Then. Now. Always.

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘Look.’ Tom nudges me out of my drooling delusion and points out of the window. We’re nearing Almería now, and he’s spotted the corrugated roofs of all the farm buildings next to the airport. From road level, they’re nothing special at all, but from up here they look like scattered pieces of a broken mosaic. It’s actually quite beautiful.

  ‘I remember these,’ I tell him. ‘We’re almost there.’

  I feel the fingers of nervous excitement start to tickle my insides. My very first location shoot, in a place that means so much to me – and Theo is going to be waiting for us at the airport. As the plane starts to slip through the thin clouds towards the Spanish runway, I feel as if my smile alone could keep it up in the air.

  ‘Did I sleep the whole way?’ asks Claudette as the wheels hit the tarmac, yawning and stretching out her tiny limbs in all directions.

  ‘Yes,’ Tom informs her. ‘And you snored the whole way, too.’

  Claudette merely smiles sleepily at him, and then turns to me. ‘He is so funny, that boy, always making such silly jokes.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I reply, doing my best not to laugh as she runs her minuscule hands through her neat, dark bob. It seems cruel to tell her the truth, which is that she snores like a warthog with severe asthma, so I keep my lips sealed as we get ready to disembark. Tom is making a big show of rubbing the circulation back into his legs, grumbling all the while, and Claudette is tapping her foot impatiently behind our friend the bald man, who is in turn wrestling with his case, which has become stuck in the overhead locker.

  ‘This man is an imbecile,’ she remarks, not bothering to lower her voice.

  ‘What?’ asks Tom, shooting up from one of his extravagant bend-and-stretches and promptly cracking his head on one of the airflow nozzles above the seats.

  ‘You are an imbecile, too,’ she adds with disdain, as Tom rubs the back of his messy blond head and recites every swear word known to man – plus a few inventive extras of his own. How the hell these two manage to go on foreign shoots together all the time, I’ll never know. In the past year alone, they’ve been to Canada, Australia and France – and every time I’ve had to pretend I’m not gut-squirmingly jealous.

  By the time we’ve queued to get our passports checked, waited half an hour for Claudette’s three suitcases and then waited another fifteen minutes for her to redo her make-up in the bathroom mirror, my frustration and excitement has reached such an intense level that I’m about ready to climb up the wall of the arrivals lounge, scramble across the ceiling and come back down the other side.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ enquires Tom, frowning at me as I hop from one foot to the other. ‘You look like you’re about to wet yourself.’

  ‘I am!’ I practically yell at him, glancing towards the doors leading out to the exit. Mojácar is waiting for us on the other side of that frosted glass, and so is Theo.

  ‘Just go to the toilet then,’ he says, confusion evident in his voice. Men don’t understand anything.

  Of course, when the moment arrives and we finally make it through to where Theo is indeed waiting, a newspaper open across his lap and a pair of sunglasses keeping his dark curls off his face, the only thing that happens is a series of polite hellos. I’d hoped for a kiss on each cheek at the very least – we are in bloody Spain after all – but no. He just smiles at me and beckons us outside to where the car is waiting.

  My senses are reeling as I look around and take it all in. I’m actually here, back in Almería, less than an hour away from the beautiful and magical Mojácar that I’ve never been able to forget. It all feels so strange yet familiar at the same time.

  ‘Bit hot, isn’t it?’ remarks Tom, taking off his hoodie and squinting up at the cloudless azure sky. Theo, who is wearing an immaculately pressed white shirt and smart black trousers, and who doesn’t have a single bead of sweat on him, shrugs.

  ‘It is summer,’ he says, by way of an explanation. I decide not to say anything about the fact that my cropped jeans and vest top seem to have morphed into an eighteen-tog duvet in the hour since we landed, and instead sneak a tissue out of my bag to wipe the sweat off my face. It’s just past four in the afternoon, and I know the sun will soon start to lose its intensity, but at the moment it’s almost stifling. It’s a huge relief to clamber into the air-conditioned haven of Theo’s hire car, even if Tom – traitor – does bagsy the front seat.

  The overwhelming sense of déjà vu intensifies as Theo puts the car in gear and heads out of the parking lot on to the motorway, and I feel my eyes widen as they take in the surrounding mountains. We’re on the south-east coast of the country, and the landscape is arid and roasted brown by the year-round sunshine. Below me to the right the Mediterranean is spread out like a navy blanket, its canvas interrupted by only a very occasional flash of white-topped wave. There is almost no wind, and clumps of cactuses sit fat and unmoving by the side of the road. It’s no wonder that this area of Spain is often used as the setting for Westerns, another fact that I’ve discovered since I began my research.

  Tom has fallen silent in the passenger seat, as mesmerised as I am by the alien landscape. Claudette, meanwhile, is nattering away to Theo about the filming schedule and doing her best to persuade him that a few days off to work on her tan would be beneficial to the documentary.

  ‘I just think people like to see me looking healthy,’ she tells him. ‘They don’t want a ghost telling them about this beautiful place – my skin is so pale it will scare the audience.’

  Theo, who has clearly spent the last few days in the sun himself, chuckles along, humouring her, but I know he won’t budge when it comes to the schedule. His serious-boss side is one of the things I love most about him. When he puts on that stern face of his and gets those angry wrinkles across his forehead … Sigh.

  ‘Hannah, did you hear me?’

  Oh hell, he’s actually talking to me.

  ‘Yes! No. Erm, sorry. What was that?’

  Moron.

  Theo smiles at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘I said that Mojácar is absolutely perfect. I looked at so many photos before we came here, but nothing could have prepared me for how beautiful it is. You have found us an amazing place.’

  Is it possible to actually combust with pride? If it is, then the interior of this hire car is about to get very messy.

  ‘Thanks.’ I grin back at his reflection. ‘I can’t wait to see it again myself – I imagine it’s changed loads over the years.’

  ‘I thought we could all have dinner in the Old Town this evening,’ Theo continues. ‘Then afterwards you can show us where you used to party when you were a teenager.’

  He’s definitely poking fun at me now, but I love it.

  ‘Do you think any of the Spanish barmen will recognise you?’ asks Claudette, making me instantly regret telling her tales a few nights ago about some of my teenage antics. I knew that second bottle of wine was a bad idea, but I was so thrilled to be invited out for a drink with her. She’s done a few projects with Vivid now, but because she’s a freelance presenter and sometime actress, she isn’t based in the office with the rest of us, and so I haven’t spent much one-on-one time with her. Claudette is effortlessly cool and radiates the sort of self-assured charm that I have never managed to convey. She’s thirty-seven, but her skin is flawless and her make-up always immaculate so she looks about ten years younger. She’s the kind of woman that doesn’t even own a pair of ratty old tracksuit bottoms, let alone wear them to the pub on a Sunday afternoon like I often do.

  ‘Why would they?’ I reply, through gritted teeth. I don’t want to discuss Spanish barmen in front of Theo. He must see me as professional and sophisticated at all times.

  ‘True,’ she says, her tone making it clear that she’s enjoying toying with me. ‘They must get off with so many English girls that they all blend into one.’

  ‘I did not get off with any Spanish barmen,’ I squeal. It’s a total lie, of course, and I know Claudette’s only teasing me, but I wish s
he’d rein it in around our boss.

  ‘Greek barmen are the same,’ Theo agrees, overtaking a lorry with just a single hand on the wheel. ‘I can’t remember many English girls from the summer I spent working in my uncle’s bar.’

  Oh my God – Theo was a teenage tramp, too. Now all I must do is invent a time machine, then go on holiday to the Greek island that he was working on about twenty years ago and make him fall in love with me. Simple.

  ‘Men are disgusting,’ Claudette announces in response, causing Tom to boo loudly at her from the front of the car. Theo is laughing now, and he catches my eye in the rear-view mirror again. Is it my imagination, or does he linger a little longer this time? I dare myself to look again, but the moment has passed. Either that or I simply imagined it.

  ‘We’re coming up to the turning,’ Theo says. ‘The first time I drove around this corner and saw Mojácar, it took my breath away, I’m telling you.’

  He’s right. Even though I’ve been here before and seen the honeycomb-shaped village appear in the distance, its white stone buildings shining like an enormous toothy grin against the tanned backdrop of the mountain, I still get major butterflies when it eventually comes into sight.

  The car falls into a reverent silence, with even Claudette lost for words as she gazes up at the magical village nestled snugly in the distance. As we speed up and veer towards our exit, she mutters something romantic-sounding in French, putting her slender hand on my arm and giving it a squeeze. This is exactly what I’d hoped for. I knew that Mojácar would get them all under its spell, just as it had done to me all those years ago. There’s just something about this place, something that makes it special, unique and different to anywhere else I’ve ever been in the world.

  ‘I’ve got the goosey bumps,’ Claudette admits, saying what we’re all thinking. Assuming she’s cold rather than moved, Theo stretches over and switches off the air conditioning, and for a few minutes we continue to drive in silence. The spell is only broken when we turn again and the view of Mojácar is momentarily lost, obscured by the bulk of one of the many surrounding hills.

  ‘Where are we staying again, Han?’ asks Tom, turning in his seat. I open my mouth to reply, but Theo beats me to it.

  ‘In the Old Town,’ he says, coughing slightly. ‘Hannah and Claudette are in one apartment, and you are in a studio flat.’

  ‘I’m not sharing with you this time, boss?’ Tom fails to keep the joy out of his voice.

  ‘Unfortunately for you, no.’ Theo grins. ‘I am staying down at the beach. I prefer to be next to the sea and I need space for the editing equipment, but it is better for you to be up in the town, I think. Close to the bars and shops.’

  Because I made all the bookings, I know just how small Tom’s place is compared to the entire villa that Theo has secured, but I know he won’t care. The laid-back way of life here is going to fit my best friend like a well-tailored suit, and I’m gripped by a new elation as I envisage showing him around. I’m looking forward to sharing an apartment with Claudette, too. I’m hoping that some of her French magnetism will rub off on me.

  It makes a change from sharing with Tom, anyway, which I’ve done at a fair few festivals over the years. His feet smell like centuries-old Brie after a day spent in wellies and he talks in his sleep when he’s drunk – and I mean really chatters away. I had an entire conversation with him in complete gibberish at Glastonbury one year and he didn’t remember anything about it.

  I hear Claudette gasp next to me and look up to see that the village of Mojácar – or Mojácar Pueblo, as the locals call it – is now right above us. Incredibly, it’s exactly how I remember, with narrow cobbled roads snaking up and around the hill, white stone houses sitting at jaunty angles and, as Theo edges the car higher, magnificent sweeping views of the mountains and beach below. Something stirs deep inside my belly, and I’m unable to keep the smile from forming on my lips. The fatigue I felt after the three-hour flight vanishes as I wind down the window and inhale the warm air. I can smell lemons and there’s an earthy scent, too – even the dust here smells deliciously fragrant to me. Poking my head out through the gap, I suck more of the air into my lungs like a greedy child.

  ‘You look like my parents’ old Labrador,’ Tom quips, laughing at me in the wing mirror. I slyly give him the finger.

  ‘Parking around here is a nightmare,’ Theo complains. We’ve arrived at the rather unimaginatively named Vista Apartments, where Claudette and I will be living for the next four weeks, but all the parking spaces, plus a lot of the road alongside them, are full.

  ‘Just drop us here,’ I say sweetly, ignoring the look of total disgust on Claudette’s face. ‘We’ll meet you up in the square at, say, half seven?’

  Theo nods and flicks on the hazard lights long enough for me to heave Claudette’s entire collection of luggage – plus my own, single case – out from the boot, before giving us both a quick wave and driving off up the hill towards Tom’s place.

  ‘I am all sweaty,’ grumbles Claudette, sniffing at the bougainvillea that’s trailing down from the top of our apartment block. Like so many of the buildings cut into the side of the vast hills here, its roof is level with the road, and each apartment is reached by climbing down a scarily narrow and steep set of stone steps. Luckily, given Claudette’s increasingly fractious mood and the multiple number of suitcases she’s brought with her, we only have to go down to the second level of five. The key is, as promised by the owners, hidden under the doormat, and there’s a large Indalo Man symbol painted on the wall next to the door.

  I didn’t tell any of the others this, but I stayed in this very same block of apartments with Rachel and her folks. We’re higher up this time, but the layout is exactly as I remember it, with a hallway, large living area and kitchen, plus a separate bathroom and two good-sized bedrooms.

  While Claudette crashes around in her chosen bedroom and mutters French obscenities at the lack of wardrobe space, I head straight out through the glass doors and on to the wide, tiled balcony. There’s a beautiful wrought-iron table and two chairs out here, and someone has strung a makeshift washing line from the back corner to a pipe that’s running down the length of the whole block. A large clay figurine has been fixed to the sloping stone wall on my left, and I smile as I sneak a look down at my matching tattoo.

  If I peer over the side of the far wall, I can see the very edge of the balcony belonging to the apartment below our own, each one in the block stacked against the hillside like seats in a stadium.

  I’m still standing there, enjoying the citrusy air and the feel of the warm tiles beneath my bare feet, when Claudette bustles out. I think she’s saying something about forgetting her travel iron, but as soon as she looks up and sees the view spread out in front of us, she shuts up.

  ‘Mon dieu,’ she whispers, and I see the hairs rise up on her arms.

  We stand there for a time, side by side, drinking it all in. I realise I can feel a strange something stirring inside me, the same something that’s been bubbling away since I began reading up on this place again. There really is magic in Mojácar, I decide. And I intend to find out where it comes from.

  4

  The first thing that strikes me as Claudette and I make our leisurely way up the steep hill and into the Old Town later that evening is that Mojácar has barely changed at all. It’s over ten years since I was last here, but it feels like it could have been last week. Everything is so comfortingly familiar, from the immaculate whitewashed buildings to the decorative pots of flowers fixed to walls and lined up along window sills. The little gift shops selling postcards, maps and hundreds of Indalo Man souvenirs look utterly unaltered, as if time has ceased to pass up here. With every step, my enchantment swells, and I have to quell a ridiculous urge to skip along the path like a playful goat.

  It isn’t long before Claudette gets fed up of stopping every few yards to wait for me while I take photos to send back to Rachel. I can’t help it, though, despite her unsubtle tutti
ng – everything is just so beautiful.

  ‘My legs are hurting,’ she grumbles now, reaching down to massage her non-existent calves. It’s not surprising, really. The winding road that leads up from the beachfront, right up the side of the hill, past our apartment block and into the Old Town, is very steep – especially on this last section just below Plaza Nueva, the main square.

  Often when people think of Spain, they picture the fiery golds and reds of a matador’s costume and the rich orange of the setting sun over one of the country’s many beaches, but the dominant colours here in Mojácar are white, blue and pink. The buildings in the town are almost all painted a bright, unapologetic white, a shade that is made all the more vibrant by the contrasting deep blue of the sky above and the many cerulean-blue shutters and doors. The pink comes from the clusters of bougainvillea that are spilling out over the balconies of every house we pass, their scent clashing deliciously with the strange fragrant dust in the air. I could quite happily sit down on the wall by the road and let my senses devour the lot, but Claudette has other ideas. She is hungry, she is thirsty, she is worn out and she needs to empty her bladder – all things she’s told me at least ten times in the last three minutes. I had no idea she was this high-maintenance.

  We pass the tiny post office just below the Plaza Nueva and Claudette, spotting several open bars, dashes off across the cobbles in search of a bathroom. There’s no sign of Theo or Tom yet, so I decide to take the steps to my right and head up to admire the view from the Mirador de la Plaza Nueva, a wide, tiled platform set along one side of the square.

  I have to navigate a few tables and chairs outside the platform’s one neighbouring restaurant to reach the stretch of black railings along the far edge, but it’s worth it – the view below is nothing short of spectacular. The brown, desert-like earth seems to stretch on into the distance as far as my eyes can see, and the road we drove in on earlier snakes its way between white buildings that are scattered like discarded Scrabble pieces against the dusty horizon. To the far right is the shimmering blue line of the sea, and immediately in front of me is a very distinctive flat-topped hill, which I know from my research to be Mojácar la Vieja, or Old Mojácar. It was here that the ruling Moors of the Bronze Age built a garrison to watch over their land, and what a view they must have had.