Chapter Four #2
“I love those books,” she says after a moment.
Her voice lingers a little on the words, still warm, but with an edge to it now and a touch closer.
She nudges me lightly again. “They’re pretty spicy.
They make me all hot and bothered, if I'm honest.” A sideways look.
“I love that you're just sitting here reading one. On a wall. At the base of a volcano.”
“Well. It passes the time.” I keep my eyes on the page.
“I really fancied the main character in that one.” A slight wistfulness in her tone. “The uptight boss.”
“Hm. Yes, she’s interesting. I quite like the plumber. She’s a hard worker.”
Emma laughs, bright and sudden, like she wasn’t expecting to. “That she is.”
I finished the first book in two days. I’m already well into the second and have spent the majority of the holiday in a state of considerable physical distraction.
The series has four books. I bought the remaining two as eBooks from my hotel room on the second night.
It’s quite pleasing to be able to discuss them with someone for the first time.
“Do you know other books like this?”
“Loads. I can give you a list if you want.”
“Oh. Yes. That would be good, thank you.”
She smiles at me and we sit in silence for a while. Every so often, she tilts her head up to take in the changing sky. I try to focus on reading, and not on wanting to study her neck or ask what her perfume is.
“The video,” I find myself saying.
“What video?”
“The one at your grandfather's house. The solar system.” I keep my eyes on the page. “How old were you? When you were watching it.”
“Six. Maybe, seven.” A pause. “Why?”
“Just trying to place it. The era of it.”
A soft exhale of amusement leaves her mouth. “I'm thirty-four, Cathleen.”
“I wasn't asking.”
“You were absolutely asking.”
I say nothing. Thirty-four. Sixteen years. I look at the page in front of me and the words have become decorative.
“And you?” Emma asks, glancing at me.
“I'm reading.”
“You've been reading the same page for twenty minutes.”
“It's a very good page.”
She laughs again and my chest pulls, inconveniently. Her sleeve is warm against my arm. A closeness that is becoming difficult to be casual about.
“I’m fifty, just so you know.”
“Good age.”
Good age? It is at this point that I become aware I need to find an old wooden door with Senoras written on it again. Damn wine. I sit, crossing one leg over the other, and let the thought settle, hoping it will reconsider. It doesn’t.
“Do you know if there’s toilets —” I gesture vaguely in the direction of nothing in particular.
“I don’t think so,” she says, glancing around at the dark.
“I’ll try the coach.” I stand, smooth my skirt, and walk with as much dignity as the uneven ground will allow back to the coach, which sits at the edge of the car park, door open, the driver inside with the settled patience of someone being paid to wait. I lean into the doorway.
“Excuse me, is there a toilet on board?”
He looks at me. Then smiles, broadly and with great sympathy. “No, Senora.” He gestures at the darkness beyond the coach with one expansive hand. “Your toilet — is nature.”
I stand with this for a moment.
“Right,” I say. “Thank you.”
Emma is standing a little way from the wall, hands in her pockets, watching me return with an expression of complete understanding.
“Nature,” I confirm. “I’ll just wait.”
“We’re going to be here for a few hours. Come on,” she says, and walks around to the far side of the coach without ceremony.
What follows is, I will say, not among the more dignified moments of my fifty years.
Emma stands with her back to me, arms slightly out — those broad shoulders creating a small, private space between us and the rest of the mountain — providing cover with a calmness that suggests she has no issue with it whatsoever, which is reassuring and enviable.
“So,” she says conversationally to the darkness in front of her. “What made you choose Tenerife?”
“Are you seriously making conversation right now?”
“Would you prefer silence?”
I consider this. “No,” I admit. “Keep talking.”
“Why Tenerife?”
The cold presses in at my ankles. “I needed somewhere that wasn't home,” I say. “And Tenerife promises heat in February.”
“That's it?”
“That's it.”
“And how's that going?”
“Ask me when I'm not crouching behind a bus,” I say.
I glance at the side mirror of the coach.
In the dark I can't tell if the driver can see me.
I decide, as my knickers pull tighter across my shins, that I am fifty years old and at the base of a volcano, and if the bus driver of a Tenerife excursion coach catches a glimpse of my backside in his wing mirror, then that is simply the evening we are all having.
As I sort myself out, the tissue presents its own problem.
I look at it. I look at the ground. I think of the ancient dark earth and feel, nonetheless, that I cannot leave a tissue on it.
I wrap it in a second tissue from my bag.
Then a third. Then bury the entire arrangement at the bottom of my bag beneath my book and my purse and decide I will deal with it when I am home.
I dig for my hand sanitiser and pump vigorously.
“Finished?” Emma asks.
“Finished.”
She turns around. In the dark her expression is unreadable but her voice is warm. “Lovely night for a full moon,” she says.
“If you tell anyone about this —”
“I'm not going to tell anyone about this.” A pause. “The bus driver might, but I won't.”
I smooth my skirt. “I'll return the favour if you need to go.”
“I went after dinner. I'm fine.” She falls into step beside me as we walk back around the coach. “Though I appreciate the offer.”
We walk a few steps in silence.
“This is bonding, isn't it,” I say. It comes out less like a question than a mild accusation.
“I think it might be, yes.”
“Well, thank you. I don’t imagine you thought you’d be shielding a half-naked woman on the side of a mountain.”
“I think the bus driver got the better view to be honest. Lucky man.”
I stop walking.
She keeps going, hands back in her pockets, and it’s clear from the set of her shoulders that she is very pleased with herself.