by Rachel Dann
I stagger out of bed and tiptoe towards the balcony, teeth clenched in sudden fear. Who could he be shouting at? What if something is happening to him – maybe he’s being mugged, or kidnapped? Could this be the last time I see my boyfriend before he’s bundled into a waiting car and driven away as a hostage, and all this time I’ve been here in the hotel room sleeping. Suddenly my mother’s voice bursts uninvited into my consciousness. ‘Dangerous part of the world… drugs everywhere…’ I physically shake my head and tell myself I’m being silly. But, even so, I edge towards the balcony, keeping my back flat against the wall while craning my head as far forward as I dare to see out over the wrought-iron bars.
Harry is standing about three metres away in the street below, his back to me, mobile phone pressed to his ear. His raised voice reaches me again over the background noise of cars passing and distant salsa music playing from a café at the end of the road. Although I can’t make out any actual words from so far up here, his body language emanates anger and frustration. Still with his back to me, he raises his free arm and seems to shake it at the street in general, then brings it to his face and runs his hand through his hair in an all-too-familiar gesture of exasperation.
There are no gangsters, hostage takers or drug pushers anywhere near him, just a few bemused pedestrians who all turn to look back at Harry as they pass. He seems to be really shouting, but from up here all I can make out is the anguished tone of his voice. Relief floods through me that he is in no apparent danger, but is then immediately followed by troubled curiosity. Who the hell could he be talking to?
I edge forward on the balcony and strain to hear more, just as Harry starts to swing round and pace back towards me. I hurl myself backwards into the hotel room and out of sight, as snatched words from his conversation drift up to me, clear as crystal – in Spanish.
‘Por favor! No entiendes!’ is all I hear him shout before the balcony curtain swishes back in place and Harry is once again drowned from earshot.
Please – you don’t understand.
I sit down heavily on the cool marble floor of the hotel room and lean back against the foot of the bed. What was all that about? Who would Harry be speaking to so forcefully, in Spanish? He had said something about making a complaint to the airline when our connecting flight in Madrid was delayed. But surely he wouldn’t do that on our very first day here? They had been really polite and apologetic, and served everyone orange juice while we waited at the departure gate. And he’s usually so laid-back… it’s very unlike Harry to get upset over something like that.
‘Jet lag?’ I’m suddenly aware he is standing in the doorway, smiling down at me warmly. I swallow back my irritated curiosity and silently watch him enter the room and start pulling clothes out of his backpack, slinging them over a chair. All traces of the anger and tension I saw in him just now have gone. He even starts to whistle to himself as he pulls out his razor and heads into the bathroom, turning the tap on.
‘Harry? Are you… okay?’ I call after him.
He turns to look at me through the open bathroom door, and his face breaks into a broad, gorgeous smile.
‘Of course, babe – why? I was going to ask you the same thing… you look a bit rough sitting there on the floor like that.’ He chuckles and turns back to the mirror.
‘Oh… just the jet lag, like you say,’ I mutter, feeling stupid, and haul myself to my feet. I potter about unpacking some clothes and the silence in the room grows.
Just ask him what the hell all that was about.
The question is on the tip of my tongue. But something about Harry’s overly cheerful demeanour feels like a kind of warning. He has to be faking it. There’s no way even someone as impulsive and spontaneous as Harry could go from shouty, hair-tuggingly anxious phone calls to bright and breezy unpacking in the space of two minutes. With a wrench, I’m reminded of Harry’s increasingly distant behaviour in the weeks before the trip. His irritability when I tried to ask him about it. It had seemed so unlike the laid-back bloke I was used to living with, and I’d put it down to the stress of planning such an ambitious voyage. But now we’re here, shouldn’t he be relaxing and embracing the adventure ahead? I stare at Harry’s back and admit to myself the uncomfortable truth that, at times, I feel like I have no idea what makes him tick.
Wasn’t this trip supposed to bring us closer together?
If his behaviour over the last few weeks is anything to go by, he’ll only get all defensive if I ask him what that phone call was about, I realise. I briefly imagine what it would be like if we fell out, now, today. He’s all I have in a strange country. Plus, I still feel like my body clock has been taken out, rewound and shoved back in upside down. It was probably nothing anyway, I almost manage to convince myself. It could have been the airline, or one of the hotels or tour companies we’ve looked at.
‘By the way, it’s because he’s been living here twelve years and Spanish and English have started to mix together in his head,’ Harry calls from the bathroom, patting his face off with a towel.
‘Eh?’
‘Ray. That’s why he speaks like that. He can’t really tell the difference between the two languages anymore, so he uses Spanish word order when speaking English, and vice versa. He came backpacking here after uni, met a girl and never left.’ He comes back into the room, produces a cold beer from somewhere and hands it to me. ‘I’ve been down in the bar all afternoon with him, waiting for you to wake up.’
‘Oh.’ Suddenly I’m hit by a wave of homesickness. But not for our house in Fenbridge… to my surprise, an image of my mum’s living room fills my mind. I’m in the armchair, drinking hot chocolate, with Steve in the corner behind his paper and Mum watching Strictly Come Dancing with the volume turned down. I wouldn’t need to worry, then, about who Harry has been shouting at, or whether he’s keeping some sort of secret from me. I could just slide back into my old routine and pretend none of this had ever happened. For the first time in weeks, I feel something other than excitement and eagerness about our forthcoming adventure. For if we’ve only just arrived and Harry is behaving like this… what do the next three months hold for me?
I don’t know what takes me more by surprise, the feeling of actually wanting to be at my mum’s house or the sudden pounding music that starts to blast out from somewhere below us.
‘That’s Ray getting the bar going – come on, Kirst, our first night in Quito has begun!’ Harry looks so happy and mischievous, I resolve to push my concerns to the back of my mind for now. He obviously doesn’t want to talk about whatever it was, but I’m sure it will all become clear in time, and I will have been worrying for nothing.
‘Drink up that beer and let’s go!’ Harry stops to kiss me on the cheek and cracks open another beer for himself.
After a brief effort to make myself look presentable, I follow him out of our hotel room for a night of wild partying.
‘Oh, wait.’ Harry stops dead in the corridor. ‘There are six missed calls, an email and about a hundred WhatsApp messages from your mother. You should call her first.’
Chapter Four
The hotel bar area is thronged with the same colourful assortment of tourists as it was this morning, except now they’re all knocking back pints of beer and gaudy cocktails instead of coffee and toast. Upbeat, tropical-sounding music is playing from a complicated stereo system in the corner. We spot Ray behind the bar performing several complicated manoeuvres with a cocktail shaker, then pouring a thick, bright-yellow liquid into two tall glasses, all the while chatting energetically to the other two barmen. As soon as he catches sight of us he gestures to one of his colleagues, and within seconds the two glasses of yellow liquid are placed on a table before us along with enormous plates of chicken, rice and what seem to be monster-sized fried bananas.
‘Mum sends her love,’ I tell Harry, sitting down beside him to tuck in hungrily. ‘I also had to assure her there are no volcanic eruptions, landslides or civil protests curr
ently unfolding in Quito.’ Harry rolls his eyes in empathy at my mum’s typical fussing.
Ray pulls up a chair, too, with his own glass of the vivid yellow drink.
‘Sugar cane syrup,’ he explains happily. ‘They call it canelazo. Mixed with fruit from the jungle and canela – what do you call that? Cinnamon.’ He raises his glass. ‘Now Kirsty is finally awake, I can officially say – welcome to Ecuador!’
We stop stuffing our faces with the delicious fried banana long enough to chink glasses with Ray and take a gulp of the liquid. It’s spicy and sweet and throat-burningly strong.
‘So, any recommendations for a night out?’ Harry asks, already draining his glass. ‘I think it’s time for Kirsty and me to get smashed.’ Ray catches my eye with one eyebrow slightly raised.
‘Er, yes, definitely,’ I say, with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. ‘Getting smashed it is.’
Ray’s gaze flicks between Harry and me, and for a brief second I self-consciously wonder what he is thinking.
‘Well, if you like, once the wife gets home shortly we can take you out to sample Quito’s nightlife? I’m sure these guys can hold the fort here.’ He waves vaguely in the direction of the bar staff. ‘Oh, and Barry always keeps an eye on things when we go out. He practically lives here.’ I notice the chubby man sitting in the far corner of the bar, in the shadows, silently watching us. Bizarrely, I’m reminded of Aragorn sitting in the tavern in Lord of the Rings, watching the hobbits cause chaos around him with a disapproving air. ‘She kicked you out again?’ Ray calls cheerfully to him. Barry responds by raising his glass, unsmiling, then taking a long drink from it.
‘Gabi’s eight months pregnant, so we won’t be joining you in getting smashed, but we can certainly show you some sights,’ Ray continues. ‘We were talking about meeting some friends in town tonight anyway, so how about we all go?’
‘Amazing!’ exclaims Harry, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. ‘How about it, Kirst?’
I nod and smile and thank Ray, but once he turns back to the bar I touch Harry’s arm.
‘Since when have we ever gone out and got smashed?’ I ask him under my breath, trying to sound light-hearted. ‘I mean, since uni, which feels like a hundred years ago. I’m up for going to a bar, but…’
‘Oh, come on!’ Harry interrupts me. ‘Uni wasn’t that long ago. We’re still young – well, reasonably young!’ He laughs and grins and gives my waist a squeeze, and it strikes me that there is something a little bit manic about his smile. Something a little… forced. ‘After all the preparation and such a long journey we’re finally here, and I don’t know about you but I think it’s time for a drink!’
I stare at Harry as he goes over to Ray and indicates for his glass to be filled up again. I haven’t really seen this side of him since uni, when he was always the life and soul of any party… the Harry I moved in with soon became more of a glass-of-wine-and-takeaway-on-a-Friday-night kind of guy. It felt like the natural transition from carefree student to sensible adult, to a life with responsibilities and early starts… now it feels a little like Harry is regressing back to our pre-employment days.
But maybe this is no bad thing. Maybe a wild night out is just what we need to get this trip back on track. If it was ever off track. And wasn’t the whole idea for us to have one last adventure before… things change? We won’t get much time for partying once we have a baby, I remind myself. I’m sure that’s just what Harry means – we must make the most of this trip, and our current freedom, right from the first day. Also, I can’t help feeling a little relieved that at least Harry’s irritability of the last few weeks seems to have abandoned him.
My train of thought is interrupted as Ray’s wife, Gabriela, comes home amid a flurry of wavy dark hair, dazzling white smile and enormous pregnancy bump. Ray drops everything he is doing (lazily polishing glasses and eating nachos, I think) to rush round the bar and give her a long smooch, then tell her to put her coat back on as ‘Harry and Kirsty want us to take them out and get smashed’.
Gabriela greets us with warm hugs and cheek-kisses. It’s far more physical contact that I would usually feel comfortable with when first meeting someone, but something about this beautiful, smiling girl makes me want to return her hug with just as much warmth.
I start to understand why twenty-one-year-old Ray arrived here as a backpacker, then within five years found himself the owner of a bar, happily married to Gabriela. Who, it seems, speaks far better English than him.
‘I found him sitting with his backpack and a hangover in some dodgy café in town,’ Gabriela beams at Ray, ‘and decided I didn’t want to let him leave.’
I find myself watching this petite, delicate woman in amazement and wondering whether it can be true that she actually goes inside the prisons in Ecuador. But even as Gabi chats openly to us, I somehow lack the courage to ask.
After a few more canelazos we pile into a taxi and head towards what Ray and Gabriela describe as the ‘Mariscal district’, apparently a must-see part of Quito for any newly arrived traveller.
We pull up amid neon lights, throngs of people and a cacophony of thumping, Spanish-language R&B music. The taxi deposits us in the middle of Plaza Foch, a square surrounded by bars, some small and grungy-looking, others several storeys high with bright flashing signs and palm trees outside. The square is filled with groups of smiling and laughing locals, tourists wearing skimpy clothes and colourful bandanas, embracing couples and cigarette-smoking teenagers who don’t look old enough to be here. Ray half-heartedly argues with the taxi driver over the fare, then we throw ourselves into the crowd.
I take Harry’s hand and follow Ray and Gabriela into the queue forming outside one of the fancier-looking bars, determined to enjoy tonight… even though this isn’t exactly what I’d expected our first night in Quito to pan out like.
What had I expected?
As we wait in line, I allow myself to daydream briefly. Perhaps the two of us would have gone out for a nice meal somewhere, a balcony overlooking the city, and sat tucked away in a corner discussing the places we’re going to visit this week, making a plan over a bottle of wine and some typical Ecuadorian food. I feel my brows start to knit together as I realise I can’t remember the last time we went out for a romantic dinner. There’ll be time for that, we’ve got three months, I tell myself. Just go with the flow tonight. It’s obviously what Harry wants, and there will be time.
A tugging feeling at my sleeve interrupts my train of thought and makes me jump in the air and let go of Harry’s hand with a jolt. A tiny elderly woman is standing below me, coming up no further than my chest, tugging lightly at my sleeve. She’s wearing an apron and has a cardboard box slung around her neck, loaded with cigarettes, chewing gum and chocolate bars.
‘Por favor… Señorita…’ She continues to nudge me and proffer her cardboard box with an imploring expression.
Close up, she looks well over seventy and has no teeth. I immediately start fumbling in my bag for some change, and within a few seconds have bought three chocolate bars and five cigarettes from her. Harry turns around just in time to see her beaming, toothless face looming in on his, obviously excited about the commercial opportunities presented by our group.
‘Kirsty – what are you doing?’ he cries, recoiling in horror from the woman and stumbling unevenly several steps backwards.
Gabriela intervenes and says something quickly to the woman in Spanish, smiling kindly at her but at the same time firmly steering her away by the arm.
Harry is still gaping at me, weaving a little on the spot, his brows furrowed together in almost comic exaggeration. ‘What are you doing giving her your money? You don’t even smoke!’
I look down at the chocolate and cigarettes in my hands, suddenly feeling ridiculous.
‘She could have been dangerous!’ Harry continues, oblivious of the uncomfortable glances from other people in the queue around us.
At this, I can’t hel
p but snort with laughter. ‘Oh, come on, Harry… she was about four feet tall and old enough to be my grandmother! I just felt bad for her, okay? And—’
‘That’s not the point!’ Harry’s voice is getting louder. Out of the corner of my eye I notice Gabriela making panicked throat-cutting gestures to Ray. ‘You know some people here hand out flyers or free gifts in the street, then try to drug you and rob you! Maybe she was trying to catch you unawares, maybe she…’ Harry trails off, puffing, as Ray pats him gently on the shoulder.
‘Pal… relax. Our table’s ready. Time to get out of here.’
To my immense relief, the bouncer is gesturing for us to go inside. It takes us considerable time to get across the bar as Ray and Gabi seem to know everyone there, so our progress across the room is halted by their stopping at every table for an elaborate routine of cheek-kissing, hand-pumping, back-clapping, hugging and fist-bumping.
‘Harry,’ I hiss to him as we follow on behind. ‘What was all that about?’ I jerk my head back in the direction of the bar entrance.
He frowns down at me, swaying slightly. ‘What was what about?’
I roll my eyes at him. ‘You, getting all freaked out by a ninety-year-old grandmother!’
Harry takes an unsteady step towards me, and puts both hands on my shoulders.
‘Babe, look, I’ve been here before… I know what Latin America is like. You can’t trust anyone. Anyone. Okay?’
I can feel my eyebrows rising further towards my hairline with every word.
‘I’m being serious… you have to trust me and take my lead out here, okay?’
‘Harry, we’re hardly in the Wild West, it’s—’
I don’t get the chance to finish, as Ray has turned back to us and is indicating for us to join them at a table next to the dance floor, already half filled with a group of their friends. I glance back at Harry as he follows Ray off to the bar, and decide to let it go for now. He’s had a few drinks, we’ve only just got here and everything is new and unfamiliar. It’s been a decade since he came here, so maybe culture shock is just hitting him harder than he expected it to. Even so, I can’t help feeling a growing sense of unease, a feeling that tentatively began while we were still at home and only increased with every irritable or distracted comment from Harry in the weeks leading up to our trip. And what if his overreaction now is somehow related to that weird phone call earlier? Shouldn’t Harry be feeling relaxed and excited that our great South American adventure has finally begun?
