A Wedding in the Sun

Chapter 12

‘We are not going to Girona!’

‘Hear me out, Jo. It’s the perfect solution.’

Gargh, just when she’d started tolerating his company! ‘There is nothing perfect about this situation, especially not your hare-brained idea to go in the opposite direction from where our kids are!’

‘I know, that’s the only slightly inconvenient part of this.’

‘Going around one of the major mountain ranges in Europe instead of over it is “slightly inconvenient”?’

‘Firstly, we wouldn’t have to hire a car, because there’s a connection?—’

‘We still have to hire a car,’ she grumbled. ‘That’s what Ben was calling me about.’

‘What’s happened now?’

‘Mónica’s aunt María has broken her toe and she can’t drive at the moment. That means one less car is driving to the coast.’

‘Aunt María Rosa or Aunt María Dolores?’

‘It could have been Aunt Mary Magdalen for all I know! Apparently Liss told him we were hiring a car and he thought that meant we could drive all the way to Peniscola. Another man with a perfect solution who hasn’t thought things through.’

‘It’s… Pe?íscola,’ he corrected her with a frown. ‘It has nothing to do with penises. But this makes my solution even more perfect.’

‘“Perfect” is an absolute adjective. “More perfect” doesn’t exist,’ she snapped.

‘It’s Saturday – ten o’clock,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘If we hire a car from Toulouse – for over one thousand euros – we would arrive late this evening at best and my guitar maybe never. As you’ve realised, I can’t drive with my arm in a sling. It’s 400 kilometres from Toulouse to Zaragoza – over the Pyrenees.’

‘I promised Liss,’ she protested, but she suspected Adrián saw how daunted she was at the prospect of the long, mountainous drive in a hire car.

‘Your daughter is what? Fifteen? She’ll understand.’

‘She’s seventeen, but that’s old enough to value a promise!’

‘Well, maybe that’s another detail that is less than perfect, but the headline is, arriving in Zaragoza today will be a huge – dare I say superhuman – effort. The other option is we arrive tomorrow – Sunday.’

‘I know what tomorrow is.’

‘And only one day later we have to go to the coast anyway. Why don’t we go to Girona today – on the nice, relaxing TGV train – pick up my guitar and then travel directly to Pe?íscola on Sunday. Save money. Save hours of driving. I get my guitar back. We see the kids only one day later.’

She crossed her arms with an inarticulate grumble, hoping he didn’t realise she was running out of complications to throw in his face. ‘What about Oscar?’

Adrián’s face fell and she almost regretted bursting his bubble. ‘Fine. Nothing about this situation is perfect, but if we have to pick a set of problems, I’d pick Girona. I can’t drive anyway. If you weren’t here…’

Asking herself what she’d do if he weren’t here made Jo’s thoughts spin. She liked travelling alone and had a book in her bag she’d barely opened. She could have sat in peaceful silence – and continued on to Zaragoza with Godspeed. What concerned her was that the prospect didn’t sound as appealing as it should have.

‘You’re not seriously going to play the guitar at the wedding, are you?’ she deflected.

He shrugged, which resulted in a grimace of pain. ‘By the time the wedding comes around, it will be a week since the crash. The doctor said I should move it when the pain has lessened and the exercises she showed me even look a little like holding the neck of the guitar.’

‘Adrián!’ she groaned. ‘You have the perfect excuse not to play – even if we go and collect the guitar.’

His gaze rose to hers with a sheen of eagerness that suggested he’d worked out she was about to agree to his crazy plan. She wasn’t ready to accept that fact herself yet, although his puppy-dog eyes helped.

‘I know the situation is uncomfortable, but I’d rather be at the wedding with a guitar to play than just… at the wedding. I mean, for you I’m sure it’ll be fine?—’

‘It’s not going to be fine – and it’s not perfect. But we do what we have to do, I suppose. I only hope we actually make it to Spain this time.’

Jo didn’t recognise France – or her life – that afternoon when every train ran on time, the air-conditioning worked, there were no accidents or strikes and Adrián managed to reserve seats facing forwards. She even used the free WiFi between Toulouse and Narbonne to talk to the kids.

Liss had been surprisingly understanding about the next delay. Ben had agreed that she and Dec needn’t come on the family outing to a restaurant in the wilderness somewhere on Sunday and she was in a good mood at the prospect of a day on the sofa with her phone.

The only slight hiccough was the next phone call from the airline in the missing guitar saga. The office where they could collect it wasn’t open on Sundays, meaning they would have to spend two nights in Girona. Jo was struggling to resent that.

Adrián appeared to have an uncanny ability to fall asleep within minutes of nestling down in a train seat and the hours flew by with pages read, blank gazes out of the window at the passing towns and a couple of passable coffees.

They had an hour in Narbonne to wander the warm stone streets – baking in the evening sun – and find something to eat. It was noticeably hotter now they’d almost reached the Mediterranean – still over thirty degrees at seven o’clock. Jo couldn’t face steak or noodles or a kebab in the heat and when they found a little brasserie that offered takeaway in a hurry, she was delighted with her salade ni?oise, although Adrián made a joke about the name of the brasserie: La Bonne Excuse.

‘Don’t show anyone from the wedding or they’ll think we came here on purpose.’

It was completely irrational, but her nerves multiplied as they waited on the platform for the train that would take them over the border.

‘Do you think Spain has erected a kind of forcefield to keep us out for our own good?’ she asked, scrunching up her nose.

‘We’re about to find out,’ was all Adrián said in response.

But the train pulled out on time, slipped into a tunnel after Perpignan and emerged without incident on the other side. Her phone beeped with the ‘Welcome to Spain’ message and Jo’s stomach swooped. She’d been so focused on Zaragoza and the kids, but now they were getting closer to the wedding venue.

Surely something would go wrong before they got there. She’d been thinking along the lines of a train failure or a riotous demonstration closing the line, but she’d never expected her next surprise to come from Adrián himself.

As the conductor announced their approach to Figueres, the stop before Girona, he stood and slipped his shoulder bag over his head one-handed. She didn’t think she was imagining the spots of colour on his cheeks. Instead of giving him the satisfaction of asking, she just prompted him with a look.

‘We have to get off,’ he said curtly.

She raised her eyebrows.

‘I only booked us tickets as far as Figueres.’

Swallowing an outburst of frustration, the emotion vibrated out through her clenched jaw and stiff arms crossed over her chest. She mustn’t have been in her right mind last night when they’d kissed. She must have imagined the heat of it, the rightness. She dropped her chin and eyed him darkly.

‘Someone is picking us up from the station,’ he mumbled.

‘I don’t want to know who, do I?’ she finally asked.

‘Probably not,’ Adrián said, his voice high.

‘If it’s your mum, I think I’ve come down with a horrible illness and you won’t want to expose her.’

‘I think it’s a little late to worry about exposure,’ he said with an infuriatingly straight face, a quick bite of his lip the only hint of what he was talking about. But that little nip was enough to send a flush up Jo’s neck. Could he tell she’d just been thinking about the kiss too?

The train stopped, leaving Jo off balance – both physically and figuratively – and she rushed to shove her book into her backpack and grab the shopping bag that contained the rest of their things to scramble after Adrián.

‘Is it your mum?’ she confronted him as soon as they were on the platform. She tugged at her trendy T-shirt, which seemed to stick to her skin immediately in the sudden heat.

‘It’s not my mum,’ he mumbled in reply.

That’s when she heard the booming shout from along the platform: ‘Adrián! Gordito!’ An older man with a broad smile, deep, crescent-shaped dimples and a comb-over continued speaking in Spanish and held up his arms as though Adrián would run into them.

‘Your dad?’ Jo asked between clenched teeth.

‘No,’ Adrián assured her, ‘although perhaps a father figure. I don’t even know if he speaks English.’

‘Not speak English?’ the man cried. ‘I, who played concerts in New York and Chicago and Milwaukee.’ He pronounced the city ‘Tchicago’, rather ruining the effect of his mock-offence. ‘Adrián!’ he said again, with feeling, as he folded the younger man in a hug that appeared to cut off his air supply.

The hug also caught Adrián’s shoulder, making him gasp in pain and extricate himself apologetically. ‘Thanks for collecting us,’ he said. ‘Where’s Esther?’

The older man’s face transformed, the smile dropping away. ‘She… passed on. Is it really so long since we’ve been in contact? She’s been gone nearly two years.’

‘Dios, I’m sorry, Carles.’ Adrián’s expression was stricken. ‘Oh, God, if I’d known?—’

‘London is further away than you think, hmm? Come, introduce me to your girlfriend.’

Adrián looked genuinely upset, so Jo stepped forward to make one of the most awkward introductions of her life. ‘I’m Joanna – Jo. I’m not Adrián’s girlfriend, though. We’re just…’

Adrián said, ‘Travelling together,’ at the same moment that Jo said, ‘Friends,’ and they eyed each other. With a sigh, he explained, ‘Jo is the ex-wife of Mónica’s fiancé,’ and Jo realised there was no end to the potential awkwardness of this conversation. She was going to kill him.

‘Dios mío,’ the older man muttered. ‘I need a drink just hearing that. I’m Adrián’s maestro de música. I taught him everything he knows! Except for what he learned at the conservatorio in Seville.’ He slapped Adrián on the shoulder, which made him wince again, even though it had been his right shoulder. Jo suspected if it had been his left, the shoulder would have popped out again. ‘Let’s go home.’

Leaning heavily on a cane, the man Adrián had called Carles led them to a little Volkswagen parked in a spot for people with disabilities. Jo noticed Adrián’s brow creasing with concern. She wondered where ‘home’ was and what they would find there, glancing longingly at the run-down hotel near the isolated train station.

‘Carles was my music teacher for many years in Madrid,’ Adrián explained after they’d got in, the car boot unnecessary as they had so little with them. ‘And after I graduated, he invited me on tour with him several times – although not as far as New York or Chicago. After about ten years, I was allowed to call him Carles instead of profe.’

They skirted Figueres in the evening sun, the air-conditioning in the little car struggling to make a dent in the humidity, and Jo had a sudden pang for the Pyrenees as she mopped her brow with the heel of her hand. When they left the city behind, the landscape was dry and scrubby and terracotta, with palm trees and whitewashed houses, baking in the June heatwave.

The contrast with the little chalet restaurant in the Pyrenees – had that really only been yesterday? – was stark. In other circumstances, Jo would have soaked up the views of the hills and half-grown cornfields and the endless sky. She had no idea where she was, only that she was looking forward to being a rude guest and going to bed early, but that would be Adrián’s fault anyway, so she tried not to feel guilty about it.

Turning off the main road, the houses and factories and greenhouses grew scarcer, the wilderness of the landscape broken only by the occasional silver olive grove. The hairpin curves brought back memories of the accident, but the warm colours and heavy heat chased them away again.

The road followed a high ridge and, at a break in the hills, a long, wide view opened out on the right, making Jo gasp and press her nose to the window. Framed by green hills and the sky was a town of orange and glinting white, rambling down to the sea, dusky mountains in the distance. The flash of the town disappeared again just as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Jo with the impression of a dark blue sea, so vivid the colour still shone behind her eyes.

Feeling Adrián’s gaze, she looked up to find him turned in his seat, watching her with half a smile. ‘Welcome to the Costa Brava,’ he said softly.