‘Darling, Tara’s waiting for you to phone her. She sent me a text asking me to phone her urgently when we were in the restaurant, and when I did, she told me,’ Yvonne explained.
Anna looked at her blankly. ‘But he’s playing golf with James, and she’s having a facial.’
‘Ring Tara. Here, use my phone,’ Yvonne offered, pressing the call-back key and handing it to her.
Stunned, Anna took the phone and the foreign dial tone only rang for a moment before Tara answered.
‘Oh Mum, Mum,’ she wept.
‘Tara, where’s Dad? Is he in the hospital? Are they working on him?’ Anna asked frantically, terrified when she heard her daughter’s sobs.
‘No Mum, didn’t Yvonne tell you? He’s dead. He died on the golf course. It was too late to work on him when the ambulance came. It was instant, they said.’
‘Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!’ Anna muttered, the colour draining from her face. ‘I’ll get a flight over, even if I have to go via the UK.’
‘No Mum, don’t put yourself through that ordeal. James is really brilliant; he’s got everything under control. He’s got consular assistance and Aer Lingus have been terrific. Once they have the post mortem done we can leave with . . . with . . . Dad’s body,’ she managed, before breaking down again.
‘Oh but I want to be there, I want to see him. I want to be with him.’ Anna started to cry, great heartrending sobs that tore at her friends’ heartstrings until they too were all sobbing.
‘Please, Mum, please don’t come out. I’d be so worried about you coming over. Please be waiting for us when we get back. And besides you have to organize the funeral at your end. You need to go to Massey’s and let them take it from here,’ Tara urged. ‘And you’ve got to tell Chloe.’
‘Oh, heavens I forgot about Chloe, she’ll go to pieces,’ Anna wept. ‘But tell me, was Austen ill at all when you arrived? Was there any indication that he wasn’t feeling the best?’ Anna was desperate to know every detail.
‘No, not at all, we had a great time with him. And James said he was really enjoying his game. He thought he’d scored a birdy. He said to James that you’d be delighted. They were his . . . his last words.’ She broke into a fresh paroxysm of sobs.
‘Oh, Tara, Tara,’ Anna wept with her daughter, unable to grasp the enormity of what she was hearing. Was she in some sort of nightmare from which she would awake with a thumping heart but great relief that none of this was real?
‘Mum I have to go, James is calling me. I’ll ring you as soon as I have anything more to tell you,’ Tara said. ‘I love you Mum, and Dad loved you,’ she added before hanging up.
At these words, Anna bowed her head and sobbed uncontrollably, while Yvonne held her. Breda made the tea, and Mary, ever practical, looked up the undertaker’s number to have it ready for when Anna felt composed enough to make the call.
When Anna looked back on those unbearable days what struck her most was how bizarre it all seemed. Much of it was a blur with only flashes of coherent memory that stayed in her consciousness. Chloe’s screaming hysterics until Mary told her sternly that Austen wouldn’t approve of her losing it in such a fashion. Ringing family to tell them the inconceivable news but unable to bring herself to say ‘Austen’s dead.’ Saying instead that he’d ‘passed away’. It seemed somehow less harsh. Less final. Having to repeat the story time after time.
Her father’s distress. ‘But he’s a young man,’ he kept saying. ‘I can’t believe I’m still here and Austen isn’t. I wish with all my heart it was the other way around, pet.’
The calming, authoritative tones of the undertaker who took the whole burden of the arrangements off her shoulders in such a professional but most kind manner. The sense of utter disbelief and numbing shock at having to choose a coffin and select what clothing she wished for Austen to be waked in.
The hordes of people coming and going, offering stunned condolences, while her steadfast friends made copious pots of tea and platters of sandwiches, staying in the background but always there, like a safety net for her. Even the arrival of her husband’s body and the short service in the airport chapel seemed unreal. Tara and James’s stalwart comportment despite the traumatic few days they’d endured was a credit to them, she’d the wherewithal to say. But mostly she felt that she was an observer in someone else’s drama. It didn’t really have anything to do with her. Austen was out in Spain playing golf and would be home soon, filling the house with his welcome presence.
It was only when the undertakers brought Austen home, and placed his coffin in the candle-lit, flower-decorated study, looking out onto the back garden, his favourite room in the house, and when the lid was lifted, that reality hit Anna and she trembled with devastation and the most overwhelming, heart-piercing, gut-wrenching sense of loss and grief, to see her beloved husband lying as though he were asleep, with a hint of a smile playing around his lips, as though inviting her to share a private joke.
‘Austen,’ she said in disbelief. ‘Austen, why have you left me? How could you leave me all alone?’
She stayed beside his coffin all that night, alternately telling him of her love for him, and raging at what she perceived as his ultimate act of betrayal and abandonment. As she followed his coffin out of the house and watched the undertakers place it in the hearse to take it to chapel the following morning, Anna that knew her life had changed irrevocably. Changed to ‘before’ and ‘after’, and a future that stretched ahead of her, dark and forbidding. A very lonely vista that Anna did not know if she’d the strength to face.
PART FOUR
TIME TO SAY GOODBYE
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
January 2010
JUTTA / EDUARDO / ANNA / SALLY-ANN
‘Hello, Anna, how are you?’ Jutta asked when she saw the Irish woman’s name up on her phone. Her heart sank. It was hard to know what to say to a bereaved person if you didn’t know them very well. She tactfully refrained from wishing Anna a Happy New Year.
‘Hello Jutta, I’m putting one foot in front of the other, it’s all I can do,’ her client said flatly. ‘I had keyhole surgery to have my gall bladder removed in November so that’s helped a lot. Listen, I want you to put the penthouse up for sale for me, please. If you can get what we paid for it, I’ll take it. All the better of course if you can get more for it.’
‘I’m glad to hear you had the surgery but very sorry to hear you’re selling up,’ Jutta said, sympathetically. Although at one level she was excited to have a penthouse to sell, she was sorry to lose Anna as a client. The MacDonalds had always paid their fees on time and had left their penthouse in good condition when they went back home after a stay, unlike some clients who left their apartments like pigsties.
‘I couldn’t bear to set foot in it again, to be honest,’ Anna confessed sadly.
‘That’s understandable, I suppose,’ Jutta said slowly, ‘but don’t they say you shouldn’t make big decisions in the first year of bereavement?’
‘Perhaps, but I really won’t ever step inside that penthouse again. We never had luck from the day we bought it and I don’t want to be reminded that Austen spent his last days there without me. I don’t feel the same about the place. It’s hard enough every day here in the house.’
‘I understand,’ said Jutta sympathetically. ‘So presumably you want to sell it furnished? What about your personal effects?’
‘The girls said they’d go over in the spring for a couple of days to clear out, unless of course you get a quick sale,’ Anna said forlornly.
‘And of course you’ll have to come over when there is a sale agreed, whenever that may be. We use a notary in Marbella. You can always stay in a hotel there if you wish. We’ll sort all that when the time comes.’
‘OK. Just keep in touch and let me know what’s happening, will you?’
‘I will, of course, Anna. Take care,’ Jutta said kindly.
‘Thanks, Jutta. You were always very good to us.’
‘De nada, A
nna. Again my sympathies for your loss,’ she murmured before hanging up.
What a terrible tragedy had fallen upon the MacDonald family. In the blink of an eye life had changed for them. Life was so arbitrary, it could happen to anyone, at any time. There was her elderly father, rejuvenated after his hip replacement, and a man she would have presumed to be fitter and healthier than Oskar was under the clay!
She remembered the time she’d had dinner with Austen in the restaurant beside La Joya. He’d looked terrific for a man of his age. To tell the truth, she’d found him quite attractive and if he’d made a move on her she might have followed it up, because she’d been quite drunk, as she remembered. But Anna had been Austen’s love. That was quite obvious when he spoke about her, and about how much he was missing her and wishing she were there with him.
And now Anna was selling up. Five other Irish owners in La Joya were also selling, unable to afford their mortgages and the maintenance fees, as the EU was brought to its knees by recession.
If Felipe’s business wasn’t hanging by a thread, and they were still in boom times, she would have considered buying Anna’s penthouse herself. To own a property like that, in a complex such as La Joya would be all she could wish for, Jutta sighed. But now, she was the main breadwinner, and she’d a young child to think of, and au pair fees, and bills, bills, bills. Her chance to buy a home as opposed to renting one would probably never come about in Spain again, she thought glumly.
And it was all Felipe’s fault.
This thought, as it often did, came unbidden and she sighed deeply. Would her marriage end up as rock solid as Anna and Austen’s had been when she and Felipe were their age? Right now she didn’t think so. She was angry with her husband, extremely angry and frustrated. He’d dived headfirst, despite her urging caution, into borrowing to buy development land in Spain’s southeastern Costa Blanca. He’d wanted to get as many units per acre built as he could, while she’d advised to build fewer units but at a higher spec, and with bigger gardens, to ensue privacy. In some of the so-called villas that she’d seen, they had been so overlooked there was not one room in the house where there was privacy. The vista from the roof terraces filled her with horror. Every hill in the area covered in miles and miles of whitewashed, orange-roofed houses with their ubiquitous satellite dishes as far as the eye could see and not even a pine tree in sight to add a splash of colour. The sea, a faint blue blur on the horizon.
‘Felipe, why don’t you buy in unspoilt, uncrowded areas, and build classy apartments? They’ll sell as quick and for a higher price,’ she’d suggested. ‘These little egg boxes are hideous!’
‘Because I couldn’t care less about who buys; I want the money to pay off the loan as quickly as possible, so I can make a good profit and move on to the next deal,’ her husband shrugged. ‘Your business is different. You’re a service provider; you have to keep your clients sweet. I just buy, build and run. You’re a snob, Jutta. Why shouldn’t people be allowed to have their little bit of heaven in a Mediterranean country even if they’re halfway up a mountain and overlooked? Why should owning a place in Spain be the privilege of the wealthy types you service? The common man has his place in the world too,’ he’d sneered, eyes watery and red, speech slurred from the bottle of Rioja he’d drunk on his own one evening when she’d come in from work, tired and annoyed to find the apartment in a mess and a dirty nappy in a ball on the bathroom floor.
There was no point in arguing with Felipe when he was drinking, and when she’d pointed out the following morning that it wasn’t very responsible to be drinking and in charge of their baby on the au pair’s night off, he’d apologized.
The discussion on his property deals had resurfaced later in the week and she’d reiterated wearily, ‘Just finish one development, and have all your units sold before you start on another, so you won’t be compromised financially.’ But her husband hadn’t listened and now he was stuck with an apartment block and villas that he was struggling to sell. He was resentful of her thriving agency and even recently made a snide remark about her ‘making her money cleaning other people’s dirt’. That had stung and she was being very cool with him.
Just as well she was able to run a business properly, even if a portion of it was cleaning other people’s dirt, Jutta thought crossly while she sat in traffic, idling at traffic lights, on the outskirts of San Antonio del Mar. Her husband had some nerve. At least she was responsible in the way she ran her business and not feckless like he was. Felipe’s exuberant, go-for-it-no-matter-what approach that had so appealed to her when she’d first met him now exasperated her hugely. Her husband never considered the consequences of his ill-thought-out actions. She, on the other hand, was never happy to take on a new venture until she’d satisfied herself that it had a good chance of succeeding.
Her ‘cleaning’ business had expanded to selling property and it was taking off slowly but steadily. Considering how the Costa had been ravaged by the downturn, that was quite an achievement, Jutta thought proudly noticing how quiet it was in the town she was driving through. Normally the restaurants would be bustling with ex-pats spending the winter in Spain. At least four businesses along the strip had their shutters down and Se Vende signs up. In all her years in Spain she’d never seen the coast so deserted. At this time of the year her long-let rentals should be keeping her busy, but at least half remained empty this winter.
Pulling up into a guest parking space in La Joya, she noticed the cleaners carrying their mops and buckets to clean the reception area. They were cleaners, Jutta thought snootily, tempted to take a photo and send it to Felipe; it wasn’t as if she was doing the cleaning personally in her apartments. She employed a team of cleaners, so what was Felipe’s problem? Her increasing success and his continuing failure, she supposed. It wasn’t a contest between them. They were supposed to be a team.
Concentrate on what you have to do, she chided herself, sliding out of the car with her usual long-limbed elegance.
How timely to get Anna’s phone call. She was doing her weekly checks in the complex; she could begin taking photographs of the penthouse and do some of the inventory and get it typed up in the afternoon, and put a For Sale post online.
She’d start on the kitchen. That would take the longest. January was a good time to put a property on the market. Nordic buyers especially always started looking at sun destinations in the winter and liked to have their properties bought by the summer. She couldn’t imagine that the MacDonalds wouldn’t have all their taxes and utilities paid up. Most of their bills were paid by direct debit. She would organize the necessary checks and have everything just right, so there would be no delays. Jutta had always liked to have everything organized to the nth degree, and she was glad of that trait in her personality. Selling or buying a property in Spain could be very tricky if all the Ts weren’t crossed and all the Is dotted.
‘¿Qué tal?’ Jutta greeted Constanza who walked around the corner, heading towards her office.
‘Ah, Jutta! Hola! Asi asi.’ The older woman gave a resigned shrug and made a face.
‘Only so-so? Aww. Is El Presidente in situ, then?’ Jutta made a face.
‘El bastardo is, as we speak, sending an email to all the owners telling them that pets are definitely going to be allowed now that the trial period is over. He has his own dog up in his apartment. He’s rubbing my nose in it, Jutta, because I wouldn’t allow him to have that mongrel here before. It’s in the constitution of the complex. ‘No pets!’ she fumed.
‘Has he been here long?’
‘He and his wife and aunt have been here since the first of January. What a start to the New Year. I may go mad, completamente loco.’ She gave a wan smile, inserting her key in the door to her office. ‘He summoned me up to his apartment like the little dictator that he is to tell me this news.’
‘Not good,’ frowned Jutta. ‘Barking dogs cause rows. Dog shit causes rows. And animals in rental apartments are a big no-no! Landlords don’t like them.’
‘Also there is to be no topless bathing at the pool.’ Constanza flung her keys on her desk and poured water from a bottle into a kettle and switched it on. ‘Coffee?’
‘No gracias, Constanza, I’d love to but I have to go and take an itinerary. Anna MacDonald is selling her penthouse. I want to put it on the boards a.s.a.p.’
‘Ah no. How sad that Austen died. Shocking. Shocking.’ Constanza shook her head. The concierge had aged in the past few months, Jutta noted. The lines around her amber eyes and coral-slashed mouth had deepened and she had an air of despondency that was most unlike her.
‘Good luck with the topless rule: I can’t see anyone taking any notice of that. I suppose the old crones from Madrid who’ve been kicking up about the “nude” women are behind that.’
‘He probably is too. He’s a prissy little monja,’ Constanza spat.
‘He is a bit of a nun alright,’ Jutta laughed. ‘Well hopefully he’s not a pigeon fancier. The president in another complex I have apartments in decided out of the blue to install a pigeon loft, without a by-your-leave from anyone, and announced that the concierge would look after it. It caused uproar. Pigeon shit everywhere, and the noise! Power goes to their heads when they get elected—’
‘Especially the Spanish ones,’ Constanza said grimly. ‘But this too shall pass, as my mother used to say.’
‘Bear up, he’ll be gone back to Madrid soon.’
‘Next week. He’s here for another week.’
‘Ah Madre de Dios! Adiós, Constanza. If you hear on the grapevine of anyone who is looking for a penthouse to buy, let me know.’
‘Adiós, Jutta, I will.’ The concierge gave her a smile before turning her attention to a slew of emails from Pablo Moralez, incensed that El Presidente – or ‘ese idiota, De La Fuente’, as he generally labelled him – had given the gardeners instructions to remove a host of flowering shrubs in favour of hardy annuals in the borders.
Orange Blossom Days Page 31
