The First Wife (31 page)

My legs shook as I walked to the waiting-room door, not looking at anyone. I went back past the man on the reception desk, who gave me a cheerful grin. Two other officers walked by me and went through a door, he a black man, she a peroxide-blonde woman. They laughed and joked and took no notice of me.

B7 turned out to be a cubbyhole, containing a desk with two chairs on my side of it and one on the other, screened off from identical spaces on either side of it, and with an open-plan police office visible behind the police officer’s chair. There was a woman sitting there, not much older than me, with jet-black hair and black civilian clothes on.

I sat down and she smiled. I forced a smile back. She held her head on one side and asked me to go over all the details.

‘You are completely sure about this?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Christmas Day, nearly a year ago. She died in the water.’

‘In Barcelona?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Not Sitges, not Vilanova?’

‘No. Here.’

Then she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in slow, clear English. ‘I have looked back over the records, but that information would be easy to find. Everyone would know. Nobody died in the water, here, at Christmas last year, or this year, or a different year. It happens sometimes when the weather is bad. I’m sorry about your sister, but this must have happened in a different place, or at a different time.’

‘No one died like that here last Christmas?’

‘No one.’

Next stop was the hotel they had stayed at. It was the three-star one in the back streets, not the luxurious place Harry had described. Why had he done that?

I was disorientated by my new knowledge. If Sarah had died, the police would know – and yet they had no record of her drowning. Fergus said he had watched them pulling her body out of the water. That meant he had lied. The fact that she had not died in Barcelona did not mean that she was still alive, of course. It simply meant that the story everyone had been told about her death was not true.

I stood on the other side of the narrow road. The building was painted cream, and had windowboxes with geraniums in them, the usual wrought-iron decorations around the bottom of the windows and, through the glass doors, I could see a cream lobby. The hotel’s name was on the whitewashed wall in gold metal letters, and there were three discreet stars underneath the words.

The doors opened automatically as I approached. There was classical music playing in the entrance hall. I looked around, at the white sofa and wicker chairs. This was too shabby for Harry. He must have hated it.

A young man appeared and looked at me quizzically. Every single word of Spanish deserted me.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Do you speak English?’

‘Of course,’ he said pleasantly. He was dressed in black trousers and a white shirt, as if he were going to a wedding, but not a very smart one.

‘I need to ask you something,’ I said. My hand shook as I reached into my bag and took out the picture of Harry and Sarah that I had stolen from their wedding album, which now lived in the bottom of a box at the back of a cupboard. ‘My friends stayed here at Christmas last year. While they were here, one of them,’ I pointed to Sarah, ‘died. Do you remember them?’

He frowned and took the photo. ‘She? No one has died at the hotel.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Not at the hotel. Out in Barcelona. In the sea.’

‘Oh.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry. But I did not work here.’

‘OK. Is there anyone who did?’

He screwed his face up. ‘No, I’m sorry.’

‘No one at all I could talk to?’

‘No, sorry. Nobody.’

‘Oh.’ I wondered what to say next. I heard the doors slide open behind me, and I saw his attention transfer instantly from me, an annoying visitor who was not paying any money but just asking stupid questions, to some more important people.

I had to keep hold of the man’s attention.

‘Is there anyone who was here?’ I asked quickly. ‘Last Christmas?’

‘Come after four o’clock,’ he said. Then he turned his back on me and greeted his new visitors, a smiling couple in matching slacks and raincoats.

Between now and four o’clock I had nothing to do. Since I had read the guide book, I knew what I ought to be doing. I should go to the Sagrada Familia, to Gaudi’s great unfinished cathedral. It was Barcelona’s top tourist sight, and Sarah had marked it, perhaps for herself and Harry, on the map.

I started walking.

The walk to the cathedral was a blur. There were people in the way, in coats and boots and with their heads down, and as I wove my way between them, I felt invisible. Everyone was lying, and nothing made any sense at all.

I kept taking wrong turnings, because I was not concentrating. I went down blind alleys, came out on roads I had already passed twenty minutes earlier, discovered myself walking south when I felt I was walking north. When I found myself, yet again, on Las Ramblas, I decided to walk right up it.

There were flower stalls, and stalls selling poor, cold little birds in cages. There were people disguised as robots standing very still. The crowds were probably far bigger in summer, but it still felt crammed with people. They ambled around with guide books in their hands, taking photos with their phones. I pushed through the middle of groups, but no one said a word to me. I could do anything. I could walk down the middle of a road and nothing would happen. I could do a handstand at the doorway of the huge department store, El Corte Inglés, and no one would notice me.

I found my way to Gaudí’s Cathedral anyway, without meaning to. It was the middle of the afternoon, and I was dizzy. I had only eaten the croissant for breakfast, and I was starving. There was a queue by the ticket counter, but since nothing was making sense, I just walked to the front of it, smiled at the people waiting next in line, and barged in. Nobody said anything; I had known it would happen that way.

I handed over some euros and walked in.

This was a cathedral that was still being built. A crane soared higher than its towers. I stared at it. Because it was called a cathedral, I had expected it to be a bit like Truro Cathedral. Instead, it was something completely different, with several gothic towers with curvy patterns on them and, as I got closer, organic shapes, the ones you saw in plants and trees and leaves, that swirled around it. I liked the soft edges. In real life, this place was overwhelming.

Around the back, there was a bench, and a group of proper tourists were sitting on it looking at the Passion façade over the door. I went inside, feeling reverent in spite of myself, and stood on the edge of the building site. Now it seemed we were back in medieval times, when cathedrals sprang up. It took my breath away. This was the inside of a cathedral, but it had all the detritus of construction work: there were bags of sand, tools, even a little digger.

They had all lied. I was lying too, just by being here. I knew that I was in the middle of something I did not understand at all. If I had had Fergus’s phone number, I would have called him, then and there. But I did not. There was nobody who would help me now.

I could smell the builders’ sand in the air. It was dusty and cold, and my breath was puffing out around me. When I struggled back outside, my legs gave way and the bench was empty just in time. I sat on it, closed my eyes, and wondered what on earth I was going to do.

When the man sat next to me, I ignored him. Ignoring everyone, and being ignored back, was suiting me. After a while, I could tell that he wanted to say something. I looked at him.

He had thick blond hair and cheeks that were pink from the cold.

‘Hey,’ he said, in an accent, ‘are you OK?’

‘Yes, of course.’ My voice sounded crisp and very correct after his. I sounded like the Queen.

‘That’s good then. You looked like you might not be feeling too well.’

He was not much older than me, and he was the first person I had properly met since I arrived here. This was a strange experience that might not be happening to me anyway. What the hell? I thought. I had never thought ‘what the hell?’ in my life before, and I smiled at my recklessness.

‘I was feeling a bit weird,’ I admitted, ‘but not ill. Just odd.’

‘Oh, sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘You better now?’

‘Kind of.’

‘On holiday?’

I laughed. ‘Not exactly. It’s a long story. I guess “on holiday” could be the short version.’

‘Not a happy holiday?’

‘No. Not a happy holiday.’

I looked again at his open face. I knew nothing about anything, had no idea how to read people, but this man seemed nice enough. I needed not to be on my own right now, and he was here, talking to me.

‘I think some food would make a difference,’ I said to him. ‘Do you want to go to a café or something?’

He leaped to his feet. ‘Best offer I’ve had all year.’

Jack went to the cathedral because he had been living in Barcelona for months and it was the only place in the city that even Kiwis knew, and people kept assuming he’d been there, and it was getting embarrassing.

He queued for half an hour or so, even though it was December and he had expected to walk straight in. He tried to imagine a church in New Zealand that could make people stand in line for thirty-three minutes, and pay twelve euros just for the privilege of wandering in and having a look around.

It was worth it. Of course it was.

He wasn’t working this afternoon, and after he’d done this bit of catch-up sightseeing, he was going to go shopping for the ingredients for a fish stew. He blew on his hands and stared up at the cathedral’s fagade. It was one of those cold crisp days that took the skin off your face, and something warming was going to be just the ticket.

He could see why everyone raved about this place. It was like an old cathedral that you saw in books, but it was different. The Mary and baby, for instance: they did not look like the traditional ones. Everything was very slightly different. The shapes were not at all like normal church shapes, and he liked that about it. It was a bit cheeky. You could stare at it for days. He spent half an hour walking around looking delightedly at everything, then sat himself down on a bench and took some photos.

He was going through his shopping list in his head when he noticed there was a girl next to him. He was not even sure who had been here first – it was possible she’d been there all along – but he noticed her now because she seemed to be gasping for breath. She was biting her lip and closing her eyes, and she was deathly pale. When her eyes were open, they were astonishing: enormous, a deep and soft brown.

Although she was not the girl in his head, he was drawn to her. The more he looked, the more she interested him. He tried to catch her attention, but she was concentrating on getting the breath in and out, as far as he could tell. After a while he leaned forward to where she would see him if she opened her eyes, and said: ‘Hey, are you OK?’

It took her a while to answer. He thought she was ignoring him, or that she could not even hear him. Also, he had said it in English, which was stupid of him. She might be going to keel over at any moment. What did you do if that happened? He looked around for someone in uniform.

Then she suddenly said: ‘Yes, of course.’

‘That’s good then,’ said Jack, but he was uncertain. ‘You looked like you might not be feeling too well.’

He tried not to stare at her too much, because it would make the poor girl uncomfortable, but as well as her beautiful eyes, she had the most amazing hair. It was long and curly and there was more of it than he had ever seen on any person before. Underneath all that, her face was like a china doll’s, pretty and pale. He hoped she did not think he was coming on to her. He was worried about this girl, that was all. He corrected himself: this woman. Anya, from Serbia, had said that unless a girl was a child, you had to call her a woman. She was right, he could see that.

‘I was feeling a bit weird, but not ill,’ she said. ‘Just odd.’ She was English, like Peter. She talked like one of the BBC newsreaders they sometimes watched on the telly.

They spoke a bit, just polite chit-chat. It was a surprise, and a delight, when the woman asked if he’d like to go to a café.

Jack refused to go to one of the cafés outside the cathedral, because he avoided the places with hiked prices for tourists, and these fell into that category. He led her through a few streets, over some pedestrian crossings, round corners, and into a bakery on a random quiet street. It was a place he had spotted on the way over. There was a huge counter with all sorts of bread, sandwiches and pastries behind it and a delicious smell of baking. The chairs and tables were made of twiddly iron, which he often did not like, but there were cushions on the chairs which made them comfortable enough to be acceptable.

They sat opposite one another at a little table. She pushed her hair back, and he wondered what they were doing here. Months he had lived here, and he had met plenty of people, but only by studying with them, or teaching them or living with them. He had never picked up a stranger on the street before. He hoped she wasn’t after sex or anything. The very possibility alarmed him intensely.

She still looked pale and he needed to get some food into her – quick, he reckoned.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Coffee,’ she said immediately. ‘And anything to eat – I don’t care what. Not a croissant though, because I had one for breakfast.’

It wasn’t until they were sipping their coffee and she was eating a sandwich while he put away a couple of Danish pastries, that they even introduced themselves.

‘I’m Jack,’ he said.

‘Hi, Jack. Are you South African? Sorry, I’m not very good at accents.’

‘Nah, I’m Kiwi. A New Zealander.’

This news seemed to affect her more than it ought to have done. He looked at her, wondering whether she was going to explain her interest.

‘I’m Lily,’ she said instead.

‘Hey, Lily. I was worried about you back there. Thought I was going to have to call an ambulance or something.’