Chapter 5
Violet
Of all the places I thought I might see this man again, the garden of La Casa Naranja was not one of them. But here Juan was, in all his stubble-coated, deeply tanned glory, seemingly completely at ease with the person who’d banned him from ever again crossing the threshold.
I gaped at him, incomprehension writ large, and struggled for something to say. The word that kept floating to the surface, oil on the water of my inherent British need to be polite, was ‘why’.
Why are you here? Why is Henry not reacting? Why is this happening? Why?
I managed to emit a low, sort of murmuring sound.
‘Are you OK?’ Juan laid a hand across my forehead. ‘Hot,’ he proclaimed, in thick, heavily accented English. The way he pronounced his ‘O’s made them sound flayed, as if his throat was somehow stripping the skin from each one on its way out. I stepped away from him.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, bending my elbow so I could examine the scrape on my upper arm. ‘It’s a scratch, it’s nothing.’
Henry reached up and casually plucked a lemon from one of the lower branches of the tree – one that I’d failed to reach even after scaling the wall.
‘Here,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘You need only have asked.’
The back door opened to reveal Luke, his cursory glance transforming into an expression of delight when he saw who had joined us.
‘Mi amigo,’ cried Juan, jogging up the two sets of stone steps to greet him. Luke abandoned his tray of drinks on the patio table and allowed himself to be pulled into a hug, grinning as Juan clapped him on the back. As I did during every interaction that I saw the two of them share, I tried hard not to envy their closeness, nor the casual way our Spanish neighbour crossed Luke’s boundary and found himself welcomed as opposed to rebuffed. There was no doubt that if it pained me to witness this show of companionship, it must be agony for Henry.
‘What brings you here?’ Luke asked.
Juan hesitated for a moment before answering, his gaze straying to Henry, who was making his way to the patio just ahead of me. ‘I am here with a proposition,’ he said. ‘For your father.’
Eliza chose that moment to fling open the shutters in the bedroom above, a wet bikini top in her hands that she promptly started to wring out. Ducking to avoid the droplets of water, I deposited my lemons on the table and, picking up the knife Luke had brought out on the tray, started to slice them.
‘What proposition?’ Henry’s flat tone betrayed no emotion beyond perhaps mild curiosity.
‘A house,’ said Juan. ‘Here, in Pollen?a town.’
I took a sip of gin and tonic and winced at its strength.
Henry’s face must have registered interest because Juan then clarified the address of his mystery house as being on Carrer de la Garriga, a narrow lane around fifteen minutes’ walk from where we were standing.
‘It is... un desastre,’ he went on, punctuating the statement with a shrug.
‘Is that a good or bad thing?’ asked Eliza, who had floated out to join us in a pale green floor-length sundress.
‘Bad,’ I supplied, at the same time Henry said ‘good’. Eliza blinked at us, confused.
‘Most people would consider a wreck of a house to be a bad thing,’ I told her. ‘But Henry isn’t most people.’
‘You want Dad to do it up for you?’ guessed Luke, and Juan beamed at him.
‘Sí! He is the best, after all.’
I took another sip.
‘Antonio heard that it was becoming available, and he arranged for me to make the first bid,’ Juan explained. ‘It is a gift,’ he added. ‘For Tomas.’
I could not be sure if I had imagined Henry flinch when he heard his father’s name, but at the mention of Juan’s son, Tomas, he visibly softened.
‘Generous gift,’ observed Luke, as Eliza picked up the tray of drinks from beside me and offered it to the three men. ‘You go ahead,’ she urged when Henry looked as if he was going to refuse. ‘I can make myself another one.’
It should really have been me who played host, me who saw to it that everyone was given refreshments, and me who went inside now and mixed a drink for Eliza – but I was loath to leave the unexpected tableau playing out in front of me. Juan not only back in The Orange House, but seemingly in our lives, the past wiped clean as if it were no more than dust on a windshield.
Luke was right – a house was a lavish gift, wreck or not – and by rights, La Casa Naranja should have been his one day. Henry and I had talked about it. Putting down my glass, I tried not to react as my stomach twisted unpleasantly.
‘Tomas has outgrown the apartment in Palma,’ Juan continued. ‘The place is full of Paulina’s toys, and soon there will be a new baby.’
‘Carmen’s pregnant?’ I blurted, to which he smiled.
‘Sí. Soy un abuelo.’
‘Abuelo means grandfather,’ I told Eliza. She’d just returned with a large drink and slid the hand not holding it into one of Luke’s.
‘I did not think I would be a grandfather twice over at the age of forty-five,’ Juan said, with an affectionate lament. He raised his drink as if toasting the absurdity of life and drained it in a single gulp.
‘Salud,’ I said, retrieving my own gin and tonic. Henry, I noticed, had yet to drink any of his.
‘So,’ said Juan, ‘what do you say, my old friend? Will you come and take a look, help Tomas to plan for the refurbishment? It will be a big job,’ he added. ‘There is money.’
Henry would refuse – he had to.
I jumped violently as someone began hammering on the front door. Luke said he’d go, and a few moments later, a little girl hurtled through the open back door and threw herself against Juan’s legs.
‘Paulina, mi mu?equita,’ he crooned, hoisting the dark-haired toddler into the air and rubbing his nose against hers.
‘Basta, Abuelo,’ she squealed, writhing as he tickled her.
Luke reappeared with Tomas, who was less classically handsome but more lithe than his father. He greeted Eliza with genuine warmth but offered little more than a faint nod in my direction, choosing instead to bestow his attention on Henry. They had much in common, the two of them, and I could see his arrival was having the desired effect. As soon as Tomas pleaded his case, Henry capitulated, telling Spanish father and son that he’d be happy to inspect their house at the earliest opportunity.
I stole a glance at Luke, but he had moved a few paces away and was listening intently as Eliza whispered something in his ear. Whatever she was saying had turned the tips of his ears the same bright pink as her hair, and as I watched, he dropped a kiss on her collarbone.
Overwhelmed by a sudden urge to cry, I looked hurriedly away. The little girl had grown bored of pulling Juan’s ears and was wriggling to be put down.
‘Papá,’ she said, reaching up towards Tomas. As he levered her into his arms, Paulina found herself face-to-face with Henry, and promptly screamed.
‘Caracortada!’ she cried, repeating the word over and over as she buried her head against her father’s chest. Tomas shushed her, soothing and scolding in turn until it became clear she was not going to stop.
‘Sorry,’ he said, before carrying the near-hysterical girl back indoors.
Eliza was looking at Luke, who’d turned pale. ‘What does Caracortada mean?’ she asked, and it was Henry who answered.
‘It’s a word I hear a lot these days,’ he said, the flatness of his tone at odds with the wretchedness of his expression. I made myself look at him then – really look at him – at the raw, puckered skin that had yet to heal, the jagged line where flesh had been torn from bone, and the still swollen eye that would never again find focus.
‘Caracortada means Scarface.’