Then. Now. Always.

by Isabelle Broom

  I feel my brow furrow up at his words. ‘What?’

  Theo grins. ‘I know, but listen. This club throwing was considered a proposal of marriage, so if the girl’s family accepted, they would leave the club on the floor and preparations would be made.’

  ‘What if they weren’t keen?’ I want to know.

  ‘Well, in that case the girl’s father would pick up the club and bang it on the inside of the door, before yelling, “Porra afuera” and throwing it back through the window into the street.’

  ‘That is so bizarre,’ I tell him, and Theo nods, shutting the book and regarding me with amusement as he sips his rapidly cooling coffee.

  ‘You know what is an even better story?’ I whisper.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s one where a very handsome and clever Greek director lets his lowly researcher go with him to film in Turre today …’

  Theo frowns at me. ‘Hannah,’ he begins, shifting himself away. ‘We’ve been over this already.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ I moan, hating how teenage I sound. ‘Claudette and Tom get to go, but not me. I can help, I’ve been reading up about the place.’

  ‘There isn’t enough room in the car,’ he says, finishing his coffee. ‘And anyway, you will only distract me.’

  I must have pouted at this, because the next second he’s pinned me down on the mattress and is kissing my neck and my face over and over until I squirm with delight.

  ‘You are a very naughty girl, making me feel guilty,’ he murmurs, his teeth closing around the soft part of my ear.

  ‘Sorry,’ I breathe, not meaning it one bit.

  Just when I think he’s going to move his mouth around until it covers mine, Theo bends his head instead and blows a huge raspberry in my armpit.

  ‘Get off me!’ I shriek, half-heartedly wriggling underneath him, but I can sense that I’ve lost his attention as he looks past me towards the clock on the bedside table.

  ‘I have to get up,’ he groans, levering himself off me and rolling away. I have to fight the temptation to clamber on his back and pull him down on to the sheets, and instead settle for admiring his toned bottom as he strolls around the room fetching his clothes.

  ‘You should spend the day with Nancy,’ he tells me as he heads to the bathroom, shutting the door before I can reply. To Theo, my sister is family and that should be enough to bond the two of us – but of course he has no idea how complicated things are. While we’ve been perfectly civil to each other over the past week, there haven’t been any occasions where the two of us have been alone. As far as I can tell, she’s no longer ill or crying for no reason, so I don’t feel too guilty about spending time away from her.

  I have no desire to get up, but the idea of still being here at the villa when Claudette and Tom arrive makes me uncomfortable, and by the time Theo is back from the shower – looking sexy as hell with droplets of water all over his tanned chest – I’m dressed and ready to leave.

  ‘I like this,’ he says, picking up the hem of my red sundress and rubbing the cotton between his fingers. ‘Why do you never wear dresses like this in England?’

  ‘Because it’s cold,’ I reply. ‘And because I love my jeans.’

  ‘I like this new Hannah,’ he states. ‘She is more womanly than the old Hannah.’

  I know he means it as a compliment, but for some reason his words sting a bit.

  ‘Be good today,’ he tells me when I don’t reply, dropping a kiss on my shoulder then patting me on the bottom as I turn to go. He says that to me all the time, but I have no idea what he thinks I might be getting up to in his absence. It’s not as if I’m working my way through the men of Mojácar when his back is turned.

  I make my way along the main road at an aimless pace, reluctant to head back to the apartment but not tempted by the bank of shops on the corner by the roundabout. It’s getting hotter with every passing day, and the heat is so intense this morning that I feel as if I can see it vibrating in the air around me. A persistent wind is bothering the very tops of the palm trees and chasing dirt in circles around my ankles. Theo persuaded me to accompany him on a late-night swim before we retired to bed, and my hair feels hard and knotted from the dried-in traces of salt. It’s funny to think that I used to spend so long painstakingly applying my make-up every morning back in London, just in case he deigned to look in my direction at the office, and now he’s seen me laid bare and washed clean. I feel so much closer to him now, but more wary of him at the same time. Neither of us has broached the subject of what will happen when this trip is over and we have to go back to normality, and I know why I haven’t. The mental image of Theo in my tatty bedroom in the big shared house in Acton just doesn’t work. More than that, it’s actually laughable. What would he make of my stuffed toy collection and wall of drunken photos? I’d need a month and a two-grand IKEA gift card to get that place looking anywhere near good enough to let Theo into it – and even then, he’d have to run the gauntlet of my housemates.

  No, we’ll just have to stay at his. He must have a gloriously modern bachelor pad just crying out for some female energy. I wonder if he’ll take me out to dinner at one of those swanky places along the Thames? Or up the Shard? He probably has membership at a club with a swimming pool on the roof – the sort of places Tom and I used to say we’d rather die than be seen at. But that was before. I’m seeing an older man now, so I need to be sophisticated. Perhaps I should start wearing pencil skirts and stilettos? Then again, I’d definitely be taller than Theo in heels, and I wouldn’t want to make him feel emasculated …

  I’ve been strolling along while mulling all this over and suddenly realise that I’m only five minutes away from the beach bar where Carlos works. There’s a low white-stone wall up ahead that has baked to a crisp in the sun, and the top of it always reminds me of the lemon meringue pie my mum used to make when I was little. I feel a bit guilty because I’ve been ducking her messages for days now, unable to face all her questions about Nancy. The only person I have answered calls from is Rachel, but even she seems distracted. Now that the initial excitement about Theo and me getting it on has passed, she isn’t as keen to discuss him, and keeps turning the conversation around to the subject of Paul, who can apparently do no wrong.

  Camila greets me at the bar with two kisses and a warm smile, and I’m gratified to see that Carlos has got the morning off. What I want is a few undisturbed hours in the sunshine – time to switch off and relax. We’ve been working such long days; I think I’ve earned it. And anyway, I won’t get the chance for much longer. Whenever I think about going home, I feel punched with sorrow. Mojácar feels like more of a home to me now than London. The pace of life suits me, and I love the people. Elaine, especially, has become such a good friend over the past three weeks, but as she has no phone at home and no email address, I’m starting to worry that we’ll quickly lose touch after I’m gone. I must talk to her about it. Perhaps she’d even consider coming back to the UK if she had a friend to visit?

  ‘Agua sin gas, por favor,’ I tell Camila, returning her smile as she hands me a bottle of still water, but when I hand her some euros to pay for a sunbed, she shakes her head.

  ‘Nancy is already there,’ she explains, pointing down the beach. Sure enough, I can just see the garish pink of my half-sister’s kaftan underneath one of the bright green umbrellas.

  For a good minute, I seriously consider abandoning my plan and sneaking off before she spots me, but then I think about what Theo said this morning. If I can prove to him that I can be mature enough to make nice with Nancy, then maybe he’ll think I’m even more womanly than he does already. It will also mean I can finally call my mum back and tell her what she wants to hear: that Nancy and I are fine and that there’s nothing to worry about.

  Taking a deep breath and flicking my sunglasses down over my eyes, I make my way along the makeshift wooden jetty between the sunbeds and come to a halt beside her.

  27

  My dad told my mum h
e was leaving her on a Sunday. Obviously I was too young at the time to know what day of the week it was, but I know it was that particular day because my mum told me years later that it happened just after she’d cooked a joint of roast beef, and she only ever does that on a Sunday.

  She said he was quiet all through the meal, and that at first she simply put it down to tiredness. I wasn’t a very good sleeper, and at that time I was regularly getting the pair of them up at four a.m. on an almost daily basis. On reflection, I’m surprised my mum even managed to prepare an entire roast dinner. If it had been me, he’d have been having macaroni cheese out of a tin and that would have been that. But my mum was trying to be a good wife to him and a good mother to me. In hindsight, she admitted to me once, the whole roast beef thing was her attempt to keep things normal. She had sensed that my dad was growing distant, and she was terrified to ask him the question why. As it turned out, my mum was far more astute than even she realised.

  I’ve decided to tell Nancy the story now, as my mum always told it to me. Not because I want to goad her, but because I want her to understand just how hurtful it was, and has always been. My mother pretends to be okay about it now, but I know she’s never really forgiven my father for leaving. As for me, I’ve just grown up always knowing that he did something bad, and that resentment has sat like a huge, murky puddle in the meadow of my affection for him. I’m not sure if I’ll ever completely get over it, but I am starting to realise that I have to try.

  Nancy has been listening quietly, but her large, dark eyes widen with sympathy as I explain how shocked my mum was to find out that my dad had already made the decision to go.

  ‘He didn’t even give her the chance to fight her corner,’ I say now, sniffing in disgust. ‘She begged him to reconsider, but he wouldn’t. He gave us up without so much as a discussion.’

  ‘Had he already met my mum?’ Nancy wants to know, and looking at her now I realise that she’s angry. It’s not directed at me, though. For the first time ever, it’s aimed at Dad.

  ‘Yes,’ I say simply. ‘He told my mum that he’d tried to ignore his feelings, but that he couldn’t do so any longer. He didn’t want to have to pretend any more. Imagine that. Imagine the person you love, the father of your child, admitting to you that they’d only been pretending to love you all along.’

  ‘It would be horrible,’ Nancy agrees, and I think she really means it. She looks more serious and intense than I’ve ever known her to be, and despite the heat I look down to see goosebumps on my arms.

  ‘I always thought it was a mutual thing,’ she tells me. ‘Mum’s always told me that she met Dad when he was single.’

  I shake my head. ‘That’s not true.’

  Nancy is fiddling furiously with a loose thread on her beach towel and wraps it around her finger before snapping it in half.

  ‘I guess I never really thought about it from your mum’s point of view before,’ she says then, and I glance up in surprise. It’s not like Nancy to be contrite or admit that she could have been in the wrong, and for a moment I’m too taken aback to respond.

  ‘I suppose it suited me to believe what Mum told me,’ she adds, baffling me yet again with her new self-awareness. ‘I didn’t like the idea of Dad being with anyone else. I guess I still don’t.’

  ‘I don’t either,’ I agree. ‘But I had to grow up with it.’

  There’s a beat of silence as Nancy absorbs this, and then she looks up at me. Her refusal to sit in the sun, coupled with all the late nights hanging out with Claudette and the Spanish boys, has lent her skin a greyish pallor, and there’s a bruise of colour under each of her eyes. She looks as if she hasn’t slept for days.

  ‘Do you think …?’ she begins, but then seems unable to continue.

  ‘That he cheated on my mum?’ I guess, and she nods. ‘I don’t know. I really hope that he didn’t, but then I guess that’s just wishful thinking. I mean, he must have been sure about Susie. Sure enough to leave us behind.’

  ‘I hate people that cheat,’ Nancy snaps, and there’s genuine vitriol in her tone.

  ‘Is that why you broke up with your boyfriend?’ I ask her gently now, the idea only just occurring to me. I think back to the photos I’d seen of the two of them on Facebook – they looked so sickeningly happy with each other that I’d even remarked on it to Tom at the time. It had struck me as odd that they’d broken up so abruptly, but then Nancy had brushed aside my questions about him when she first arrived and I, distracted fool that I am, hadn’t bothered to delve any deeper. Now that I’ve thought of it, I realise that it would explain a lot – the tears, the random kissing of strangers, the look of contempt on her face right this second …

  ‘No,’ she grunts, looking away to where two tiny birds are picking at a discarded paper napkin. ‘He didn’t cheat on me.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad,’ I say, puffing out my chest. ‘If he had, then he’d have an angry big sister to contend with!’

  It’s a bit of a feeble gesture, but I can see that Nancy appreciates the effort. I don’t think we’ve ever had such a measured conversation before, and it feels weird, as if I’m only just getting to know her, and she me.

  ‘It’s seriously hot – shall I get us a drink?’ I ask, standing up and reaching for my dress, but when I return a few minutes later with a water for me and a Diet Coke for her, Nancy is crying.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I ask, digging a quick hole in the sand with my foot so I can put down the drinks without them toppling over sideways.

  ‘Nothing.’ She shakes her head.

  This is my fault. I shouldn’t have told her the truth about Dad. I should have let her continue on through life thinking that he was infallible. He’s always been her hero, and now I’ve gone and tainted him. Then again, isn’t it always better to know the truth? Once you have all the pieces, then surely you stand a greater chance of putting them all back together – even if the puzzle does take half a lifetime to solve.

  ‘Don’t be upset about Dad,’ I say gently, awkwardly patting her shoulder. ‘It was all such a long time ago. I shouldn’t have brought it up.’

  Nancy is still sobbing, but there’s no sound. There are just tears running like two minuscule streams down her cheeks. At a loss of what else to say, I remain silent, my hand on her back.

  ‘Have you ever been in love?’ she suddenly asks, and I laugh in surprise.

  ‘I think so. No, I mean I have. Well, I think I have.’

  Classic Hannah Hodges response to a simple question: mumble incoherently like a toothless Womble.

  ‘Theo?’ she guesses, and I blush.

  ‘Is he good to you?’ is her next question, and I smile in relief that it’s one I can actually provide an answer to.

  ‘Oh, yes – he’s great.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ She smiles weakly at me through her tears, and I get a sudden urge to cross over to her sunbed and put both my arms around her. If she’s surprised by this outpouring of affection after a good twenty years of solid scowling, then she doesn’t mention it. Instead she just cries a bit more, and I feel overwhelmed by helplessness.

  ‘Shall we call Dad?’

  A vicious shake of the head.

  ‘Do you want to call your mum, then?’

  Again, a fierce rebuttal.

  ‘Some food?’ I try, groping through the limited options open to us.

  ‘Just a drink,’ she says, sniffling like a hamster, and I reach down and fetch her glass.

  All the ice has melted in the sun, and she stares down at it for a few seconds as if contemplating what to do next. Then, before I have the chance to propose a toast to sisterhood, she’s grabbed the straw between her fingers and necked the entire thing in one go.

  ‘Thirsty?’ I enquire, smiling as she raises a hand to her mouth to disguise a belch, nodding at me in amusement.

  ‘Then let’s get a real drink.’

  ‘Salud!’

  We cheer the word so loudly in unison that a family on the next table a
ctually recoil in alarm, but that only makes us laugh all the harder.

  ‘I am drunk!’ I declare, bashing my beer bottle against the side of Nancy’s cocktail. ‘Drunkety, drunken, drunkola!’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ she giggles, sucking on her straw and smiling at me through half-closed eyes.

  We’ve been at the beach for hours now, and I’ve lost track of how many drinks I’ve had, which I’m mildly aware should be a worrying fact, but can’t be bothered to care too much about. It feels so nice to be merry like this and – best and most oddly of all – it’s actually really fun getting drunk with Nancy. Who would have thought it? Not me, that’s for sure.

  Since our heart-to-heart this morning, we’ve been making up for lost time and filling in the gaps we’ve missed over the years of refusing to talk to each other. Well, I say we, but I’ve been doing most of the talking. I had no idea that my sister was such a good listener, but she really is. I’ve told her all about Theo and about Rachel and oafish Paul, and now I’m explaining how great Elaine is. In fact, I’ve even decided that the two of them should meet.

  Like I said: drunk, drunkety, drunken, drunkola.

  Having skipped breakfast and forgone lunch in favour of yet more alcohol, by the time the sun is setting I’m feeling more than a little worse for wear. Staggering back from the little shack that comprises the ladies’ toilet, I collide with Carlos, who is carrying two plates of food, and almost fall over sideways from laughing.

  ‘Idiota,’ he mutters with a frown, and I stick my tongue out at him.

  ‘Look at the sunset!’ I slur at Nancy when I’m back in my seat, but she already is. The view of it from here is even more beautiful than it is from up in the village, the smudged pastel pinks and yellows turning the surface of the sea into molten gold. I try to focus my eyes on the dark patches of gently shifting water, but everything is swimming in and out of focus.