by Lucy Foley
‘Can it be you,’ he says, moving towards me, ‘little Estrella?’ There are tears in his eyes. ‘I had assumed … I had thought, oh, a terrible thing—’ He speaks in Spanish, and the sound of his voice, unlike everything else about him, is exactly the same.
‘It is me.’ I wait for Aunt Aída to appear behind him, too, but the corridor remains empty.
‘Where—’
‘In Madrid,’ he says, quietly. ‘In the house. There was nothing I could do.’
‘Tino,’ I say, and can’t say any more – but it is enough. My uncle knew him, and loved him, and seeing the shock of it hit him now makes it all new. I loved my aunt. I have come ready with questions, with accusations, ready to lay my pain before him, but now I know that there was great pain for him, too.
He holds out his arms to me and I go toward him, this familiar stranger. And I breathe in the coffee-and-tobacco scent that is so like my father’s, and find that I am crying.
After what could be minutes or hours, he ushers me in, and as we move through the chalet I see that he has filled it with memories of Spain. On the walls are photographs, old posters advertising the toreadors. And there is a photograph …
I look away.
‘It is my favourite photograph of us,’ he says, behind me. He smiles. ‘Of course, sitting next to your father always made me appear fatter and balder than ever.’
I force myself to look back at it. The two men sitting together in our garden. My father, handsomer than even my memory of him. Both broadly smiling for the camera, small cups of coffee on the table between them, the overflowing ashtray suggesting a long afternoon spent in the same spot. I can almost taste that coffee: thick and black in the Turkish style. It was my father’s favourite way to drink it. I remember how he laughed at me when I tried it, and told him it tasted like boiled earth.
There are other photographs. The garden, with the orange blossom in bloom. My father must have been taking the picture, because the rest of us are all there. Tino is very young here. He isn’t looking at the camera. In the corner of the frame I see the thing that has no doubt caught his attention: a furred tail, disappearing out of sight.
Of all the faces in the image, only my uncle and I are left.
He is looking, with me.
‘I sent a telegram,’ I say. ‘I came to Madrid. We came—’ I pause, try to collect myself, ‘We had nowhere else to go, after Papa. The farmhouse wasn’t safe, any more. And I was a child …’
I realize that despite my efforts to remain in control, I am crying again. My life would have been different, I want to say, if you had been there. I know, of course, that this is a false way to think. It was my mistake alone. But I was so young.
‘Little Estrella,’ he says. ‘Pequeña Estrella.’ So strange to hear my name like this, with his use of it tethering the two back together somehow – me to her. ‘I’m so sorry. I had just lost Aída, our house. I knew a man – a Frenchman – who could get me out, but it had to be then. I had a chance, and I took it.’ He puts out his hands, palms facing up, in a gesture of contrition. ‘I can admit that I was afraid. I am not a brave man. I have never pretended to be anything other than a coward.’
‘So you left.’
‘Not before I had tried to make contact with you and your brother. I sent a telegram myself. I had a feeling that if you had survived I would hear of you. Or you would see Gregorio’s book, somehow, and know … and come to find me.’ He looks at me, hopefully. ‘And you did.’
I look at him, this elderly man who is in some ways exactly as I remember him – his short-sighted squint, the uniform of the badly buttoned cardigan with the poorly matched shirt. And yet so terribly changed, at the same time: hunched and crumpled by age, and perhaps a little by his guilt, too.
I realize that what anger I have for him is slipping from me, is being replaced by something like pity. It is a feeling almost like powerlessness, this loss. But it is also the setting down of a great burden.
If I had come here with him, I think, all those years ago … I can see how it would have been. He would have become a father to me. I would have been safe. And then, one day, I would have left him to start my new life. But always with the security of knowing that I could return whenever I needed to, that I was loved. The sort of security that would, by its very existence, have allowed me my independence. I would have had a different life. But this cannot matter now. I am still young, still almost whole.
EPILOGUE
I can see her, down on the sand. She has long dark hair, which she is towelling dry. It is a very dark colour – not a natural colour, I think. There is something about her that renders me transfixed. I cannot take my eyes from her. Why?
She seems to be alone. All around her there are groups of people – fishermen, elderly women talking, some local children playing with a cat. Yet she appears to be no part of any of these tribes: no recognition passes between her and any of them. She moves through them, alone. She is like a wisp of dark smoke among them: a wraith, a wanderer from another world.
I move a little closer. For some reason – I know it is madness – there are tears pricking behind my eyes. And when I lift my hand to catch them before they spill, I understand that it is too late; my cheeks are wet where they have already fallen. I had not noticed that happening. What is happening to me? Am I, finally, falling apart?
But no, I do not feel like I am coming undone. I feel the opposite, if anything: a concentration of feeling. It is something to do with her, this slender figure before me, this smoke-woman, this ghost.
It seems as though she is making straight for me. Certainly, she is moving in my direction. I realize now that I was wrong, before. She is not smoke: she is the flame: burning so brightly that I can hardly stand to look at her. But I must look at her – she has absolute command of my attention.
Why is no one else staring? I cannot be the only one beneath her power. And yet the hubbub of the beach goes on around me, loud, oblivious.
She is so near now. For the first time I see not a flame, nor a curl of smoke, but a human being. And she is …
But it can’t be.
She is smiling, though her eyes are watchful.
‘Hello, Hal,’ she says.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
So many people have contributed to the making of this book, and worked so tirelessly on it, that their names should, by rights, be on its cover. At least I have the opportunity to show my gratitude here. Thank you to:
Cath Summerhayes: agent extraordinaire. For being such fun to work with, and such brilliant counsel.
Dorian Karchmar, Annemarie Blumenhagen, Siobhan O’Neill, Ashley Fox, Jamie Carr: thank you for your passion, your diligence and your humour! I am so lucky to work with you all.
Kim Young: for seeing what this book could be, and for your incredible editorial investment in it.
Carina Guiterman: for taking the reins with such skill and dedication.
Jennifer Lambert: for loving this book!
The team at HarperCollins UK: Charlotte Brabbin, Ann Bissell, Sarah Benton, Heike Schüssler, Charlotte Dolan, Anne O’Brien and Rhian McKay.
The team at Little, Brown US: Zea Moscone, Reagan Arthur, Julianna Lee, Terry Adams and Jayne Yaffe Kemp.
The team at HarperCollins Canada: Kelsey Marshall and Natalie Meditsky.
David Mathieson, historian, author and Spanish Civil War expert: thank you for a phenomenally interesting tour of key sites in Madrid, and for your help with innumerable small and tricksy queries afterwards. (Readers interested in the Civil War, I urge you to visit his site: www.spanishsites.org, and book onto one of his tours, as well as reading his book: Frontline Madrid.)
Gregorio Salcedo, or ‘Goyo’, thank you for another fascinating tour, this one to the remains of the trenches at Jarama just outside Madrid (and in blistering 35 degree heat!). (Goyo owns a museum in nearby Morata de Tajuña: the Mesón El Cid Museo Guerra Civil, with an incredibly rare collection of artefacts from the war, collected by G
oyo himself. I highly recommend visiting, and leaving at least a couple of hours free to peruse.)
Laura MacDougall and Simon Chadwick: for all your linguistic help. Thank you for your speediness, patience and fluency.
To my cheerleaders within the industry who have done so much for a new author. Special mention to: Mark Lucas, Richard Charkin, Fiona Foley Croft, Daniela Schlingmann, Chloe Healy, Holly Martin, Paddy Reed, Blair Wood, Georgina Moore, Sherise Hobbs, Clare Foss, Emily Kitchin, Anna Hogarty, Holly McCulloch, Clare Gatzen, Patricia Nichol, Sarah Tyson, Anne Williams, Julie Cohen, Emylia Hall, Katherine Webb, Erika Robuck, Miranda Beverley-Whittmore, Jennifer Chiaverini, Lucinda Riley, Mary Simses, Kerri Clarke.
To all the friends who have lent their support and gone out on a limb for me. I appreciate all you have done for me in reading my books and recommending them. Special mention must go to Vee Dix, Heather Gibbons and Toby Stevens for being the best friends a girl could ask for.
To my family (and almost-family!): Foleys, Allens, Crofts, Colleys, Osterweis, Martins.
To Liz and Pete: for your encouragement … and guerrilla marketing in the North East!
To Robbie and Kate: for all your support, and for inspiring me constantly.
To my husband: still, always, my first reader. Thank you for making life such fun!
LONDON, 1986: Bequeathed an old portrait by her grandmother, Kate Darling begins to unpick the tapestry of her family’s secret history in a journey that takes her to Corsica, Paris and back to the heady days of the Roaring Twenties where it all began.
PARIS, 1939: Alice Eversley and Thomas Stafford meet once again in the City of Light. Tom is now a world-famous artist, Alice is much-changed too – bruised from the events of the last decade. Perhaps they can lose themselves in the love story that ignited by a moonlit lake all those years ago?
But sometimes there’s no place for happy endings – and there’s no hiding from the shadow of war …
‘A glamorous, seductively immersive read’ Sunday Times
‘Epic’ Woman and Home
‘Striking debut’ Grazia
Click here to buy now 978-0-00-757534-3
About the Author
Lucy Foley studied English Literature at Durham and UCL universities. She then worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry – during which time she also wrote her debut novel, The Book of Lost and Found. Lucy now writes full-time, and is busy travelling (for research, naturally!) and working on her next novel.
To find out more about Lucy and her writing, join her online.
/LucyFoleyAuthor
@lucyfoleytweets
@lucyfoleyauthor
Also by Lucy Foley
The Book of Lost and Found
About the Publisher
Australia
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United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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United States
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