This afternoon, however, Margaret Jensen had more pressing things on her mind.
She wiped her hands on her skirt. She could feel her pulse, fluid behind her clavicle.
The plan she would execute in just a few hours’ time was
years in the making. Eight, to be exact. Oh, she hadn’t settled on Mr V’s gruesome fate until more recently—not till she’d met the man who could make it happen—but a long time she had fantasised of a vengeance that fitted his cruelty exactly. His abhorrent scheme was one she had always been privy to. After all, she’d been one of the women who had allowed it to happen. She’d been stupid enough to believe his hollow pledge, his guarantees of money and security and a better future—in exchange for what? The most precious thing in the world. How could she even have considered it? But she’d been a different woman then, a wretched woman with no way out. As they all were.
Only she’d been more than he bargained for. She’d stood up to Mr V. She’d refused to give him what he wanted and he’d been forced to offer her a compromise, a position as his lowly housekeeper, guardian to his son, pushing her to the shadows and pretending she didn’t exist.
He should have known she wouldn’t stay there for ever.
Margaret exited the van der Meyde mansion and stood at the top of the stone steps that led down to the beach. She raised a hand against the glare of the sun and squinted down the pale sandy stretch. Mr V’s yacht was moored a hundred yards away, dark spots milling round it like ants, everybody desperate to get involved in the big man’s day. Adoring minions, nothing more, blinded by his riches and his power, with no idea what he was truly capable of.
It was ambitious. It was outrageous. It was wrong. But it was revenge, and revenge was usually all of those things.
As far as Margaret was concerned, there was only one person to protect.
‘Ralph!’ She called for the boy, knew he’d been playing on the beach all morning.
There was no reply, so she walked a little way down the steps and repeated his name. In moments she caught sight of the child’s small frame weaving haphazardly down the beach. As always, he brought a smile to her face and happiness to her heart. The years hadn’t all been in vain. He waved at her and she waved back.
‘What have you been up to?’ she asked as he ran, panting, up the steps, bursting with enthusiasm. He was carrying a red bucket and held it out for her to see. Inside was a hard, moving scrape of crabs’ legs, their burned-orange shells lifting and dragging over each other.
‘Shall we eat them?’ she asked.
Ralph nodded happily. ‘Where’s JB?’ he said excitedly. ‘I want to show JB!’
‘He’s not here, darling.’
He held out the crabs, his fingers small and sticky where they gripped the rim of the plastic lest anyone try to steal his loot. ‘Do you think Daddy will be pleased?’
Margaret swallowed. Ralph idolised Mr V, more so because he believed him to be his only living parent. It was what he had always been told.
If only
.
‘Very,’ she said. ‘Come inside, my love, we’ve got to get you ready. Look at your fingers!’ He had grubby sandmarks under his nails.
‘Can I go to the party?’ he begged as he trailed her inside. ‘JB said the whole world’s coming! That means I have to come!’
Briskly she shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. You heard what Mr V said.’
‘He said I’m not old enough.’
‘And he’s right.’
Ralph was disappointed. ‘Please?’ he tried again, hoping Miss Jensen might be a softer touch. Usually she let him have his way.
‘I’ve said no and that’s the end of it.’ Outside the boy’s bedroom, she turned and crouched down to his level.
‘Besides, we’ll have fun here, won’t we?’ She smiled. ‘Just you and me. Safe on the island. Because, my darling, who knows what could happen at sea?’
Book Two
2009-10
15
Lori
The taxi Lori took from Murcia San Javier airport was driven by a slight, middle-aged Spaniard with a hook nose and thick eyebrows. A rosary swung from his rear-view mirror and the upholstery smelled sweet, like lemons, or vanilla. Dusk had fallen. The gloomy shapes of mountains reared up on both sides as the car wound its way between, tyres throwing up dust.
They drove through a sharp bend, then another, and she realised they were climbing. Each twist required the car to slow completely, almost to a stop, and she knew the ascent must be steep. She wound the window down and breathed the unfamiliar air. Crickets gave off their whistling nighttime rhythm; the sea was close because she could smell its salt.
Lori had travelled an ocean. She had gone halfway across the world. And yet all she had thought about, incessantly and without reprieve, for the past forty-eight hours,
was the man who had saved her. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face and his hands; the leather band around his wrist; the twist, almost cruel, of his top lip. That day felt like a dream, impossible—something out of a novel about which she’d half laugh, half swoon. The way he’d arrived from nowhere, strange as though he’d come from another world, far far away, and how he had kissed her, the urgency in his eyes as he’d tried to resist … Details became her addiction: a specific suddenly surfacing, shedding new light.
Who was he? Why had he come?
And then the soft comfort of her recollection would be punctured by shame. Guilt at having denied Rico the lie that would set him free; the way she had run from her commitment to him, into the arms of another man. She felt as if she had leapt from an aeroplane into wide blue sky, off the top of a mountain, over the rim of the earth, abandoning every principle that had guided her through seventeen years. Never had she endured a sensation so strong it eclipsed every other, stifling her conscience, making her selfish, reminding her that those same principles by which she’d lived so strictly had never made her happy or fulfilled, and in that way drawing her, tempting her, towards a new horizon.
For what? A stranger she knew nothing of?
Lori ran the bud of her thumb over the ring Rico had given her the day they had planned to escape. It felt like centuries ago, another life, another her.
They passed a red and white church buried in the hillside, momentarily bathed in the gold of the headlamps before retreating to its shroud of darkness. By the side of the road was a box, lit by a lone, uncertainly flickering
candle: a shrine for a child, tipped from a crumbling precipice. The motion of the car, winding and turning, rising ever higher, began to lull Lori to sleep.
When she woke, the moon was high and bright in the sky. The car was rumbling along a bumpy track and Lori realised her head must have been resting against the window, for it was this motion that roused her. They were in the middle of nowhere. On either side what looked like orchards, clusters of trees whose fingers brushed questioningly as they passed. At the foot of the drive was the dark shape of her grandmother’s house, bordered by the shadowy outline of an olive grove, and a single lamp glowing in the porch.
She thanked the driver in Spanish and heaved her bag from the trunk. She watched as his red taillights disappeared, listening to the silence of a depth and quality entirely new to her.
There was no sound coming from inside and when Lori knocked it seemed to disturb the sleeping hills. She began to wonder if anyone was in when, eventually, a light came on. The slow patter of footsteps approached, accompanied by a wet snuffling.
When the door opened, something quick and small rushed out and Lori felt a damp nose attacking her legs.
‘Pepe!’ the old woman chided. ‘Come back here.
Tsk!
’
Lori petted the dog as it sniffed enthusiastically at her knees. Corazón watched her, the old woman’s ancient, pale face cracked by the lines of time and the losses she had known: she had dressed in black since her husband, Lori’s
abuelo
, passed fifteen years before. Even in the dim glow of the porch her eyes sparkled with happiness.
‘Loriana.
Querida
, my darling.’ She held her arms out, eyes brimming with emotion.
They embraced, Lori clinging lightly because holding Corazón was like grasping a bundle of sticks and she didn’t want to break them. She told her hello and her grandmother touched her face, her mass of wild hair, and kissed her forehead.
‘
Has crecido!
’ she marvelled, taking her hands. ‘You have grown.
Te heche de menos
, Loriana; I have missed you.’
Inside, Corazón boiled a pan of water and gave Lori a cup of sweet, hot liquid that smelled of herbs, and a bowl of vegetable stew that through her hunger and fatigue tasted incredible. Pepe the dog darted between her legs, begging for food and attention. They spoke about Lori’s journey and her memories of Spain (what Corazón called her ‘home country’), and why she had come back here. While Lori didn’t go into detail about her strained relationship with her father, she suspected Corazón knew more than she was letting on.
Despite being over ninety, her grandmother was shrewd. Lori didn’t know if it was the tea and the soup, or her exhaustion, or arriving in Spain after dark, but she soon found herself opening up, telling her about her stepsisters, the way she missed her mother, her hopes for the future—and finishing up with Rico, the killing and the arrest. She didn’t tell her about Diego Marquez, or the stranger with the accent, or what had happened afterwards … This was a secret she kept close, a fragile form she couldn’t yet be sure would survive definition.
The old woman listened patiently, nodding sagely once or twice.
‘I am glad you have come,’ Corazón said at last. ‘Important things will happen to you here. I feel it in my bones.’ She looked down at Pepe. ‘Don’t I,
chiquita
?’
Lori went to her room a little after midnight. It was humble, just a single bed made with floral linens, a small square closet and a wooden desk. On the desk was a lamp, the only source of light, which cast a pale yellow glow and was not enough to read by. At the head of the bed was a finely carved crucifix. The ceiling was sloped, with thick black beams running across it, and the floor was scratchy and cool beneath her feet. An old rug covered a portion of it.
She opened the window. The catch was stiff and she wondered how long it had been left unused. The air was balmy and still. Outside was what appeared to be a yard, though it was difficult to tell at this time of night. Mountains in the distance, darker than the air that held them, stared back, old as time. Lori drank the air in through her nose, fragrant and sweet.
Whenever she pictured the man in
Tres Hermanas
, she experienced a nagging throb deep inside, delicious and frightening. She had been feeling it on and off for hours, and it kept coming back, stopping her from sleeping and making it hard to eat. Was this what people called love? How could it be, if she didn’t even know his name?
The moon was full, a white outline in the inky sky. Lori leaned out, imagining that somewhere, wherever he was, by some trick, a hole in the sky, it would mean they were looking at each other.
The dragging sensation in her belly returned. She closed her eyes. Her heart quickened. She tried to picture him, not too hard else the image fell away like shattered glass. She
tried to hear him, but could not conjure his voice. What was happening to her? She felt possessed, under a spell, the back of her neck tingling in that spot where his fingertips had touched, the accuracy of it, the assurance, how he knew what she wanted and how he was going to give it to her.
A little while later, Lori shrugged on her white cotton nightdress and climbed into bed. The sheets were cold and slightly damp, but the heat from her skin soon warmed them up. She was tired past the point of being able to sleep, and lay with her eyes open, staring into the black. The pillows released an old, musty scent.
Ten minutes passed, then twenty. She could not sleep. Each time she came close, something woke her: that hot feeling, again and again, in her stomach. After another half-hour, she sat up and flicked the lamp on. The room was as it had been only now it seemed brighter, sharper, as if she was looking at it with renewed vision. She returned to darkness and lay back.
Faintly she became aware of the swell of her chest as she breathed. She realised her nipples were hard against the cotton of her nightdress. A jolt rushed through her and she raised a hand to touch herself. She ran her fingers across her skin, over the material at first and then underneath it, feeling the softness of her breast. The tingling sensation in her gut was stronger than ever, calling her down, telling her what she must do. Exploring the lines of her own body, she trailed her hand over her stomach and parted her legs, releasing a gasp as she met the surprise of her own wetness. She tilted her hips up, her breath lowering to something wilder as she ground against her own touch. Lifting her knees and spreading them, she stroked gently
till she discovered a spot so sensitive it whipped the air from her chest. She pictured him lowering his head, in the way she had heard men did, and as her fingers slipped in and around she imagined it was him, exploring her with his tongue, tasting her, wanting her, what would have happened had the kiss gone on, in that car, across the leather, against the windows. The fire was raging now, flames licking down her legs to the tips of her toes and racing to the blinking lights behind her shut-tight eyes till a great blinding wave crashed over her and every fibre in her body surged. She arched her back, meeting the point of ecstasy. Unable to move, she let the current pass through her, shaking, trembling, shivering.
Recovered, Lori dressed and padded down the dark corridor to the bathroom, where she vigorously washed her hands. She saw her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were darker than they’d ever been: total black, the most basic of colours.
Shame washed through her. What had she done? She had heard about people who touched themselves … It was wrong; it was dirty; it was sinful. She scrubbed at her fingers and splashed cold water on her face, before killing the light and returning to her bedroom.