Nyctophobia (30 page)

‘Well,’ he turned and sent a secret smile to Bobbie, ‘I thought about what you said and you’re right, there’s no point in making myself sick. I cancelled my final New York trip. The new guy’s already started in Madrid, so he can take my place. I emailed him this morning and he agreed to take over.’

‘You mean it?’

‘Sure I mean it. Work-life balance, right? We sort that out and everything else falls into place.’

I was so surprised that I could find no voice. I cleared my throat. ‘Okay. If you’re sure. If it doesn’t get you into trouble or anything.’

He ruffled Bobbie’s hair. ‘Of course I’m sure.’

I glanced over and noticed that Rosita was listening. ‘Maybe we could go somewhere, just for a few days, the three of us. We haven’t been away together for ages. It’ll be our last chance before Bobbie starts her new school.’

Mateo hesitated for a split second, just long enough for me to notice. ‘Yes, sure. As soon as we’ve got this place straight. And I’d have to give head office a month’s warning notice.’

‘But she starts school in two week’s time, how can we go anywhere?’

‘Oh, we’ll figure something out, I’m sure.’ He grinned at Bobbie and she lowered her fork long enough to grin back, the
tostada
packed in between her teeth. It was as if they were sharing some private joke at my expense. Behind them, Rosita bustled out triumphantly with the dishes.

I grew increasingly angry. I’d had enough of the house, and them. I pushed away from the table and booked a taxi into Gaucia.

As I made my way up the hill, I could see Alfonse on his terrace, painting. Hearing the taxi turn he looked over the rail and gave me a wave. ‘My dear, this is a nice surprise. I thought I’d scared you off for good. Come on up.’

He was smearing thick cyan onto a canvas with a palette knife, and kept comparing the results to the view. If the picture was a landscape, it was an extremely abstracted one. Beside his spattered paint-stand stood a coffee pot and a brandy bottle. ‘Which is it to be?’ he asked. ‘Let’s start with coffee. You look done in – are you alright?’

‘I keep asking myself that,’ I replied. ‘Has anyone heard from Celestia?’

‘Not a word, it’s all very peculiar.’ He poured thick
cortados,
adding milk from a sun-warmed steel jug. ‘The police don’t seem to care. They’re used to ex-pats behaving strangely. Her neighbour’s family have taken over her house. I see them sitting on the porch and they wave to me as I pass, quite brazenly.’

‘What do you think happened to her?’

‘She didn’t take off for London, that’s for sure. She hated the place.’

‘Alfonse, if I tell you something, can you make sure it goes no further?’

‘Honestly, Callie, who am I going to tell? Apparently I’m a recluse.’

I sipped my coffee and looked out over the landscape. ‘Celestia came to the house the night before she went missing. She wanted to try and “read” the place – she said she had a gift for understanding such things.’

‘Oh God, why is it that old women always go loopy? I suppose she told you about her run-in with the law back in Blighty. Maria’s just as bad, forever sloshing holy water about and seeing omens in flocks of birds. What happened?’

‘If I tell you, promise you won’t think me crazy?’

‘Go on, then.’

‘She saw the ghost of Elena Condemaine dragging her husband’s remains – we both saw her. The storm put the lights out, and when they came back on, she’d gone.’

‘Dear God. Was she driving?’

‘No, she came in a taxi, but no-one’s ever traced it. The distance is just about walkable – but not for her, and not in the rain.’

‘The cops think she missed the edge of the ridge somewhere around here, and ended up in the drink.’ Alfonse set aside his brush and smeared a dab of paint with his thumb. ‘If they’re right, she’ll never be found. Not that anyone wants to find her. It suits them all that she’s gone missing. Of course, Maria and her coven think she was snatched by the Devil for saying rude things about the church. They presume she was an atheist.’

‘She told me she was raised as a Catholic.’

‘Because you can’t believe in the supernatural without faith? Well of course women can believe any bloody thing. They rewrite the world to suit themselves. I don’t suppose we’ll ever get to the truth of it.’

‘I did see someone,’ I insisted. ‘We both saw her.’

‘And I suppose when you looked again in the morning, there was nothing.’

‘I’m trying to make sense of it all. It’s there, right in front of me, but every time I concentrate it vanishes. ’

Alfonse laid a paint-crusted hand on my wrist. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, I’m not poking fun at you. Tell me, how are you keeping?’

‘I suppose it appears we’re all well,’ I said. ‘Bobbie’s about to start boarding school in Marbella.’

‘Then I hope we’ll see a little more of you. Your visits are most welcome. I suppose you heard that Jordi left town.’

‘No, I was about to look in on him. Did he go to Cadiz?’

‘No, in the end he decided to take a position in the library of the
Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
He assured us he would be in touch once he’d settled into his apartment, but I don’t suppose we’ll ever hear from him again.’

‘It seems like everyone is going,’ I said, unnerved.

‘It always feels like that in small villages,’ said Alfonse. ‘Eventually you just get left with the ghosts.’

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The Grave

I
HAD TAKEN
to sitting in the little glade of the Condemaine cemetery. It was one of the few spots where the bleaching rays of the sun were diluted by the overhead fronds, and I could be left alone with only a few birds for company. More and more often I needed to get away from the overwhelming
niceness
of everyone.

When I returned from Gaucia, I found Mateo in the drawing room helping Bobbie with her essay. They were laughing together at some private joke, so I decided not to interrupt them. Instead, I lugged a wicker chair from the atrium down the garden, and filled my bag with the remains of the unopened correspondence from Mateo’s desk, together with a letter opener.

Settling myself between the worn-away headstones, I sat back in the chair and watched midges glittering like flakes of gold in the shifting light. The letters lay on my lap, in danger of slipping off, so I began to sort through them. There’s something permanent about written correspondence, the date-stamps placing markers in time that make you recall what else you were doing on the day the letter arrived.

Which was why I noticed that the first letter, from Mateo’s company, had arrived on the Thursday after I dreamed he had collapsed in the garden. Its tone was formal and polite. In it, someone called Senor Alex Mendoza was enquiring frostily (as far as I could tell) when Mateo might be expected in Jerez to discuss their distribution problem.

I opened the next letter, dated a week later, this time from someone billed as a Senior Production Manager. This one was in English. He was disappointed that the meeting had not taken place in Jerez, and promised to catch up with Mateo in New York.

One after another, they said the same thing. When are you coming back, why aren’t you answering your phone, why couldn’t you make the meeting in Jerez and finally, why did you not come to the convention in New York?

But he had been in New York. I had seen him on Skype, the Manhattan skyline clearly delineated in the background. I had always seen him and spoken to him wherever he went. I tore open the rest of the letters to find more complaints, more requests, more threats, including two from Bobbie’s school concerning the non-arrival of his promised cheque.

It made no sense; what could possibly be gained by lying to me? If he was in financial trouble, why not tell me? But of course Mateo was an old-school gentleman. If he was in difficulty at work, I would be the last to know. What if it was worse than that? What if he had lost his job? What if he was having some kind of mental breakdown?

I had read of a Swiss banker who had carried on going to work for full two years after losing his job. Eventually the strain of pretending that he was still employed, coupled with the mounting debts he had incurred, caused him to go crazy and slaughter his entire family before killing himself.

I stacked the letters and returned them to my bag, trying to work out what I should do. Confront him? Or pretend, like he always did, that nothing was wrong?

I sat back and looked up through the branches of the cork trees at Hyperion House, remembering something that Celestia had said: that houses weren’t haunted, people were.

For no particular reason I dug out my mobile and called her.

It heard it start to ring. Then I realised I could hear it twice.

Once on the phone at my ear, and once from somewhere else below my chair. I climbed off the seat and searched the unruly grass. Nothing. I remembered she’d told me that she had never got around to setting her voicemail. Taking the mobile away from my ear, I listened, and could still hear the ringtone. I lay flat on the grass and heard it more clearly, coming from under the ground.

I needed something to dig with.

Sticking the brass letter opener into the grass, I twisted it and pulled out a chunk of earth. I punched the letter opener into a rough circle, removing the dirt with my hands, working as quickly as I could.

The ringing became clearer.

I didn’t have to dig very far. Moments later, the letter opener stuck fast, and I realised it was caught in something that felt fleshy and human.

As I scrabbled away at the patch of dirt, something began to appear. I saw dark skin, grey lips and white teeth, the mouth filled with soil and ants. Frantic, I tore away at the softly packed earth until Celestia’s dead eyes were exposed, staring up past me at the hard blue sky.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The Light

A
S
I
RAN
into the house I shed everything I was holding, the letters, the opener, my bag. Dirt from my shoes and my bleeding hands scattered across the polished floor. Rosita was coming down the stairs, and looked at me in astonishment.

On the way I had collected a hammer from Jerardo’s shed, and was holding it in my right hand. I drew several deep breaths and tried to calm myself.

‘Where is Mateo?’ I asked. She dumbly pointed at the drawing room.

My husband was kneeling on the floor beside Bobbie, helping her draw a huge map of the area on cardboard. I waited for him to look up and acknowledge me. His shirt was so white that it seemed to shine in the sunlight. He slowly raised his eyes and a smile formed.

‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.

‘We’re making a 3D picture of the whole area,’ said Bobbie. ‘It’s going to be so beautiful.’

‘I thought you were working on your essay.’

‘I’m going to do that later.’

‘But it’s why you said you couldn’t come in to Gaucia with me.’

‘Daddy said we could do this.’ She looked to Mateo for approval.

‘That’s okay, honey, it’s fine isn’t it?’ Mateo asked.

‘There were people hoping to talk to you,’ I replied. ‘They say they never see you anymore.’

‘They’ll only start inviting us to their festival planning committees,’ said Mateo. ‘You know how many Saints’ days they have, and there are still so many things we need to sort out at the house.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, looking about. ‘I should do more around here. Perhaps I can help.’

‘Sure. It would be great to have a hand.’

‘Oh, by the way, I thought you’d be interested to know that I’ve found Celestia. She’s buried in our garden, in the Condemaine cemetery. But I suppose you know that already.’

I turned on my heel and went upstairs to the bedroom. Digging into the second drawer of the clothes chest, I found the ring of keys and ran back downstairs, my heart thumping. I walked into the drawing room and headed for the connecting door, my fingers feeling for the right key in my pocket.

Mateo looked up. ‘Wait, hon, what are you going to do?’

‘Something I should have done a long time ago,’ I said, unlocking the door to the dark side. ‘I’m going to let some light into this place. I know the windows back onto the cliff but if we take down the shutters and open all the connecting doors, maybe take them off their hinges, we must be able to at least get some brightness into the rooms. Wouldn’t that be nice?’

‘But Rosita will be devastated,’ said Mateo, rising. ‘The house has never been altered.’

‘Then I think now’s the time to alter it,’ I said, throwing open the door. A broad panel of sunlight sliced across the floor of the darkness beyond.

‘Callie, you mustn’t!’ cried Bobbie, rising.

I brandished the hammer with menace. ‘Don’t worry about it, either of you. Get on with your fucking drawings and let me sort this out.’

The first shaft of light from our drawing room allowed me to head deeper into its mirror image and reach the shutters. I unbolted them as far as I could, then used the hammer to bash back the bolts and break the slats free of their swollen frames. There was a shower of dust as the shutters unpinned themselves and folded back, letting in at least some light reflected from the cliff wall. Chunks of wood split apart and fell.

Mateo and Bobbie were shouting behind me, but I ignored them as I headed for the next window. The shutters here were stiffer, painted over so that they stuck in their frames, but I could use the hammer to smash out the slats. Once I realised how flimsily they’d been made, I punched more of them out. Shafts of dust-filled light began to criss-cross the room. As more shutters came down beneath the weight of the hammer, more sun was reflected in. It wasn’t dark at all. The light was bouncing off the amber cliff face.

Bobbie and Mateo were still yelling at me but they remained outside as I pushed past them and worked my way upstairs. Unlocking the mirror-bedroom and throwing the sun-side doors wide, I ran into the room in time to see
her
rise from the safety of her high-backed chair and flit through the shadows, as startled as a fox.