Last Child

by Terry Tyler

  “Are you? Forgive me for saying so, Isabella, but you don’t seem very fine; you always seem so tense, so highly strung, and you’ve lost weight, haven’t you?”

  Now, that was going too far. How come it’s rude to remark that people have put on weight, but not that they’ve lost it? “I like to keep slim,” I said. “Never mind the emotional stuff, being slightly underweight is one of the best things you can do for your health.” I looked at her kind face, and I wanted to hurt her. I don’t know why. I wanted to make her feel bad for being fat.

  She coloured, slightly, but didn’t take the bait. “I can’t argue with that,” she said, and smiled her sweet smile, which annoyed me even more; she was supposed to be offended. “But I can tell you’re not eating properly; Pat tells me you just microwave ready meals, and throw them away, half-eaten—”

  What was this, a conspiracy? “What business is it of yours and Pat’s what I eat? Am I going to have to tell her not to tittle-tattle about me?”

  “It was only mentioned in passing, and only out of concern—”

  “Is this what you did with Dad?” I said. I kept my face neutral and carried on flicking through the report I’d been looking at before she barged in and interrupted me. “Did you poke your nose in and try to mother him? Is that why he stopped screwing you?”

  I didn’t look up. I just heard her walk out, slamming the front door behind her.

  I’d never mentioned that I knew about her and Dad, before. I can’t even remember how I’d found out; it was just one of those things that had passed into Lanchester family history.

  Of course I felt ghastly as soon as she was gone, and phoned her up the minute I knew she’d be home.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, “you’re under a hell of a lot of pressure, more than I think you realise. I’d rather you hit out at me than someone who won’t understand why you’re doing it.”

  Which meant that everyone had been complaining about me more than usual. I knew I got ratty with people, mostly because I was so tired all the time, I think.

  A couple of days after the run-in with Hannah, I found myself staring into space in the middle of a meeting; Ruth’s words just sounded like noise. That was the day my navy suit trousers actually started to slide down over my hips because there wasn’t enough of me to keep them up. Jane came into my office, shut the door and told me that if I didn’t book myself a holiday she was going to ring up the funny farm and get some men in white overalls to inject me with something to make me sleep for a week.

  “Get yourself away somewhere!” she said. “You need blue skies and beaches, big nutritious meals and even bigger ridiculous cocktails.”

  “That sounds wonderful, yes,” I said, “but it’s a bit sad, isn’t it? Skinny pale single woman going on holiday on her own. Sitting on the beach with a big hat, sunglasses and a book, trying to look as if I don’t mind being by myself. And what would I do with myself in the evenings? Read more books? Chat up waiters?”

  Jane thought for a moment. “We could go together.”

  I laughed. “I don’t think so! Who’d run the show?”

  “If you’re away, I won’t have so much to do anyway.” She smiled. “Will can take charge, it’ll do him some good, get him to wake up a bit. Susan can keep on top of the admin stuff. We’ll only be a phone call away. Come on, let’s do it—let’s go and have a girly holiday, it’ll be fun!”

  So that was how I ended up going away for a fortnight in a Spanish resort, and that was how I met my husband.

  ***

  We stayed at the Hotel Feria in Calella de Palafrugell on the Costa Brava. I’d never heard of it, but I was adamant we didn’t go to anything approaching a rowdy 18-30 type set-up, and Jane said she knew just the place. She was steering me towards it, and not very subtly, either; after we’d spent an afternoon with the brochures she finally admitted why she was keen to go there.

  It was a man, of course.

  Some Spanish guy called Dante, who owned a bar there. They’d had ‘more than just a holiday romance’ the summer before, she said; they e-mailed often, sent photographs, and she’d been over again when she took a week off in November; didn’t I remember?

  “No,” I said, “and aren’t we supposed to be best friends? Why the hell haven’t you mentioned this Dante before?”

  “Because I met him just after Jaz died,” she said, gently. “And then—well, you know. People make jokes about silly, lonely English women getting their hearts broken by Spanish waiters, don’t they? I didn’t want to start raving about him in case it came to nothing. We still e-mail, but I’m always aware that the love of his life could walk into the bar any night, and I’ll be forgotten.”

  I knew the real reason she hadn’t told me. Our friendship was born of our mutual lack of success with men. Now, she’d skipped over to the other side. I was jealous, but intrigued. “Haven’t you thought about moving out there, to be with him?”

  She grinned. “He hasn’t asked me to. But maybe he will after this trip, eh?”

  Dante’s bar was called after his father, Ferdinand, which was also my mother’s maiden name. If I was the sort of idiot who believes in that kind of rubbish, I’d have thought it was a sign.

  On a Monday morning just three weeks later, in the middle of May, I sat not at my desk giving myself eyestrain over little rows of figures, but lounging on a balcony, looking out at the boats on the sparkling blue water, the tension floating from my knotted temples as the delicate breeze lifted my hair from my shoulders. Yes, my laptop was sitting there in my room, but I was in no mind to check my e-mails, not for a few days, anyway. Jane told me on the plane that she’d instructed Will to give me at least three days' complete rest, unless there was a real emergency.

  I assumed we’d be sharing a room and had looked forward to late night, wine-fuelled chats, but Jane booked separate ones; of course, she was hoping to need privacy. We arrived late on Saturday, which was when everything caught up with me; after a light dinner and just one glass of wine, I flopped into bed and slept for ten hours.

  We spent Sunday enjoying the small, sheltered beach with its fabulous views of the Med, the gentle wooded slopes and uneven rows of white buildings in the distance. Honestly, I felt so relieved, lying there under my huge umbrella and drinking iced tea, that I wore a constant smile; I kept feeling my mouth turning up at the corners. I might have been ill, and taking a rest cure.

  “I’m not surprised,” Jane said, when I expressed this. “You’ve been running yourself ragged for weeks.” As a redhead Jane was as susceptible to sunburn as I was, but slathered on the factor fifty sun cream and exposed her bikini-clad body to the rays. When she saw me with my wide-brimmed hat, sarong and black crop top, she laughed. “Honey, get yourself some of that vitamin D! Come on, don’t you want to go back with a tan?” She persuaded me into a bikini, though I felt self-conscious; Jane was curvaceous, veering on chubby, the sun bringing out cute freckles on her face and shoulders, whereas I was just skinny. I hoped we didn’t look weird together. I insisted on being careful that first day, exposing my skin only when I went down to the sea.

  In the evening, of course, we went to Ferdinand’s. Jane tried not to be silly with excitement but I encouraged her to be so, and we giggled like teenagers going off to meet two boys for the first time. It was fun, except for the fact that I was about to play gooseberry, a role I remembered well from my girlhood. I needn’t have worried. Dante was delighted to see Jane but too busy to do much more than sit down with us a few times to renew their acquaintance. I wished I smoked as an excuse to go outside and leave them to it; instead, I went to the loo a lot. He promised that the next night he would be free, with plenty of staff working, and would take the evening off to spend with us. Oh dear, I thought. I assured Jane I was happy to go off on my own; I would eat a quiet dinner somewhere, with a book. But no, generous in their joy at seeing each other again, they wouldn’t hear of such a thing; Dante said he would bring a friend with him, to ‘make up the n
umbers’, if that would make me feel less awkward.

  “As long as it’s not some ghastly blind date,” I whispered to Jane, as soon as we were alone.

  I wondered what sort of friend Dante would rope into completing our foursome; probably some loser type who couldn’t get a girlfriend, I imagined, for Dante was no Mediterranean Lothario. His English was perfect, for a start, and he was shorter than me, quietly spoken, with heavy black glasses. A sweetie, though. Jane was five years younger than me, at just thirty, and Dante only twenty-four; I just hoped my ‘date’ would be out of short trousers.

  “You’ll get on well with Philip,” Dante said, whipping out his phone to show me photos of the two of them together, “He is very interested in business; he has a degree in business studies.” Dante told me more about him as he scrolled through the photos; I saw a fair, sensitive-looking man with very pale blue eyes, smiling in typical boys’ photos: laughing, clinking beers in the sunshine, holding up the spoils of a fishing trip.

  He had a lovely face. I felt a tingle of excitement rush through me.

  “You look as though you have a good time together!” I said, and all at once I was dying to meet this Philip Castillo who was twenty-six and who, I told myself, I mustn’t, I really mustn’t fancy.

  The trouble was, I already did. I couldn’t help it.

  The next day I gave myself a good talking-to approximately every ten minutes.

  He’s nine years younger than you.

  He’s probably got a girlfriend.

  He might not even come.

  He almost definitely won’t fancy you.

  I wouldn’t even get dolled up. It wasn’t a date, thank God; I wouldn’t know how to act on one. But I was pleased to see that the sun had already touched my cheeks, shoulders and bony chest. I wore a sleeveless, pale pink tube dress that reached to mid calf (and covered up my skinny legs), flat Grecian sandals, and my hair loose, with a gold chain around my neck. I didn’t want to look as if I’d tarted myself up for him. Jane said I looked fabulous, with all the generosity of a woman who knows she looks much better. Her fledgling suntan made her look slimmer, and she’d done something amazing with her hair, taming the bushy curls into smooth waves that cascaded over her shoulders; I felt colourless next to her.

  “Isn’t this fun?” she said, linking her arm through mine as we walked down to Ferdinand’s in the soft evening light. “I wonder what Phil will be like.”

  “Pissed off about having to entertain your dreary mate, I should think.”

  But he didn’t seem pissed off at all. He gave the impression he’d been looking forward to meeting me. And me? Well, to say that I fell for him at first sight would be stupid, because it can only ever be physical attraction when you don’t know someone, but my first thoughts on meeting Philip Castillo were oh, please don’t let me bore him. Please don’t let me be too old. Please don’t let him already have a girlfriend.

  For all my striding around at work and speaking my mind in the boardroom, I was lost. How I wished I had the gift of flirtatious banter, or even just knew how to relax, like Jane, but I had neither of those attributes. As we started on the wine and tapas, (and I could hardly eat a thing, though the wine went down a treat), I realised that I didn’t need them, because Philip was doing all the work for me, as if he knew how awkward I felt and wanted to put me at my ease.

  I was impressed and touched to find that not only had Dante bothered to tell him all about me and what I did, but that Philip had the good manners and savoir faire to remember little pieces of that information in the way of the consummate business networker. He had style.

  He told me that his mother was English and his father was Spanish, hence his surname; they lived on a barge in Rotterdam, where his mother, Val, taught English at a local college and his father, Luis, did repairs for the other barge residents (‘liggers’, he told me they were called). It sounded a wonderfully free and easy life, which perhaps explained why he was so relaxed, generally. We talked about his course at Manchester University, about how he’d tried out various careers since, but couldn’t find his niche. He’d run a shop, he’d tried estate agency and even stockbroking in the City, but nothing had clicked, which was why he was out there in Spain, kipping down on his pal Dante’s sofa and doing a little bar work here and there until he decided what the hell to do with his life.

  “I know it’s just waiting to be plucked out of the ether, the big thing that will be right for me,” he said, “I just don’t know what it is yet. But the more people I meet, the more experiences I have, the more likely I am to discover it.”

  We talked about books, films, art and music, or rather, he did; my lack of knowledge made me ashamed that I spent so little time appreciating the cultural side of life. I hadn’t read a book for a year; I was so tired and preoccupied these days that I scarcely managed a newspaper article. I opened up to him about the difficulty of running a huge property company on my own, and found that the emotions flowed from me. He listened. He’d only just met me, but he understood, and even seemed to care.

  Philip had the most engaging smile, a bit like my father’s. Although confident he was quietly so, at home with himself, just an ordinary guy, except that I found him far from ordinary. He wore a light blue granddad shirt, off-white jeans and deck shoes, so I was glad I’d heeded my mother’s words: if in doubt, underdress.

  An instance she’d related remained forever in my memory.

  “It was your dad’s birthday barbecue party,” she said, “and I spent hours getting glammed up like some Texas billionaire’s wife, thinking I’d be the belle of the ball. Everyone turned up in shorts and t-shirts. I spent the whole day feeling completely ridiculous.”

  I never told her, but I remembered that day. I was only seven, but I could remember her pulling at her big stupid hair-sprayed sausage curls in the mirror, trying to flatten them, mascara tears streaking grey trails down her thickly made-up cheeks. It was a good lesson to learn, and I was glad of my simple dress and flat sandals, especially when Phil suggested we leave the lovebirds alone, take a bottle of wine and walk along the moonlit beach together, so I could elaborate on my theories about the future of the construction industry. See, I told you I was no good at flirtatious conversation.

  We wandered along the water’s edge carrying our shoes, and the faint, warm, salty breeze danced around our faces, while the moonlight and the lights from the promenade lit up Philip Castillo’s pale hair and his white, even teeth as he talked. He handed me the bottle of wine to drink from and I raised it to my smiling lips, like happy, carefree people did, and he flung his arm around my shoulders, casually, as we dawdled along with all the time in the world. I laughed as he chased me back up the beach to where the sand was soft and dry, and I fell in love.

  I didn’t want to, I didn’t mean to, but my arms and my heart and a certain other part of my anatomy had been empty for so long that perhaps my brain knew I needed love, and allowed me to respond with no reservations, at last.

  We made love under the stars, though I feared that for Phil it wasn’t love, but a pleasant interlude. Even if I never have this again, I have this now, I thought, all the time I held his body against mine.

  I wept with the bliss of my skin touching his, I couldn’t help it. Phil knew, I know he did, without me saying; he stroked my hair and kissed my tears away.

  The sun was coming up by the time he suggested we went back to my hotel to sleep, but when we got there we didn’t sleep at all.

  For so many years I’d slept alone; not since Emil had I known the joy of seeing a loving man’s head on the pillow next to mine, though my affection for Emil had been nothing compared with the sudden, alarming and intense need I had for this wonderful man who had opened the windows and let the beauty of an early summer morning into my life.

  I called down for room service and we had coffee, fruit and croissants on the balcony in the peace and sunshine. The boats bobbed on the sparkling water, the smells of summer filled the air, and I was in
heaven. Then we went back to bed and made love all over again.

  Philip had to go; he’d promised a friend he would look after his bar for the afternoon, he said. I kissed him, and he promised to come back soon; I spent the rest of the day in a dream, not wanting to see Jane, not wanting to share the memory of the night for which I’d been waiting all my life. Instead, I walked on the beach and sat at the water’s edge, feeling his touch on my skin. I hadn’t showered, because that would have washed the smell of him away. As the sun moved lower in the sky I made my way back to the hotel and readied myself for his return. I sent Jane a text telling her not to worry, and just to enjoy her time with her man.

  Philip didn’t come back.

  I waited until nine o’clock then, beside myself with fear that he’d disappeared from my life forever, I went down to Ferdinand’s. I didn’t text Jane to ask if he was there; while I didn’t know, I could still hope.

  He wasn’t there, and Jane hadn’t seen him.

  “Do you not have his number?” she asked. Something as mundane as swapping telephone numbers hadn’t even occurred to me. She called Dante over, who said that Philip was probably still working, and not to worry.

  “The Mediterrano bar is one of the busiest, even more so than Ferdinand’s, alas,” he said, with a smile, “and I am sure that Philip would love nothing more than to be sitting here with you, but we all have a living to earn. He will be back, don’t worry.”

  That made me feel better.

  “We could go there,” Jane said, but I said no. I didn’t want to spoil the spell of the evening before by seeing him in a noisy place, talking to others, unable to talk to me.

  I drank wine, and told Jane a little, but found I couldn’t and didn’t want to express how I felt. Her schoolgirlish questions were irritating and completely irrelevant to the momentous change in my life.