CHAPTER 26
Nicholas
El Cotillo
Five days later, Nicholas was in El Cotillo. He looked out of the tiny window of the blue house. The sky was also blue, with that clarity he remembered so well. He decided to walk to the lighthouse.
Memories were deceptive, of course. People remembered what they wanted to, mixed that in with what they’d been told by others, and added a touch of fantasy.
Hmm. Fantasy made him think once more of Venice .
. . Joanna Shepherd hadn’t emailed him back yet.
He found himself wondering about her life.
Was she married? Where did she live? What was it like to be a travel writer?
Last night, it had been dark when he arrived in the hire car from the airport but he could see there were more buildings in Cotillo – things had changed.
But this quirky blue and white stone house still looked the same.
He and Rachel first spotted it when walking along the beach with Celie, who was just a toddler then; they’d admired the exotic plants in the walled garden, the slanting blue roofs, the clear bubble of a dome on the top.
Like a coffee percolator, Rachel had said.
What would it be like to live there? Well, now he knew.
It was too big for one. Already, he was wandering around in it like a lost soul.
Nicholas left the house and stepped straight into the deep, pale sand of the beach.
The sea was royal blue, curling into fronds of white waves, thinning into turquoise where it lay, shallow and inviting, between stacks of volcanic black rocks.
The wide expanse of sand was broken up by corralitos – smaller, uneven piles of molten lava arranged in a horseshoe, or a sea-house, as Celie called them, where a family (his family) could settle for a day on the beach and be protected from the wind.
You could never tell – until you were on top of them – whether the corralitos were occupied.
Once, he had accidentally come across a couple making love and he’d stumbled away before they saw him, thought about a day in the future when he and Rachel might come here without Celie and simply lie contentedly in each other’s arms among the rocks and dunes.
It would never have happened, though.
The sun warmed his skin as he trudged over the fine sand and down to the shore.
The sand was compacted here but it still sank under his feet, as if it would pull him in if it could.
The silky water of the lagoon shone clear as a diamond.
He looked out over the beach which stretched into the distance like a lunar landscape.
There were more people – clearly, Cotillo had become something of a tourist destination in the last seventeen years.
It wasn’t crowded; the beach was too vast for that.
But in the distance he could see the new buildings that had sprung up – an ugly brown apartment block with a swimming pool, brash new cafés and bars.
El Cotillo was no longer a sleepy fishing village content with itself.
Had it lost sight of its true identity? Or simply grown into a new one?
He supposed it depended on how you accepted change.
After that single surf at Godrevy five days ago, Nicholas had become aware of his identity seeping back. Cautious at first, the joy, the rush had soon claimed him when he rode his first wave. It turned out to be a bit like riding a bike. You didn’t forget. And now he was here to do more.
He walked on. Soon there were fewer people and the landscape grew more desolate – dusty earth, black rock, miles of cratered sand and those shallow rocky bays to swim in. He wouldn’t swim, though, not yet. First, the lighthouse.
He had walked alone to the lighthouse on their last day in Cotillo seventeen years ago.
Rachel was reading and Celie happily paddling in the lagoon.
Nicholas had been restless, though. The lighthouse, rising in the distance, a stick of red and white stripes against the clear sky of this bleak landscape, was a visible goal, a marker; somewhere to aim for, touch, walk back from.
Joanna Shepherd had written about needing to find a sense of direction.
Seventeen years ago when they came here, Nicholas had been thinking about changing direction too.
The jewellery business run by Rachel’s brother-in-law Giuseppe was doing well and Giuseppe needed someone to find new buyers, take the merchandise to cities in Italy and abroad, deal with the finances, invest in the company so that it could grow.
Nicholas could be that person, Giuseppe told him.
It was very different from what Nicholas had been doing in Rachel’s father’s company in Surrey and before that as an accountant in Cornwall.
It would mean being away from home a lot. And, at first anyway, a drop in pay.
Nicholas sighed. Like most things in their marriage, this decision had been a battle.
Rachel favoured the security of her father’s firm.
There was Celie to think of, she said (as if he didn’t).
Didn’t she deserve the best? Rachel couldn’t understand why Nicholas was even considering it, and since Giuseppe had made the offer, furious unforgiving phone conversations had shot like liquid fire between Rome and Surrey.
But Nicholas’s working life in Rachel’s father’s firm sent a knot of tension drilling into him every Monday morning – and it didn’t unravel until Friday. He hated it.
Now, Nicholas reached the lighthouse and touched the wall for luck.
Even this place had been sanitised: a new car park, the house restored and made into a fishing museum, a café built with a glass wall for protection from the wind.
Paths had been forged through the rocky outcrops and down to the shallows with information plaques for tourists.
Nicholas supposed it was good to be informed.
Little piles of stones had been balanced among the volcanic rock and sand; each visitor making their mark.
He liked these – they added a personal touch to the landscape.
Perhaps even back then he had realised he was in danger of losing his sense of self.
He thought of his recent revelation in Godrevy.
And it hadn’t only been the surfing he’d missed.
Was it when he moved from Cornwall to Surrey (because Rachel wanted it)?
Was it when he joined her father’s firm (because she wanted that too)?
Or was it when he first felt Rachel’s love slip away?
Which came first? The lost love or the lost bit of Nicholas Tresillion?
Slowly, he began to walk away from the lighthouse.
But, amazingly, those cloudless blue skies back then had melted Rachel.
As the days passed, she had become softer again, more caring, somehow.
They had thrashed out the subject of the job, mixed it in with swimming in the lagoon, walks over the sand, and eating in the restaurant by the Old Harbour.
Nicholas smiled as he remembered . . . The sweetness of those prawns cooked in salt, the soothing curl and fizz of the waves on the pebbled beach, some chilled Doors music playing in the background. Ah . . .
El Cotillo had always reminded him of Cornwall and Godrevy had always reminded him of Cotillo.
They shared more than just a lighthouse, more than a surfing beach, more than a desolate landscape.
It was, he realised, more about the way they made him feel.
Godrevy was all about going back to his roots.
But this place – this was about the last time things had been good with Rachel. This place was about change.
Pretty soon he had retraced his steps. He stopped for a coffee in the Azurro bar just back from the shore.
From his vantage point on the terrace he had a good view of the beach houses: the Gaudi-esque house with a pear-shaped sculpture on the roof, the white stone building that appeared to have been split in two by a giant axe, the lighthouse back in the distance from which he’d come.
To the south, Cotillo was backed by volcanic mountains and a low-level cliff that stretched out to sea like the finger of a pier.
Nicholas sipped his coffee. Who could blame him for coming back? It had been a fabulous holiday. And on that last day, Rachel had walked over to where he was standing by the water’s edge and wrapped her arms around him.
‘OK,’ she whispered.
‘OK?’ Over her shoulder he had checked automatically on Celie. She was playing in the sand – brown, freckled and healthy.
‘I know you’re desperate to leave Bannisters,’ said Rachel. ‘I know you think this job with Giuseppe could work out for us – in the end, I mean.’
‘I do.’ And God, he had meant it. He felt like he was renewing his marriage vows. I do, I do . . .
‘So, you should give it a try,’ she said. ‘Otherwise you’ll always wonder.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ Her eyes were giving nothing away.
And in that moment, as Nicholas held her, as the wavelets lapped over their feet, he had thought, This is it, this is my perfect forever moment in this place, and . . .
And the moment would never come again.
He pushed his coffee cup to one side. That was how it was – with moments, with places, with people . . . They moved, they shifted, they changed.
Abruptly, he got to his feet, left some euros on the table, set off for the village. Who was he kidding? He shouldn’t have come back here. Nothing stayed the same. And not all surprises – unlike the one in Venice – were pleasant.