Chapter 23
Violet
Ynes’s words of misguided wisdom continued to prod finger-like against my temples for the remainder of the morning, and by the time Luke and Eliza had finished eating and were chasing around ideas of how to spend their day, I was more than ready for a distraction.
‘How about we go to Alcúdia?’ I suggested, as Eliza helped me clear away the breakfast plates. I’d cooked the dropped tomatoes in the end, gently frying them in olive oil, fresh oregano, and a generous twist of black pepper, and had two scraped-clean plates to show for it.
Luke glanced up from the table, at which he sat hunched over his phone.
‘Sure, yeah,’ he said. ‘Whatever.’
‘His enthusiasm knows no bounds,’ I murmured to Eliza, and was pleased when she let out a laugh.
Henry, for once, had commandeered the jeep, so the three of us made the thirty-minute journey by bus. The small town of Alcúdia was in the north of the island, its oldest part encircled by meticulously restored high medieval walls. Having crossed from the bus stop to a grand stone archway, we strode beneath it and found ourselves in the shadow of Sant Jaume church. I was not religious, and neither was Henry, although Antonio often extolled to us both the merits of Catholicism. As far as I was concerned, he could keep the idea of an omnipotent Almighty, and I would settle on admiring the buildings created in His honour.
‘Wow, it’s stunning,’ said Eliza, who was wearing a white dress that set off her ever-deepening tan. Gold hoops gleamed at each ear, and she’d twisted her short pink locks into a minuscule bun. ‘I love how the stonework looks like a flower.’
‘That’s the rose window,’ I told her. ‘And the church itself has been integrated into the city walls.’
She nodded, awed into a silence that proved contagious. The air was dense with a heat so heavy that even the palms above us were still, and the sun that sought us out did so with an intensity that scratched. Luke had put on his usual tent-sized T-shirt and jersey shorts, sneakered feet huge at the end of pale, hairy shins. The combination of his exquisite bone structure and height coupled with her colourful hair and piercings ensured that a fair amount of attention was drawn their way, but while Eliza seemed aware in the way that many young women and girls are, Luke appeared to be oblivious. He either failed to notice or cared not about the curious gazes of those we passed as we weaved our way through the shady backstreets.
‘I thought it’d be busier,’ he said, turning to Eliza. ‘Maybe we could do that thing?’
‘That thing?’ I echoed.
‘Luke wants me to pose for some photos so he can use them for a portrait,’ Eliza said, sounding mildly embarrassed.
‘I’ve tried to draw her before,’ he said cagily, ‘but I can never get it quite right.’
‘I’ve told him it’s probably my fault,’ she teased. ‘On account of being so asymmetric.’
‘No, you aren’t,’ Luke and I chimed in unison, as he pulled Eliza towards him. I was still growing accustomed to this tactile side of him and averted my gaze as he bent to kiss her. Henry and I had been the same once, constantly pawing at each other, but the intimacy we shared had tapered off as Luke’s struggles worsened.
I mulled this over as we continued to explore, Eliza finding new things to remark upon at every turn. The papery thin petals of the bougainvillea were ‘reminiscent of Matisse’s cut-outs’; the pots of flowers on steps and windowsills ‘nature’s fireworks’; and the mottled walls ‘so like sourdough, I want to cover them in slices of avocado’.
‘Dad used to go into a trance-like state whenever we came here,’ I said. ‘Do you remember, Luke?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He’d run his hands across the walls and stick his fingers into the gaps, puzzling how it all fitted together, working it out, and telling us at great length how good the design and building techniques must have been for it still to be standing.’
‘Alcúdia is a celebration of craftsmanship and vision,’ quoted Luke, pulling off an accurate impression of Henry at his most impassioned.
Eliza trailed her fingers over the coarse texture.
‘My dad would put old sections of wall into art galleries if he could,’ said Luke. ‘He puts more merit into buildings than he does anything else.’
‘We all see beauty in different things,’ I allowed. ‘For your dad, those things are most commonly made from bricks and mortar.’
‘I see beauty in people,’ mused Eliza. ‘But by that I mean their idiosyncrasies and unique ways of seeing the world, not what they look like. My parents taught me that a body is just a body – a vessel for the soul, and I agree with them. What makes us human is on the inside, not the outside.’
‘You should say that to my dad,’ muttered Luke, as we skirted past a vast cactus. ‘He’s been so, I don’t know, weird since the— since his face changed.’
‘Poor man,’ said Eliza, while I silently reeled. ‘I’m so used to the scars now that I barely notice them.’
‘Give him time,’ I managed to say, though it was difficult through the churn of misery that had become my insides. ‘It’s been less than two years, and the whole thing must have been deeply traumatic for him.’
‘And he is still very handsome,’ Eliza said, to which Luke shrugged noncommittally.
I nodded. ‘People would remark on how good-looking he was all the time when we first met – often complete strangers. I had such a complex about it in the early days. I assumed people wondered what a man of his calibre was doing with a freckly imp like me.’
Eliza scoffed good-naturedly.
‘But then you were born and all that changed,’ I went on, turning to Luke. ‘You became the one who got all the attention, all the old ladies hurrying over to cluck at you in your pram and tell me how gorgeous you were.’
Luke stared straight ahead, a stony look on his face. I had meant what I’d said to be taken as a compliment but had somehow strayed yet again on to conversational turf that he’d rather I’d left untrodden. It was so hard to know what to say, and I had become an expert in getting it wrong.
‘What about you, Luke?’ Eliza said, coming to my rescue. ‘What do you see beauty in?’
He thought for moment, a muscle twitching in his jaw. ‘Truth,’ he said at last. ‘Although I see a lot less of it than I’d like.’
My immediate response to this was a shocked ‘oh’, and when I looked at Eliza to gauge her reaction, I saw that she, too, seemed lost for words. Luke felt as if he was being lied to – that point he’d made loud and clear – but was it me he was taking a pot shot at, or Eliza? I found it hard to imagine it was the latter option. I thought about what Eliza had said to me, when she’d spent a night on the couch.
‘Me and Luke, we trust each other. Trust is important to him.’
Those two were mutually honest, but I had lied to Luke many times. Never out of malice, only to shield him, protect him from himself and, yes, sometimes to protect myself from him. Did that make me an ugly person, or a desperate one?
‘Shall we get an ice cream?’ Eliza suggested, the brightness of her tone at odds with my sullenly contemplative thoughts. We had wandered from the dusty backstreets into a wide square, which was bordered on every side by colourful awnings. An ice-cream shop, complete with predictably long queue, was in the corner farthest away.
‘I’ll go,’ I offered, keen to escape, but Luke cut across me.
‘S’all right,’ he mumbled. ‘Dad lent me some euros this morning. Pistachio, right, Mum?’
‘The greener and nuttier the better.’
I watched him lope away, bony shoulders hunched and hair flopping forwards over his eyes, relinquishing a sigh as I leant back against the nearest wall. Eliza stood a little to one side, fiddling with the hem of her dress.
‘Is he happy?’ I asked, and saw her eyes widen in surprise at the question. I hadn’t known I was going to ask it until I did.
‘I think happy is too simple a word,’ she replied cautiously. ‘Luke is... complicated, and he’s anxious a lot of the time. I think he’d need a different brain to be happy, in the traditional and simplistic way. I don’t mean it as a bad thing,’ she hurried on. ‘I like that he’s a deep thinker, that he’s considered and measured in the way he responds to things, you know?’
‘He’s always been anxious,’ I said, trying for a smile. ‘Though I think he fought back against it for a long time.’
Eliza nodded in understanding. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘When I met him, like, the first few times we spoke, he used to pretend he was happy all the time, and it was really weird. He was almost manic sometimes. I remember asking him if he was on something.’ She laughed softly at the memory. ‘But of course, he wasn’t. You know he hates drugs?’
‘I know he’s distrustful of them.’
‘Totally,’ she agreed. ‘He’s too smart to put any pharmaceuticals into his body.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, somewhat mechanically. ‘He is.’
‘I called him out on it,’ Eliza went on, pulling a loose thread from her dress and twisting it around her finger. ‘The fakeness. I told him to stop acting and be himself, even if that meant being quiet, or subdued, or even rude. I knew I liked him, but I didn’t want some pretend version of him, I’m not about that. It took him a while to dismantle all those walls he’d put up, but slowly he started to show me the real him.’
‘He always seems so angry with me,’ I said, staring past her towards the throng of people congregating in the square.
Eliza dwelled on this for a moment. ‘He’s not angry,’ she said. ‘Sad, maybe.’
‘Oh god.’ I pressed a hand to the side of my face. ‘That’s even worse.’
‘It’s natural to be sad when something bad happens. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you and Henry both seem sad to me and... one sec,’ she said, stepping away. ‘Oh, Luke’s calling me. Do you mind if I—?’
‘You go,’ I urged, as she hovered on the spot. ‘I’ll try and find us somewhere to sit.’
Even if I’d no qualms about pinching one of the many café tables, that option was out of the question due to the sheer number of tourists, and the square had little in the way of benches. Eventually I came across another of Mallorca’s many estate agent’s, which offered the double benefit of being closed and having a low, wide windowsill on which to perch. A couple that looked to be in their early thirties, well dressed and highly polished, were peering through at the listings, and I scooted across so as not to block their view.
‘These are nice, but far too small,’ I heard her say, to which the man agreed they were, ‘a bit on the pokey side’.
‘And most have pools,’ she went on. ‘Daddy says the upkeep is a nightmare.’
Curiosity got the better of me. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but am I right in thinking you’re on the hunt for a holiday home?’
The man turned first, a smile of polite solicitude above a pressed pale-blue shirt. His hair was startingly blond, almost white, while the woman – who I assumed must be his wife, given their matching gold bands – had the carefully highlighted locks of someone who spent numerous hours in a salon.
‘Do you work here?’ she enquired eagerly, her face falling when I shook my head. ‘I’m afraid we’re becoming a bit of a nuisance for the agents,’ she confessed. ‘Our list of specifications is extensive, and nobody’s shown us anything yet that’s up to the mark.’
‘Which area are you hoping to buy in?’
‘Oh, Pollen?a. Absolutely,’ the man put in adamantly. ‘Used to visit as a boy, always promised myself I’d get a pad there one day, and now, here we are, aren’t we, Mags?’
‘I fell in love with it the moment Malc brought me here,’ she gushed. ‘Do you know it well?’
I stifled a smile. ‘You could say that.’
‘You don’t happen to know of anyone selling a house, do you? Ideally, we’d want at least four bedrooms, a garden, parking, nice views.’
‘And no pool?’
Mags tinkled with laughter. ‘No pool,’ she confirmed. ‘You’d think it would be easy, but we’ve been made to feel as if we’re asking for the proverbial moon on a stick. I just know, and Malcolm feels the same way, that the house of our dreams is here – we just need to find it.’
I stood up from the windowsill, wiped the dust from my dress, and beamed at them.
‘As luck would have it,’ I said, looking from one to the other, ‘I think you just did.’