The Lemon Grove (19 page)

‘It’s fine, darling. All of it.’

He turns to her and lifts her head with a finger.

‘Is it?’ She nods and tries to convey absolute certainty.

‘I hope so, Jenn. I do so hope we’ll be okay. More than you know …’

She smiles with her eyes and kisses each hand. She moves away from the terrace and sits down at the table. The sun has slipped from view. The sky is darkening.

They joke about Benni and his impromptu appearances that always seem to coincide with Emma sunbathing by the pool; they talk about what they will do tomorrow. They do not mention the near-crash with the hippy van and they do not talk about each other. They finish the wine and each convinces the other that the cold linguine is the best meal of the holiday. It’s delicious. They stand at the kitchen sink later on, washing and drying the dishes, mountain bats flitting in and out of the window frame. She casts a glance at her husband. He is miles away, absolutely lost in his thoughts. We’ll be fine, she tells herself – and she reaches up and kisses the top of his arm to let him know.

She squats down on the floor to get at the shelves behind the small gingham curtains. We’ll be fine, she tells herself again, and she stacks the plates carefully, setting them down, one by one, as though any sudden movement might shatter her conviction.

19

She is seated at the kitchen table when she hears the rattle of the approaching taxi. The headlights come blinking through the lemon grove, the beams jolting up and down with each pothole. She blows out the candle. Its pear-shaped flame is frail and thin; burnt right down to the wick. In its time, she has paced the kitchen floor in a fever of guilt, anger, recrimination.

She goes through to the lounge. Greg is sprawled across the couch, snoring, his glasses lopsided on his nose. Flickers from the TV screen reflect in their lenses. He is one big mass, taking up the entire sofa. She used to love the sense of constancy that his sheer size gave out. Now he seems unwieldy.

She places a hand on his shoulder and gently shakes him awake.

‘They’re back now, honey. Let’s go to bed.’

He whistles a stream of stale breath in her face, shifts position; grunts his annoyance at being disturbed. Jenn takes the throw from the end of the sofa and places it over him. Removes his glasses from his nose. She stoops to kiss his forehead, a wave of sadness rinsing her. His phone drops down onto the rug. The little red light is flashing. She picks it up, sees the four missed calls. It’ll be the uni again, pestering him over the studentships they’re interviewing for. She wishes he’d be as assertive with work as he is dogmatic and insistent with herself and Emma. She places the phone next to the television so he’ll see it when he wakes, then turns to take herself off to bed. The winking BlackBerry catches her eye though, and she’s overcome by a gnawing dread. What if those missed calls are from Emma? What if they’ve had an argument up there and, drunk, or guilty, Nathan has confessed? There’s a hot spray in her throat as she clicks the button with her thumb to bring up the call log; and then mild irritation.
Prof
. That’s all. Thank God! Four missed calls from Professor Christopher Burns, one of Greg’s oldest friends and a colleague at the uni. She hears the slam of the taxi doors and hurries herself up the stairs. Once Emma is in bed – once Jenn is certain she’s asleep – she will go to Nathan and confront him.
She will go to his room and have him tell her the whole sordid truth.

She is halfway along the landing when she’s stopped dead in her tracks by a rapid series of beeps from below. She peers down to the terrace. A silhouette of two military looking figures staring up at the windows, and then a radio voice crackles through. She would know that sound anywhere – Manchester, Rochdale, Deià – it’s the same all over the world. Trouble.

Two things go through her head as she hastens back down the stairs and sees the police car through the window: the incident with the hippy van yesterday, and the bracelet she stole. It is still in her bag, hanging behind the kitchen door. For one moment she thinks about dumping it in the bin but in the next, realises that in doing so, she’ll be giving undue credence to her paranoia. Instead, she places both hands on the door and breathes through her misgivings. Composed, she goes out to the terrace.

One of the male officers is fielding a call on the radio. His bulky, dark-skinned partner is sizing up the villa from the driveway. He has a hard, sly face that she takes against on sight. He pushes his shoulders back, stretches, and gives a world-weary crack of his knuckles, muttering something under his breath. She is standing there on the
doorstep, no more than a few feet away; neither officer has yet acknowledged her presence. What
is
this? A combination of the cold night air and the lateness of the hour sobers Jenn to the reality that this is no trivial follow-up call. It’s something serious – it has to be. She’s about to go and rouse Greg when the guy with the sly face opens up the back door of the car. A crutch pokes out first, then, moments later, Emma’s face pops up above the roof. Her head hangs at a slant, and even from here, with only the dirty glow of the exterior lights to go by, Jenn can see that her eyes are squiffy. Their daughter is drunk, that’s all, and the
policia local
have come to rub their noses in it.

She elects not to wake Greg, knowing how he’ll react, and instead pulls the heavy door to behind her. Tiny stones and thorns poke her feet as she treads the drive barefoot towards them. Emma hobbles a little way to meet her. Jenn revises her opinion – she is not drunk at all. Her face is pink and peeling, puffy from crying.

‘What’s happened? Are you okay?’

She takes Emma’s face between her fingers and looks right into her eyes. Emma focuses on her for one sharp moment before sliding off behind her. Her nostrils flare as though she’s on the verge of tears again. Jenn turns to the
guardia
.

‘What’s going on here?’

The guy with the sly face looks at her and smirks. He delays answering; rakes his eye all over her as he lights a cigarette; he slows down the ritual, blows a long bar of smoke out across the pool.

‘Nice place you got here.’

He’s regarding her lasciviously now; he’s sinister. There’s something about the sense of entitlement he radiates that makes her step closer to Emma and link a protective arm around her. She turns back to face the villa and gently tugs Emma with her.

‘If that’s everything, gentlemen …’

The cop is still grinning as though he knows Jenn’s most intimate, recent, degenerate secret. He blows another bar of smoke out and flicks the smouldering butt into the grove. His partner gets back in the car. Jenn’s throat slackens a little.

‘Next time, Momma. Give her number for taxi, yes?’

He takes in the villa one last time then slumps down into the car and slams the door. They reverse at crazy speed back down the track, spinning out onto the narrow beach road and tearing back up the steep sidewinder, back up to Deià village. Their tail lights watch her from on high.

Jenn goes to help Emma indoors, but she shrugs her off angrily. She shuffles through the side gate towards the swimming pool, lowers herself onto the steps and just sits there in silence, staring out across the bay.

‘Emma?’

No answer.

‘Em.’

Emma turns her shoulders as much to indicate that she’d like to be left alone, her chin jutting out self-righteously, just like her father’s does. Jenn knows she should just leave her be – but she has to know what has taken place up in the village tonight. She dips inside, returns with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She pours out a glass, hands it to Emma.

‘Come on. What happened, darling?’ she says. Her stomach turns as she awaits the response. Where is Nathan, she wants to ask. Stop your snivelling and tell me what has happened to Nathan. But no sooner does the question declare itself than Jenn recognises the depravity of it all. This must stop, now – and she must end it, as soon as he is back.

Emma reaches into her canvas satchel and takes out a packet of cigarettes. She slides her eyes across at Jenn – not to seek her approval, but to slap down any hint of resistance. Jenn doesn’t flinch. She squeezes out a smile that says, of course I know your secrets. I know you smoke; I know about your spunk-sprayed underwear. She leans across and takes a cigarette for herself. And now it’s Emma’s turn to look surprised. Yes, Emma, I am old, I am wretched, but I have secrets, too. Jenn
studies her in the flame, Emma’s tiny nose, dusted with freckles, and she is smitten with guilt. Not so very long ago she used to count each and every one of those freckles; she’d pretend that two had gone missing, they were hiding up her nose or in her ear, and Emma would fall back giggling and say, ‘Again, Mummy! Count again!’ They scrutinise one another through drifts of smoke. Emma exhales, holds up her cigarette and says: ‘Don’t tell Dad about the police bringing me back.’

She draws deep on the cigarette, as though to show Jenn just how long she’s been doing this; how little she really knows about her. She holds the third drag in, lets it out slowly, in waves. Jenn tops up Emma’s wine. She’s barely sipped at her own. She changes tack; changes her tone. She speaks to her as she might speak to a friend.

‘Did you two fight?’ Jenn asks. Emma shrugs. ‘Do you want to talk about what happened up there?’

Emma drops her head and looks up at her through the lids of her eyes.

‘Not especially.’

She draws on her cigarette, tilting her head right back as she exhales into the night vault. She stays like that, staring up into the sky. The stars are blunted; the moon covered by cloud. Jenn gets up.

‘Okay.’ She smiles. She’s cold, but she can hear the
added shiver in her voice. This is her and Emma: no joy; no bond. ‘You enjoy your smoke. I’ll come and get you in a bit. Help you up to bed.’

Jenn turns to go. Emma brings her gaze down slowly from the stars.

‘We argued about you, actually. Seeing as you ask.’

Jenn tries to swallow her own bile.

‘
Me?
Why would you argue about me?’

And her delivery is so swift, so seamless in its execution, that even if her daughter did suspect it of her, she might think twice now. Emma’s nostrils are flaring and shutting.

‘He said you deserved better.’

‘Nathan did?’

‘Yes. Nathan did. He said you deserved better than Dad. He said Dad didn’t know how to handle a woman like you. That if you were his wife, he’d know how to handle – you.’

‘Why would he say that?’

‘I don’t know.’ She eyes Jenn. ‘Why would he?’

Jenn can’t meet Emma’s eyes. She can hear the falsity in her tone.

‘I hope you put him right!’

Emma holds her gaze for a moment longer, then she digs into her canvas bag, pulls out her wallet. Jenn’s heart begins to bang, hard. She eyes the wallet, expecting
Emma to pull out some irrefutable piece of evidence; whatever Nathan has been writing, she’s about to be confronted with it. Her face must nakedly display the shock that seizes her when Emma slaps a credit card on the table. It’s Jenn’s Amex. She picks the card up, squints at the name, just to make sure.

‘Where did you—’

‘Dad.’

‘Your father gave this to you?’

‘Lent. But only because his card hasn’t been working. He said he’d reimburse you as soon we get back.’

Jenn is fighting to get on top of her anger at the sheer effrontery of it.

‘Well, it would have been nice for your father to check with me that mine’s working okay. Did it?’ Emma tries to tough it out with a shrug, but her lip is beginning to tremble. ‘Why did you need it, anyway? There’s cash enough in the house for a meal out.’

‘Dad booked us into Jaume. He wanted us to have something special to look back on.’

And this last bit has Jenn boiling over, all over again. She squats right down so she’s level with Emma’s face. When Emma tries to look away, Jenn takes her chin between two fingers and gently, firmly, turns her head back towards her.

‘He had no right.’

‘I know! Okay? I fucking well know you wouldn’t have let us!’

She jabs at her with spite-sparkled eyes. Jenn can only whisper her response.

‘You’re damned right I wouldn’t.’ She has to walk away to the far end of the grove just to let go of her anger. She takes her time coming back. ‘Do you not see how … 
wrong
that is? You have to
earn
privileges like that, Emma.
Jaume!
And how
were
you going to pay us back?’

Emma grins up at her. ‘Well, I could try for that
weekend
job you’re always on my back about.’ She screws up her face, broadens her vowels and starts to imitate Jenn. ‘Hey, maybe then I would have earned the privilege, right?’

It’s been coming for some time, this. Jenn can feel it surging up, thrumming through her in waves. She knows she will regret anything she says, but she can’t keep a lid on it. She tries to keep her voice calm, clipped.

‘Do you know, darling, I probably wouldn’t have minded if you’d have asked me.’ Emma rolls her eyes, and Jenn flips. As she starts talking, an inner engine takes hold of her, speeds her up until there’s no Jenn left; there’s just her voice, talking; spouting. ‘Emma – if you
were
that person who
had
a job, who
took
responsibility for your own actions, then you
would
have run it by me. But you’re
not that person, are you? And judging by that little stunt you pulled tonight, you show no signs of growing into her. And for the record, if you want to play grown-ups with your boyfriend in some nice fancy restaurant, then you need to start acting like a grown-up. You need to get out of this mindset that you just
get
things by pouting. By intimidation …’ She was getting out of breath, but she couldn’t stop. ‘Start
working
for the things you want so bloody badly! And before you start pulling your faces and rolling your eyes, the answer’s yes. You need to start doing what I did at your age; like I’m doing now – six, seven days a week plus overtime to pay for your fucking education! To pay for those privileges you take for granted.’