‘Are you all right?’ Nico stood beside me. I glanced towards Pilar, who was looking into the depths of the swimming pool.
‘Yes, thanks, fine.’ I thought I sounded like one of those no-nonsense cinema teachers in British 1950s movies.
‘It still bothers you, the asthma?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It’s improved a lot since I moved back to Spain.’
His eyes flickered and I realised that he wouldn’t have known that I was living in Spain again.
‘Alicante,’ I told him, and launched into a not-very-coherent account of the job offer from Gabriella. ‘But look, you know, how are you?’ I asked. ‘How’s the song-writing? And the band? And . . . and everything?’
‘Why were you on my balcony?’ he asked.
I’d kind of hoped he wasn’t going to go there!
‘Look, Nico, please please forgive me for that. It was so stupid of me. I . . . well, I heard your . . . I heard people speaking Spanish, you see, and the name Nico, and I wondered . . . and I guess I just thought I’d check it out and see if it was you, that’s all. I didn’t really think it would be. I got a tremendous shock.’
‘But why didn’t you simply knock at the door?’
Why hadn’t I? I didn’t really know. The thing was, it seemed to me that when it came to my emotions and my relationships with men, I never really knew what I was doing.
‘You know, Nico, I’ve really no idea.’ I shrugged my shoulders.
He laughed suddenly, an infectious laugh. ‘You always were a bit crazy,
Isabella
.’
My mouth twitched. ‘Maybe.’ I took another slug of champagne.
‘It’s nice champagne,’ he protested. ‘You’re knocking it back.’
‘I’m still in shock,’ I said shortly.
‘Hey, come on, if anyone should be in shock it’s me. You were the trespasser, remember?’
I nodded and glanced towards Pilar again. She was talking to a couple I’d noticed earlier, an older man and a younger woman. He looked distinguished. She looked like me when I’m having a bad hair day. But she was smiling broadly at whatever he was saying. They were holding hands. I’m always very cynical about people who hold hands in public. I gave the relationship a few more weeks at the most.
‘So are you here to get married?’ I asked.
He looked at me appraisingly. ‘Always interested in the getting married,’ he said.
‘Oh, come on . . .’
‘You left me to get married to someone else,’ he reminded me tartly.
‘But I didn’t marry him.’
His damn eyes were smouldering yet again as he continued to look at me. An awkward silence was beginning to develop between us.
‘I heard,’ he told me eventually.
‘So, I’m footloose and fancy-free,’ I said. ‘And loving it.’
He frowned.
‘It’s an English expression,’ I told him. ‘It means . . . it means I don’t have a boyfriend.’
‘That must be difficult for you,’ he remarked. ‘You always had a boyfriend.’
‘That was then.’ Suddenly I recovered the composure that I’d gained over the past few years and that had deserted me since the previous day. ‘I’m a different person now. A better person.’
‘Yes?’
I nodded. ‘And, well, look . . . Nico . . .’ I floundered a little, then shrugged dismissively. ‘I’m truly sorry about how I treated you in Spain. I was a bitch to you and I have no excuse. I should have dealt with things properly and I didn’t. I probably wasn’t even a very nice person when we were going out either. You were lovely to me and I was a fool.’
‘Why didn’t you contact me?’ he asked.
It was my turn to frown.
‘When you left your boyfriend – in the lurch, no?’
I laughed suddenly. ‘In the church, actually.’
Nico smiled slightly. ‘Yes. Yes. But whenever. Wherever. You didn’t contact me, Isobel.’
‘I couldn’t see the point,’ I told him. ‘You were going out with Barbara. And there was still the thing about Carmen. But more importantly, I didn’t want to contact anyone. I needed to be on my own. Isobel without a boyfriend. Any boyfriend.’
He nodded in understanding. ‘But after a time . . . I thought you would contact me after a time.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why mess up our lives all over again just because I was a fool?’
‘Not a fool,’ he said. ‘Not really,
Isabella
.’
I wished he hadn’t called me Isabella. It made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and a frisson of forgotten desire run along my spine.
‘Oh, come on, Nico. I was more than a fool. I had no idea what I wanted. I messed things up. Much better that I didn’t call anyone. Besides . . .’ I glanced around for Pilar and spotted her again, this time talking to the novelist, chatting easily. She seemed to have the ability to get on with everyone. ‘You have someone else now.’
‘Why do you think that?’ he asked. ‘I am here and Pilar is here but that doesn’t mean we are together the way you think.’
I grinned at him. ‘Nico,
querido
, if you’re not with her the way I think, then you’re sadly out of touch.’
He laughed again and so did I, and suddenly I felt comfortable with him once more. Then the manager came over to us and introduced himself and said that he hoped we were enjoying the hotel and the facilities and we told him politely that we were; and when he left us the food and beverage manager took his place and said the same things and hoped we were enjoying the food and the type of menu that the hotel provided and I said that I was enjoying it far too much, and then, finally, Pilar came and joined us too.
Her dark eyes slid over me appraisingly as she told me that she was delighted to meet me. We talked of completely inconsequential things for about five minutes and then she rather pointedly looked at her watch and told Nico that the taxi was probably waiting and they’d better get going.
He looked at his watch too and agreed with her.
‘Perhaps I will see you when we get back, Isobel,’ he said.
‘I doubt it.’ I didn’t want to give Pilar any reason to doubt him either. ‘I’m sure I’ll just go to bed with my book.’
‘Oh dear.’ Pilar’s eyes danced with merriment. ‘That sounds a little dull.’
‘But safe,’ I commented drily and walked away from them.
So what do you do when you suddenly fall in love with a person all over again? And when that person is with someone else?
I sat on my balcony, my book unopened on the table, and thought about Nico Alvarez. How could I have dumped him for Tim? What had I been thinking? How could I have believed that I didn’t love him when now he occupied every single moment of my thoughts?
Maybe, I muttered to myself, maybe it was because he’d found someone new himself. I remembered the flash of jealousy that had spurted through me when I’d seen him in a restaurant with Barbara Lane. Maybe, even though I didn’t want Nico myself, I just didn’t want any other woman to have him either. God, but I was a mean-spirited bitch, I told myself. Horrible, just horrible.
I wrapped my arms around my body. I was lying when I said that I didn’t want Nico.
I did.
I’d wanted to contact him when I’d walked out on Tim. But I hadn’t trusted myself then. Later, when I’d kind of got it all together, I’d wanted to contact him again. But I’d told him the truth when I said I was madly guilty about the way I’d treated him; and I’d doubted whether I could take him being nasty and horrible to me in return. Or cool and distant, which I knew he did well.
And there was another reason. Nico had pointed it out himself earlier. I always had a boyfriend. And after the whole wedding thing, I didn’t want a boyfriend. I didn’t want any man in my life. Even Nico. Even though I loved him.
I took a sip from the glass of wine on the table beside me. It’s difficult when you’re describing your thoughts at a certain time because you’re describing them with hindsight and you can always justify your actions. Truth is, I was always hopeless at knowing when I was in love because I was in love with the whole idea of being in love! I read romantic novels. I cried at chick-flicks. I loved the soppy photos in
Hola!
of celebrity couples who were supposed to be in love even though I knew they’d probably split up a few weeks later. There was a core of me which was a romantic idiot and it was much, much better for me to ignore that side of me completely. That’s why I hadn’t bothered over the past few years. That’s why I hadn’t contacted Nico. I thought I was better off on my own rather than getting involved with someone all over again. And I was right. Only now, on one of the most romantic islands in the world, and having bumped into the man who had been the best lover in the world to me . . . I sighed deeply and closed my eyes.
I’d thought I’d grown to know myself. But I hadn’t. At all.
No sign of them at breakfast the following morning either, although I was down early. I smiled acknowledgement at the elderly lady and got trapped by the secretary on her own. I supposed that it was a sign of my horrible bitchy self that I let her rabbit on at me about something that was probably tremendously important to her while not listening to a word she said. I wondered whether Pilar was having beauty treatments ahead of the wedding. I wondered whether Nico was nervous about the whole thing. I wondered when it was going to be, because this was my last full day on the island; I was going home the following night.
What would happen, I asked myself, if I knocked on the door of Room 607 that evening and confessed to Nico that I was still in love with him? Would it matter to him? Did I matter to him? Would he leave Pilar for me? I shivered in the silk-warm air. I couldn’t mess up another wedding – one that wasn’t even my own! And the hotel had already had its wedding drama. I would do nothing. I would put Nico back into that part of my mind that was now locked away and I would pack my bags and go back to Alicante where, thanks to the four hundred kilometres, I wouldn’t see Nico again.
I spent the day on the beach, finishing my crime caper and thinking that at least I only had to worry about being in love and not dastardly plots against vulnerable girls by evil anti-heroes. I was a woman in command of her own future, and that was a good thing to be.
The shadow inched across the white sands, creeping over the edges of my lounger and finally leaving me in its shade. The other sun-worshippers left the beach and wandered up to the hotel pool, set higher in the grounds and the beneficiary of late-evening sunshine. I lay on my back and watched as tints of rose and orange streaked the sky.
‘
Isabella
.’
He sat on the edge of my lounger.
‘Nico.’
‘Can we talk?’
I remained lying on my back, staring up at the sky.
‘I don’t want to mess things up for you Nico,’ I said. ‘I don’t think there’s really anything for us to talk about. I am truly and deeply sorry about how things went between us.’
‘Me too,’ said Nico. ‘I should have gone after you.’
I pulled myself up so that I was sitting facing him. ‘No you shouldn’t.’
He made a face at me. ‘
Isabella querida
, I knew you were mad for this man, but it was all wrong for you. Everyone said so. Gabriella, Magdalena, Luis, Alejandro . . .’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ I interrupted him irritably. ‘Did half of Madrid spend its days talking about me?’
He grinned. ‘Only your friends.’
‘It’s in the past, Nico,’ I said tiredly. ‘It’s all over.’
‘Not for me,’ said Nico gently. ‘Never for me.’
‘D’you mean you’ve been pining away for me?’ I asked. ‘Because it doesn’t much look like it. And it’s been years!’
‘I wanted to come and get you,’ he said as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘And I would have done. But then I thought that it would be a mistake. You’d walked out on one man and I wasn’t sure that you would walk into the arms of another. Even me. Especially me.’ He looked at me ruefully. ‘So I decided to wait for you.’
‘A long wait,’ I remarked.
‘Yes. I thought you’d come to me,
Isabella
. I really did. And then I thought that I was a fool too, because you didn’t.’ He shrugged in his continental way. ‘And so . . . I gave up on you.’
There was a bit of me which thought, as we sat on the lounger together with the fiery sun finally spilling into the soft blue sea, that this was the kind of romantic setting I’d read about in my novels and seen in my movies. And that in romantic settings like this true love always wins out. But not this time. Not without hurting other people. And I wasn’t prepared to do that. I knew that I was a fool but I wasn’t really a bitch. Besides, he’d given up on me. He’d just said so.
‘Are you and Pilar getting married here?’ I repeated my question of the day before.
‘Why would you think that?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘Why else would you be here? She’s absolutely gorgeous, Nico. And it’s not an ordinary holiday, because you’re never on the beach, never in the restaurant . . . in your room obviously, or getting on with wedding details.’
‘Oh, Isobel.’ He smiled at me. ‘Still the same, even though you’re different.’
‘Shut up,’ I said peevishly.
‘Pilar and I are not going to be married,’ he told me.
I stared at him. ‘Not on my account,’ I said. ‘Please, Nico.’
‘If I loved Pilar and was going to marry her, then I wouldn’t abandon her for you or for anyone else,’ he told me sharply.
I blushed.
‘But I don’t love her and we’re not going to be married.’
Christ, I thought. Not another cancelled wedding. The hotel staff would do their combined nuts!
‘But you’re still here together,’ I commented.
‘We are both in this hotel. We have separate rooms.’
I didn’t know what to say about that.
‘We are colleagues,
querida
, not lovers.’
I looked at him, startled.
‘Yes. Colleagues,’ he repeated. ‘We are here for the conference on drugs to treat HIV. It’s being held in the Blue Skies complex.’