Chapter 20
Violet
‘Buenas noches,’ was how he greeted me, raising a hand as I brushed dust off the back of my dress.
Dressed smartly in soft grey chinos, white polo shirt, and a pair of tan-coloured deck shoes that looked fresh out of the box, Juan made his way over and leant forwards to kiss me on each cheek. I found myself assailed by the woody scent of his aftershave, as well as something more astringent.
‘I can smell the ocean in your hair,’ he told me, to which I smiled faintly. Did he know I’d spent the day on Antonio’s boat? It was likely.
‘Henry’s inside,’ I said, and Juan glanced towards the house. ‘But don’t go in there without a hard hat on or you’ll get told off.’
‘I am on my way out to dinner,’ he explained, unhooking his sunglasses from between the buttons of his shirt. Like Antonio, he favoured Ray-Bans, though this pair did not have mirrored lenses. He didn’t put them on, just turned them over in his hands.
‘So, you thought you’d pop in on the way past and check on progress?’ I guessed.
Juan nodded. ‘Paulina has been asking me when her new bedroom will be ready,’ he said, beaming indulgently at the mention of his granddaughter. ‘She is impatient, the same as me.’
‘There are worse traits.’
‘And probably, I have all of them,’ he said, though I knew him well enough not to be taken in by his show of self-deprecation. I cast my mind back to the first time I’d met him, as a new mum barely out of her teens, recalling how the confident and strikingly handsome Spaniard had seemed so much wiser, steadier, and more comfortable in his skin than either me or Henry. Both of us had been happy to be swept beneath his wing, and I’d been pleased when the two men formed a bond over those first few summers. Juan’s friendship had meant a lot to Henry, just as it had to me.
When the latter emerged from the interior of the house a few minutes later, there was a tense kind of smile fixed across his face. He and Juan greeted each other with little more than a nod, and I hovered awkwardly on the periphery, waiting while they discussed building materials and schedules.
‘I can’t see it being ready until at least September,’ Henry said, his tone matter-of-fact. When the two of us had founded our business, we’d made a pact to always be honest with our clients when it came to timeframes, even if doing so led to disappointment.
‘Better they start with moderate expectations we can exceed, rather than vice versa,’ he’d said, which I’d learned was a typical Henry way of seeing the world. When I’d told him I was pregnant, he hadn’t promised anything more than he was able to. There was no big declaration, he’d simply arrived at the front door of my parents’ small house in Cambridge, sat the three of us down in the lounge, and put forward a plan of how he and I would raise our baby.
‘I’ll have to move in here,’ he’d said, and I’d watched the colour drain from my mother’s cheeks. ‘Sooner the better, so I can establish myself in a job.’
He would work as hard as he could, earn as much as he possibly could, do whatever he had to do in order to support the baby that I was still, at that stage, in two minds about keeping. I wanted to go to university, to travel, to be selfish for a little bit longer. I had none of the faith and commitment that seemed to come so naturally to Henry and was ashamed of myself for it. I didn’t want to let him down, nor risk losing him. It was easier to slip into the tailwind of his enthusiasm and let it carry me right through to term.
He had no idea how close I’d come to choosing a very different future for myself. Neither of them did.
‘I should get off,’ I told them. ‘I promised the kids I’d cook.’
‘The kids,’ echoed Henry, shaking his head. ‘Don’t let them hear you call them that.’
‘I still think of Tomas as mi peque?o,’ Juan said with a low chuckle. ‘They will always be our little boys, eh? No matter how big they get.’
‘If Luke gets any bigger, we’ll have to take the roof off the turret,’ I joked, turning to go. ‘Should I save a portion of dinner for you?’ I asked Henry.
He scratched behind his ear. ‘No, thanks. I’m— I have other plans.’
The woman in the street, her hand reaching for his, glossy hair swinging.
‘Oh.’ Even speaking hurt. ‘I guess I’ll... The keys for the jeep are back on the hook.’
‘Thanks.’
He couldn’t appear to meet my eye, but Juan had no such qualms.
‘Shall we walk together?’ he asked, tucking the arm of his sunglasses back between his shirt buttons. ‘I am going the same way.’
This would be bound to annoy Henry.
‘Why not?’ I smiled at him. ‘It will be good to properly catch up.’
I strode away and heard Juan murmur something to Henry before he hurried after me. Having negotiated the makeshift fence, we headed along the darkening street, close but not near enough to touch. Now that the sun had properly set, the sky was a deep violet, its surface aglow with the promise of stars.
I waited until we reached the corner before I spoke. ‘Are you really going the same way as me?’
Juan raised a single, trimmed eyebrow. ‘It is Pollen?a,’ he said expansively. ‘Every street leads to every other street.’
‘Does that make us mice in a mouse run?’
‘Why don’t we say marbles?’
‘I’m not sure I have many left,’ I said, and he gave me a rather crooked smile, the meaning lost on him.
‘I heard about the house.’
‘Are you going to lecture me about it, too?’
We had reached Pla?a de l’Almoina, a small square with an ornate fountain in its centre, Pollen?a’s symbolic rooster standing illustriously at its top. Holidaymakers filed past in a blur of noise and colour, bumping against us as they went. Juan put his arm around my shoulder to shield me, ushering me forwards out of the scrum.
‘To sell?’ He sucked air through his teeth. ‘It feels so... final.’
‘It’s the best option for everyone concerned,’ I said robotically. ‘Henry has moved on, and I need to do the same.’
Juan’s dark eyes narrowed.
‘What do you mean “moved on”?’
‘Moved on as in seeing someone else,’ I said, attempting to sound casual about the fact, as if the mere thought didn’t rip my insides to shreds. ‘I saw them together.’
Juan looked as if he didn’t believe me.
‘I did,’ I insisted. ‘She has long dark hair and they were holding hands.’
‘Have you asked him?’
I shook my head slowly. ‘Not my place.’
Juan made a tutting sound. ‘He is still your husband, sí?’
I agreed begrudgingly that he was, ‘on paper’.
‘So, you can ask him whatever you want.’
‘Hmm,’ I said, unwilling to confess my real reason for avoiding the subject. If I did what he was suggesting and raised the topic of this woman with Henry, then I ran the risk of having him confirm my worst fears. As things stood, I only suspected he was romantically involved with someone new, I didn’t know for sure, and knowledge like that had the power to crucify me. I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough to bear it.
Juan touched a hand to the crook of my elbow, drawing me across to the doorway of a restaurant kitchen. I looked up at him, taking in the familiar curve of his nose, the fullness of his lower lip.
‘You used to talk to me about all the things happening in your life,’ he said. ‘You can still trust me.’
I shook my head, and he let out a low hiss of frustration.
A bin bag was hurled out through the open door, and I only just managed to hop out of the way in time.
‘That was a bit close for comfort,’ I said, leading the way across the lane and through the puddles of light spilling down from shop windows. I was restless in his company, itching to escape, though I knew to admit as much would bruise his ego.
‘Are you talking about the rubbish,’ he asked, ‘or me?’
I chuckled. ‘Can it be both?’
‘Violet.’
The way he said it, enunciating each syllable, stirred something in me, the faint trickle of a feeling that had long since run dry. He put a hand on my arm to still me, and this time I sighed under the strain of it, of him, of all my diverging emotions.
‘You don’t need to worry about me.’
I don’t deserve your concern.
‘I can find out,’ he said urgently. ‘About this woman that you saw. There are people who will know, and I can be...’ He paused, searching for the English word.
‘Discreet?’
‘Sí, discreet. Nobody will know who is asking, and this way, you can be certain.’
There was no need to ask him why he was willing to do this for me – I knew why. We all had an agenda, that self-interested part deep inside, and who was I to judge Juan for following his? I told him to go ahead, shutting down my fear with a nod, telling myself that the truth would do as promised and set me free.
Because if Henry had fallen in love with someone else, then we really were over.
Finished, broken, done.