The Lemon Grove (20 page)

Emma drags herself to her feet; gets one crutch under her armpit.

‘Nice speech,
Jenn
. You must have been working on that for weeks …’

‘Years.’ She’s gone too far. She can’t stop swinging at her. Emma smiles. She is calm. There’s vehemence, but she’s measured.

‘I’m sorry it’s all such a big sacrifice for you, Jennifer. You’re so damn martyred, aren’t you? Having to provide
for me, having to pay my school fees. It must be some burden, all that …’ She makes a big thing of stooping for the other crutch. Shuffles a step closer to Jenn. ‘I know I’ve never, ever heard any of my friends’ mums harping on like you do. Never heard one of them moaning about all the sacrifices they make; all the hours they put into giving their kids this great, fantastic life.’

Jenn is possessed, now. She pokes her finger into Emma’s chest.

‘Your friends’ mothers don’t even work! They wouldn’t know sacrifice if it slapped them in the face!’

Emma sneers at her; looks her up and down.

‘That’s because it’s
not
sacrifice to them! They do it because they want to, and that’s the thing, Jenn. You do it because you have to and by God do you let me know it!’

She drags herself down the path, hesitating at the little broken gate. She rests a crutch against the gatepost and leans down to pull it open. Its bottom sticks in the grit. Mortally wounded, Jenn comes up behind her. The rasp of her breath is loud as she pulls Emma back by the shoulder.

‘Well maybe that’s because you’re not my kid!’

There’s the flicker of something in Emma’s eye. Victory. She smiles and hobbles off. Jenn just stands there,
numb. She is shivering. Silence, except for the wheeze of her lungs. She heads back inside the house. Slips on her sandals and scoops up her handbag, digging out her inhaler as she heads back out, gets into the car and fires up the engine.

20

She crawls along the narrow road to the village, eyes scanning right and left. The dark is near solid and with no moon to light the way, she sits with her face right up to the wheel. She snaps on the full beams; at any moment she expects to see his figure loom into view. She is desperate to see him; she doesn’t see him. She passes the police car, pulled in at the bus stop by La Residencia. The inside lights are on and their heads are bent over something. Porn, no doubt. She slows to 20 mph. She is over the limit; she’ll give them no excuse.

The restaurants are all closed but she can see Bar Luna’s tree lights twinkling in the night breeze. She slows down as she passes. Thinks she spots him leaning back against the terrace balcony, his arms stretched out along the banister. She winds her window down but does not
stop; laughter and the buzz of chatter. She is not ready for him yet. She carries on down the village road; closes her eyes as she passes Jaume. The road darkens as she passes the front and starts her climb back up, and out. Through the blackness she can just about trace the outline of the olive groves below, like a giant staircase racing down to the sea. The road is wide and straight for a while and she presses her foot down hard. The surge of speed soothes her, and she thinks back to Emma.

Words that needed to be said. Words that cannot be unsaid. It’s been hovering there, hovering between them for months, now. She could never bring herself to analyse the whys and hows, but she’s felt it coming. Emma’s questions, Emma’s fury. She knew, yet she had no inkling of the extent, the depth of feeling – and this time she can’t just brush it off as a teenage outburst. This felt rehearsed; as though it was coming from someone much more mature. Jenn had felt like a foolish girl. Emma sounded like a woman.

She forks right after the garage. For a few miles she is moving inland through the mountains and the darkness closes in on her like fog, but then the road bends back on itself and the sea slides into view. Shiny, a sheet of dark metal, lit up by a slither of moon; clouds blown fast across the sky. Maybe he was right after all. When they met, when they became official, it was Greg’s wish
that they kept things simple with Emma; until she was older. Yes, of course he’d tell her about her birth mum in good time, but for now there was no point confusing her. Jenn fought him on this: when she moved in with him, she dug out the crates of photographs and memories that Greg had consigned to the attic, found a picture of Emma’s mother and erected it on the fireplace. In her bedroom, she hung a picture of Emma as a newborn in her mother’s arms, taken only hours before she died. Gregory took down the pictures. He was furious. Let her call you Mum. We’ll tell her when she’s ready. She didn’t have it in her to hurt him, to say, ‘But
I’m
not ready.’

When Emma first said it, it made her feel trapped. Mamma. For the first time in her life she was rudely aware that she was accountable to someone other than herself – and it scared her. She couldn’t flee if things didn’t work out between her and Greg, and she knew that if she went through with this whole thing, if she walked down that aisle with him, she’d be pledging her vows to two people, not one.

The road twists through dense pine forests. The moon slips out of sight. A mountain hare flits across the road and she swerves to miss it. A steep incline; flashes of street-lights through the trees. She lets her foot off the accelerator, freewheels for a while. She recognises some
of the places on the road signs. Banyalbufar. There’s a bar there they visited one winter that Nathan would love; shabby, mainly locals, cheap and real. She wishes he were here right now, by her side, his hand on her lap. She wishes they had Deià to themselves. She wonders if she could bring him back here, just the two of them. Greg was always on at her to extend her horizons. Perhaps she will. Perhaps she’ll do just that.

The road dips down and away from the mountains. The petrol dial hits red. The flat black disc of sea is visible below as she rounds a bend and coasts down towards the village below. She’ll dip into the bar for one large brandy; then back again to face up to things. To find him, and sort this whole mess out.

She is woebegone. The bar is no longer there. In its place are the first two thirds of a villa. She stifles a resentful laugh, parks up, shuts down the engine, goes over to inspect. She can picture the place in her mind’s eye. Paco’s. Tatty. Lively. Full of smoke and laughter. Yes, Nathan would have loved it here. She crosses back to the car. A solitary old man gives her a look as he passes by. She goes to get back in the car, steadies herself on the door.

‘Excuse me?’

He stops. She tries a smile. He gives nothing back.

‘
Parle inglés?
’

A shrug. Maybe. What do you want?

‘The bar?’

His face splits and softens into a sad smile.

‘Ah, Paco’s place? You remember this?’

Jenn nods.

‘Yes. I remember Paco’s. I remember it good.’ He shrugs again. ‘Gone. No people. Everything change.’

He gives her the slightest nod of the head and shoulders and he’s on his way. Jenn gets in the car, drives through the little town as far as the cliff-side car park, turns herself round. Sets off to find petrol.

The night sky is perfectly black. The wind rocks the car. She drives on, thinking nothing, smoking the cigarettes that she bought from the garage, the first pack she’s bought in years – but then Deià curves into view below, the church lit up like a beacon in the starless night, and it all starts to seep through her again. The whole thing feels like a landslip; the more she digs, the more it submerges her. She could drive straight back to their villa and go straight to bed, and in the morning, the storm
will have worn itself out. Emma will be contrite; sullen, and a little embarrassed, but she’ll want to make things up with her. Greg will be Greg. All will be well again.

She passes Sa Pedrissa on her left, Deià now a minute or two away, and the bar where she thought she saw Nathan, and she finds herself overcome by the deepest conviction that, no, all will not be well again. Things won’t be the same from now on. Words were said, opinions expressed, that cannot be taken back.

Everything change
.

There’s no going back now. Emma said things. Jenn said worse, and it will take her years to earn back her favours, not that she won’t try her damnedest, but because those mother-daughter privileges were never hers to earn in the first place.

21

She steels herself. Heads up Bar Luna’s narrow steps. Nathan has moved deeper into the crowd. He’s leaning against one of the chunky wooden stanchions; smoking, carefree. She can just about make out a slice of his shoulder and brown forearm as he lifts the cigarette to his lips. The terrace is filled with locals of all ages: the teenage progeny of ex-pats; arty octogenarians; the flirty young sales assistant who sold her the frock the other day; and there are lots of svelte young women with beaded hair, all vying for the attention of a good-looking white guy with fat, fuzzy dreadlocks. Eyes shut, hands behind his back, he sways minimally to the dirty dub beat, thoroughly aware of his admirers, looking on.

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.