Chapter 52
Violet
Henry and I exchanged a horrified look, and without a word, he headed back inside.
‘Can you check the back garden?’ I asked Luke and Eliza. ‘Just in case she wandered out there.’
They disappeared around the side of the house, and I turned to Juan.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘She can’t have gone far. We’ll find her.’
He barely seemed to hear me as he began marching around in a circle, swearing in Spanish, and clutching his head with both hands. ‘Mierda,’ he grunted. ‘I knew it was stupid to let her come. She is very frightened of cara— Henry.’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘You taught her that word.’
Juan’s expression darkened. He was a man who didn’t relish being caught out.
‘You did, didn’t you? You absolute bastard.’
I’d been so consumed with condemning myself for that night, for our kiss, convinced that I’d caused it by putting out the wrong signals, flirting back and encouraging him. But Juan had been the one who kissed me, and he had done so knowing that I was married to his friend, that the two of us had problems, that I wasn’t in my right mind.
‘Was this whole thing about you and him?’ I said. ‘Some sort of, what, macho Spanish rubbish?’
Juan stopped pacing and stepped towards me, chin jutting out, hands raised.
‘It was all Ana ever said to me. “Why are you not nice like Henry? Why don’t you adore me the same way as Henry adores Violet? Why can’t you have a good and honest job like he does?” I was never enough for her, she wanted me to be someone else, to be him.’
Shocked into silence, I could only gape at him.
‘I do care for you,’ he said. ‘Naturally, I wanted to kiss you. Look at you, Pelirroja, you are very beautiful. Any man would want to kiss you.’ He seemed to wilt before me as he spoke, all his usual suaveness draining away.
‘But you did it to prove a point,’ I said. ‘That night wasn’t about me at all, was it?’
‘Sí.’ Juan sighed. ‘It was about you, and me, and Ana, and I think, perhaps, also Antonio. You all loved Henry more than you loved me.’
I tried to imagine how he must have felt, but all that resonated was frustration. Juan’s fragile ego, his need to be viewed as more worthy than anyone else, had corroded his sense of what was right. He’d set out to make himself feel better that night and to hell with the consequences. But even he couldn’t have foreseen an accident on the scale of what occurred, when Henry’s own bruised pride had lit an unstoppable fire inside his chest, and this horrible nickname he’d come up with could be attributed to nothing more sinister than guilt. Juan didn’t want to feel responsible, and so he deflected, made jokes, taught his granddaughter a cruel word, while I had gone the opposite way, and held myself fully accountable for all of it.
There was no time to say any of this to Juan. No sooner had he made his declaration than Eliza and Luke re-emerged, followed closely by a harried-looking Henry, who shook his head as he locked the front door.
‘No sign,’ he said, as Juan began to swear in earnest.
‘She probably went back to the Rosario,’ I reasoned. ‘Would she know the way on her own?’
He was shaking his head. ‘Juan, focus.’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said helplessly. ‘She is never alone, not ever. Tomas, he made me promise to not let go of her hand. Ay dios mío.’
The wake was being held at the villa Mateo had inherited, which was situated towards the outskirts of Pollen?a, around a fifteen-minute walk from where we were.
‘Go back there,’ I instructed Juan. ‘If she isn’t there, you can let Tomas and Carmen know, and they’ll be able to help us search. Henry, why don’t you and Luke head into town, check the gift shops, the ice-cream parlours, anywhere that sells toys?’
They nodded, Henry rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.
‘Eliza, can you run up the Calvari Steps, check the viewpoint behind, maybe the olive groves? She might have spotted a stray cat and followed it.’
‘On it,’ she said, pressing a kiss to Luke’s cheek. ‘Shall l set up a WhatsApp chat, too, so we can all stay in touch?’
‘Sure, fine, whatever you think,’ I said distractedly.
Juan had reached the gate. ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What will you do?’
My eyes met Henry’s, and I knew that, like me, he was remembering the day Luke had wandered off, how we’d discovered him out in the road, small and vulnerable.
‘Whatever it takes,’ I said.
I watched them go, then hurried back into the house and swapped my black heeled shoes for trainers, kicking the former off with such force that they skidded across the hallway floor.
‘Paulina!’ I called, shutting the front door behind me. There was no reply, but I continued to shout her name as I circled the boundary of the house, passing the spot where I’d clambered over the wall all those years ago. A sliding doors moment that saw the path of my life skew in a wholly unanticipated direction. I glanced up at the house, at its peach-hued facade and scalloped tiles, and found myself undone by a sudden rush of love. How close I’d come to losing her when all she’d ever done was welcome me. Henry had been right: we could never sell.
I carried on through the lanes, zigzagging my way backwards and forwards as I hurried towards the hub of the town, peering over fences and into the open doorways of shops, asking everyone I encountered if they’d seen a little girl, this tall, with dark hair. Nobody had.
Despite the collective panic we’d all experienced when Juan initially raised the alarm, I’d remained fairly confident that Paulina wouldn’t have strayed very far, and that we would find her within minutes once we started to look. But the further I went without so much as a potential sighting, the more trepidation began to take over. Someone could’ve snatched her, bundled her into the back of a car or into another house. Unlikely, but not impossible, and vile to contemplate. Thinking that I’d check my phone to see if any of the others had struck luckier than me, I delved a hand into my bag only to find it empty, save for a hairbrush and lipstick. My purse, I remembered, was on the kitchen table, and I had a vague memory of plugging my phone in to charge earlier that morning. I was too far from the house to circle back for it now and ground my teeth together with irritation at my own absentmindedness. I had little choice but to head in the direction of Antonio’s villa, where I could join up with Juan, and the other guests, and having made my decision, I set off at a run, dodging idling tourists, café tables, and tall racks of colourful postcards as I went. It was only when I caught sight of the boarded-up windows that I realised I’d come along Carrer de la Garriga and somehow ended up at Tomas’s new house. Paulina had been here before, not long ago – could she have come back in search of her papá?
I pushed aside the makeshift fence and listened, but all I could hear was the screeching cry of the swallows.
‘Paulina,’ I called, and this time, I heard something. A whimper, perhaps. I couldn’t be sure. The outer door was padlocked, but I could see a gap between two of the panels covering what would become a downstairs window. It was tight, and I swore as I felt the hem of my dress rip, but I made it through in one piece, calling the girl’s name again as I went and hearing a definite cry coming from above.
There were no hard hats within sight, and no time to locate one. I ran to the stairwell and took the steps two at a time, pausing on the first floor, before heading up again to the very top. The attic was cramped and searingly hot, the dark tarpaulin no match for the relentless June sun. I stared around, sweat already starting to prickle, confused as to where the whimpering was coming from – and then I spotted it. A tiny hand in a far corner of the space, reaching out from between the beams.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ I cried, hurrying across and falling to my knees. ‘It’s OK,’ I said, switching to Spanish as I reassured her that everything was going to be fine, that nobody was cross, that I was going to get her out.
But how?
The space through which she’d squeezed was minuscule, and no amount of gentle encouragement from me would convince her to come back through.
‘Me dolió mucho,’ she sobbed. It hurt me so much.
Squinting, I peered through the gap, saw the scratches along her arms, the fear in her trembling lip. She was pink-cheeked, likely dehydrated, and near hysterical. I required help, needed Henry, but without my phone, I had no way of contacting him, and I knew I couldn’t leave Paulina here, not by herself. She was clinging to my hand so tightly that there was a chance my circulation would be cut off.
Casting around for ideas, I noticed a heap of tools a few feet away, and stretching across, rooted through until I found a hammer. If I could prise apart the vertical beams, perhaps I could create enough space to reach through and haul her out. It was worth a try.
I stroked Paulina’s hand as I explained in broken Spanish what I was going to do, urging her to move as far back as possible into the space. This she did, clambering over the exposed beams until she reached the wall.
The teeth of the hammer slid into the narrow gap, the wood whining as I pulled it backwards as hard as I could. There was a splintering sound, but the nails didn’t budge. I readjusted my position, trying a spot closer to the join, but it was difficult to gain purchase. Sweat ran into my eyes, and my fingers were slick with it. Abandoning the largest, central beams, I crouched and began working on a smaller plank to the side, trying in vain to lever it off. Whoever had bashed in the nails had done so with enough force to half bury the heads in the timber, meaning there was very little I could do to get them out.
Paulina’s cries were growing in volume, her chest heaving. If I didn’t reach her soon, there was a very real chance that she would suffer a full-blown panic attack, and she was in desperate need of water. We both were.
With a moan of frustration, I returned to the stack of tools, new hope flashing as I spotted a serrated edge. If I couldn’t wrench the planks apart, then I would cut them.
The saw slid easily into place, and I let out an exalted breath as I managed to turn it, the timber splitting as the blade got to work. When I had sliced through both, I knelt and repeated the process lower down, kicking out the sections of wood until a small escape route appeared.
I gestured to Paulina, but she refused to budge, her body trembling and eyes wide.
Biting down on my lip, head pounding from exertion, I examined the hole I’d made. It had been a very long time, almost twenty years, in fact, since I’d asked my limbs to bend in the way they had while I was a gymnast, but I thought that if I got the upper part of my body through the gap, then I’d be able to manoeuvre my legs in after me.
Set on my task, eager to reach the little girl and bring this nightmare to an end, I didn’t stop to consider how much damage my sawing had wrought.
Not until I heard a loud cracking sound.