by Lilac Mills
She ordered some packing boxes, bubble wrap and tape from Amazon, and did some more research to find a man with a van who’d be prepared to move everything from the house to the storage facility.
It was time to be ruthless.
There was such a great deal to sort out – both her own stuff and her mum’s. And she didn’t even want to think about what was in the attic. She hadn’t been up there since last Christmas, and all she’d done then was grab the tree and the box of decorations, then shove them back up again afterwards. She dreaded having to go up into that gloomy, dusty space which was no doubt full of spiders and other assorted creepy-crawlies. Then there were all those boxes filled with memories; she wasn’t sure she was ready to face those either.
In the end she had to, because no one else was going to do it for her, and she didn’t intend to leave such personal things for the council to dispose of. The thought of her mother’s photos being sent to a landfill site broke her heart, so the following day she steeled herself to clamber up the precarious ladder, making sure to leave the back door unlocked and take her phone with her in case she needed rescuing. After all, she didn’t have very many days in which to get everything done before she jetted back to Tenerife, and she couldn’t afford to waste any of them being stuck in an attic.
The mere thought of the island filled her with excitement and trepidation in equal amounts. Now that she had returned to England, she wasn’t entirely sure she was making the right decision to fly back to Tenerife.
Here everything was familiar; she could speak the language for a start, and she could read the writing on packets and tins in the supermarket and know what they contained. She mightn’t have anywhere to live, but that could soon be rectified, as could the lack of a job. She was sure she’d find something, even if it wasn’t what she really wanted to do.
Ah, but that was half the problem, wasn’t it? She didn’t have a clue what she wanted to do.
Then there were the twins to consider. Now they were born they felt more real, and she knew she’d have trouble wrenching herself away once she’d got to cuddle them. She might only be away for three months, but that was a long time in the lives of a pair of tiny babies – they’d change so much during that time and she was going to miss it.
Bloomin’ heck, it was freezing up here, she thought, sticking her head into the attic and seeing her breath mist in front of her face.
Suddenly an image of sitting on that lovely terrace, staring out at the sea with the warm sun on her face and a plate of tapas on a table next to her popped into her mind. Not that she’d sat on the terrace, and she’d certainly not had anything to eat at the villa, tapas or otherwise. She had made herself and Hugo a cup of coffee, though, as they’d hashed out the details.
She’d taken some of her things to the villa the following day, but as that was the last day of her holiday she’d not had much time to do anything else other than to change the sheets on the bed in what was to be her room and hang a few clothes in the wardrobe, after clearing out the items that were already in there and putting them in the third and smallest of the bedrooms. It was full of stuff (junk mostly, she guessed from looking at it) and she was looking forward to giving it a good sort out.
Hugo had shown her where things were and how they worked, then she’d taken Paco on a nice long walk before she’d said her goodbyes, promising to be back in a week. Finally she’d returned to the apartment, packed the remainder of her things in her case, and booked a single flight from the UK to Tenerife in exactly one week’s time.
Therefore she now had five and a half days in which to pack up her life in England and prepare for a new one in Tenerife.
And she’d hardly scratched the surface of what she needed to do, so she’d better get a move on.
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. She’d not anticipated just how painful it would be to sift through box after box from both her life and her mother’s. It was amazing what had been stuffed up there, from her first pair of tiny shoes to school reports from when she’d started school right up until she was eighteen. She found herself reading each one, a half-smile on her face as she recalled those innocent days filled with childhood worries and carefree joy. How she longed to go back to a time when the only thing she had to concern herself with was that her music teacher wanted her to practise the violin more, or that she was a bit too chatty in class. It had all seemed so very important then.
Maybe what she was fretting about now would seem equally as unimportant in ten years’ time but, being realistic, worrying over forgotten homework was hardly in the same league as a complete overhaul of her life.
How she wished her mum was here to talk it over with. Although if she was still alive, then there wouldn’t be any need for such upheaval in the first place, would there?
Feeling lost and adrift, Sophie hurried to finish what she needed to do. She couldn’t think straight in this house – it still felt as though her mother was just in the other room. And sometimes, as she was going about the business of packing her life away, it was almost as if her mum was standing right next to her.
‘Am I doing the right thing, Mum?’ she whispered on her last night in the house she’d lived in for nearly all her life. Soon all the things she either couldn’t or didn’t want to take with her would be packed into the back of a van and locked away in a storage unit until she set foot in England once more.
She took a very long time indeed to drift off to sleep, but as she finally succumbed she could have sworn she felt a cool kiss on her brow and a soft breath of a whispered ‘I love you.’
Chapter 7
The odd thing was that on stepping out of the doors of Tenerife’s main airport for the second time, Sophie felt as though she was coming home. It was such an unusual feeling that it made her pause for a moment. Technically, she had never been so alone or so adrift in her whole life – despite the temporary job and temporary place to live – and by rights she should be feeling terrified, but she wasn’t. She felt liberated and confident as she contemplated making her way up the coast by public transport while carrying so much luggage that she felt like a pack horse.
Before she worked out where to get a bus, she needed to let her aunt know she’d landed safely. Anne had been most insistent yesterday when Sophie had called to say goodbye, and there had been tears on both their faces. She’d found it hard to walk away, to leave her aunt and those two gorgeous little girls behind, but as she’d told Anne more than once, it wasn’t for long and three months would soon fly by.
‘I’ve arrived safely,’ she said when her aunt answered, and she was immediately treated to a barrage of warnings about eating right, being careful in the sun, not speaking to strangers, and a host of other things that had Sophie trying to stifle her giggles.
She ended the call by promising to take extra care. ‘Give those babies a hug and a kiss from me,’ she said, a lump in her throat, ‘and remind Denise to send me photos. Lots of photos.’
With a deep breath, she pushed thoughts of home to the back of her mind, and approached a holiday company rep to ask her where to catch a bus. The rep pointed her in the general direction and Sophie negotiated the crowds of people and hordes of cars, vans and coaches, and made her way towards the public bus stops. On asking again, a nice gentleman showed her which bus she needed to catch and even asked the driver to let her know when she needed to get off.
As the journey progressed, she began to recognise certain landmarks – and not just the great big volcano in the middle of the island, either – and eventually, after travelling down a straight stretch of road, she spotted the towering cliffs of Los Gigantes in the distance and her heart lifted as she realised she was nearing her destination.
Ooh, look, they were passing through the busy little town of Alcalá, then out the other side and through the familiar banana fields on either side of the road. Finally, the bus rounded a bend and there it was, her home for the next three months. She craned her neck to see through the wi
ndscreen and squinted a bit to make sure, but it was definitely the little villa she’d fallen in love with, perched all on its own, on a low rocky outcrop in the middle of the sweeping bay. Its tiled roof glowed terracotta in the mid-afternoon sun and the leaves of the palm trees in its garden fluttered and swayed in the breeze like so many flags set out to welcome her. Beyond the villa, the sea sparkled, the deep blue topped by flecks of white foam as the warm wind whipped up the waves, sending them hurrying for the shore. Even from this distance she could see the spray as the breakers rolled in and crashed against the rocks. The whole scene was exotic and wild, and extremely beautiful.
The driver helped her with her luggage then drove off, leaving her staring at a barrier beyond which a straight narrow track led directly to the villa, with another barrier at the other end, by the coastal path. The track led between fields either side of the road, but on closer inspection she realised they were rather derelict, the plants in them neglected and scruffy, the walls crumbling, and the protective nets either removed or shredded by the wind. As she walked down the road, dragging and carrying various pieces of luggage, she wondered who these abandoned fields belonged to. Were they attached to the villa? And if they were, what did Hugo intend to do with them? Maybe he’d been forced to leave them to their own devices because of his health, but hopefully once he was back on his feet again, he’d be able to restore them to their former glory. It was such a shame to let them fall into disrepair, although she guessed that Mother Nature would claim them back eventually and the bananas would gradually be replaced by the hundreds of varieties of cacti and other native plants.
What was that?
A rustling caught her attention and she stopped, looking around her fearfully, worried that there might be snakes or scorpions hiding in the undergrowth. Did such creatures even exist on Tenerife? She had no idea, but she wasn’t prepared to take any chances.
To her relief, she saw it was a lizard. She quite liked lizards, and this one was small and greenish and really rather cute. It had frozen and for a moment she stared at it and it stared back at her, before it found its courage and darted back into the spiky bushes, gone in the blink of an eye.
Embarrassingly, her first comment when Hugo opened the door to the villa after she’d rung the bell wasn’t ‘How are you?’ or ‘It’s great to be back’. It was ‘I just saw a lizard!’
Hugo’s eyebrows rose a notch and his lips twitched. ‘This is good?’
‘Erm… yes?’
‘Then I am happy. Come in. Remind me to give you a key.’
He reached out for one of her bags, but Sophie brushed him away. ‘Oh, no, you don’t. You don’t need to be lifting anything heavy. I can manage.’ She might be hot, sweaty, and panting a little, but she could definitely manage to carry her bags from the doorstep into her room.
‘I’m not old and… what is the word? Weak, that is it. I’m not old and weak yet,’ Hugo protested.
Sophie shot him a glance but didn’t say anything. In the week since she’d seen him last, Hugo was looking frailer and more gaunt, and she suspected he was in some pain, recognising the signs in the tightness of his mouth and his sunken eyes. The sooner he had the operation, the better.
‘I’ll just pop this little lot in my room, then I’ll make us a nice cup of tea,’ she said.
‘I don’t drink tea.’
‘Oh, OK, coffee then?’ She made a mental note to buy some teabags when she went to the shop.
‘Bueno.’
She watched him for a moment as he shuffled off in the direction of the living room, then she picked up her bags, deposited them in her room, and went to the kitchen to make the promised coffee.
‘Hello, Paco.’ She ruffled the dog’s ears as he wandered into the kitchen to greet her, his tongue lolling as he looked at her with big brown eyes. By his sorrowful expression she guessed he probably hadn’t been out for a decent walk in a while. She intended to make that her first task after coffee, then she wanted to tackle the kitchen and the bathroom, because Hugo clearly wasn’t coping that well with keeping on top of the cleaning, she noticed with a small shudder. On the surface the kitchen didn’t look dirty and it was fairly tidy, but closer inspection revealed dried-on stains on the counter top, a rather sticky floor, and – God help her –she almost let out a cry of dismay when she opened the fridge and a decidedly unsavoury smell assaulted her nose.
As she carried the cups into the living room, she was once again taken aback by the astonishing view. She didn’t think she’d ever become fed up of looking at it. Although the vista was essentially the same, it was continually different in the way the sun tracked across the sky, the direction the clouds scudded in, the play of light on the water, and the variety of vessels bobbing on the waves. Right now the sea was quite lively, but she knew from her last visit to the island that the water could calm in an instant, and it was this constant change that she particularly loved. It was a bit like British weather but without the rain, and with considerably nicer and more uniform temperatures.
It might be breezy today but it was also warm, verging on hot; a fact that she’d discovered on her trek from the coastal road to the villa. Thankfully, Hugo had opened the large doors, letting the scent of the sea drift through the house, and she breathed in the salty seaweed smell, relishing the freshness.
Hugo was sitting on the terrace and, after placing the coffees on the old wooden table, she took a seat next to him and sat back with a deep sigh, lifting her face to the sun.
‘I love it here,’ she said. ‘The island, this place, your villa.’
He smiled at her. ‘As do I. I don’t want to have to live anywhere else.’
Sophie reached for her coffee as his words sank in. ‘I don’t want to’, not ‘I wouldn’t want to’, and she would have assumed it was a translation thing if it hadn’t been for his tone of voice. He’d sounded sad, regretful, and she wondered why – questions flitting through her head but remaining unasked. She didn’t feel she should pry – if he wanted to tell her, then he would. Besides, she might be mistaken, and it hadn’t been sadness in his voice that she’d heard but a different emotion altogether.
‘Right.’ She swallowed the rest of her coffee and stood up. ‘I’m going to take Paco out, then have a bit of a potter in the kitchen.’ She didn’t like to tell him that it needed a darned good scrub from floor to ceiling, in case she hurt his feelings. ‘Have you got anything planned for tonight in terms of food?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘What were you thinking of having for your evening meal?’
Hugo looked out to sea and shrugged. ‘There is plenty of pasta and bread.’
When he avoided looking at her, she realised that he probably hadn’t had a proper home-cooked meal in a while. She bet that Paco, with his biscuits and tins of dog food, ate better and more regularly than Hugo did.
Well, that was going to change and pretty damned sharpish too. For one thing, the elderly gentleman needed to eat properly to keep his strength up, otherwise he’d be in no fit state to have an operation, and secondly, she didn’t intend to live on bread and pasta for the next few months. No matter how ill her mother had been towards the end, Sophie had always made sure to prepare a well-balanced, nutritious meal for the pair of them, and if her mum had only been able to manage a mouthful or two, then so be it. At least Sophie had tried, and sometimes she’d felt that cooking for her mother and persuading her to eat was the only thing she could do to help her in her fight against the inevitable advance of the horrible disease.
There was no way she was going to let Hugo’s health deteriorate – not if she could help it – so she added shopping to the list of things she wanted to achieve that afternoon.
Actually, the afternoon was fast turning into the evening, as it was already four o’clock. Thank God she’d managed to get an early morning flight, or they would be dining on little more than fresh air tonight. She could hardly go out to eat and leave Hugo on his own, so she would have had no choice
but to eat with him, regardless of how unpalatable the food was.
‘Change of plan,’ she announced. ‘I’ll go shopping first.’ She knew there was a supermarket in Playa de la Arena and there was undoubtedly one in Alcalá, but with the villa halfway between the two towns, her shopping trip was going to involve a decent walk whichever direction she decided to go in. And she wouldn’t be able to carry much either, what with having to haul it all that way. Not only that, but afterwards she wouldn’t then feel like taking poor Paco for his walk. It was a pity she couldn’t combine the two…
‘Will Paco be OK if I tied him up outside a shop?’ she asked.
Hugo frowned. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
Sophie explained, adding, ‘I’ll get a taxi tomorrow and do a big shop, but for now we need something more substantial for supper.’
‘You’re not to take a taxi.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it myself – I don’t expect you to.’
‘Why don’t you drive my car?’
‘You have a car?’ She glanced over her shoulder into the living room as if she expected it to be parked next to the sofa.
‘Yes, of course. Didn’t I tell you?’
Sophie shook her head. A car? Wonderful.
Hang on a sec, did that mean she was expected to drive it? Oh, hell, yes, that’s exactly what she was expected to do.
‘Where is it?’ she asked.
‘On the main road. You must have walked past it. Juan left it there.’
‘Who is Juan?’
‘The man who owns the garage. It had to have an ITV.’
‘A what?’
‘Inspección Técnica de Vehículos. It’s to make sure the car can be allowed on the road. But if you see some of the cars and vans that people drive, I don’t think they have it.’
She thought Hugo must be referring to the Canarian equivalent of an MOT. ‘I don’t have insurance, though,’ she pointed out.
‘You have a driving licence?’
