by Zoë Folbigg
‘When did it start?’
‘I can’t remember exactly.’
‘Yes you CAN!’ she pleads.
Kate knows no one ever forgets the time of year when new sparks ignite; the way the air feels, the seasonal punctuations that witness a new flush of excitement. She herself remembers the balmy mountain heat of her summer fling with Hector Herrera. The sticky thunderstorm the night she turned to him in the bar and saw him kissing another girl. How it was Independence Day – mid September – she was due to go back to England in a few weeks, to start her graduate trainee job at Digby Global Investors in London, but she changed her flight so she could leave the very next day. The autumn chill in the air when she and George first started eating their sandwiches together on a bench in Elder Gardens. ‘You don’t forget those things,’ she adds with a measured whisper.
George removes his coat in defeat.
‘Last summer. It was last summer.’
Kate looks at him with pure hatred.
‘Last summer?’ Every second Kate thinks it can’t get any worse, it does. She’d at least hoped it was this spring, around the time the text came in as she stood in the kitchen at the exact same spot.
‘After we got back from France. She joined badminton. Said it was a shame we missed their cheese and wine party – it was a shame I had missed their cheese and wine party.’
‘Bitch. She went after you.’
‘One thing led to another. It just went from there. It didn’t mean anything.’
Kate’s blotchy face crumples as she imagines George and Antonia entwined. She takes a big sip of tea to give herself a momentary shield.
‘I’ll end it tonight, Kate. I promise. I don’t love her. I want to be here, I do not want to leave this house…’
Kate studies George’s small eyes, not knowing whether to believe him.
‘Not even for Barrie Manor and all Antonia’s millions?’
‘What are you talking about? You and the kids are my world. They’re so dysfunctional! It was just a bit of fun – call it a mid-life crisis or whatnot, I’ve not been myself recently – but she told her bloody husband and then…’
‘Just a bit of fun? You’d ruin your family and hurt me like this – make me think I was going mad or being paranoid – for just a bit of fun?’
George looks flustered, and ever-so-slightly annoyed.
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant I don’t love her, Kate…’
Kate shakes her head in her hands, angry that she’s meant to feel relieved about this; disappointed in herself that she does.
‘But she went and bloody told Archie – and he saw his way out. He invited me for a drink at the Red Hart, was giving me advice on how to handle her, as if she was one of his vintage cars, wishing me the best of luck – it’s a nightmare, Kate…’
‘Oh boo-fucking-hoo, George,’ Kate wobbles between two octaves, her volume rising.
‘I’ve been trying to get out of it since. I’m so bloody sorry. I was trying to be discreet.’
George doesn’t look all that sorry to Kate. She wonders if he’s just sorry he was caught.
‘Discreet? Discreet?’ Kate slams her empty mug onto the kitchen worktop. ‘Cosy drinks with her husband in the Red Hart? Civilised lunches with Antonia and Amber in London? Shagging for hours up The Shard? Who else knows? I bet the whole village knows! All those bitches at the WI must have been laughing at me behind my back.’
Kate pulls at her low ponytail in despair and looks at the mug on the cluttered island. She wants to pick it up again. This time she wants to throw it at George’s lying face, but knows it will be her cleaning up the tea stains and shattered ceramics, so she holds back.
George puts his scarf back on and winds it around his neck, trying desperately to save his family from unravelling in front of him.
‘I’ll go there now. I’ll end it, I’ll speak to Archie if he’s there too. You and the kids are my life, Kate,’ he says, his eyes piercing into her from where he stands at the kitchen door. Despite all the treachery, despite the fact that, while he protested that he didn’t love Antonia, he forgot to tell his wife he loved her, Kate can’t help feel the small relief of a hollow triumph as she watches George leave in panic.
At least I know. At least he’s choosing us.
Forty-Two
November 2018, Xalapa, Mexico
At his art desk at La Voz, Hector tries to sketch but is lost for inspiration. He’s meant to be drawing a cartoon for tomorrow’s paper but can’t think of anything funny to say about the twenty-five million pesos found in a suitcase on the governor’s private jet. He’s all out of ideas. He puts on his headphones to switch off from the background noise of fingers hammering on keyboards; telephones ringing; discussions between editors.
Play.
Depeche Mode ‘Poison Heart’ comes on shuffle. Hector flips to the back of his sketchbook, to the drawings of wolves baying for each other’s blood, drool hanging from their teeth. He starts to work on one while he waits for inspiration, adding detail to a snarling and sweaty canine nose.
I can‘t end it and walk away.
As he shades the darkness of a wet nostril, Hector feels a finger tapping the fingertip igniting a flame on his arm, and looks around suddenly. His art director Oscar is standing over him with a sympathetic face. Everyone’s been looking at Hector like this lately. Their heads slightly cocked to one side while they talk to him.
Hector slides his headphones down and around his neck.
‘How’s tomorrow coming along, Hector?’
‘Nearly there,’ he lies. ‘I’ll file it by 4 p.m.’
‘I’d like to see it first,’ Oscar says with a kindly smile, his white shirt tinged cream under the armpits.
‘Sure thing, jefe. Give me two hours.’ Hector looks up and Oscar is reassured by his wide brown eyes. He smiles and walks away down the corridor. Hector’s never failed to deliver.
Hector replaces his headphones and scrolls through his phone to find a different song. A beep rings in his ear. A quick pulse of hope. Hector thinks of Cecilie, then pushes the image of her loveheart-shaped face in a circle to the back of his mind.
Not now.
As desperate as he is to talk to her, to see her, to feel her, Hector can’t face Cecilie right now. How can he explain his anguish to her? How can he ask her to wait when he doesn’t know how long for? Until Pilar wakes up from her coma, his plan – his treacherous plan – has to be buried, and he doesn’t know how to say it. He can’t leave his wife dying in the hospital.
As much as he hopes the message is from Cecilie, he’s relieved to see it isn’t.
It’s from Abuelo, and a smile appears on the corner of Hector’s lips. He already knows how long old thumbs spent typing a simple twelve-character message.
She woke up.
*
Pilar’s weak smile strengthens when Hector walks into the room.
‘Hey,’ says a frail and husky voice.
‘Hey you. How are you feeling?’ Hector walks over to the bed and sits by her knees. He rubs Pilar’s shoulder tenderly and then withdraws. He thinks of how he found her covered in vomit, shit and semen, and walks around to the low wooden chair on the other side of the bed. His chair, although Pilar doesn’t know how well Hector knows the view from it. He sits down and studies Pilar’s pale and haughty face, as she tries not to make eye contact, guilt driving her to look at the plate on the little table in front of her. Propped up in a hospital gown, without a jot of make-up on, she looks like a fragile lamb. Black hair and white skin. Frail, meek and sheepish.
She nibbles on some corn from her plate.
‘Did you tell my parents?’
‘No.’
Hector doesn’t tell Pilar how close she came to dying. If she had died from choking on her own vomit that night, her parents wouldn’t have made it to Mexico in time anyway. There was a time for calling them, and it wasn’t then. They would have died with shame had they known what their respectable Cath
olic daughter was capable of. In the days after, as Pilar lay in a coma, Hector battled with his conscience, but knew she would rather Mari-Carmen and Leonel Cabrera didn’t know at all. It’s not like they missed Pilar’s calls, she’d been communicating less and less, since she was too ashamed to let them know she’d been fired.
‘How long have I been under? The doctor said it was, like, three weeks.’
‘Twenty-two days.’
Pilar looks shocked, as if she thought the doctors were playing a trick on her.
‘Your mother did call, once. Left a message on the apartment phone to see if you wanted to go home for Los Reyes. They said they’d pay for your flights. I didn’t call them back.’
Hector doesn’t say that Mari-Carmen hadn’t mentioned him in their family Christmas plan.
‘Well they don’t need to know now. The doctor said I’m going to be OK.’ Pilar’s cheeks are so sunken, her olive Moorish skin so pale, that her teeth look large and yellow.
Hector circles his mouth with his thumb and forefinger while he considers his words.
‘I just spoke to Dr Fuentes outside…’ his brow furrows and revolutionary eyes look troubled. ‘You ought to make a full recovery but your liver is weak. You’ve had hepatitis and jaundice, as well as the overdose… You have to change your life, you understand?’
‘He already spoke to me, Hector.’ Hector can hear the graveness in Pilar’s gravelly voice. ‘He said I was seconds from death, that I’m lucky not to have brain damage. He said your quick thinking saved me. You saved me.’
‘You’re my wife, Pilar, what else was I going to do?’
Pilar’s eyes well up and she looks at her plate on the thin table and nods. Hector sees shame in her face for the first time.
‘I guess I’m just not as strong as you, Hector. My privileged life made me soft, my indulgence made me weak.’
‘Don’t be silly, baby…’
‘It’s true. You could see what was happening and I couldn’t. I’m weak and I’m toxic.’
‘No you’re not. We can clean all this up. If I managed it, you can.’
‘I am toxic. You don’t know the depths of my dark thoughts. You have experienced so much more hardship than I have and you rose above every shit thing thrown your way. I am wretched, and I don’t deserve you. I’m weak.’
‘You’re strong enough, Pilar.’
‘You think I’m strong enough to change? I want to change.’
‘I’ll help you.’
Hector rubs his frail wife’s shoulder and smiles.
‘I want to go home.’
‘I’ll take you home, as soon as Dr Fuentes says you’re ready. I suspect you’ll need a few more days here, but I’ll get you out and I’ll get you any help you need to recover fully, to live clean.’
‘No, I want to go home home. To Spain. I can’t be here any more. I’m too ashamed.’
Hector looks at Pilar, tiny and remorseful, although she still can’t bring herself to say the word sorry to him.
‘Come with me, Hector. Come with me to Spain, we’ll start afresh.’
Forty-Three
January 2018, Day 1,661
‘Happy New Year!’ Cecilie giggled as she slumped onto the swing chair of her mother’s veranda. The tumble of snow from the sky had stopped and a chink in the clouds revealed a green beam arcing over the mountain behind the Wiig residence. The light of her mother’s en suite bathroom was suddenly switched off, making an illuminated rectangle disappear on the white lawn in front of her. Stars peeped through to brighten the inky sky, before retreating gallantly to let the aurora have her moment.
Cecilie narrowed her eyes and peered into her screen. Perhaps her vision was blurred but Hector didn’t look ready to party, his military cap was lowered and almost covered his eyes.
‘What does 2018 look like?’ Hector asked with a forced smile.
Cecilie turned her phone to face the dark snowscape of the front garden. Hector could just about make out the lights on the bridge; twinkles in the town beyond it on the other side of the harbour.
‘That’s what it looks like!’
‘Looks cold.’
‘I feel warm.’
Cecilie’s Aperol-infused cheeks were so warm she didn’t feel the bite of the Arctic blast as it whipped across the Barents Sea and onto the veranda, where it started to push her swing. She had spent the evening at a private party at the Iskrembar. Abdi took over the kitchen and made a big vat of lamb stew served with lentils and muufo flatbreads. He created a special coconut and cardamom ice cream that was so tasty Grethe insisted it become a regular on the Iskrembar offering. Espen was working, but Morten popped in to say hi, and as midnight struck, Grethe whispered her secret to Cecilie and pressed both their hands to her stomach.
Hector was silent. He didn’t seem chatty, or excited about another New Year’s Eve of hedonism ahead of him.
‘The lights are on show,’ Cecilie said with pride, as she turned her phone to the sky.
‘Oh, I can’t see them.’
Hector seemed polite and functional. His manner unusually brusque. There was no sign of his sparkle or his playful soul, which hadn’t ever had problems crossing two seas, a gulf and an ocean to get to her before.
‘Everything OK?’ Cecilie asked, as she curled her legs underneath her on the swing chair. The breeze made it rock gently. ‘Everything OK?’ was usually code for, ‘Are you alone?’ or, ‘Can we talk?’ but Hector didn’t have to answer her FaceTime call if he hadn’t wanted to talk. Cecilie started to feel frustrated.
‘Yeah sure. Pilar’s out getting her hair done for the party.’
Cecilie’s heart sank and she put one boot on the decking to stop the swinging motion, it was starting to make her feel nauseous.
‘Where’s the party at tonight?’
‘Elias’s house. It’s gonna be a big one.’
Saying it made Hector feel bad, so he looked out the window, away from the screen.
Double celebration.
Cecilie was thrown by the awkwardness and changed the subject.
‘Hey, I had some good news tonight. Grethe is pregnant!’
‘Wow,’ Hector replied flatly. ‘Great news.’
‘Not due until the summer, very early days, but gosh, I can’t believe I’m going to be an auntie. Well, of sorts…’
‘Congratulations.’ Hector removed his cap, ruffled his hair, then replaced it low, almost over his eyes again. ‘Hey, mira, I have news too.’
Cecilie suddenly sobered up. She pulled her knees in to her chest on the swing and pulled the phone closer in. Her vision didn’t seem blurred any more. She could see everything in Hector’s faraway face.
‘What is it, Hector? What’s wrong?’ She wished she could rise up out of the swing chair, float over the fjord, to half a world away so she could see him, touch his arm, look into his eyes.
‘I’m erm…’
A shipping container tooted its horn on the harbour, wishing revellers a happy new year while drowning out Hector’s big announcement.
Cecilie laughed at the timing of it. She knew something terrible was about to happen, that her world was about to turn upside-down. She almost appreciated the captain’s censorship.
‘What did you say?’
‘I’m erm… I’m getting married.’
What?
‘We decided yesterday and we saw the priest this morning. We’ve booked the church. For March.’
Double celebration.
By the light of the screen under the light of the aurora, Cecilie’s glassy green eyes filled and her pretty face crumpled.
She turned the phone up to the sky so she could stifle and silence her cry. Tears tumbled, but no sound came out of her open mouth. She took a deep breath and looked back to her phone. Hector’s warm brown skin, his sad cinnamon-flecked eyes, finally looking right back at her, lovingly, apologetically, pleadingly, cruelly.
And with that, Cecilie realised Hector didn’t have to see her cry, so she
hung up.
Forty-Four
December 2018, Suffolk, England
‘Urgh, Mum, I so don’t want to come in. I’m like, ten, surely you can leave me in the car?’
Kate turns off the engine of the S-Max and the windscreen wipers stop mid-swipe. Heavy drops pummel the glass and Kate’s vision becomes increasingly obscured.
‘Izzy love…’ Kate negotiates nervously. ‘It’s cold and it’s dark and it’s raining, and look, it’s packed in there.’ She gestures towards the tinsel and tension inside the bustling supermarket. Checkout queues trail towards the back half of the store. The customer service desk has a line of disgruntled click and collectors, clutching phones and order numbers, backing up to the flowers gondola and preventing people from getting to the fruit and veg. And Kate doesn’t even know that there’s a separate queue for the turkey collection point, lurking at the back of the store.
Kate looks at her daughter in the front seat, while the phat headphones Izzy got for her birthday almost drown her mother out.
‘Come on,’ Kate says, lifting one ear. ‘I’ll buy you one of those giant Florentines you like.’
Izzy smiles in defeat and unclicks her seat belt.
‘Okayyyy,’ she skulks and they open the car doors, ready to make a run for it.
Izzy’s never been that keen on spending time with her mother, she’s such a daddy’s girl. Even when she was a baby, she rarely sat on Kate’s lap; unlike Chloe or Jack, she didn’t turn to her for one of Mummy’s Magic Kisses if she fell and hurt her knee. And as her teenage years approach, Izzy seems increasingly repulsed by her mother. Often running to Daddy if Kate won’t let her play on the iPad, or complaining to George that Mum is such an ogre. But still, Kate plugs away. Trying to win Izzy over, with warmth, with patience, with Florentines. And Kate has never once implied that, actually, her father came very close to breaking her little heart recently. Kate’s done very well to bite her tongue, as much as it hurts.
They walk through the automatic doors and shuffle through the queue at customer services, Kate apologising left, right and centre.
