Chapter 50
Henry
Two Summers Ago
It was getting dark by the time Henry rinsed out his paint rollers and set them to dry on the balcony wall.
He’d been at the hillside villa since early that morning, layering lining paper on to the walls of the master bedroom before getting started with the first coat of emulsion, and his body ached with fatigue. He was supposed to be on his summer holiday and had only agreed to this job as a favour to his father, who was ‘doing important business’ with the owner. Henry hadn’t asked Antonio to elaborate – what you didn’t know, and all that – but he had his suspicions that it was very much a ‘you grease my palm and I’ll grease yours’ type of arrangement.
‘Do you think I should refuse?’ he’d asked Violet, but she scarcely seemed to hear him, let alone care enough to offer an opinion. It had been a tough few months with Luke, who’d seemed to be on the verge of turning a corner only for things to fall apart when he came up against another boy he didn’t like in his sixth-form class. There had been five days – five glorious days – where their son had got up, eaten breakfast, and gone into college without complaint. Then it had all splintered into chaos.
Henry went into the palatial downstairs bathroom to wash his hands, lathering up a good amount of soap and employing the use of a nail brush to scrub the flecks of paint from his skin. He didn’t really know why he was bothering, given that he had at least another three days’ worth of work ahead. It wasn’t as if Violet would mind. She probably wouldn’t even notice.
Once outside, he climbed into the driver’s seat of the jeep and sat for a while staring out at the view. From his elevated position on the hillside, Henry could see the halo of warm yellow light that emanated out above the old town, its layout of church spires, bell towers and sloping rooftops as charmingly familiar as the face of an old friend. The air was different up here, more fragrant, though with what, Henry could not say with any degree of confidence. Flowers were Violet’s speciality. Or, he countered internally, they had been. When she’d had the time to study and focus.
With a yawn, he slid the key into the ignition and fired up the engine. The headlights bloomed on, illuminating a fuzz of insects, the stone wall that ran along the roadside turning from black to the palest grey as he steered his way carefully down and round. Stray cats often darted out from beneath parked cars at this time in the evening, and Henry lived in perpetual fear of hitting one. They’d never had a family pet, much as he and Violet both loved animals – it wasn’t fair when they spent such a large chunk of every summer over in Mallorca. Plus, it was difficult when you rented, and even the most lenient of landlords would baulk at the idea of their walls being used as a scratching post. He’d often wondered if a pet would’ve helped Luke, made him feel as if he had a friend outside of his immediate family. His son had grown fond of telling him, ‘You have to like me, you have no choice,’ whenever Henry professed his love, and though he knew it came from teenage belligerence and emotional immaturity – Violet was not the only one who read child psychology books – it did little to temper the blows those words struck.
He would have to go back to La Casa Naranja now and face them – the son who thought his father’s love was all an act, and the wife from whom extracting any semblance of love left Henry gasping like an underwatered plant. Where there had been affection was now standoffishness, her warmth replaced by rigidity, humour snuffed out by antagonism. It was becoming increasingly difficult to locate the woman he’d fallen for, as if it wasn’t walls he’d been papering over all these years but her, the essence of who she was, the joy she’d exuded that had drawn him to her.
They must talk. Tonight. Reconnect.
Henry felt marginally better having made a decision and increased his pressure on the accelerator, taking the final mile at a speed he knew was dangerously close to rash. The lower backstreets that wrapped around this section of the hillside were dark and high-walled, a labyrinth of blind corners and hairpin turns. When he finally pulled up in a screech of dust in the lane outside La Casa Naranja, Henry felt emboldened. He would fix his marriage, no matter what, no matter how long it took, no matter who got in his way.
The clock on the dash told him it was after ten p.m., and a glance towards Luke’s turret bedroom confirmed that his seventeen-year-old son was still awake, likely chatting online to one of the friends he gamed with, although Henry used the term ‘friend’ mildly. When he’d been Luke’s age, his mates had been the people he saw every day, not a nicknamed somebody hiding behind a cartoon avatar. But, as he was only too aware, that had been a long time ago. The world had changed, technology was an inherent part of most people’s lives, and his son was at least making his way towards being an active participant.
Instead of going in through the front door, he closed the gate quietly behind him and stole around the side of the house to the rear garden, hoping to find Violet sitting out on the patio, moon-bathed and mellow after a few sips of wine. As he emerged from the shadows, however, Henry froze. Violet was indeed in the garden, but she was not alone. Juan was there, too, the deep murmur of his voice like a droning mosquito, and there was something about the scene that made the hairs stand up along Henry’s arms. He heard his wife giggle – not laugh, but giggle – a childish titter that sounded as if someone else had taken possession of her. Envy burned inside him, hot and abrasive, and he took a step back, into the darkness.
Juan had been perched on the edge of the patio table, but as Henry watched, he stood up and crossed to the low wall, pointing at something in the far distance.
Violet murmured a reply, and Juan gave a deep, throaty laugh. There was music filtering out from the house, Henry realised. Astrud Gilberto, the track they’d played at their wedding, ‘And Roses And Roses’. A song about a girl afraid to love, whose heart is won over piece by piece, petal by petal, as her amour brings her flowers every day.
He watched through eyes now glazing over with tears as his wife started to dance, her bare feet soundless on the tiles as she stepped, spun, and swirled her skirt. Juan turned from the view to face her; Henry could see the flash of his smile, that swarthy grin he so deftly bestowed. He knew he should move, interrupt them, make a joke, rush over and sweep Violet into his arms, dance with her as he had that day in Deià, when they had promised to love, and to cherish – but Henry’s feet were stuck fast, rooted in place like the surrounding trees, giving him no option but to wait, to watch.
This was their place, his and Violet’s – the garden was where they’d met, where he had fallen so fast and with such a furious sense of rightness into loving her, and now he was watching her defile it, sully the most pivotal moment of his life.
The song ended and another began, the sweetness of Astrud Gilberto’s lilting voice so at odds with the melancholy he felt, that exquisite pain of witnessing the inevitable.
Juan’s hands were on Violet’s waist, the lower half of their bodies pressing together as they moved closer, held tighter, gazed longer. When the second song finished, silence fell, and Henry held his breath as the dancing stopped.
Violet’s hair had worked loose from its clasp and fallen between her shoulders, the fiery red of a dragon’s roar. She was smiling, lips parted, and chin tilted up. In any other circumstance, Henry would have said she’d never looked more beautiful, and the thought turned his heart to ash. He saw what was about to happen before it did, yet the kiss still landed hard as a mallet against his chest.
With a roar, he ran forwards, his arms raised and thrashing wildly. Violet pulled away from Juan, horror turning her face into a spectre, a black hole into which Henry found himself sucked. He threw a punch in Juan’s direction and missed, the Spaniard ducking out of the way, but only by a few scant inches.
‘Bastardo!’ Henry yelled, fists flailing through the air as Juan cowered behind Violet.
‘Stop it!’ she screamed, as a wine glass fell to the ground and smashed.
‘I’ll kill him,’ Henry snarled, as Violet tried to grab him. ‘Get off me,’ he snapped, wrenching himself free as Juan jogged out of reach once more.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, his palms raised.
Henry scoffed. ‘Bit late for that,’ he spat, and Violet let out a sob.
‘Please,’ she said, as broken glass crunched under Henry’s boots. ‘It was nothing, a mistake, a stupid mistake.’
Henry watched as Juan’s face fell, the bruise to his ego wiping away any attempts to be conciliatory.
‘What did you expect?’ he goaded, as Henry advanced. ‘When you treat her so badly, neglect her, make her feel like an afterthought?’
‘Shut up,’ Henry growled.
‘When was the last time you told her how beautiful she is? The last time you danced with her?’
‘I said, shut up!’
Violet was properly sobbing; an inconsolable, wretched sound that turned Henry inside out with misery. How could she have done this to them?
‘Please, Henry,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t.’
Turning away with a sob that came out as a bellow of anguish, he stumbled over several plant pots, one of which rolled over and cracked loudly in two. He heard Violet’s gasp of shock, followed by a shout as Juan called his name.
‘Come back,’ they both called, but Henry had no intention of lingering any longer in the murky darkness of his wife’s betrayal. He needed to get away, to make sense of what he’d seen, and what it meant.
‘Henry, wait!’ Violet was gaining on him, her arm outstretched, feet still bare, hair wild.
‘Leave me alone.’
He was through the gate and back in the lane, warm night air a suffocating blanket. There was no time to get back in the jeep, she would catch up with him, force him to look at her, to listen, and he couldn’t. He felt sick with terror at the thought of losing her, but the strength of his anger frightened him more. He didn’t know what would happen if he unleashed it, the sleeping beast inside him liable to tear its way out.
Henry set off at a run, his arms and legs pumping, heavy boots cumbersome on the uneven surface. A darting blur to his left, something small and fast; he swerved, body wheeling round, and collided hard with one of the high walls at the road’s edge.
Suddenly, there was light, so much light, so bright that it blinded him. Henry staggered forwards only for his feet to be ripped out from under him, the force flipping him over sideways, the hot tarmac slamming into his face.
And then there was movement, a scream, tearing, agony like no other. Henry closed his eyes, and let the nothingness take him.