Chapter 8
Violet
The balmy evening merged into a sultry night as I wandered aimlessly through Pollen?a’s congested backstreets. I was oblivious to all but my own malaise, and barely registered the expressions on the faces of those I passed. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits, their jovial babble a steady percussion behind the strains of music and song filtering out from restaurants and bars.
It was too late for cicadas, but the swallows still soared, tiny rips in the navy fabric of the darkening sky. I searched for the stars, but only the very brightest were visible, high beyond the warm yellow eyes of opened shutters, dropped diamonds of light.
Storming away from the table had been a mistake, but more than that, it had been out of character. Being me was becoming increasingly difficult, and at times I barely recognised myself as the person I’d once been, that plucky, confident girl who’d shimmied over that garden wall twenty years ago to pick a flower, only to end up finding something far more beautiful, more rare, more vital. When Henry and I had been the sole focus of each other’s lives, things had been so much easier. I knew how to love him, I had since the very first moment we met, and had assumed the same natural pattern would follow when I became a mother. To discover I’d been wrong about that had altered the very core of me, twisting me into someone else, a person that neither I nor Henry knew what to do with.
My thoughts were shattered as church bells began to chime, and I pressed a hand against the rough stone wall beside me as I counted. Eight... nine... ten. I had been walking in a directionless meander around the town for over an hour. It was time to go back to The Orange House; back home. Stifling a yawn, I made my way to the bottom of Pollen?a’s famous Calvari Steps, weariness overtaking me as I trudged past the towering cypress trees to the halfway point and turned left. From here, La Casa Naranja was only a hundred yards away, and I could see the glow of light from its highest, circular window. Luke’s room.
When he was still very young, he and I had pretended the turret was the hull of a great ship, the vast expanse of blue sky beyond our make-believe portholes a fine stand-in for swirling ocean seas. Those hours we spent together in a fantasy of our making were some of my most cherished memories of motherhood. Our holidays here had begun with such frivolity, the three of us unshackled from the everyday pressures of life in England. The house and the island that bore it had continued its annual restoration of us, right up until the moment we became damaged beyond repair.
Rubbing at my eyes, I let myself in and dropped my bag on the dining table. The lounge door was closed, but as I started across the hallway to fetch a bottle of water from the fridge, I heard what sounded like furniture being dragged across the floor coming from within.
Henry. It had to be.
Steeling myself, I pushed open the door.
‘Oh, it’s— Sorry.’
Eliza let out a gasp as she swung around to face me.
‘Shit,’ she said, then hurriedly, ‘I didn’t mean to swear – you startled me.’
I told her not to be silly, falling silent as I noticed the blanket in her arms, the pillow at one end of the pulled-out sofa.
‘Is something the matter?’ I asked. ‘Have you and Luke fallen out?’
‘No, no.’ She shook her head, pink tendrils falling across her eyes. ‘We’re fine. Luke’s just having one of his, you know, times when he needs to be alone. I’m giving him some space.’
‘Is he all right?’
I’d asked the question more sharply than I intended and regretted it when I saw Eliza flinch.
‘He’s fine – just assimilating.’
‘Assimilating what?’
She shrugged awkwardly. ‘Tonight, himself, you, life – everything. I don’t know exactly. First, he assimilates – only afterwards will he be ready to talk about it.’
‘Me?’ I pressed. ‘Why does he need to assimilate me?’
If Eliza had appeared uncomfortable before, she now looked positively ill.
‘Sorry,’ she said, picking up the pillow and hugging it against her chest. ‘I don’t really feel like I should— That is to say, I don’t want to—’ She gave up, grimacing at me in either sympathy or dismay – I couldn’t quite tell which.
‘Has Luke said something to you about me?’ I persisted. ‘Is he annoyed with me about leaving the dinner earlier? He is, isn’t he? I did it for him, that’s the stupid thing. I left so as not to upset him.’
This half-truth hung stagnantly in the air between us for a few moments before Eliza sat down on the sofa. She could not have made it clearer that she wanted me to leave her alone, but I needed to know more. Luke and his problems were the proverbial itch that I could never seem to scratch enough.
‘Are you sure everything is OK between the two of you?’ I asked, crossing the room, and sitting down uninvited beside her. ‘I know what he can be like.’
She appeared to bristle at this. ‘Luke hasn’t said or done anything to upset me,’ she reiterated carefully. ‘Sometimes he needs a bit of headspace. I don’t take it personally.’
The implication being, of course, that I did.
‘I think I’ll go and check in with him,’ I said decisively, but Eliza stilled me with a light touch.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I really think that you— Oh god.’ She started to pick agitatedly at her chipped green nail polish. ‘This is so... ugh.’
‘Circle of trust,’ I promised, hating how desperate I sounded. ‘You can tell me what he said about me – I’m used to it, and I won’t say anything to him.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Eliza was shaking her head. ‘I can’t do that. Me and Luke, we trust each other. Trust is important to him, and I can’t go behind his back. I’d be breaking a promise if I did, and he’d never forgive me.’
She sounded so wretched at the thought that I put my arm around her, and was surprised when she leaned into me, her head resting gently against my shoulder. The last time Luke had sought out a cuddle from me, he’d still been in primary school, and I was pathetically grateful to Eliza for her willingness to accept the comfort I offered.
‘Has he told you,’ I asked, ‘about his childhood, and how difficult he found his teenage years?’
She nodded but didn’t speak.
‘You might think that you know him,’ I went on, my cheek warm against the side of her head, ‘but there’s a lot to Luke that I’m betting he hasn’t shown you. I’ve known him for nineteen years, and you’ve been in his life for...?’
‘Seven months.’
‘Well, then.’
She sniffed, lifting a hand to wipe something off her face, and I wondered if she was crying. It would not have surprised me in the slightest if she was. I’d been on the receiving end of Luke’s ‘I need to be alone’ speeches often enough to appreciate their severity, and I understood how ostracising it could feel when he lashed out.
‘I don’t think time has much to do with it,’ Eliza mumbled.
‘To do with what?’ I replied, thinking I must have misheard.
‘Knowing someone. I think you can know someone completely in no time at all, if they choose to let you.’
An image of Henry strode, unbidden, into my mind, and I shook my head, dislodging Eliza from my shoulder in the process. She didn’t look defiant any more so much as tired and, feeling a stab of something close to guilt, I stood up to go.
‘You’re exhausted,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have disturbed you. Can I get you anything? A hot drink? I can make fresh mint tea, if you like, or just some water?’
Anything to ensure she reported back to Luke in glowing terms.
Eliza shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’
I turned to go only to immediately spot a pair of feet on the stairs.
A swearword far worse than the one Eliza had used rushed through my head.
‘Luke,’ I called. ‘Wait!’
I ran to catch up with him, but it was no good. Having thundered noisily up the two flights to his turret bedroom, he slammed the door behind him so hard that every fibre in my body vibrated. A few beats of terrible, foreboding silence filled the house, and I was forced to quell a yowl of pain as my stomach contracted into knots. Being Luke’s mother had conditioned my body to register a threat, and I was helpless to prevent it from responding.
Not then, not now, not ever.