Chapter 17
Henry
Seventeen Summers Ago
The wheels of the buggy snagged on a tree root, and Henry clenched his teeth. The last thing they needed was for Luke to wake up again, not when they’d spent the best part of an hour strolling up and down the waterfront trying to get him off to sleep.
Violet had crouched down and was making soothing noises, her hand on their baby’s chest. Luke squirmed, stretched, and set his features into a frown, but his eyes remained blessedly closed.
Henry let go of the breath he’d been holding in. ‘Close one,’ he whispered, as Violet smiled wearily up at him. She was exhausted – they were both exhausted. Henry could no longer recall a time when he hadn’t been worn out to the point of collapse.
‘It’s just a phase,’ Violet’s mother was fond of saying. ‘No baby is easy.’
That might be true, Henry always thought, but he’d be willing to bet that their baby was more difficult than most. For the first year of his life, Luke had slept, as the old saying promised, like a baby, and he’d barely cried either. That had all changed in the weeks after they’d brought him home from his first Mallorca visit, and he and Violet had looked on in horror as their cherubic little boy changed into a screaming, writhing ball of potent fury.
‘What does he have to be angry about?’ Henry would often exclaim, as his son clawed and scratched and sobbed in his arms. ‘He has everything. A safe, comfortable home, parents who worship him, grandparents on hand to help, food, toys, games, attention.’ So much attention. More than Henry, who’d been raised by a single working mum, had ever received during his formative years.
‘He always gets like this after we spend time with your dad,’ Violet said now, rubbing at her eyes as they continued on along the path. It was nearing six in the evening, and the sunlight speckles on the water had faded from silver to gold. Pine trees swayed gently above them, long branches trailing like giant’s fingers into the sea below; down on the shoreline, birds picked and chattered.
Henry did not want to upset her, so he waited a few moments before replying, trying his best to quell the surge of irritation that had flared in his chest.
‘Antonio gets him so worked up,’ Violet went on. ‘All that rough-housing and throwing him up into the air – Luke hates it.’
‘He was laughing the whole time,’ Henry protested.
Violet made a scoffing sound.
‘He was!’
‘Because he was scared, not because he was enjoying it.’
She always did this – made out that she knew what was going on in their son’s head, even if his actions contradicted it.
‘I think you worry too much,’ he said, quietly so as not to goad. ‘Luke’s only two.’
‘I’m aware how old my son is, Henry.’
‘I know, but—’
‘And of the two of us, I’m the one who spends the most time with him. I know him better than you do, and I know when he’s putting on a game face.’
If she’d been trying to hurt him with this comment, stewed Henry, then she’d be able to put a tick in that particular box. Did she not see him out from dawn until dusk every day, putting in the hours on his apprenticeship at the building yard so he could work his way more quickly up the ranks? Was she blind to the fact that he was doing whatever he had to in order to support them, saving every spare penny so they could move away from her parents’ house and get a place of their own?
‘I don’t want us to argue,’ he said, defaulting, as usual, to the role of peacekeeper. ‘Please, Vee.’
Henry could tell she was still annoyed with him, her anger simmering just below the surface of her set jaw. Violet’s moods were like waves, tempers that swelled from barely there ripples to crashing froth in minutes, leaving trails of destruction in their wake. Henry’s were more solid, but constructed slowly, each argument they had representing another hammered-in nail.
‘I’m just so tired,’ Violet said, with a sigh that made her sound almost as old as her mother, who Henry was sure must be at least sixty. Violet had confessed that her parents tried for a long time to have her, and he’d often wondered if the reason why her mum was so hard on them now was because she harboured some jealousy towards her daughter for conceiving Luke so easily. He’d never mentioned it to Violet, though. It would only upset her, and Henry figured they had enough to contend with already.
‘I’ll take him tonight,’ he promised. ‘We’ll sleep downstairs, so you don’t hear him crying.’
But Violet was shaking her head. ‘He needs me,’ she said dejectedly. ‘He won’t settle with you.’
Despite all his efforts, Henry felt himself bristle. ‘He might, if you’d only let me try.’
‘No.’ She was adamant. ‘I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, I’d be too worried about him, and there’s no point in both of us suffering.’
They walked on for a while in silence, past beachside restaurants teeming with sunburnt tourists, souvenir shops overflowing with stacks of inflatables, and cocktail bars belching out cheesy pop tunes. Henry watched a group of guys approaching a table of girls of around his age and envied them their fun. None of those people had to concern themselves with sleep training, or weaning, or which brand of nappies were the most absorbent; their lives were about frivolity and living in the moment, not sterilising bottles and competing for early nursery places. When Violet had told him she was pregnant, Henry had been so sure that keeping the baby was the right thing to do – so much so, that he’d flown to England and made his case to her – but very occasionally, in his darkest and most wrung-out moments, he questioned if it had been the right decision. Violet had told him emphatically that they were too young, and he had made her trust that they weren’t. He, Henry, had done this, and so he must be the one to make everything all right.
‘Whatever you think is best,’ he said, taking one hand off the buggy and wrapping it around her shoulder. Violet melted gratefully into him, her body warm against his, and despite the exhaustion, the residue of their row, and all his worries about the future, Henry felt a stirring of desire.
‘If we get home without waking him, we might even have time to... you know,’ he said.
Violet gripped him tighter. ‘Sounds good to me,’ she said.
Their eyes met, an understanding passing between them, and a moment later they had set off at a jog, both laughing as they dodged and ducked around tourists, children, Port de Pollen?a residents walking their dogs, never letting go of each other’s hand. The bus came into view ahead of them, its red bulk tantalisingly close.
‘Hurry,’ urged Henry, quickening his pace, and dropping Violet’s hand so he could gesture to the driver to wait. Narrowly missing a seagull that was busy devouring a pizza slice, Henry barrelled on, reaching the stop just as the bus began to move. ‘Esperar!’ he called. Wait. But when he turned to reach for Violet, there was no sign of her. The driver threw up his hands impatiently and, cursing, Henry waved him away, turning as he heard a man’s voice.
‘Hola! Hey, Enrique,’
It was Juan, his arm raised and usual wide grin in place. The two men greeted each other in Spanish, and Henry explained about the missed bus.
‘So, you get the next one,’ Juan said. ‘Come and have a drink.’
Looking over his neighbour’s shoulder, Henry saw the unmistakeable red hue of Violet’s hair as she headed into a nearby bar.
‘Ana is there,’ Juan explained, adding with a glance at the pushchair, ‘with Tomas.’
Henry did not want to sit and drink cerveza with their friends, no matter how jovial they were; he wanted to take his beautiful girlfriend home and make love to her.
‘One drink,’ he said eventually, reluctantly, and followed Juan across a crowded outdoor terrace. Rihanna was singing about her umbrella, and he wished she wouldn’t do it quite so loudly. There was little hope of Luke staying asleep long in here and, once awake, he might not go down again for hours.
‘There you are,’ said Violet. ‘You ran off.’
‘To catch the bus,’ Henry replied stiffly, careful to keep his fixed smile in place.
Tossing her mane of long dark hair over one shoulder, Ana stood up from her seat to greet him, a stack of bangles sliding down her slim, tanned arms as she kissed each of his cheeks. Five-year-old Tomas was in the chair beside her and held up a toy car for Henry to see.
‘Lamborghini,’ he enunciated carefully, as Juan beamed down at him with pride.
‘Increíble,’ said Henry, unable not to recall the set of wooden vehicles he’d brought home for Luke only to have them rejected.
‘Vroom, vroom,’ yelled Tomas, as he pushed the car backwards and forwards across the tabletop. Ana smiled at him indulgently, rolling her eyes as Tomas almost sent his glass of orange juice flying before turning her attention towards Luke.
‘Sleeping – lucky you,’ she said, adding in an undertone, ‘They are terrorists when they get older.’
‘Luke won’t be,’ Violet responded instantly. ‘He’s never shown any sign of being rough or boisterous.’ It wasn’t strictly true, and Henry detected a hint of annoyance in her tone. Juan had gone inside to fetch each of them a drink, and he watched as Violet’s eyes strayed after him. She’d always got on better with Juan than Ana, whereas for Henry, the opposite was true.
‘How are you?’ Ana asked him now, sticking to English, Henry presumed, so as not to exclude Violet. When he told her they’d been out with his father all day, she visibly softened.
‘Ah, Antonio – such a brilliant man.’
‘He is?’ came Violet’s surprised reply.
Ana turned to her, nonplussed. ‘If Antonio had not given Juan a job, we would have nothing,’ she said. ‘When we met, do you know that he was a fisherman? Can you imagine it – the stink of him?’
Violet seemed affronted, but Ana merely laughed, her fingers searching the table.
‘I have told my brain that I do not smoke any longer,’ she said, tapping her temple, ‘but my hands have not, how do you say it, received the memo?’
Henry, who had dallied with the habit for all of two months when he was sixteen, nodded sagely.
‘Vroom!’ shouted Tomas, only to be shushed by Violet.
‘Sorry,’ she said, as Ana sat back and folded her arms. ‘I just... I thought he was going to wake Luke, and we’re at our wits’ end with his poor sleeping, aren’t we, Henry?’
‘Tomas could sleep through a hurricane,’ said Juan, who’d returned with a tray of drinks. Putting a beer down in front of Henry, he passed Ana her red wine then presented Violet with some kind of multicoloured concoction, complete with pineapple wedge and pink paper umbrella.
‘What is it?’ she asked, reaching for the straw.
‘A hanky panky.’
Violet giggled, and Henry caught Ana narrowing her eyes. The irony of Juan presenting his girlfriend with the one thing that he, Henry, had been hoping to share with her tonight was not lost on him, and picking up his bottle, he drained a third of it in a single gulp. Juan took the seat next to Violet’s, stretched his arm around the back of Ana’s chair, and began telling them a joke about two nuns that Henry had heard a hundred times before. It did not translate well into English, but both women laughed regardless, Violet rocking forward in her seat. Music blared, voices rang out, and a ruddy-faced woman wearing a sequinned cowboy hat screeched as she tripped over in the street outside.
Henry was fairly sure that if he lay down here on the sticky, drink-stained floor, amid all the chaos and noise, he would still be able to sleep. Any hope he’d harboured about having sex with Violet had gone, as had his desire. All he wanted was to go home and rest, and having made up his mind, he got to his feet.
‘We can’t go yet,’ protested Violet, blinking as she looked up at him. ‘I haven’t finished my hanky panky.’
Juan bellowed in delight just as Ana, who was becoming impatient with the non-stop ‘vroom, vrooming’ of her son, made a grab for the little Lamborghini. Tomas shrieked, snatching away his prized possession only to lose his grip on it. There was an agonising pause as each of them followed the trajectory of the small metal object in mute horror, and then, with a heart-cleaving scream Henry knew would haunt him forever, the toy car collided hard with Luke’s peacefully sleeping face.