The Lemon Grove (22 page)

There’s a head rush and she grips the bedside table to steady herself. She wafts her free hand in front of her face to intimate that her inhalers have made her light-headed. ‘I stopped off for a sandwich on the way back.’ And she could end the charade here. Greg has drifted away. His mind is already elsewhere, pursuing another line of inquiry, but as though she’s working out the story as much for her own benefit as his, she carries on. ‘You remember that little place between Valldemossa and Banyalbufar? Paco’s?’

‘Paco’s.’ He smiles, momentarily released from the ordeal. She nods, as though tuning in to his nostalgia – they’d eaten there the winter they came. They’d driven straight from the airport in search of food; it was the only bar open and the kitchen had shut down for the evening. They were serving only
bocadillos
, but their
twinkling host, Paco, was insistent that his English guests would have hot fare. He heated up
estofado de Tramuntana –
mountain stew, made from kid and rabbit; hand-cut fries for Emma. Greg talked about that meal for months. There is a picture on his desk of the six-year-old Emma sitting on the bar.

He snaps back to the here and now.

‘Was she in her room when you came to bed?’

‘I don’t think so. I didn’t think to check.’

‘You must have noticed if her light was on?’

‘I’m sorry, I …’

She’s floundering, and now Nathan is trying to catch her eye. See? You are no different from me.

Greg rubs his face, slumps on the bed. Nathan is still hovering in the door. They both look at him.

‘I’ll go try phone her again,’ Nathan says.

Greg discharges him with a nod. They hear the door of his room shut and Greg leans into her and says: ‘He’s lying about something.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Greg. Let’s not jump to any conclusions, hey?’

‘Something’s not right. You said it yourself, yesterday – you don’t trust him.’

She sidles towards the bathroom; hesitates, until she’s certain she’s dismissed. Greg is still hunched, his hands clasped between his legs.

‘That fucking kid knows something, I’m sure of it. What else could possibly explain his indifference?’

His expression wanes from a livid self-righteousness to resigned, humble melancholy. Jenn wants to go to him, to hold her husband, but she can smell herself: the sex-sweat, the residue of skunk on her fingertips. And thinking back to him, to them, only hours ago, another fire is lit. Her daughter is missing; she fears for her, now. Yet she has to know who raised the alarm. Did Nathan go to her room to make up with her? Did he go there for sex, and find her bed empty? She knows they are fucking – she knows it. But why does he still go to Emma? What does she give him that she does not?

She lets the door frame take her weight and strains for a casual timbre.

‘Was it you or Nathan who noticed she wasn’t in her room?’

He shrugs as though the question is as trivial as it is self-evident. ‘Greg?’

‘The big door downstairs … It was banging. It woke me up, so I went to have a look. It was wide open. I thought we might have been robbed at first, but everything seemed fine. On my way back up to bed I noticed Emma’s lamp was on.’ Jenn blanches. He
does
know! Why ask her if she’d noticed whether Emma’s light was on. Greg drones on; his voice flat. ‘I stuck my head
around the door expecting to find her reading …’ He forces a rueful smile. ‘I was going to tell her to get her beauty sleep, you know, but she wasn’t there and I assumed … I thought the worst. I went straight to
his
room expecting to find –’

She nods, giddy with relief.

He lowers his mouth to her ear. ‘I found this on her bed.’ He gets up, goes to his bedside drawer, takes out a book.
The Social Contract
. Jenn doesn’t get it, she nods for him to elucidate. ‘Look at the inscription.’ She opens it up.
To my Nate, here be the meaning of life! With love, Em
. Jenn shakes her head, still not getting it.

‘Look at the date.’

‘St Valentine’s Day.’

‘She gave this to him when they first met. Her broadside at the beach café the other day. They were her opinions, not his. Look underneath.’

She has to strain her eyes. It’s written in a spidery hand, in pencil.

Sorry. Don’t get it. Or you
.

He’d signed it. Yesterday’s date. Jenn feels faint.

‘Can you give me five minutes, Greg? I’ll get ready. We need to start searching for her – properly.’

They stare at each other until he nods, his face crumpling as he turns to the balcony, its window-panes rattling in the wind. Beyond, the soar of the sea.

She showers. The water is so cold that she lets out a long, hard stream of piss the moment it hits her skin. She gags at the stench that rises with the steam – must and iron and sex. She soaps herself quickly, recoiling at the stubble springing from her pubic mound. Her arse is hot and swollen to the touch. She rubs her eyes, tries to rub away the pall that fogs her thoughts. It’s all there – she can sense it; yet she cannot process. Emma has gone. Emma, the young radical who has gifted her gormless beau Rousseau for Valentine’s – and they’d thought
he
was pulling her strings. Would she harm herself, for Nathan? It depends what she knows. Would she do it to punish Jenn for the daughter outburst? No. Surely not. Jenn tilts her head right back and lets the jet spray her face, her scalp, her mind. No, Emma will be out there, within earshot, witnessing the drama unfold; revelling in the pandemonium that, even now, she is capable of instigating. Any minute now she is going to walk back through those doors and let Greg and Nathan know what a wicked stepmother she has.

As she steps out of the shower she spies a bright red bruise on her breast. A shudder of disgust shivers through her as she pictures him, only hours ago, sucking and biting, wild like a dog. She winces as she tugs her jeans up over her damp thighs, and the seam cuts into the puffy folds of her cunt. He’d done her
again after the smoke, down by the swimming pool, and then in the kitchen, bent over the table; again and again. She’d let him.

Starving, they raided the fridge and devoured the Serrano ham Greg had been keeping for their last day. They peeled it from the waxy paper, strip after strip, and dangled it into each other’s mouths. He’d dropped to his knees again and opened her up with his mouth. She clamps a hand to her face as the feel of his tongue, mechanical but efficient, shoots through her. She remembers buckling at the knees; the deckchair being blown across the terrace, the swimming-pool lights flickering off, then on, then off for good. She remembers the big front door slamming. Is it possible that Emma came in? Did she see their carnival?

She finds Greg downstairs. He is on the phone, trying to convince the local police to send out a search party for his little girl, but it’s futile, she can sense them mocking him.

‘
Only
five hours? Isn’t that enough? Have you seen the storm out there? I don’t care if this is
normal
for Deià – it is not normal for us! My daughter has a fractured ankle and she is out in that hurricane right now.’

She wonders whether the officer on the other end of the line will make the connection between the missing girl and the emotional waif they taxied home last night.
It is only a matter of time, now, until events of the last few hours catch up with Jenn. She should come clean before he finds her out. And thinking it out, imagining her confession playing out in front of her, makes her mind up for her. She’ll tell him. Now. As soon as he gets off the phone.

He sees her hovering in the doorway, gestures for her to sit down. He gives her an odd look before swivelling his body away from her. He sighs down the phone.

‘Yes, I know that, I know we’ve been through all of that, but what’s changed is that I have reason to believe my daughter poses a risk … to herself.’ She feels almost embarrassed for him, she can hear exactly how he must sound to them. Desperate, ridiculous – and every bit the blinkered, indulgent, tourist-father. ‘No! She is
not
being treated for’ – he juts out his jaw, frustrated – ‘the
melancholy
. But there have been some rather big changes in her life these last few weeks.’ He turns round to eye Jenn again – as though this is just as much for her as for the police. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you – and I would like you to alert the coast guard. Yes!
Guardia Costal!
’ She can hear the officer talking down the phone in English. He sounds perfectly bored. After the call has finished, Greg turns to her and says:

‘So. You heard it.’

‘What? What did I hear?’

He looks like he might cry. ‘It’s me, Jenn. I’ve made her … I should never have confided in her.’

She can’t go to him. She wants to hold him, but she can’t move. ‘What, Greg? What are you telling me?’

‘Well …’ He tries to regain control. He manages a smile and shakes his head. ‘I’ve lost my job, for one thing.’

Jenn finds herself laughing, out of relief. She stems it.

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry. I should have –’ He takes her hand between both of his and squeezes too hard. ‘The new Dean … Romantics aren’t for him, it seems. Aren’t for now, full stop. They’ve dropped my modules – not just mine, they’re making cuts right across the board …’ Jenn just stares at him. There’s shock. There’s anger. There’s an unpleasant stab of hatred. Greg is talking to the floor. ‘… pouring their funding into New Media.’

Jenn releases her hand.

‘Hang on, Greg, back up – you’re telling me they sacked you?’

He shakes his head. He looks more embarrassed than angry.

‘They demoted me and then they asked me to reapply for my newly demoted post.’

‘When? When did all this happen?’

He runs a finger down along the bridge of his nose.

‘I didn’t want it to spoil the holiday … spoil
this
.’

He is pointing at the fridge. A shiver of guilt – his precious mountain ham – instantly smothered by anger.

‘But … you said … I thought they were giving you more? More work, more PhD students to supervise?’ Her eyeballs burn into him. He drops his head. ‘Isn’t that what all those calls were about?’

He shakes his head, slowly. ‘No. Those calls were from Chris – telling me I’m a fool to myself. Begging me to reconsider.’

She nods; drives her teeth down onto her lower lip. She waits for Greg to look up.

‘And you told Emma? You told our fifteen-year-old daughter and not me?’

‘It wasn’t like that. Emma worked it out for herself. As we’re beginning to appreciate, she’s not quite the ingénue—’

‘She
is
, Greg! She’s a fucking child!’

She’s weeping, now. Greg crouches in front of her; gently pulls her hands away from her face.

‘Darling, listen. Emma put two and two together and, I don’t know … I told her. I’m sorry. I had to tell
someone
. Em made me promise not to tell you. She said you needed a proper holiday more than anyone.’

‘And this is why you think she’s out there, now? Because her father lost his job?’

‘Yes. I don’t know. I think it’s part of it, yes. I think there’s been a lot of things, building up. I think she quarrelled with Nathan last night and that was her tipping point – but, yes. Anyway. Now you know.’ He gets to his feet. He stands there, his eyes low, expecting some sort of rebuke, pathetically grateful when it doesn’t come. He kisses her on the forehead. Scoops up the car keys. ‘I know my daughter, and I have to go and find her.’ She nods, gets up. He places a hand on her arm, firmly but gently. ‘Please, can you wait here? I want one of us to be here. For when –’ He drops his head again. He opens the door and the wind roars in, knocking a glass over and sending it spinning along the table. It slows to a stop, right on the edge. Jenn watches her husband, old, defeated, as he heads out into the dark.

24

She finds him lying on his bed, reading a magazine. He’s plugged into his iPod through one earphone, the other dangling loose against his bare chest. There is something staged about the way he’s composed himself, half-clad, one leg trailing to the floor; yet he starts when she appears in the doorway. He gives her a panicked look and drops his magazine to the floor, casually kicking it under the bed.

She perches on the edge of the mattress with her back to him. For a while she says nothing. She tilts her face to the ceiling fan, closes her eyes and her mind cools for a minute, filled with nothing but the shallow hum of the blades. He shuffles up behind her, loops an arm around her waist and pulls her down onto his chest. His thumb digs under the hem of her bra and finds her
nipple. His touch rips through her, urgent and extreme, but now she fights it. She clamps his hand, pulls it off her. She hauls herself back up and spies the corner of the magazine. He darts a look at her; drops an eye to the floor. On impulse, she sticks the magazine with her big toe and slides it out from under the bed. It’s not even porn, it’s a lad’s mag – some barely legal airbrushed wench winking from the cover. Like a schoolteacher examining bad homework, she runs her eye over it, letting him register her contempt. Yet her revulsion is not reserved for the magazine. She’s appalled at the recognition. She can’t help but feel betrayed by him: she’s given him everything she has to give and here he is, carefree, reading the revelations of a soap star’s former boyfriend. She’s shocked and deflated and, not for the first time today, a worm of doubt eats into her. Who are you? she thinks. What are you, to me? And in a flash her betrayal turns to anger.

‘How can you just sit here!’ She snatches the earphone out. He cowers away from her. She jabs a finger at him. ‘Why aren’t you out there with Greg, looking for her?’

He composes himself, holds her with those huge, earnest eyes. ‘Come on, Jenn. You don’t believe she’s in danger any more than I do. She’ll be buzzing now the old man’s gone out there trying to rally a search party.’ Jenn checks the impulse to lash out at him but she lets
him know with her eyes: it is not okay; you do not speak about my husband that way. ‘You said so yourself, Jenn – she’s a bad drama queen.’