Chapter 5
If Adrián hadn’t been present in his own life over the last twenty-four hours, he never would have believed how he’d ended up in the Grotto of the Apparitions, the words of the Rosary on his lips as he listened to a Spanish pilgrim recite them fervently from her place in the pew.
‘Are you religious?’ Jo asked, giving him a sidelong glance. There was another thing he could barely believe, even though he’d seen it: Jo Watters had been nice to him for most of the day.
‘I feel I can’t say no or my grandmother would have lived in vain,’ he explained thoughtfully.
After the disaster with the wrong coach that morning, they’d spent over an hour on the phone and in internet searches looking at hire cars then public transport, only to discover that the latter didn’t exist without circumnavigating the Pyrenees and the former cost the equivalent of a kidney on the black market because of the country border crossing and one-way trip.
Just when he was about to jokingly suggest resorting to prayer, a solution had presented itself in an unexpected manner. Perhaps it wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was all they had.
‘Are you two going in?’ asked Georg, the bearded biker who’d adopted them when he’d found them strung out and desperate by the stations of the cross. He clapped Adrián on the shoulder hard enough that he stumbled.
‘Oh, we can just… stay out here.’
‘I’m not Catholic,’ Jo volunteered apologetically.
Georg roared with laughter. ‘Neither am I! We are members of the Free Protestant Church. We might not believe exactly what Catholics do about Mary and the holy water, but do you think bikers are worried about those details? It’s the spirit that counts. Go and drink the water, touch the stone. If you don’t want to pray, just make a wish and see what happens.’
Jo gave a weak laugh. She’d looked decidedly green when they’d finally accepted Georg and his friends’ offer of transport to Zaragoza the next day by motorbike. Georg and his wife Claudia were members of a ‘gang’ of middle-aged bikers who called themselves ‘Godspeed’ and were making their way slowly from Cologne to Santiago de Compostela, seemingly via every religious monument they could find. They’d tried to reassure Jo that their bikes were top-of-the-range luxury BMWs with plenty of space for a passenger – and that they couldn’t do better than a group with ‘I Ride with Jesus’ on their number plates – but she obviously wasn’t looking forward to their journey across the Pyrenees with a hunk of hot metal between her thighs.
‘A wish and a prayer aren’t the same thing, though, are they?’ Jo asked, her expression perplexed. Her hair was limp with sweat and her blue eyes were glazed with tiredness, but there was definitely something endearing about her wry acceptance of the chaos in her life. Chaos was a heading he was certain she included him under – quite rightfully.
‘Not really,’ Georg agreed. ‘With prayer, we strive to find the heart of God and not our own desires, although the Lord always has a listening ear for whatever we pray, however flawed.’
‘The church sure has a nice husband,’ she mumbled, too quietly for Georg to hear.
‘Go in and see what you find.’
‘At least we’ll be out of the sun for a few minutes. I didn’t think June in the Pyrenees was supposed to be so hot,’ Adrián said casually, pushing off from the fence where he’d been perching to head for the queue making its way slowly through the cave.
He kept his hands shoved in his pockets, his expression carefully neutral, but his thoughts swirled as he glanced between the pyramid of candles, the white statue of Mary in a small hollow above the cave and the dark recess in the rock. Husbands… mothers… prayer and wishes and the strange path to this moment, where he lifted a hand carefully out of his pocket to skim the grey stone, a path that had been worn by a century of fingertips.
Oscar was over a country border he couldn’t seem to cross – while the old guitar had crossed before him by now. Mónica was marrying someone else and he had nothing to do with his fingers except graze them across the stone. The moment was an exercise in futility.
‘What are you going to wish for?’ Jo’s voice startled him, curbing his spiralling thoughts.
‘I have no idea. Have you got over your aversion to revealing virgins to make a wish?’
‘You haven’t got over your cynicism,’ she observed softly.
He nearly stumbled. For a moment, it sounded like she cared about what he felt. Of course she did. She’d been vice-chair of the PTA for six years. You didn’t do that without a strong sense of compassion – and perhaps a touch of masochism.
‘I know cynicism is the easy way,’ he said, almost reluctantly. They’d reached the middle of the cave, where bouquets of flowers and wreaths with ribbons and bows had been left as offerings to the Lady. ‘We should wish for something outside of ourselves like Georg said.’
‘Like our children?’
They paused in front of the water rushing beneath a hole in the flagstones – the spring Saint Bernadette had discovered when Mary had appeared to her. ‘That works.’ They’d phoned the kids with the last 10 per cent of Adrián’s phone battery and he’d gathered Jo’s daughter hadn’t taken the news of their further delay well.
‘I wish we could get to our children quickly,’ Jo said, turning her gaze awkwardly upwards.
He made the sign of the cross out of habit and she watched as though the gesture was something exotic. ‘The heart of God…’ He sighed deeply, the mixed feelings rising again, but within his control this time. ‘If we prayed with the heart of God, it would be for blessing on Ben and Mónica’s marriage,’ he managed to finish, although his voice nearly gave out at the end.
The violence of emotion that flitted over Jo’s face took him by surprise and he grasped her wrist instinctively. She shook him off. ‘I know this place specialises in miracles, but I will never be able to wish that.’
The message was clear: back off. They were bantering adversaries, not friends. She didn’t want to share her feelings with him. What surprised him was that he wished she would.
It wasn’t difficult to keep things light for the rest of the afternoon. They checked into Georg’s hotel in the maze of streets by the sanctuary, taking a twin room when the only other option was for one of them to stay in the honeymoon suite.
‘I think the damage was done last night,’ Adrián murmured, earning a scowl from Jo.
She bought underwear and a shirt from the first store they found, complaining that her daughter would be horrified to see her in something designed for a teenager, with a knot sewn at the front to show a hint of midriff.
‘But it’s not enough for me to go into another shop,’ she said with a shudder. ‘I don’t know what I did before online clothes shopping.’
‘I quite enjoy it,’ he insisted. ‘Trying different styles, “Is this me?” Maybe I could be a professor or Indiana Jones.’
‘Indiana Jones was a professor,’ she insisted.
‘By God, you’re right,’ he’d responded in mock amazement. ‘But the shirt looks fine,’ he slipped in casually afterwards.
Jo was endlessly amused by the little shops selling incense and candles and rosary beads – along with cheap knock-offs of the statue of the Virgin Mary in the grotto.
‘Do you think they’ve all been properly blessed?’ she asked, holding one up next to her face.
‘Would you rather buy the real thing, carved by monks under the supervision of the Holy Spirit itself?’
‘I’m not sure how it would look on the shelf at home,’ she mused, studying the little white statue with its blue sash. ‘Is there really a sweatshop of monks somewhere manufacturing these?’
‘I have no idea,’ he admitted. She raised a hand and for a moment he thought she was about to give him a friendly slap with the backs of her fingers, but she seemed to reconsider at the last moment and dropped her hand again.
They found an ice cream parlour that sculpted the scoops into the shape of roses and Jo was like a kid in… an ice cream parlour, struggling to contain her excitement. He snapped his fingers, gesturing for her to hand over her phone, which she’d charged for twenty minutes in the hotel room. Smiling faintly as he lined up the photo, he captured her staring at her peach-flavoured rose-shaped ice cream with bright eyes.
Leaning on the bar table under an awning outside, she said thoughtfully, ‘I can never show anyone that picture.’
‘Because I took it?’ he asked.
She laughed at him. ‘I’m not mad at you. I know it’s weird that we’re stuck here together, but I know it wasn’t by choice.’
‘Choosing to spend time together would definitely be strange,’ he responded with a nod. She obviously hadn’t started doubting the veracity of that statement the way he had.
‘But we probably shouldn’t be enjoying it. That’s what I meant about the photo.’
He hoped the flush that rose up his neck wasn’t visible. ‘After what we’ve been through and what we’ve got ahead of us, I think it’s your duty to enjoy that ice cream,’ he pointed out. She hadn’t meant enjoying his company – at least he was pretty sure she hadn’t.
‘You’re right.’
‘Careful,’ he said, dropping his voice. ‘You agreed with me.’
‘Did you ever agree to play Santa at the school Christmas Fayre?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Are you still in the PTA?’
‘God, no. I only lasted that one year.’
‘I get it,’ she said, taking another slow lick of her ice cream, leaving a smear of pale orange on her top lip. It was definitely bizarre that he was enjoying that. ‘You join the PTA full of ideals and you leave full of…’
‘Trauma,’ he finished for her.
She laughed again. ‘Do you know how hard it was to find a Santa? In my memory, I asked about fifty people and the one we ended up with was from Kerala – although that was fine in the end.’
‘You could have asked me to find a Santa. I just didn’t want to be one. That would have meant leaving Mónica alone with Oscar at the Fayre and she was already angry at me because I didn’t take equal responsibility. I stupidly thought joining the PTA would send her a message – or maybe just prove a point,’ he admitted.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this while enjoying our ice cream,’ she mumbled and he indicated his agreement with a lift of his eyebrows.
Georg and Claudia invited them to dinner that evening at a low-key café full of beards, leather jackets and helmet hair.
‘What do you two do for work?’ Claudia asked conversationally. ‘Or are you at home with the kids, Jo?’
She nearly choked on her omelette. ‘No, I’m a software developer,’ she explained, taking a sip of wine – actually it was more like a slug. ‘My kids are older now.’
‘But they only seem to need us more and more!’ Claudia exclaimed with a broad smile. ‘Our kids are twenty-one and twenty-three and they just bounce in and out of the house. I’m still cleaning up after them. But you said you two aren’t married, so?—’
‘We’re both divorced,’ Adrián supplied, feeling the frustration vibrate out of Jo. ‘And just friends,’ he added with a wince.
He should have guessed what was coming next. ‘And what do you do?’
‘I work in a care home for the elderly,’ he replied. That was the simple answer anyway.
‘And you’re from Spain?’ Claudia asked.
He glanced at Jo, realising she probably didn’t know any of this stuff either. He hadn’t realised she was a software developer. ‘I’m from Madrid, but I moved to London twelve years ago.’
‘So it’s one of your friends or family who’s getting married?’
‘Not exactly,’ he answered. ‘Mutual… eh… friends of ours.’ He hoped that didn’t sound too suspicious.
After dinner, the entire town was drawn to the sanctuary like iron filings to a magnet. The sun cast long shadows and the still river reflected the balconies of the buildings built along it. The shops selling the Virgin Mary knock-offs had closed their shutters for the night. Only the shop promising to cure your ills with gourmet sweets and chocolates was still tempting passersby.
They arrived back at the posh hotel with its Belle époque stonework and wrought-iron balconies and Jo turned for the doors into the foyer.
‘You’re not going to miss the procession, are you?’ Georg asked in horror that appeared genuine.
Adrián started to make their excuses. ‘I thought we should get some rest before?—’
‘The candlelight procession is the most restful experience. You’ll see,’ Georg assured them.
There was a faint furrow between Jo’s brows. ‘I suppose when the other option is sitting around in the hotel room…’
‘Good! We went last night as well. It will be something you won’t forget,’ Georg said with a grin.
As they followed the ‘Godspeed’ crew towards the sanctuary, he couldn’t help saying in a low voice, ‘Going to Mass is more interesting than hanging out with me?’
She eyed him, then drew close to speak quietly into his ear. ‘I don’t exist to address your insecurities, but that’s not what I meant.’ With a look that brooked no nonsense and gave him tingles all the way to the tips of his fingers, she said, ‘You’re all right, Adrián. I’m kind of glad you’re here.’
‘I think I just fell a little bit in love with you,’ he said with a huff, before he’d properly thought it through. He was joking. She knew he was joking.
Her sigh was long and deep. ‘You’ll get over it.’