, Marina . . . She was failing them all. And behind all of it, all of them, was the one she had failed most of all. The one who would never forgive her.

  She heard footsteps coming down a hallway; they sounded brisk, efficient . . . She didn’t want to be found here, crying in the corridor.

  Straight ahead was a closed door. She turned the handle and found herself in an extraordinary open space: as in her bedroom, the ceilings were vaulted but down here the distinction between the ceilings and walls seemed to have become even more blurred, with the brick skeilings swooping all the way down to the floor into a series of thick, looped arches.

  She walked through, her flip-flops slapping on the stone-flagged floor. An extravagant statement of space for space’s sake, everything was textured and layered: the rough-plastered walls, the exposed brickwork, her nose detecting the fragile scent of essential oils before her eyes found the extravagant sprays of white tuberose arranged in splayed planters in alternate arches, strategic lighting illuminating them in moody golden pools. In contrast to the untouched, old-world traditional feel of the main house, with its mounted bulls’ heads and dark portraiture, this wing felt impressive by its very unshowiness, an exercise in architectural restraint, an Axel Vervoordt dreamscape.

  A uniformed woman carrying a bundle of towels suddenly emerged from one of the doors on the right, stopping as she caught sight of Charlotte and the yoga mat tucked under her arm. ‘The gym is the fourth door on the left, Señora Fairfax,’ she said, making no sign of noticing her blotchy face.

  ‘Thank you,’ Charlotte nodded, walking away quickly. She glanced in as she passed, at the room the woman had just left – Marina was lying on a massage table, her bare shoulders visible above the sheet, her dark hair swept up in a topknot. Her eyes were closed, gentle music playing quietly, and Charlotte wondered how she was coping with all of this. Did she know this was all an illusion? A seduction? For a woman used to working two jobs – a woman who, a little more than twenty-four hours ago, had walked back in slippers from the laundromat with wet clothes she couldn’t afford to dry – this was a severe dislocation from normal life: chauffeur-driven cars, a private jet, five-star bedroom and now a private spa treatment. It would read well for now, and for the next few months, as she got used to the idea that this was rightfully hers and that she was family, not merely a visitor. She was one of the famed Mendozas too.

  But six months from now, or a year, when the novelty began to pall and the days began to stretch endlessly, when she no longer had to do anything . . . that was when the trouble would begin. Charlotte knew it even though she did not, and she felt sorry for her; this wasn’t the fairytale ending Marina assumed it to be.

  Charlotte stepped into the gym, stopping momentarily to absorb the state-of-the- art equipment. There was a Pilates Reformer machine, which she knew from experience was also a torture device, aerial yoga slings and even an anti-gravity treadmill. But the visitor’s eye was inexorably drawn to the lines of this impressive space, not the equipment within it, those same arches outside in the hall here glazed with giant crittall windows that gave onto the grounds. The glass was tinted a smoky colour, keeping the room cool and subdued, and she rolled out her mat in front of one of them, determined to harness her frantic thoughts and calm her racing mind.

  She needed to focus, eliminate the noise. She lay flat, her palms facing the ceiling. She closed her eyes and tried to find her centre, to imagine her breath as a white light rolling through her – starting in her feet and working up, all the way through. But when she got to her torso, her heart, the light stopped as though blocked.

  She tried again, keeping her eyes closed. She was agitated, she already knew that. It was why she was doing this. It always worked.

  Only this time it didn’t.

  After the third attempt, fed up with her glowing white knees and resolutely black heart, she opened her eyes again and rolled up, just as agitated as before. Perhaps she should have waited till the end of the session – get her flows in first. Find a rhythm and soothe herself that way.

  Jumping up, she stood in the mountain pose, feet in parallel, eyes dead ahead, her hands splayed with the fingers pointing to the floor. As she began to run through the sequence, letting her body move rather than forcing it into stillness, she felt her mind begin to drift. Yes. She closed her eyes, running through the asana twice, three times, just feeling the rhythm and controlling her breath – it was the only thing she could control seemingly . . .

  By the time she opened her eyes, her mind was drifting like a boat on water. There was no wedding, no Stephen, no Nathan, no bouncing baby . . . But there was, in a sort of slow-motion comedy sketch, one of the golf carts trundling slowly over the lawn, Señora Quincy sitting in the front, a straw hat on.

  Charlotte’s gaze snapped back into focus. She was supposed to be resting from the journey. Was she getting some air? Reac-quainting herself with the estate? Charlotte wondered how much it had changed in her absence – these wings certainly hadn’t been here back then (whenever ‘then’ was) – but the old woman didn’t seem overly curious, her gaze fixed forwards rather than scanning the landscape. Perhaps she didn’t want to see the changes, perhaps they challenged her too much, serving as painful indicators of all that she had missed out on?

  The buggy came to a stop at one of the decorative flowerbeds that broke up the lawn: a low stone retaining wall encircled a mature jacaranda tree, with profuse oleander bushes clustered at its base. She watched as the driver – one of the male orderlies she had seen helping her with the step earlier – got out, listening to something his passenger was saying. He pointed at the bed and Señora Quincy nodded. The man hesitated, looking uncertain. Then he stepped over the wall and into the bed, up to the jacaranda tree. He looked back at the old woman and yet again she said something that made him point and then move. Charlotte frowned as she watched him carefully encircle the tree, before stopping at a point on the far side from where Charlotte sat, and stooping out of sight. What on earth was he doing?

  A moment later, he straightened up and, picking his way carefully back over the bed, handed something to Señora Quincy. Charlotte could see her nod her thanks from the tilt of her hat but she was too far away to see what the item was that she placed in her lap. All she could see, as the driver got back in and turned the buggy towards the hacienda again, was that
Señora Quincy had taken the item and was pressing it to her lips as though it was treasure.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she asked, as Marina emerged from the spa.

  Marina smiled at her languidly, leaning against the door frame for a moment. ‘I just had a three-hour massage,’ she stage-whispered, as though it was a dirty secret.

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘It was amazing. I don’t think . . . I don’t think I’ve ever felt this limp.’ She seemed almost drunk on the relaxation. ‘The girl told me I had the hardest muscles she’s ever worked on.’ Marina lengthened like a cat proudly.

  ‘Well I’m not surprised. You work so hard.’

  ‘How the other half live, eh?’ Marina winked as they began slowly walking together. She glanced at Charlotte, noticing that she was in exercise kit. ‘Did you do a workout?’

  ‘Yoga. Just a bit of mat work.’ That wasn’t entirely true. After seeing Señora Quincy’s strange behaviour, she had given up on the yoga and a futile quest for zen, and instead exhausted herself with an aggressive kettlebell workout that would punish her more tomorrow than it had even today.

  ‘I’ll go in the gym next,’ Marina said, nodding as though she was working through a list. ‘Do you know I’ve never actually been in a proper gym before? I could never afford the fees.’

  ‘Well get someone to show you how to use the machines first then. You don’t want to end up with an injury.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll ask Professor Marling. He looks like he works out.’ Marina was looking across at her slyly, her tongue poked teasingly between her smiling lips. ‘He is pretty sexy, no?’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid he’s also married,’ Charlotte said, giving as natural a smile as she could muster. She had noticed that Marina’s attitude towards her had changed since she had revealed her grandmother’s existence, becoming more confiding and intimate – as though Charlotte could be trusted now that she wasn’t directly ‘after’ her. They appeared to be on the same side.