300 Days of Sun (28 page)

 

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A
nd so, I haven't. I have written, as he wanted me to, the story of how I met Nathan Emberlin in Faro in August 2014, and how he regained his real identity as Rafael Carlos de Almeida Vicente. It was intended to give hope to other families who have lost a child in similar circumstances. At the beginning I tried to be objective, to give the facts alone, but that proved impossible; I was personally involved. It was easy to understand why Esta Hartford wrote her story as a novel, giving herself the safety net of deniability and flexibility when the facts were too stark.

Because there are always more than just facts, even in a true story. It takes time to evaluate every aspect and angle. Some contradictions can be accepted as nothing more complicated than human nature. Perhaps that was why I allowed myself to fall in love with Nathan, and even to live with him for a while in Lisbon. I still care for him, want the best for him.

But I have doubts.

Parts of the story still make me uneasy. Every aspect Nathan and Carolina endorsed as an obvious truth, I made myself examine dispassionately. I had to be sure. Privately, I couldn't stop wondering whether Nathan really was the boy the Walde family so wanted him to be. When I pressed Eduardo to admit that he was claiming Nathan for pragmatic reasons, he had the papers from the clinic that did the DNA test all ready and waiting for me. But were they genuine? I didn't examine them closely. Even if I had, I reasoned, they would have stood up to scrutiny; Eduardo Walde could well have come to a lucrative arrangement with the clinic behind closed doors no matter what the scientific outcome. He and Nathan had clearly formed a bond, right from the start.

When Terry Jackson told me the boy was long dead, I assumed he would say anything to stop me in my tracks. But did it follow,
necessarily, that he was lying? Other children went missing around that time. Was it possible that another boy had been substituted between the kidnap of the Walde boy and the arrival of a child at the Malaga adoption agency? I had started to think that the mention of Horta das Rochas by the woman who used to work there in Nathan's story seemed a little too pat, that perhaps it was designed to mislead. So far Jackson has made no admission that would worsen his situation and it could be years until he can be questioned in court. The judicial process moves slowly in Portugal.

For months, I put my qualms aside and lived in the moment. Lisbon scintillated with light. Nathan and I were gifted the use of an apartment with views over the city's terra-­cotta roofs to the river. He began working with Eduardo at the family company, a precious apprentice who charmed wherever he went. We partied with a young rich crowd, but we were equally happy alone together. We laughed a lot. I wondered how faithful Nathan would be, but he proved both loving and loyal. Our miraculous summer extended into winter.

Spring had banished the sea mists by the time I finished my account of our mission. My uneasiness about its resolution remained, though. I had to decide how to live with that, while Nathan had become Rafa all too completely, with no further imperative to question the family's faith in him.

For both of us, in our different ways, my continuing concerns were a form of punishment.

“What about the photographs of my mother when she was young? I look like her,” he would say.

“We all see what we want to see.”

“But we don't have to think about this anymore.”

“Whoever you are, you are extraordinary,” I told him. “Nothing can change that.”

It made me desperately sad, knowing I was spoiling something so special. But, if I'm honest, our romance no longer had that spark ignited by the excitement of the quest. Perhaps I should have trusted more, accepted good fortune with grace, and conceded that passion, by its very nature, inevitably evolved into a quieter bond. He told me often that he loved me. But his gratitude became hard to bear.

I stayed until June. I will always think of Portugal, and the time we had together, as three hundred days of sun. I'm sure I will never meet anyone as captivating, generous, and courageous as Nathan Emberlin. But in the end, tempting as it was to ride the wave into a life of comfort and loving friendship, I could not find consolation in a beautiful lie.

T
HE END

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

T
he seeds of this novel were sown when I traveled to Faro with my daughter, Maddy, who had booked herself a two-­week Portuguese language course there. She was only seventeen at the time, and I felt I couldn't allow her to go alone, though she would have done so quite happily. While she went to class every morning, I wandered around the town with a street map, camera, and my notebook.

I am always inspired to write by the places I visit, and Faro was no exception. I had never been there before, though I knew the name from a hundred airport departure boards as the hub for tourists traveling to the Algarve coast. Maddy and I were charmed from the first evening by its mosaic pavements, by the laid-­back atmosphere in the August heat, by the sea and the glimpses of green salt marsh. In the afternoons, we found various ways to get to the beaches and islands­—­and the first time we went to Praia de Faro we found the sea curiously green and furry, though this is not the usual state of affairs.

It's important to say here that, for all the geographical
accuracy of my portrayal of Faro, the town in this book is an imaginary version: certain elements, like the great storm of February 1941 and the reopening of the Café Aliança during the local elections (held, in real life, in 2013), are superficially true, but the story in the book is entirely fictional, from the washed-­up whale and the attacks on the storks, to the salvage of wartime gold off the coast here. In particular, I cast no aspersions on any real local politicians or towns­people, or past events. The resort of Horta das Rochas is also completely fictitious, as are the riding stables close to Vale Navio, and though both may have obvious similarities with real-­life businesses on the Algarve, this is only in order to give my story the tang of authenticity.

It has been a long time coming, but a big thank you is due to the Portuguese Tourist Board in London. In June 1985, I was lucky enough to be invited on a press trip to Lisbon, Cascais, and Estoril. I was a rookie reporter on the
Kentish Times
, a weekly newspaper based in South London. The trip was an adventure that began with a gathering of six or seven strangers in the departure lounge at Heathrow airport; we were to be escorted by a Portuguese guide with a twinkly smile called João and, in return for writing an article extolling the beauty of this area of Portugal's Atlantic coast, we would be treated to a week of interesting trips and lovely meals.

We had a wonderful time. Everyone seemed to get along, and there was lots of laughter, including a running joke about sardines, though the details of that one have gotten away. We visited Setúbal, Óbidos, Belém, and Sintra, and the
pousadas
, medieval castles and convents that had been transformed into atmospheric hotels. We had dinner one evening at the Fortaleza do Guincho at Cascais, where we drank white port with ice as an aperitif. Unfortunately, when I got back to England and wrote my piece, only four sparse, dull paragraphs made it into print, with no photography. I was so embarrassed that I never went to the trip reunion in London a few months later, not daring to face João again. So if anyone at the Portuguese Tourist Board should find themselves reading this book, may I say
obrigado
and apologize for making you wait so long for some words that do Lisbon and Cascais justice.

D
uring the Second World War, Lisbon must have been a fascinating, yet frightening and desperate, place. As Hitler's armies of occupation swept across Europe, neutral (or supposedly neutral) Portugal became one of the continent's last escape routes; in an image that many will recall, Lisbon was the transit point for Bergman's Ilsa when she was waved off by Bogart's Rick in the classic movie
Casablanca
, made in 1942.

For many of the contemporary details of the era and historical context, I am especially indebted to the following books:

Flight into Portugal
by Ronald Bodley. Some details of the Bartons' journey from France­—­in particular the route they took and Ronald Bagshaw's wonderful sangfroid in obtaining documents allowing onward travel from Bayonne­—­are adapted from his account, published in 1941 when his observations would still have been fresh.

The Lisbon Route: Entry and Escape in Nazi Europe
by Ronald Weber. Not only is this book a treasure trove of fascinating insights, but it's a thrilling read. I have used the name Ronald in the novel in acknowledgment of the invaluable background details this and the previous book provided. It goes without saying that anyone who has been intrigued by the historical background to this story can do no better than read them.

Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939–1945
by Neill Lochery. Another highly recommended read, especially for the economic consequences of the war, explanations of the wolfram trade and the importance of “Nazi gold.”

Memo to a Firing Squad
by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan is an anti-­Nazi thriller set in wartime Lisbon and first published in 1943. I read it as part of my research after I had planned the story in detail and started writing this book. In one of those slightly eerie writers' coincidences that seem to occur almost too often to mention, I realized that Hazlitt Brennan had already coined the term “The Lisbon Pact” in relation to Nazi ambitions in Portugal. My first thought was that I should change my text
immediately, but in the end­—­because I enjoy eerie coincidences­—­I left it, with acknowledgment here that I am not the first to use it.

Simone de Beauvoir's autobiographical
Force of Circumstance
touches on a journey she made to Portugal in February 1945, giving a brief insight into how important black-­market supplies of food into France and Germany were. War brought hunger, as the French­—­and the British, the Dutch, and the Belgians­—­knew all too well. Any food was at a premium, but fruit and other produce from sunnier places, if available at all, was highly prized, expensive, and, of course, the supply was wide open to corruption. She recognized, from painful recent experience, that many of the poor in southern
Portugal were hungry, too.

As ever, I give heartfelt thanks to my wonderful editor,
Jennifer Barth, with whom I work so happily, both on the big picture and the small scale, and my equally fabulous literary agent, Stephanie Cabot, whose instincts and advice are second to none.

I'd also like to thank Will Roberts, Erika Storella, and Ellen Goodson at the Gernert Company in New York. Thank you to all involved at Harper­Collins, especially Amy Baker, Katherine Beitner, Jonathan Burnham, Cal Morgan, Kathryn Ratcliffe-­Lee, Mary Sasso, Jarrod Taylor, Sherry Wasserman, and Erin Wicks. A special thank you to Rebecca Eifion-­Jones for insisting, at a difficult time, on being the one to take the author photograph, and doing it superbly.

Finally, but most important, I couldn't have made it through my own difficult time during the writing of this book without the love and support of Rob, Maddy, Helen, Pam, Louise, Felicia, Tanya, Chris, Josine, Charlie, Camilla, Nilufer, Ivan, Sophie, Martin, Sara, Jeremy, Melanie, Liz, John, Tom, all my lovely blog and Facebook friends, and Claire, who found the words that helped so much.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deborah Lawrenson studied English at Cambridge University, and worked in London as a journalist. She is married with a daughter, and lives in Kent, England. Deborah's previous novels include
The Lantern
and
The Sea Garden
.

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The Lantern

The Sea Garden