The Lemon Grove

by Helen Walsh

  A man swaggers towards her, moving his shoulders in time to the music. From the way he propels himself from exchange to exchange, kissing cheeks and shaking hands as he moves through the crowd, he’s some kind of local ‘face’. At a distance he’s lithe and impressive, like a European rock star. But the terrace floodlights do him no favours as he gets closer. His skin is leathery; all she can see is a set of brilliant white teeth, coming at her, and his weather-bleached hair. He stands a yard away and bows.

  ‘Oh welcome, mysterious lady.’

  He means no harm, yet he infuriates her. She ducks her head down and pushes right past him.

  Jenn is by no means the oldest in here and yet suddenly she feels horribly aware of her age. She hates the word – has mocked Emma, gently, for her over-use of it, but Jennifer, from Rochdale, is not cool. She feels it with every clumsy step as she goes to seek out her beau.

  He’s in the corner holding court with a gang of young Londoners. Their laughter is loud and self-possessed – and it grates on her. There was a time, not that long ago, when the only English accents they heard in Deià were their own. The thought saddens her as she stands off and watches him, a manly boy, laughing hard at some trenchant remark. She composes herself. She’s not nostalgic, just sad.

  Nathan still hasn’t seen her. She’s right behind him now, within touching distance, and she can barely contain her nervous excitement. The smell of weed is so strong in this corner of the terrace that she feels light-headed, just inhaling. She reaches forward, takes the cigarette from his fingers, and places it between her lips. He jerks round angrily, and his face flits from shock to fear to guilt with each panicky blink of his eyes. And then she sees why.

  She’s on the other side of the column, but she’s definitely with him. Her. The hippy girl from the beach cave; the one he flirted with at her market stall. Her slender fingers are drumming out a note of intimacy on the nape of his neck. Jenn’s eyes are transfixed by her cheap rings, two or three on each finger, rising and falling as she strums. Can’t think; can’t breathe. Nathan extricates himself and tries to look happy and surprised. His face radiates terror.

  ‘Jenn! What are you—’

  She smiles icily. Says nothing. She turns her eyes on the girl.

  Nathan steps back as though noticing her properly for the first time.

  ‘Have you met Monica? Here, let me get you a drink.’

  She feels she may collapse if she doesn’t go, now. She spins and pushes her way back through the crowded terrace. The teeth man tries to block her path and insinuate her into his dance. She drops her shoulder and barges him out of the way.

  ‘Prick!’ she spits.

  She clatters along the empty road with her arms folded, her unsteady footsteps ringing out. Her throat starts to prickle. She slows herself down, dips in her bag for her inhaler. Blasts. She knows he’s behind her. She can neither see him nor hear him, but she senses him keenly. She increases her pace. She’s right at the car, zapping the lock, when she hears the slap of his Converse trainers, sprinting to catch her. He stands flat against the driver’s door, his arms out either side. She points the key at his face.

  ‘Move!’

  She puts both hands on his upper arm and tries to shove him out of the way. He laughs, but he’s worried.

  ‘Jenn, just let us explain, yeah?’

  ‘No need.’

  She jabs the key at him again: ‘Tomorrow, you go home. When you get home, you break it up as gently and as nicely as you can with my daughter. You do not contact any of us. If you do … if you dare breathe a word to anyone, I swear—’

  ‘Your daughter?’ he sneers.

  A sharp intake of breath. A current running through her; mad, dangerous. She tries to contain it but, as she looks up, his face is all scorn. It’s hateful. She snaps her arm at him. The key scrapes his face; it makes the sound of a zip being pulled down, fast. His hand shoots up to the spot. A tear of blood rolls down between his fingers.

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  She puts her hand on top of his and tries to convey it with her eyes; she can’t bear that she’s hurt him.

  ‘Why are you here?’ His eyes are dancing with indignation. Jenn says nothing. He’s got her. He moves in for the kill. ‘Emma?’ He smirks and shakes his head. ‘Want to know why Emma stormed off?’

  ‘I can hazard a guess.’ She flicks her eyes over her shoulder, towards Jaume. ‘Actually, no. She’s already told me what happened …’

  ‘Has she? I bet she didn’t tell you that we made up, though, did she? That she was begging me to take her back to the villa and fuck her on the sun lounger, right under your window.’ Jenn lurches back like a woman slapped. There’s something in his eyes, the injured tone of voice, that tells her he’s not lying.

  ‘Tonight. It was going to be the night. After our fancy meal in the restaurant.’

  She takes off her cotton cardigan, folds it over and presses it against his cheek. She looks him directly in the eye.

  ‘So all those other times she’s been in your bed, does that count for nothing?’

  A brief flash of something in his eyes, but he recovers quickly.

  ‘My bed? Oh yeah, right! And how does that work, then, when she’s on crutches?’

  She drops her hand from his cheek so she can see his reaction.

  ‘I found her knickers in your bed.’

  His eyes dart all over her face. He licks his lips and goes on the front foot.

  ‘Oh yeah, really? And what else did you find while you were snooping around my room?’

  She reaches behind him for the door handle.

  ‘I wasn’t snooping …’

  ‘Sounds like it to me. I reckon you got a kick.’

  She goes to strike him again. Drops her head, ashamed. Nathan moves closer. He lowers his voice.

  ‘Look. I don’t know what you found or how they got there. Maybe from another family, hey?’

  ‘No.’ She gives him a weary smile. ‘They were Emma’s.’

  ‘Sounds like you want them to be Emma’s. You want an excuse.’

  ‘Your semen had barely dried on them, Nathan.’

  And this time he’s shocked. Again, the resigned, downwards smile. She touches him lightly. ‘I’m sorry I hurt your face. But please can you move now, I want to get in the car and go home.’

  He holds her look for a beat, then steps away from the door. She gets in. He flips round and grips the door so she can’t pull it shut.

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business, seeing as you’ve already reached your verdict on me …’ There’s a glisten of tears in the corner of his eyes. ‘But Emma was not, and has never been, in my bed. Not here, not back at home.’

  Jenn just sits there. She doesn’t believe a word of it. She is desperate to believe it. He swallows, pauses, and forces her to look him in the eye.

  ‘We made do. She shoved them under, after—’ he breaks off. ‘Just use your imagination, yeah?’

  She mulls this over. Is it any better, any easier that he hadn’t actually penetrated her? Jenn had been right the first time. Emma and Nathan had done everything but.

  ‘So why hold out, Nathan? If Emma wanted it so badly … why not give her what she wanted?’

  He looks at Jenn, wide-eyed.

  ‘Er … because she’s fifteen?’

  He phrases it as a question, just to make her sound stupid.

  ‘I see.’ She points back at the bar. ‘And what about her? Is she of age? Or yet more forbidden fruit?’

  Nathan shakes his head, slowly.

  ‘Can you stop this, Jenn.’

  ‘Believe me, I wish I could …’

  ‘I’m not like that.’

  ‘Looked very much to me as though you’re very much like that – the way she was pawing you, hands all over you.’

  ‘Monica! Seriously?’ He starts to chuckle as he digs down into his pocket. ‘Oh my God, Jenn.’

  He opens out his palm to reveal a small plastic bag, half-filled with
skunk.

  ‘This is what Monica is, to me.’ And the look he gives her is so hurt and childlike that she wants to hold him. ‘And that’s what I am to her. A punter. A sale.’

  He starts to walk away from the car, stops, and turns back round. He points through the door, right into Jenn’s face. If she didn’t believe him before, she believes him now.

  ‘You have no right,’ he says softly. ‘He gets to go to bed with you and wake up with you.’ His lip is trembling, now. ‘He sees every part of you. You’re his. Do you have any idea how that feels for me? Lying awake, listening? Imagining what you’re doing …’ He starts walking backwards up the road. ‘Leave my passport and my bag on the terrace. I’ll be gone by the time you wake up. You won’t see me or hear from me again.’

  Through the rear-view mirror she watches him walking back up the road, clutching his cheek. He walks right past Bar Luna, crosses over at the car park and dips down towards the stream. She can feel herself falling as she starts up the car.

  22

  It is past midnight when he returns. The moon has long since been consumed by the night and Jenn is huddled up on the steps, swaddled in a throw. The wind has an edge to it; it pulls her lungs tight. Every so often the gust drops to nothing, and through silence she hears Greg’s snoring up above.

  Nathan hasn’t seen her. She slips down the steps and weaves in and out of the shrubs so that she meets him from the side. The grass pokes through her sandals, rough and bone dry from the wind. She takes him by surprise; his reflexes are sluggish and she wonders if he’s stoned. Even in the dark she can see that his hair is flayed from the wind; she can smell the salt on his skin. Has he been sitting down on the beach all this time? Was he alone? She dare not think it. She doesn’t say a word. She takes him by the wrist, round the side of the house. She leads him across the rocky soil to the furthest corner of the grove. A tiny patch of flat ground is lit up by the pool lights on the other side of the villa. She lays her throw down; gestures for him to sit.

  She straddles him and kisses him, hard. He doesn’t resist. His dick is already pushing up through his jeans. She pops the buttons on his fly. She can see the pool light bouncing off his watch as he helps her spring himself free.

  She stands; with her back to the villa she peels off her clothes; everything. Her tits tighten. She spits on her hand, rubs between her legs and, very slowly, lowers herself onto him. Their faces are level; eyes wide open. He thinks it’s a mistake; he reaches round for his dick, pulls it out and guides it into her cunt. She pushes him out again, eyes never leaving his. She holds him down with one hand and manoeuvres her thighs up and down until he’s in, properly. She grips tight to his biceps to steady herself against the tearing and stabbing.

  ‘This is yours,’ she says. ‘Just you.’

  He nods; he seems to understand. His eyes don’t blink, they stay pinned to hers, rapt. His thumb finds her, just to make sure, and then his pupils slip away, off into some space up there beyond the mountains and the fast-moving clouds.

  She skins up: it’s been a long time, yet even in the rising wind the ritual is familiar to her. They lie back; scattered around her head are dozens of lemons, gone to seed. She can hear the crash of the ocean, the lowing of the wind, beginning to whip. Her breathing is shallow as she sucks on the joint; holds it down. Somewhere on the terrace, a deck chair is being blown around. A door is slamming; the pool’s lights flicker out.

  23

  A light is being snapped on, a shutter is banging open, banging shut. The wind is keening through the house. Gregory is pacing the room, cursing. Jenn lies very still, wincing from the ceiling light as she tries to piece it together. She has a flashback to knocking the bedside lamp over as she fumbled her way into bed, Gregory scolding her. It feels like it was only moments ago.

  Greg is talking to someone, but it is not her. She lifts her head from the pillow and sees Nathan standing in the doorway, clad in just his briefs. They both turn to her as she sits up in bed.

  ‘Jenn,’ Greg says to her, ‘we have a … an issue.’

  Her guts twist. He knows – he has found out. She has never seen Greg look so afraid, so serious. He moves to the foot of the bed. He is wearing his jeans and his coat. He sits down next to her, takes her hand. This is it.

  ‘It’s Emma. She’s missing.’

  A gust slams one of the shutters hard against the wall. It concertinas open, then doubles over on itself, the wood splitting at the hinges. She can hear the waves slamming the bay but it is nothing to the gale of queer relief that slams through her. Greg strides over and hooks the shutter to the wall. She reaches for her inhalers – Gregory has arranged them on her bedside table: the blue reliever closest to her pillow, and next to it, her pink preventer. She holds the cool spray deep down in her lungs, stringing out the ritual as she scopes Nathan’s face for clues. He looks straight at her but his eyes tell her nothing.

  ‘Missing. How do you mean, missing?’

  Greg stands at the window, chewing the tips of his knuckles as he watches the storm. The tops of pine trees are flailing against the blackness, like people fleeing disaster.

  ‘She’s not in her room, not in the garden. I’ve been up to the village. Her bed hasn’t been slept in.’

  Jenn’s default response at such times would typically be one of annoyance, directed at Greg, more than Emma. It was his over-protective, overly dramatic response to every little strop that, she felt, urged Emma on towards ever more elaborate revenge ruses. It became a challenge to her: one delayed but masterfully calculated game. She would always go walkabout after a spat, no matter how trivial – she’d have to draw blood. And on each of those occasions, she would stay out just long enough for even Jenn to begin to fear the worst so that, when she did finally present herself at the front door, eyes sullen and challenging, the agony of her parents and their ire at the ploy was swiftly subjugated to the joy of having her back again.

  But last night wasn’t like that. Last night had been no spat – no game She had told Emma, in so many words, that she was nobody’s daughter. Maybe, this time, Greg’s instincts are right: perhaps their daughter has gone. And the more she dwells on it, the harder it is to chase the feeling away. She can feel the dread gathering in the sump of her stomach, the way she feels a storm in her chest. Something has happened, and she knows she is to blame. She said those things to Emma and now she’s out there. Greg has no idea.

  He comes over, squeezes her hand, tries to be reassuring – but his face is pinched and grey with fear. He turns to Nathan.

  ‘I need you to talk me through it all again. Everything. From when you went for dinner in the village.’

  ‘Yeah, just like I told it.’ He lowers and raises his eyelids wearily. ‘Came back around eleven. Went straight to bed.’

  ‘And there was no … no argument? No misunderstanding or anything like that?’

  ‘No.’

  Jenn feels it rise in her throat. How can he look Greg in the eye and just plain lie like that? She tamps the anger down; forces Nathan to catch her eye. He holds her gaze with a steady, challenging look. ‘What?’ he is asking her – ‘What do you want me to say?’

  Greg isn’t buying it. He’s weighing him up – the way he might look at a student who claims his laptop’s been stolen the night before a deadline. Part of him wants to give the boy a chance, yet all his human experience persuades him otherwise. Nathan shifts his gaze onto Greg; stares right at him with clear, motionless eyes. With nothing to rely upon but his instincts, Greg turns his attention to Jenn. For a moment he just stands there, looking at her, as though he sees – he knows – everything. She over-concentrates on shaking her inhaler, theatrically blasting the gas down.

  ‘Did … did you go out last night? In the car?’ His tone isn’t accusatory but pleading. He’s trawling for clues, not a culprit. She is desperate to tell him – everything. She can’t bring herself to say a word. They stare at one another. ‘I thought I heard the car.’

  If she i
s to tell him, it must be now. She finds herself focusing on a coarse spiral of pure white hair poking out from his nose. She despises him for it; for not knowing it is there.

  ‘I went out for, you know,’ she slides a brief glance in Nathan’s direction, lowers her voice, ‘women’s necessities. I drove to the garage. Filled up the car while I was there.’ She gets out of bed; realises she is still in last night’s dress, crumpled and grass-stained. There isn’t so much as a questioning flicker from Greg.

  There’s a head rush and she grips the bedside table to steady herself. She wafts her free hand in front of her face to intimate that her inhalers have made her light-headed. ‘I stopped off for a sandwich on the way back.’ And she could end the charade here. Greg has drifted away. His mind is already elsewhere, pursuing another line of inquiry, but as though she’s working out the story as much for her own benefit as his, she carries on. ‘You remember that little place between Valldemossa and Banyalbufar? Paco’s?’

  ‘Paco’s.’ He smiles, momentarily released from the ordeal. She nods, as though tuning in to his nostalgia – they’d eaten there the winter they came. They’d driven straight from the airport in search of food; it was the only bar open and the kitchen had shut down for the evening. They were serving only bocadillos, but their twinkling host, Paco, was insistent that his English guests would have hot fare. He heated up estofado de Tramuntana – mountain stew, made from kid and rabbit; hand-cut fries for Emma. Greg talked about that meal for months. There is a picture on his desk of the six-year-old Emma sitting on the bar.

  He snaps back to the here and now.

  ‘Was she in her room when you came to bed?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I didn’t think to check.’

  ‘You must have noticed if her light was on?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I …’

  She’s floundering, and now Nathan is trying to catch her eye. See? You are no different from me.

  Greg rubs his face, slumps on the bed. Nathan is still hovering in the door. They both look at him.

  ‘I’ll go try phone her again,’ Nathan says.