Chapter 24
24
Our last full day in Lisbon, the group split up—Hamza and Seb took the train to a beachy town called Cascais, and Callum had promised to visit family. We all agreed to meet for dinner at a restaurant on the Miradouro de Santa Catarina, where we’d eaten the night we arrived. There were miradouros all around Lisbon, each a hillside plaza with stunning views of the city or the river, or both. I wrote Santa Catarina , and the directions Callum gave us, in a note on my phone.
Tess, Ginny, Zara, and I started our day at the Lisbon Cathedral, and then wandered up into the historic Alfama neighborhood, the part of the city that had survived the earthquake. The old buildings had beautiful tiles, and I took photos of them while we walked.
Eventually, Zara called for shopping. We went down the hill, and she led us up Avenida da Liberdade. After a few designer boutiques, Tess and Ginny declared they were too peckish to go on without a snack.
“What about seafood?” I asked. “And this one’s my treat, since you all got my birthday dinner.” The restaurants in this area wouldn’t be cheap, but I could afford to get a few bites for my friends. I didn’t know what would happen—with me, with us, with my Highgate charade—once we got back to London, but I was grateful to be here with them now, and this was one way I could show it. I was proud, even. This was a good use of my hard-earned tutoring money, even if my father wouldn’t have thought so.
Zara wanted to keep shopping; the rest of us went into a restaurant with low lighting, gold accents, and tiny tables. The hostess put us at the only table that could fit three, right next to a pianist playing loud American jazz standards. The waiter was young, handsome, curly-haired, and spoke crisp, fluent English. Over the piano, we ordered the salt cod ceviche, a basket of bread, and a half dozen of Portugal’s famous Setúbal oysters—two for each of us.
Tess turned to me once the waiter was gone. “Sorry,” she said. “I can tell we’re boring you, with all the shopping.”
I shook my head. “Not at all. I just like wandering around, seeing different parts of the city. It feels so romantic, doesn’t it?”
She positively beamed at me. “I’m so glad you’re loving it!” she said. “I hoped you would, but I wasn’t sure.”
“She really agonized about it.” Ginny nodded.
“Tess, I’ve had such an amazing time,” I said, leaning over in my chair, squeezing her into a one-armed hug. “Thank you. No one’s ever done anything like this for me.”
When our waiter returned, he brought the bread and ceviche first. Then he returned with a tray on his arm, and on the tray were three separate plates of oysters on ice. My stomach sank as he bent to put them all on our little table.
“Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry, that’s too many. We only ordered a half dozen oysters.”
“Half dozen, yes, that’s right,” he said, gesturing at the six on the plate in front of me.
“No, sorry—we only wanted a half dozen to share. This is too much.”
Obviously, he’d misheard us, which was no surprise with the piano so loud. A small mistake. But his eyes had suddenly gone very round.
“You want me to take this back,” he said, pointing at the plate in front of Ginny.
Tess nudged her plate forward. “And these, too,” she said kindly. “Sorry.”
At this the waiter turned his wide, fearful eyes to the swinging doors of the kitchen. When he looked back at us, his face was drawn, pinched with worry. He looked decades older.
I stood, so we were eye to eye. “You can’t take them back, is that right?” I asked, my voice as low as the piano would allow. “You’ll have to pay for them?”
He looked back at the kitchen again, and nodded, only to me.
“Well, we can’t eat them,” Ginny said, surprised. “It’s too many. And they’re huge!”
Ignoring Ginny, I said to the waiter, “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll be fine.” I watched him swell with instant relief; he looked so young again. Like someone’s baby brother. I would have to pay for all of it, of course. Three times what I’d thought the bill would be. Better me than him, of course, but still, it would be a lot.
When he’d gone, I sat down again. Tess picked up a lemon wedge to squeeze over her plate.
“I don’t get it, it’s not our fault he brought too many,” Ginny said. “We can’t eat them all.”
I smoothed my hands down my pants, feeling the little pricks of sweat there. Just seeing his fear had made me nervous, in the old familiar way. Money in, money out, never enough. “We don’t have to,” I said.
After, outside on the Avenida, Tess and Ginny wanted to go meet Zara at the mall. I told them I was going to explore on my own a little—I’d seen a castle ruin high up on the hill as we walked through Baixa, and it was only a short walk, if you didn’t mind that it was basically straight uphill, back up to the Alfama.
“I’ll meet you for dinner, at the miradouro,” I promised, and we hugged and went our separate ways.
I could see the castle from Rossio Square, so it was easy to head in the right direction, up stairs and steep, narrow streets, until I found the line of people waiting to enter the ruins, Castelo de S?o Jorge. It was long, long enough that I thought I might be late to dinner if I waited in it. I took some photos of the weathered exterior, then wandered a bit. I found an old, deserted church a few streets away and spent twenty minutes exploring inside. Wrought iron pedestals in each chapel held dozens of half-burned tea lights. For a euro dropped in the collection tin, you could light one candle in prayer. I had never prayed in my life, but I found the coin in my pocket, lit a candle, and told Mom under my breath that I was here, in a beautiful empty church in Portugal, thinking of her.
When I got outside and turned west, the way I’d come, I could see Lisbon’s famous golden light falling across the streets, a sign of the sunset beginning; I should probably hurry for dinner. My phone mapped a quicker route to the miradouro, more direct than the way I’d come up the hill. Few minutes late but on my way , I texted the girls. An expensive international text. I watched it send, and then my phone screen flashed a small battery icon before blinking out.
I could not wake it. Theo had warned me the old iPhone had a shoddy battery, but it hadn’t even been low. Maybe international roaming drained the battery, or all the photos I’d taken?
I knew vaguely where our meeting place was—just at the base of the noisy nightlife area, Bairro Alto. I just needed to get back down to Baixa, the little shopping valley, and then head up the next hill. I’d recognize something once I got there.
It worked for a while. I kept heading downhill until I reached the bottom, full of tourists and shops, men trying to hustle me into their restaurants. It was starting to get dark, clouds rolling in thick and heavy. I followed the flow of tourists to the Santa Justa Lift, a freestanding gothic iron elevator that Callum had brought us to.
I turned up the hill behind the elevator, following the cobbled street I remembered. It started to rain lightly, a cold rain that slid down my scalp and inside the collar of my useless coat. The street right-angled with a long curving flight of stone stairs. Callum had definitely brought us down some stairs, so I began to climb. It was dark now, and brightly lit restaurants were setting out chairs and tables under awnings, on little covered terraces along the stairs. I arrived, out of breath, at a large square, and stopped to look around. The plaza I needed bordered an ancient convent ruin, destroyed in the earthquake. It should have been here, and it wasn’t. While I stood there, three men called to me from a bench. Pretending not to hear them, I hurried on.
The streets pitched uphill on my right and down on my left, and I cut across them, across the hill, and that at least felt right. In the next square I came to, people were standing around drinking, and a band played samba under an awning. A few couples danced in the rain, laughing, spinning, wet hair whipping, and I felt how wet and cold I was, and how alone. I didn’t remember the name of the miradouro we were meeting at, so I couldn’t even ask for directions.
I let myself cry just a little bit, just a minute, then mopped it up with my sleeve and went on. The streets were narrow here, lined by noisy bars, their crowds filling the streets. Men called to me, reaching their hands out as I passed, brushing my coat with their fingertips, saying linda , bonita , senhorita . There wasn’t even space to pull away from them.
And then suddenly the bars were behind me, and I was in dark, quiet streets, a few lines of forgotten laundry flapping over my head, soaking in the rain. Shivering, I let myself cry some more, since no one could see me. Down the dark steep streets, I slipped on the wet cobbles. I tried to keep one hand on the wall, on whatever building was next to me. I slipped again, and I stopped to gather myself. I had to calm down. I leaned against the wall behind me and took deep breaths. I could hear someone climbing up the stairs toward me, but I didn’t look over. I didn’t want to give them a reason to call to me.
The footsteps on the stairs stopped. Silence, heavy, threatening. I looked up and saw a man in the shadow of the building. I started to turn away. Then a voice. “Anna? Anna, wait!”
After all the voices that had called to me that night, I knew this one. It was Callum’s. And it was full of worry; it held the same panic that I held inside me, that I’d gripped tight for hours. Before I could even turn to him, I felt my body sagging with relief, and then he was racing up the last stairs, saying thank god, saying my name again. He hugged me against him. I didn’t say anything. I put my head against his chest and breathed there until the tears stopped.