Chapter 42
Henry
Six Summers Ago
For the first time since he had let himself into La Casa Naranja on his eighteenth birthday, Henry did not feel comforted to be within its familiar walls. In truth, he was overwhelmed by an urge to escape.
It had not been an easy journey. Hell, he thought, it had not been an easy year.
Turning at the stomp of teenaged feet on stairs, Henry watched his son disappearing from view, and braced himself for the resounding slam that would follow.
Make that thirteen years.
Violet trudged into the hallway, a shambling mess of despair, and made her way into the kitchen with the bags of food they’d bought on their way here from the airport. Henry watched on in silence as she stacked ten packets of instant noodles into a cupboard. Luke was going through one of his ‘picky phases’ and was refusing to eat much else.
‘He’ll catch scurvy,’ Henry had warned his wife, only to be swiftly rebuked.
‘Don’t be so ridiculous – it’s not the sixteenth century.’
In the end, he’d bought some vitamin C tablets and begun crushing them up to stir into his son’s morning cup of tea. If Violet knew, she’d be furious – not because he was slipping supplements to their son on the sly, but because he’d dared to undermine her role as ‘Mum’. Henry was no longer trusted to take care of his own child – that much had been made clear to him ever since the incident in the fishing boat. Where once the phrase ‘I love you’ had been what he and Violet said most often to one another, now all Henry seemed to hear from her was a terse ‘I’ll do it’.
I’ll tidy his room.
I’ll do his dinner.
I’ll talk to him.
I’ll take him to that appointment.
She did not appear to need, nor want, any assistance from him. Henry wished he didn’t feel so bitter. Violet had lost her father only a few months ago, her grief making her retreat even further inside herself, and he knew that it was his responsibility to support her. If only she would let him.
‘Can I help?’ he asked, going to stand beside her at the worktop. Violet was holding a box of teabags in her hands, staring at them as if she’d forgotten what they were.
‘What?’ she replied vaguely, with a half-turn in his direction.
‘Help,’ he reiterated. ‘With the shopping.’
‘Yes,’ she said, though shaking her head. ‘I mean no. It’s fine. I’ll do it.’
Henry gritted his teeth.
‘It’s so hot,’ she said absently, stepping around him to open the fridge, into which she put the teabags, her purse, and three tins of tuna.
‘Why don’t you go upstairs and take a cool shower?’ he suggested obligingly. ‘I can do all this.’
‘No.’
‘Vee—’
‘I said, I’ll do it. I’m just hot, that’s all. It’s July and we’re in Mallorca. A cool shower isn’t going to change matters.’
Having closed the fridge, she filled a glass with water and pressed it against her forehead. Unable to stand the tension any longer, Henry left her to it and busied himself with taking the cases upstairs, unpacking the few clothes and toiletries he’d brought, and changing from his jeans into shorts. Pausing on the landing, he craned his head into the stairwell that led up to Luke’s turret bedroom, drawn as he so often was by an unsettling concern that his son might be doing something self-destructive. Hearing nothing, Henry crept closer, the floor creaking under his weight.
‘Who’s there?’ demanded a voice, and Henry, to his shame, tiptoed hurriedly away. Increasingly, he found dealing with Luke difficult, the need he had to love and protect clashing with the helplessness of not being able to do so. In the aftermath of his beloved granddad’s death, Luke had gone on a rampage through their rented terrace, smashing his fist through the airing cupboard door, kicking out several banisters, yanking down the blind in his bedroom and throwing his mum’s collection of potted ferns through the bathroom window, where they broke into smithereens on the driveway below. Grief manifesting as anger, an understandable and even predictable response, especially from a boy who struggled to control his emotions, and yet knowing this made it no less painful to witness. The neighbours had called the police, who’d murmured sternly about a possible charge of criminal damage, while Violet had sat on the carpeted floor of their new front room and wept. Henry had been the one to placate and appease, the person who’d taken time off work to make the necessary repairs, and the husband who’d been pushed away when he tried to offer comfort. Having locked himself in his bedroom for the best part of two days following the incident, Luke had re-emerged as if nothing had happened, remarking amiably on the fact that term time was almost at an end, before asking Violet if he could have some money to buy art supplies.
Henry had watched from his position halfway up a stepladder while she rooted through her handbag and handed over two twenty-pound notes.
‘What?’ she’d said, when Henry had made a ‘really?’ face behind Luke’s departing back. ‘He needs it for school.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Then what?’
Henry leant over, speaking to her in the hushed, urgent tone that had become his ‘serious voice’. ‘He didn’t even say sorry.’
Violet’s cheeks flushed. She was so defensive, curled tight like a ball of elastic bands. ‘Didn’t you see him?’ she hissed. ‘He’s stable again. I’m not going to risk ruining that by getting at him.’
‘I’ll just get back to fixing everything he broke then, shall I?’ Henry scoffed, to which Violet had merely rolled her eyes. There was very little fight left in her, but any fire she did have was being kept in reserve for him, not Luke. The unfairness of this made Henry crackle with irritation.
‘We need to go back to the airport,’ was how Violet greeted him when he returned to the kitchen. Everything she’d put away in the cupboards was spread out across the work surfaces, along with the contents of her handbag. Henry pushed a finger through the mess of old hair ties, stray tampons, a brush trailing red hairs and a half-finished packet of Rolos. Would she think of him when it came to eating the last one?
‘Why?’
‘I’ve lost my purse. I must have left it on the plane. I had it when we boarded, I remember putting the luggage stubs in there, but now it’s gone. What if someone’s taken it? I had everything in there and—’
‘Vee.’
‘What?’
‘Open the fridge.’
She gawped at him.
‘Seriously, open the fridge.’
‘I’m not going to open— What are you doing?’
Henry had done it for her, and now stood pointing at the very thing she’d been searching for, trying his best not to laugh.
‘Oh, come on,’ he chided. ‘Even you must see that it’s funny?’
‘To you maybe,’ she stormed, snatching up the purse but leaving the tuna and teabags.
Henry folded his arms. ‘You think I put it in there?’
‘Well, didn’t you?’
‘No! I watched you do it, you Nelly.’
‘Then why didn’t you tell me at the time?’
She might well be riled up, but so was he, and this time, Henry was not prepared to back down.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Vee, let me think. Maybe because you would have bitten my head off like you always do.’
She harrumphed. ‘I don’t.’
He stared at her. ‘OK. If you say so.’
‘I’m not doing this,’ she snapped, and promptly flounced from the room, slamming the door behind her so hard that it set the pots and pans ringing. Like mother like son, thought Henry sourly, as he checked to make sure the wooden panels were still fully intact. Feeling gloomy, he went into the rear garden, where he paced the length of the small patio, tugging beer from a bottle and grumbling to himself. The sun beat down with the relentless cheer of a drunken party guest, while cicadas sang their clacking tune in the trees. It was a sound he associated with home, one that by rights should have soothed him, but Henry found it impossible to settle. As much as Violet’s behaviour was frustrating, he couldn’t stand it when the two of them argued, and as much as it irked him to admit, Henry would rather lose a row than perpetuate a bad feeling for the sake of scoring a point.
Putting down his beer, he went upstairs.
There was no sign of Violet in the bedroom, nor was she in either the main bathroom or the en suite. Henry opened the window at the end of the landing so he could scour the front garden and lane beyond, but there was nobody. Steeling himself, he knocked on Luke’s bedroom door.
Nothing. Not so much as a ‘go away’.
Henry knocked again, this time with more determination, calling out as he did so, ‘Luke, is Mum in there with you?’
When he still received no answer, he turned the handle and went inside. His son’s suitcase was open on the floor, a sketch pad tossed on to the desk along with a half-empty bottle of Lucozade Sport. They’d only been in the house for an hour, but already the scent of worn socks permeated the space. Henry would’ve opened the porthole window but knew his son would react angrily to any sign of intrusion. Assuming he must instead be in the small shower room, Henry edged towards it, using a finger to push the door ajar.
Nothing.
The two of them must have done a flit while he was stewing in the back garden, and the realisation of this caused a lava-like surge of indignation to rise up in his chest. Racing back downstairs, he located his mobile phone and put a call through to Violet. She didn’t answer, but a few moments later, a text arrived.
Luke wanted to see Juan. Back in a bit.
No kisses.
Henry seethed.
Without giving himself time to waver, he snatched up the house keys and headed off along the lane. Juan lived fewer than three minutes’ walk away, but Henry made it in under sixty seconds, arriving at the yellow painted door out of breath with the effort of having run. He fully expected Ana to answer, but it was Tomas’s face that appeared in the gap. He’d grown up so much over the past year that, at first, Henry barely recognised him, exclaiming with surprise when it dawned on him that this thickset, bearded, almost-man was, in fact, the very same boy he’d known since toddlerhood.
They greeted each other in Spanish, Tomas demonstrably happy to see him.
‘Where’s your mother?’ Henry asked, as he was led through the small, open-plan ground floor, noticing as he passed a number of gaps on the walls where pictures and photos had once hung. The usually immaculate lounge area was cluttered with dirty plates, half-empty coffee mugs, and an ashtray in dire need of emptying.
‘She is away,’ said Tomas cagily.
‘Well, you’d better get this place cleaned up before she gets back, or there’ll be hell to pay,’ Henry warned, though he saw immediately that the remark hadn’t landed well. ‘Is everything OK, mate?’ he asked, as the younger man’s jaw tightened. ‘Has something happened.’
Tomas shook his head, but Henry held his gaze, recognising sadness.
‘She left?’ he guessed.
Tomas nodded, looked away.
‘Oh, shit. Lo siento. I’m sorry.’
The sound of laughter drifted in through the open patio doors. Tomas threw a glance at Henry, wincing as if an apology was imminent. At the age of seventeen, the boy was wise beyond his years, understood what Henry had tried for so long to ignore, the undeniable closeness that had continued to flourish each summer. It was Violet who was laughing, she who only a short time ago was quivering with rage in his presence, wretched with dread and sorrow. Henry hadn’t laughed with his wife for so long that he couldn’t recall the last time, nor had she allowed him to hold her, or kiss her, or make love to her. Intimacy had become a shadow, lingering just out of reach.
Struck by a raw and potent fear that he was about to lose something precious to him, Henry marched outside with his shoulders squared, ready to fight for what was his. Luke was there, long pale legs protruding from a deckchair, can of Coke in hand, while next to him, pink-cheeked and disproportionately perky, Violet teetered on an upturned plant pot.
The sensation was one of falling inside a dream. Henry felt suddenly faint and staggered sideways, his arm going out only to be caught by Juan’s. His Spanish neighbour had leapt up as if his seat was on fire, and Violet had moved, too, although not nearly fast enough. She would not be able to deny what she’d been doing any more than Henry would be able to forget the fact that he’d been there to witness it, that heart-scouring sight.
Her hand, clasped tightly in Juan’s.