Sleeping Arrangements (14 page)

Amanda had been up for most of the night with Beatrice. As Hugh crept out of their bedroom that morning, the two of them were fast asleep on the bed, covered by a rumpled sheet.

He drank a quick cup of coffee in the kitchen, then headed out to the swimming pool. It was empty apart from Jenna and Octavia, paddling around together in the shallows.

'Morning, Mr Stratton,' said Jenna cheerfully. 'Is Beatrice OK?'

'Asleep,' said Hugh. 'So's Amanda.' He sat down on a sunbed and looked around.

'So—where is everyone?'

'All gone out,' said Jenna. 'Philip's taken Sam and Nat down to the coast.'

'Not Chloe?'

'No. She went for a walk.'

'Ah.' Hugh paused. He picked up one of Amanda's magazines, left over from the day before, and flicked through it, an intently interested expression on his face. He stopped at a feature on glass sculptures and read the first three lines. Then he put the magazine down. 'Did you see which way she went?' he asked casually.

''Fraid not,' said Jenna.

'Right.'

The sun seemed to grow hotter on Hugh's head. He sat quite still for a minute, paralysed by indecision. At last he looked up.

'I think I'll go and stock up on a few things,' he said. 'I'll take the car. You won't be needing it, will you?'

'God, no!' Jenna laughed. 'If we need a car, we'll make one. Right, Octavia?'

'Excellent.'

Hugh paused a few seconds later; then nodded at Jenna and walked as slowly as he could manage round the side of the car. As he opened the door he could hear Octavia shouting, 'Bye bye, Daddy! Bye bye!' Feeling slightly sick, he got in and started the engine.

When he reached the road he paused. A woman could only walk so fast. If she wasn't in one direction she had to be in the other. He glanced from one side to the other and decided that Chloe, being Chloe, would have taken the uphill road.

As he pulled out of the gates, a boy leading his goats up the hill yelled something at him.

Frowning slightly, Hugh checked all his dashboard lights. He looked in the rearview mirror: the boy was still yelling. Hugh shrugged, put down his foot and moved into third gear. The car roared up the hill and he leaned forward, searching the landscape, hunting for Chloe.

Chloe walked along the cobbled streets of San Luis, feeling as though she had entered an enchanted place. On either side of her the houses rose in stark whiteness, punctuated by tiled roofs and wrought-iron balconies, by heavy studded doors and colourful flowers in pots. The town was set almost vertically up the steep mountainside; as she walked up a silent road towards the main square, she felt her legs beginning to ache.

Chloe stopped for breath and glanced about her. The street was empty save for a thin dog sniffing at the pavement; the entire town could have been deserted for the number of people she had met. But she could hear them. Voices high above her called to each other, and in the distance she heard the faint thrum of music. Taking a deep breath, she pushed her hair back and continued walking up the cobbles, past closed door after closed door. As she turned the corner, two old women in floral dresses came by, and she smiled at them hesitantly. The music was growing louder now; she must be nearing whatever centre the place had.

A sound caught her attention and she turned; the next moment, with no warning, a motorbike was zooming up towards her. The two teenagers riding it called out something to her as they roared by. She had no hope of hearing it, let alone understanding it, but she nodded back and kept on walking, towards the music which was becoming louder with every step.

She cut through a tiny shaded passage, turned another corner—and stopped in amazement. She had entered the main square of the village. The bell tower she had seen from the mountainside towered over her on the opposite side; in the middle of the cobbles a large carved lion's head gushed water into an ornamental stone basin. Leading away from one side of the square was a street full of shops, displaying brightly painted plates, huge hams and fig trees in pots. She stood quite still, looking around, feeling slightly dizzy from her steep walk. Here is a town, she found herself thinking, ridiculously. Here is a church. Here's the steeple. And here are all the people.

From the arid silence of the mountainside, from the muted tranquillity of the cobbled village streets, she had entered an atmosphere of sound, of colour, of activity. She could smell garlic and roasting meat in the air; could hear raised voices calling to each other, resonating off the white walls. A group of old men was sitting at a table outside a small café; a woman holding a baby was shouting up to a man leaning over a balcony. As she stood, silently looking at the scene before her, two young men came to the lion's head fountain, stripped off their shirts and began to wash their faces and chests, talking to each other in short bursts of Spanish. One glanced up, saw Chloe watching him, and winked. She felt herself blushing, and quickly turned away, pretending to examine a richly painted tile set into the wall of a house.

There were only a few tourists wandering aimlessly about, identifiable by their pale skins and baseball caps and cameras. A red-haired man in trainers was looking at a notice on the door of the bell tower, guidebook in hand, while his wife stood slightly away, staring ahead with blank boredom. After a while the man turned away and began to walk towards Chloe, his nose still in his guidebook.

'The place to eat, apparently,' she heard him saying, 'is Escalona. About half an hour away. Or we could eat here . . .'

Go, Chloe thought silently. Please go.

'No, let's go,' said the wife eventually. 'We might as well.' Her gaze drifted uninterestedly around the square. 'There's nothing much here, anyway. Where's the car?'

As the British couple wandered out of the square, Chloe cautiously began to walk across the cobbles, making for the street with shops. She passed the stone fountain where the two men who had been washing were now sitting in the sun, letting the rays dry their bodies. The man who had winked at her smiled and called out something—probably some sexist remark which in Britain would have infuriated her. But in Spanish, everything sounded romantic; what they were saying could have been poetry. Without quite meaning to, she felt herself respond to the men's attention. Her pace slowed down a little; she felt her hips beginning to move more fluidly beneath her dress, in time to the music which she could still hear pulsing in the distance from some invisible source.

As she began to walk down the street with shops, a Spanish woman in a strapless dress walked past, holding a loaf of bread. Her skin was brown and smooth; the dark red of her dress clung to the curves of her body and her legs moved smartly over the cobbles. Chloe stared in fascination at the woman: at the poise of her head, the confident tilt of her chin. She looked, thought Chloe, as though she revelled in herself.

The woman disappeared into a shop whose window was full of brightly coloured dresses, ruffled skirts and decorative shoes. Chloe took a few curious steps towards the shop, then stopped with an inward plunge of dismay as she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass. She felt quite shocked at what she saw. A woman of indeterminate age, in a faded linen dress, her feet clad in utilitarian sandals. She was wearing clothes which represented quiet good taste in England. Natural fibres, muted colours, flowing lines. Here, in this setting, they looked like bits of old sacking.

Staring at herself, Chloe had a longing for colour. For brightness. For the poise and confidence and beauty which seemed to come naturally to Spanish women. She pushed open the door and blinked a few times, adjusting to the light. The woman in the red dress came sashaying towards Chloe and smiled. Chloe politely smiled back, and reached for a blue cotton dress hanging up nearby. She looked at it for a few seconds, then caught the woman's eye.

'Very nice,' she said.

'It's nice, yes.' The woman had a lilting voice with a very faint Spanish accent, like etching on glass. 'It's nice. But you would suit something . . . Hmmm, let me see.'

She surveyed Chloe silently for a moment and Chloe gazed back, feeling a slight tingle of anticipation. As a dressmaker, she had become used to scrutinizing others; to fitting others; to making others beautiful. These days, she rarely had time to study herself objectively, to see herself as others saw her.

'Something like this.' The woman walked over to the other side of the shop and pulled out a vivid scarlet dress. 'Or this.' She pulled out the same dress in black and held it up.

'Oh. Well . . . I don't know.' Chloe smiled, hiding her disappointment. She had hoped for some magical discovery, some passport to Mediterranean elegance. But these dresses were not her style at all. They were short and stretchy, with halter necks and low backs. 'Maybe they're a little young for me . . .'

'Young?' exclaimed the woman. 'You are young! How old are you, thirty?' Chloe laughed.

'A little older than that. More to the point, I'm a mother of a teenager.' The woman shook her head, smiling.

'You look like a girl. You want to dress like a grandmother before you have to?'

'I don't dress like a . . .' began Chloe, and tailed off as she glimpsed her reflection in the glass of the door; her shapeless, muted silhouette. The woman, as though sensing weakness, shook the hangers at her.

'Try them. Try the black.'

The fitting room was a tiny curtained cubicle with no mirror. Struggling into the stretchy, tight-fitting dress, Chloe felt a little hot and bothered. The day had been so perfect—why had she had to spoil it with a sortie into a second-rate clothes shop? She emerged from the cubicle with a frown and turned to face the woman.

'I really don't think . . .' she began, and stopped. The woman was holding up a full-length mirror and she was gazing at her own reflection.

'Looks good, huh?' said the woman with satisfaction. 'Looks sexy.'

Chloe stared at herself, her heart pumping, unable to speak. She was looking at a twenty-five-year-old. A twenty-five-year-old with long legs and a smooth golden back, wearing the simplest, sexiest dress she'd ever worn in her life. Instinctively she reached for her hair and lifted it up into a knot.

'Exactly.' The Spanish woman nodded in approval. 'We give you a flower for your hair.

And a shawl, maybe for the evening . . . Very chic.' She met Chloe's eyes in the mirror and smiled a woman-to-woman smile. 'You see . . . maybe you're not as old as you thought you were.'

Chloe smiled back silently. She felt a foolish lightness rising inside her; any minute now she would break into a giggle.

The woman reached into a basket for a silk lily, came forward and took Chloe's hair out of her hand, twisted it back and fastened it tightly. She gazed at Chloe's reflection thoughtfully, then reached towards a rack of sunglasses.

'This will complete the look.' She popped a pair of tortoise-shell sunglasses on Chloe's nose. 'So now you are a film star.'

Chloe stared at herself disbelievingly. A mysterious blond girl looked coolly back at her.

'This isn't me,' she said, beginning to laugh. 'This isn't me!'

'It's you,' said the Spanish woman. She smiled at Chloe and added, in an affected Americ-an accent, 'You'd better believe it, baby.'

Fifteen minutes; Chloe walked out of the shop wearing the clinging black dress, the sunglasses and a new pair of slender, strappy sandals. She had paid for the lot on a credit card, not even bothering to calculate how much she had spent. The woman had offered to parcel up her old clothes, but she had shaken her head and watched them disappear into the dustbin without a pang.

As she walked down the road she was suddenly aware of her body exposed to the sun, to the gaze of men all around her. Her walk became more provocative; she began to hum softly under her breath. She was playacting in part—but only in part. Another side of her was responding to the frustrations of the last few days; she genuinely hungered for the admiring looks of strange men. She walked past three young Spaniards sitting on a doorstep and experimentally shot them a sultry look. As they began to wolf-whistle, she felt a flash of triumph; a delight in herself which made her want to laugh. She felt younger than she had done for years, full of vitality. Alive with possibilities. At the back of her mind rang the thought that she had a husband and two sons—but distantly, as though from across a foggy sea. All that really mattered was this moment, now.

The music that she had been hearing ever since she arrived at the town square was getting louder and as she approached a restaurant on the corner, she realized that she had arrived at its source. She walked into the cool, dark, almost empty restaurant, and the pulsing rhythm infused her body with anticipation. She wanted to dance, or get drunk. She wanted to lose herself completely.

Outwardly calm, she took a seat at a heavy wooden table in the window and ordered a glass of red wine. The first sip was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. She ate an olive and closed her eyes, listening to the thrumming of guitars, the Spanish chatter from across the room. She sipped again at her wine, and again, letting the alcohol take hold of her, loosen her gently from her moorings. Sip after slow sip, drifting away and starting to float.

When she had almost finished the glass she opened her eyes and looked around for the barman to order another. And as she did so, she felt a white-hot dart of shock.

Sitting in the corner of the restaurant, watching her silently, was Hugh Stratton. He had a glass of brandy in front of him and a dish of olives and a newspaper, and his eyes were fixed on her.

Chloe's heart began to thud. She took another sip of wine, trying to keep calm, but her fingers were shaky around the glass, her lips trembling.

It's the surprise, she told herself. You just weren't expecting to see him. You weren't expecting to see anybody you knew.

But deep within her, something was beginning to murmur. Something was beginning to wake and stretch and look around. She darted another glance at him—and he was still looking at her, his dark eyes burning into hers as though he knew her mind. As though he knew everything. He took an unhurried sip of brandy and put his glass down, without moving his gaze. Chloe stared back, almost faint with fear, with longing.