Finding You (5 page)
Authors: Giselle Green
Santos put in a word for us? I’d no idea.
‘How did they ...’
Eva puts a finger to her lips. ‘There’s not much his family can’t accomplish in this town, Julia. You don’t want to make enemies of them.’
‘No.’
‘Charlie’s never spoken to you about them?’ she looks slightly bemused. ‘They are powerful people. Have a finger in every pie, as you would say.’
Perhaps this—
favour
—is what Dona Ana was referring to earlier when she wondered
if I knew
? Is this why Charlie insisted that I must come, despite the fact that he himself has gotten out of it? I sigh, realising that I am clearly stuck here for now, in no position to appear ungrateful, and we both look towards the splendid three-tiered fountain in the middle of the garden which has captivated the children’s interest. Maite has gone to sit beside Hadyn at the water’s edge and she’s making sure he doesn’t actually go in, holding him back if he looks like doing so. I can understand why he might feel it’s inviting, it is turning out to be a warm evening.
‘You must try to relax,’ Eva instructs. ‘We came to celebrate, remember?’
‘It looks like there’s going to be some fun had here later on,’ I agree wistfully. Even as I speak, the fairy lights are going on all over the garden, casting a magical glow into the darkening evening. After a few more minutes, the fountain lights up and Hadyn is transfixed. I can see his little face from here, his eyes shining with the wonder of it all, and I think regretfully,
he’s having such a good time just now. I don’t have to go just yet.
‘You’ll be going back to England in a few days,’ Eva reminds me. ‘Then you won’t be able to spend any of your evenings out in the open air like this. Lourdes will have music playing in a short while—a lot of people will dance.’ She leans in, and I know she senses me wavering. ‘How long has it been since you have danced,
Julita
? I bet it has been a very long time, eh?’ She nudges me, grinning, and I smile back, remembering how I had once hoped we could be friends, sisters-in-law together, married to the two brothers.
‘I felt like dancing this morning,’ I tell her, feeling my body relax as the rhythmic strains of some traditional Spanish music reaches my ears. I can just about see the guitar players from here; young and vibrant, they are luring everyone into a party mood. ‘When your husband rang with the news that we were going home, we were on the beach. I wanted to dance right across the sand.’
‘For joy?’ she says, laughing.
‘For complete and utter joy.’
I feel her hand close over mine. ‘God has given him back to you now, Julia, and in time, he will grow into the man you and Charlie have always dreamed he would be. All children make mistakes. If they have good parents, they will be corrected. I know you two will make very good parents to him.’
‘Thank you,’ I tell her feelingly.
‘Who could doubt it?’ She makes a disparaging noise with her lips. ‘After all you suffered to get him back, who could doubt it?’
A waiter comes round with some prosecco now, and we both take a glass.
‘I never drink!’ I say, surprised at myself. ‘The taste is not as bad as I remember it. In fact, it’s quite good.’
Eva laughs. ‘It’s good wine. I am going to celebrate with you tonight, Julia. It is a day worth celebrating, no? If the men want to stay out fishing, then we may just have to take a taxi home together.’
As we talk, I keep my eye on the fountain where our two are still sitting. It’s water, and I have learned already that Hadyn is fascinated by water. He won’t move for a very long time now, I know. He’s got two of his little toy cars out and he’s wheeling them along the fountain rim. Maite has brought some food out on a paper plate. She’s talking to him, and some other children she knows have joined them. They all seem very relaxed and happy. Lots of people come and stop by me and Eva too, to congratulate me and tell me how well my son is looking. The whole town of Arenadeluna had regular prayer services for those first few months after he disappeared, one old lady tells me. I am very moved to hear this, that so many people were praying for our family and I never even knew it.
A red-faced clown comes out and starts blowing up some animal balloons now. The children all clamour to get one. Antonio, I notice, doesn’t seem to want his. He lets it drop onto the grass. He looks on at everything happening around him as if it were part of some mildly interesting drama he is not involved in and he sticks very close to his mother, I see, seldom leaving her side. Occasionally, he looks up and asks her something or makes some comment. When that happens, she always leaves off whoever she’s talking to and gives him priority of her attention, as if he were an important adult. They seem to actually converse.
When does that happen
? I wonder idly.
When does a toddler make the transition from pulling at your t-shirt to actually having a conversation with you?
When does that transformation happen? It must be one of those miracles of development, I tell myself, like the way they grow in the womb; these things just
happen.
After that, the hours pass very quickly. By the time the cake is brought out—a magnificent life-size replica of a child’s sit-in car, a red Ferrari—the party is going in full swing and there’s a roar of approval as people catch sight of it. While nobody is actually drunk, I get the impression there might be quite a few of us taking taxis home later on. Everyone gathers round a table to sing happy birthday. Hadyn is totally enchanted by the birthday cake, which comprises two of his favourite things in the world; a car and a cake. The candles fascinate him, too. He gets so excited, I wonder sadly if he has ever seen birthday candles before, if anyone even made a cake for him last year, when he was two. But I know he would not have had a cake on October twenty-fourth; that no one would have known what day it was, to wish him a happy birthday.
Half an hour later, Eva and I are sitting back on our bench opposite the fountain. Maite has begged us to let her take Hadyn into the food tent so they can each get a piece of the cake and I agreed to let her go, feeling very brave and adventurous.
‘This is the first time I have let him out of my sight
,
’ I admit to Eva. She smiles, knowing it is a big step for me. It is exciting. I keep my eyes peeled on the tent entrance, and at last they come out. Maite is holding two pieces of cake, but something is up. In the semi-darkness, she seems to me to be acting a little strained, confused. We can hear gasps coming from the tent behind us. Eva stands up abruptly, alert to that fact that something is up.
‘There is no problem with our two’ Eva says to me confidently. ‘We do not need to worry.’
But when I see Antonio’s
abuela
come marching out of the food tent a few moments later heading straight for us, Dona Ana’s face looks like thunder.
6 - Julia
It’s obvious straightaway there is a problem. I freeze, holding my plate on my lap as Dona Ana says to Eva, in Spanish, ‘Her son has destroyed the cake. Just come and see what he has done ...’
How could Hadyn have
destroyed
the cake? I feel my stomach constrict at her accusatory words. The cake was so big, so huge, how could he have even reached it, let alone done anything to destroy it?
She must be exaggerating
, my thoughts immediately marshal to defend him.
She is old and very strict and her own grandson clearly is not allowed to say boo to a goose;
Hadyn might have pulled a couple of the chocolate buttons off, I imagine. I get up, wobbly on my heels, and Eva and I are marched across the grass to see the
destruction
that has happened in the tent.
There are a lot of people already standing around looking at this destruction, making sympathetic noises. So many people in the way that I can’t see immediately what the damage is, but Dona Ana pushes us in a little closer so we can be in no doubt. Eva sees it first. I hear her intake of breath. See her eyes grow wide and horrified. She turns to me and doesn’t say a word, and I catch the end of the white tablecloth lying on the floor, and I already know what I am going to see.
When I edge in a little closer, my worst suspicions are confirmed. Hadyn has evidently pulled and pulled at the cloth until he’s brought the whole darn thing down. The beautiful cake is now lying in a heap of messy crumbs and bright red icing all over the floor. Guests from all over are coming in for a look and stepping delicately over it. Apart from the odd hushed exclamation of horror and dismay, there’s an almost eerie silence in the tent. Antonio has arrived now, and he’s got his little hand covering his mouth while his mother whispers frantically into his ear.
I feel like being sick. Hadyn has single-handedly destroyed their special cake. In the three minutes out of the entire evening when I did not have him under my direct scrutiny.
What a horrible thing to happen. An accident, of course, he never meant to destroy it, he was probably just impatient to eat some. Oh, God, why weren’t you here with me this evening, Charlie? And why did it have to be my son who did this? Our son.
Why couldn’t you just have been here?
‘The boy pulled it right off the table,’ a round little girl with a double chin is whispering.
‘It could have happened to anyone,’ I hear one of the men say. He’s looking under the table now to see if there’s anything technical that could have gone wrong. The table leg is awry, perhaps? ‘The weight of it was too much for the cake stand.’
‘I don’t think it was
on
a cake stand, was it?’ his wife comments. The young chef has been called forth from the kitchen now, to inspect the damage. His eyes nearly pop out of his head when he sees what’s happened to his creation. He looks around at the gathered party and you can almost see the tears gathering in his eyes,
so many hours of painstaking work
…
‘He pulled the cloth until it came right off the table,’ the fat girl says again until her mother pinches her arm and she’s bidden to be quiet.
‘The boy was away from his parents for so much time,’ I can hear Eva explaining faintly to anyone who will listen. ‘The woman who had him never taught him how to behave.’
‘It must have overbalanced,’ Lourdes is saying now. ‘It might have been too heavy. Forgive me. I’m only glad it did not fall on your son, Julia.’
As she brushes past, I feel her hand on my arm, a slight touch that is no doubt intended to be reassuring but which still feels somehow cold. I can’t answer her, but I’m grateful that she is willing to give the appearance of graciousness at least. And in that one, everlastingly long moment of shame while her mother Dona Ana is still looking daggers at me and the waiters have appeared with dustpans and brushes and the whole sorry mess is being cleared up, I am grateful that Lourdes isn’t publicly blaming Hadyn. Nor does she appear to be blaming me.
‘We will have another cake made for Antonio,’ she’s telling everyone. ‘Come on.’ She claps her hands. ‘Everyone outside; there are more treats outside. The clowns have arrived …’ To me, she says. ‘I am sorry. I think that Hadyn must be very tired. Perhaps you would like to go home now?’
‘I think that would be best.’ I agree.
‘Remember me to Charlie.’ Her green eyes, sad and strangely desperate, bore into mine at the door. ‘Tell him all the family send their love. If there is anything else you need, anything at all that we can do for you ...’ She sounds genuine in her intent. Maybe she just wants any excuse to keep in contact with us, though? It’s time she let go.
‘No thanks,’ I tell her stiffly. Then I remember that they have already done a lot. ‘But we are very grateful for the help your family have already given.’
She bows her head slightly, acknowledging this. ‘Tell Carlos ... I will be in touch.’ At this, Eva shoots me a small glance and I smile at Lourdes but I think:
like hell I will
. She doesn’t imagine, now he has his son back that he’d ever be interested in her again, does she?
Afterwards, in the car, Maite says sullenly, ‘I told Hadyn not to pull at the tablecloth, Mama.’
‘Shush, shush,’ Eva says, but Maite won’t be silenced.
‘If my cousin had done what I
told
him, he would not have ruined Antonio’s cake.’
‘He’s little, Maite. Accidents can happen to anyone,’ I tell her, and my voice is trembling. Accidents can and will and do happen to anyone.
I just wonder why so many of them have to happen to me?
7 - Julia
Is it because of the horrible incident with the cake yesterday evening that the awful recurring dream comes back to haunt me again? When I wake up in the early hours, it’s still with me. Everything is so clear in my mind it could be an actual memory, all the feelings it stirs up so clear and present and
real
that I have to sit up in bed beside Charlie just to reassure myself that it isn’t. It isn’t real. I haven’t done this horrible thing I keep dreaming about. I have no reason to keep feeling this way, the nightmare is over, it’s
over
, and yet ...
As I let the whole scene scroll through my mind again, hoping for some sign that something will have changed about it this time, that it’ll be different, the desperate sense of inevitability that envelops me every time—it’s here again. I pull my knees up to my chest and let my head sink into my hands. It all feels so true, even though I know it cannot be. When I close my eyes tight, I can see a beach scene in front of me: a wild, untamed beach in some way-out place surrounded by many jagged boulders which I somehow need to get over. During the last few minutes I spend clambering over those rocks, I already know I’ve lost Hadyn. The waves smacking against the bluffs might be smacking me full in the face because I can already feel he is gone.
I feel it.
I don’t have to go right up to the battered white door of that woman’s house and knock. I don’t have to go searching out the back, where her scrawny hens are pecking in the dirt, or peer inside the broken window at the front. I already know the score. I won’t be taking my son home. Deep in my heart, I know it, just the same as I once knew that if I searched for Hadyn long enough and hard enough, I would find him.
And I know that this time, it is all of my own doing.
In my dream, I am aware that, earlier that morning, while the sun was peeping over a new Spanish dawn, I delivered him back into the care of the very woman who’d kept him hidden away from me and his dad for over a year. And I also know that nobody is ever going to understand why. Not his father Charlie, who will never forgive me. Not our relatives or friends, nor the police. Nor all the hundreds of people who have come to hear our story through the newspapers and the media. I know that if I spend a lifetime trying to explain it to them, there is not one of them who will ever understand my reason. They will never know why.
But in my dream, I know why.
In my dream, I recall how he had given me a look earlier, my little lad, when I’d helped him out of his cot-bed, a look that nearly broke my heart. I recall how his hand had lingered just that brief moment about my neck as I’d set him down and it had made me think he
knew
. I’d wanted ... everything to be normal this last morning, and yet, I’d wanted it to be special, too. I gave him a bath and we piled in all the plastic toys who live on the shelf, every single one. I’d let him tip in the whole bottle of bubble bath and I’d let him splash till the entire bathroom was engulfed in a snowstorm of dripping white foam.
‘No,’ he’d said, pleased with himself, meaning
snow.
‘No, no, no!’
And when it was done, we had gone downstairs and instead of sensible breakfast, we’d opened a packet of Fox’s extra-special biscuits bought just for the occasion, and we’d sat out on the lounger outside as he ate them. I let him take as many as he wanted. He couldn’t believe his luck. I couldn’t eat a crumb. Just then, I remember thinking in my dream;
I will never eat another thing again. There will be no point: after today, I do not know if there will be any point to anything ever again.
But at that moment in this dream, I was still focused. I still had this one thing left to do. I remember with great clarity how I had chosen his clothes very carefully, how I had dressed him in a little red jumper, warm and cosy. A sturdy pair of jeans.
Then, when I’d strapped Hadyn into the back of the car, there’d been this whole sense of purposefulness about us, as if we were going on some great outing or adventure, and I had known that he’d felt it, too. Do I want to recall the look on his face when we got out of the car and he must have realised, somewhere along the way, exactly where I was taking him? How his widening eyes took in everything: the yellow-flowering shrubs along the rocky path. The tall, stark spectre of the abandoned lighthouse. Do I want to remember how his head shot up, finally, on hearing the barking of that Alsation in her front yard?
I do not.
It is too scary for me to register what I saw on his face, then. It was a dream, just a dream, I know, but I can’t stop the tears from streaming down my face as I recall it. Oh, my beloved boy, but did you know—could you even guess—how much I wanted to hold you and hug you just then?
Just one hug. That thing that no amount of riches or power or manoeuvring in the world could ever get me; I know I would have given the whole world for that.
So I let him go to her. And then in my dream, for one long moment, standing on the remote pebbled track that led off the cove to her home, I let out a scream.