Chapter 15
Violet
I didn’t see Luke or Eliza again until the following morning.
They found me where I’d been since shortly after dawn, out on the patio with my bare feet propped up on the wall, a battered gardening book open on the table next to me beside a pot of fresh mint tea.
‘Where’s Dad?’ Luke asked, stretching his long arms above his head. His hair was ruffled, and behind him, Eliza rubbed sleep from her eyes.
‘Not here,’ I said, unable to elaborate further.
Luke’s expression hardened a fraction. ‘Well, did he say when he’d be back?’
‘He didn’t, sorry. I should have asked him.’
Why did I always feel the need to apologise?
‘Did you need him for something?’
Luke glanced over his shoulder at Eliza. ‘I was hoping he’d give us a lift.’
I lowered my feet to the floor so I could pivot around and face him properly.
‘Right now?’
‘Yeah, I mean, soon ideally. We’ve been invited to spend the day on Antonio’s boat. He called just now; said we should meet him over in Port de Sóller after breakfast.’
‘We can get the bus,’ put in Eliza, who was twirling a lock of hair around her finger, but Luke pulled a face. I understood his reluctance. Port de Sóller was a popular location, and it was likely the buses would be packed with tourists. My son did not do well with crowds and having taken the bus down to Palma and back yesterday, I was doubtful he’d up to facing a similarly stressful journey so soon.
‘I can drive you,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask Dad if I can borrow the jeep. I’m sure he won’t mind.’
Luke looked unconvinced. ‘You reckon?’
‘Sure,’ I replied breezily, exuding far more confidence than I felt. Picking my phone up from the seat beside me, I swiped away an email notification – the third in as many days from my bank – and tapped out a quick message to Henry.
‘Right,’ I said, readying myself to stand. ‘Can I get you both some breakfast? You must be starving, and I picked up some lovely—’
My phone pinged. Keys are on the hook, was all Henry had written. No kisses from him. I held it up so Luke could see.
‘Cool,’ he said, at the same time as Eliza rushed out a ‘thank you’. ‘I’d better let Antonio know –’ Luke added, big thumbs dancing across the screen of his own phone – ‘that it’s you coming with us, instead of Dad, in case he... you know.’
I thought I did. On account of my conversation with Ynes – who, I realised with a stab, I still had to call and apologise for running out on – I knew Antonio had some strong opinions where I was concerned, and I doubted the old man would pass up an opportunity to make his feelings known. It was an inkling that was proven correct a few moments later, as a reply came through to Luke’s phone saying that yes, of course I was very welcome to join the party, and that he was ‘eager’ to see me after ‘so long’.
Chalking this up as the first passive aggressive strike of what I feared would be a very long day, I fixed a rather grim smile on to my face and set about preparing breakfast.
There were three separate routes that ran from Pollen?a down to the south-west seafront village of Port de Sóller, and I decided – perhaps unwisely, in hindsight – to take the one that wound up through the mountains, thinking that it would provide far better scenery than the inland highway. I had forgotten, however, about the millipede ribbon of cyclists that would be clogging up the roads, not to mention the plethora of coaches, minibuses and hire cars.
‘I’m so sorry about this,’ I said, as we found ourselves trapped in a bottleneck of traffic for what felt like the tenth time. From the back seat, Eliza, who’d wriggled her top half free from the seat belt in order to drape her arms around Luke, told me not to worry.
‘I had no idea Mallorca had so much forest,’ she observed, as I negotiated a wince-inducing bend in creaking first gear. ‘There are more pine trees here than in Lapland.’
‘Sadly, less than there should be,’ I said, nodding towards several stumps. ‘It snowed heavily here in March last year, and a million trees came down. I read that the roads up here were closed for over a month while they cleared all the debris away.’
Eliza let out a low whistle. ‘Poor things.’
Luke said nothing. His attention was on the road, jaw set and eyes watchful. I tried to concentrate on manoeuvring the jeep, but the sight of the felled trees had shaken me. That was what misery did, made you self-indulgent. These fallen spruces had nothing to do with the failure of my marriage, and yet I saw them as a metaphor relating to Henry and me, as if the destruction of nature could be somehow compared to that of love.
Once we had skirted around the old village of Lluc, with its vast, ornate monastery and lumbering tour buses, the way became clearer, and the tension in the jeep lessened as we finally began to make some progress.
‘Do you want to stop at Cúber?’ I asked Luke. ‘So Eliza can see the view?’
He considered, seemingly indifferent. ‘Sure, yeah, whatever.’
The car park that lay adjacent to the observation deck was full, as I’d feared it would be, so I dropped the two of them off and drove back along the road until I found a place to pull over. The air was moist beneath the canopy of leaves, and I swatted at hovering insects as I walked, my bag swinging at my side. The lake everyone stopped to admire at this spot was man-made, but no less beautiful for it, and on a clear day such as this one, the surface of the water was a smooth, cerulean blue.
I located Luke without any trouble. He was at the far end of the fenced deck, and easily a head taller than most of the assembled tourists.
‘Hey.’ I touched a hand to his back. ‘Where’s Eliza?’
He pointed to the path below, and lifting my sunglasses, I squinted down until I saw a dot of pink hair.
‘She went to take photos of the sheep,’ he said fondly. ‘She really loves animals.’
‘You used to be scared of sheep,’ I told him. ‘Do you remember when me and Grandad took you to Wimpole Farm during lambing season?’
He shook his head.
‘Well, we did. We thought you’d be fine with the baby sheep, but if anything, they frightened you more than the big ones. Perhaps it was their unpredictability – all that leaping around.’
‘I was a wuss,’ he said solemnly, though not without humour.
‘You were... cautious. Sensible, some might say. Animals are, after all, still animals. You can’t trust any of them one hundred per cent. Look at what happened to that man who fed a wild hippo every day, or the bloke who tried to live as a bear.’
‘Those are pretty extreme examples.’
‘I guess so.’
‘And you don’t have to do that, you know.’
‘Do what?’
Luke turned to look at me, brow furrowing from the glare of the sun. ‘Defend my weaknesses. You do it all the time.’
I was stung, and my voice when I replied betrayed it. ‘They’re not weaknesses.’
Luke gave in to a sigh. ‘OK, Mum. Whatever you say.’
‘That’s just it, though,’ I persisted. ‘I am your mum, so of course I’m going to think the best of you. You might choose to interpret the – let’s call them hesitancies – you had as a child as some sort of flaw, but I prefer to see them as an exercise in self-preservation. So many little boys take unnecessary risks growing up, and I was glad you never did.’
‘Not never,’ he cut across me, the volume of his voice creeping up a few notches. ‘What about the time—’
‘Oh look, here’s Eliza!’ I cried, rushing over to greet her as she reappeared on the steps just below us. ‘There you are. Were the sheep friendly? I’m sure they hang around here purely to beg food off all the tourists.’
And on I blathered, my stream of chatter obliterating Luke’s attempt to dig up the past. I did not want to talk about the day to which he’d been alluding, not with him or anyone else. Given the chance, I would scour it from my mind completely. Yank it out by its roots and treat the earth below it with glyphosate, thus ensuring I never had to think about it again. Because while there were many things that I’d be willing to do for my son, to support, protect and nurture him, I did still have exceptions. And dredging up memories that would do nothing but cause pain was chief among them.