The Lemon Grove (23 page)

‘Possibly. But I’m a bad mother, Nathan.’ He goes to protest, she holds up a hand. She doesn’t want his reassurance; what she wants is the truth. ‘What happened last night? Tell me.’

He flinches away, caught out for a second, but when he turns back he’s fully poised again. He’s shaking his head, wounded that she could doubt him. He slips his earphones back in – both of them. She gently removes them.

‘What happened in the village?’

She gets up, walks to the window. Down below she can see Greg stumbling around the garden with a torch, calling out Emma’s name. She steps away.

‘I told you.’

He’s standing level with her now and she can feel her resolve weakening, her conviction of only mere moments ago, fraying like the end of a rope. Perhaps he is telling the truth. She softens her voice.

‘What was the argument about my credit card?’

He looks relieved; he shuffles towards her, a dimple crease on his cheek.

‘Come off it! You know I wouldn’t have bought champagne on it, right? I was only winding her up!’

‘Winding her up …’ Jenn can hear the sadness in her own voice. Flat, perfunctory – she can’t convey any anger or any kind of feeling at all. She’s found herself out. ‘Winding her up her how, Nathan?’

His eyes are darting around her face. He’s no longer so sure of himself. He winks at her.

‘The champagne! Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t really have ordered it if she’d gone along with it.’

‘It was
your
idea?’

‘Well, yeah. No. It’s not like it was stealing or anything. Your old man gave us your card.’

It spurts through her, hot and painful. She places the flats of her hands on his chest and shoves him as hard as she can. He stumbles backwards onto the bed and sits there, looking up at her, laughing; but he’s scared, now.

‘Emma didn’t want to go for the meal, did she?’

He stands and ducks his face towards her.

‘She felt bad about taking the card, didn’t she, Nathan? Taking from me.’ She moves her head away, eyes never leaving his. He whips a hand behind her, pulls her close and kisses her on the mouth. He strides past her, pleased with himself.

‘You’re fucking sexy when you’re mad.’

He lingers in the doorway, with his back to her, one elbow propped up against the jamb for a minute, letting her take her fill of his broad, tanned back; the clumps
of muscle around his shoulder blades. ‘I feel like a shower,’ he says.

He saunters away, rolling his hips. He seems sure of it – she will take her anger to the shower. She will push him down and ride her fury out. Below, she hears the slam of a car door. The engine starts and the car is crunching, very slowly, along the dirt track. Even in the midst of a crisis, her husband is negotiating each rickety bump and pothole as carefully as he can, in anticipation of the handover back to Eurocar. She listens to him go. She could cry for the love of him.

She refuses eye contact as she passes Nathan and, when he twigs that she’s not playing, he follows her down the landing and hooks her from behind with his forearm.

‘Get on your knees,’ he says, grinding his pelvis into her back. His dick is already rigid. He’s breathing hard. She just stands there, limp. His hands are all over her tits, pulling, squeezing; his mouth up and down the nape of her neck, sucking, biting.

She closes her eyes and allows it to douse her one last time, then pushes him away with force. She runs down the stairs.

Nathan screams after her.

‘You fucking prick tease!’ She hears his fist slam into the wall. She catches her breath, waits. His voice comes
again, closer. ‘Where you going?’ He’s on the bottom stair now. She turns and, in that moment, is certain.

‘I’m going to do the right thing.’

He looks young and scared as he rubs an ear lobe with two fingers and turns down the corners of his mouth ever so slightly. She starts to backpedal out of the room and, before she can change her mind, she turns and runs out through the patio doors.

25

The storm blows great balls of tumbleweed across the terrace, held up for a moment by the picket fence before their stalled momentum propels them up and over it, skimming the surface of the swimming pool before coming to rest in the suck of the overflow. Jenn bends into the wind and picks her way across the grove. The ground is littered with small branches and rotting fruit, and with each step she can feel the dogged panic in her chest. She leans against the balustrade, catches her breath. The sea is roaring with a fury she has never heard before, the waves slamming in to the beach at speed, throwing great spumes of white up into the blackness. She can still see Greg’s rear lights as he crawls round the bend, but even at that speed she knows she can’t make up the distance; not in this wind, not with her chest.

She forks hard right across the patch of scrub where Benni lights his bonfires – if she’s quick, she can intersect him on the next bend. She knows what she must do. Once she tells the police what she’s done, what she did to her daughter, they’ll take it seriously. They’ll alert the coastguard. They’ll find Emma and bring her back to her daddy. And then she’ll tell him. Everything.

She pushes on, clenches her teeth and wills herself to go faster. If she can cut him off, then there is hope. There is still a way forward. Arms outstretched in the pre-dawn gloaming, she skirts the copse of myrtle and olive trees that separate the scrub from the road. She narrows her eyes, tries to squint for a space through which to penetrate the switchback. Just ahead is the silhouette of the little wooden ramblers’ hut, but Jenn cannot see further than a few feet past it. But then, eureka! The winking indicator as Greg’s car pulls out from the lane is now behind her – if she’s quick she can wave him down. There’s an opening of sorts in the brittle bush, a bar of space where the blackness lifts a little. It’s not the makeshift stile leading onto the road, but there’s a gap, just about big enough to squeeze through. She covers her face with her forearms and throws her weight forward, her jumper snagging on the thorns, dragging her back. She yelps, closes her eyes and goes again, pushing on through the spiky thistle. She shields her face, but the thorns catch her neck, her hair. One tiny talon
digs into her neck, holding her fast. She tries to relax, shrinking her head down into her shoulders in an effort to free herself, and, as she goes to shift her weight onto her other foot, she slips, skidding down the scree and into the road. She winces as the bramble rips the hair from her scalp, but she can’t slow herself. She stumbles right out into the road as Greg speeds past. Hunched over the steering wheel, peering right and left, he seems to look right at her before accelerating into the abyss. She runs after him, waving her arms, hopeless. The brake lights blink bright scarlet before the hairpin bend, then the car slips from view.

26

The storm has blown itself out as she limps back along the dirt track. As she comes through the broken gate, she stops to watch the shape-shifting hens, bobbing and pecking at the soil in the grove. A sun lounger, illuminated in the pool lights, is half-submerged in the water. She drags the two remaining loungers from the lip of the pool and slides them underneath the terrace steps. There’s not much point in trying to salvage them now, though. Benni will be up here at first light, assessing the damage, licking his lips at the portion of their deposit he can keep for damages.

The darkness is drifting out to silver, and up in the mountains, goat bells start up their maudlin chimes. She can’t quite countenance this new day, and what it will
bring. She lingers on the terrace listening to the hum of the fridge inside. Afraid to go in, she paces the grove, retracing her footsteps from last night. Did Emma see them? No. Impossible. Too dark. But she remembers – she tries to shy away from it, but she remembers, and she hates it, the noise coming out of her. They’d started quietly, fingers in one another’s mouths, but she’d let go, howling alien, obscene words and thoughts. If Emma had been there, she would have clubbed her with a log.

Jenn is tired; she is changing her mind with each pace this way, each step that. She circles the house and her dead-beat mind sets up little tripwires in the half-light. She sees Benni spying on her from behind a shrub. She bustles over – there’s nobody there. She steels herself. She’ll have to face Nathan sooner or later, and she’s suddenly parched. Gingerly, she steps inside. There is no sound; nothing here, not a creak from upstairs. The notion that he’s drifted off, carefree, listening to his music, enrages her. She swigs orange juice straight from the carton, gulp after gulp. There’s only an inch or so left. She catches her breath, ready to finish it off. She spies the slender wrap of Serrano ham stuffed to the back of the fridge like a child might hide a half-eaten cake. She remembers the two of them, lovers, feeding one another.
She takes the packet out, despondent; ashamed of herself. There are two slices left. She takes out cling film and wraps the ham sadly, carefully – then places it back on the shelf next to Greg’s artisan cheeses and olives. She leans with her back to the fridge and closes her eyes so that she can feel its solid weight burring through her. She finishes the orange juice and, aware that she is doing things mechanically to put off the moment, she shoves the empty carton in the recycling bag. She is fumbling through her handbag, looking for her phone charger, when the image plays in front of her tired eyes in saturated slow motion. She steadies herself on the cold tiles and stares back at the fridge, the scene of the crime, desperately trying to bring it all back; but yes, she is certain. Vegetarian Nathan was gulping moist mountain ham from her lips.

She takes the stairs, two at a time. Her heart is banging. The hippy girl. Monica. All those early morning jogs. The salt in his hair; on his skin.

In the time it takes her to get to his bedroom two things become clear: Nathan is screwing Monica; and Emma knows. That’s where Emma has gone; the hippy cave.

His room is empty; the drawers are open, emptied out. She snatches his wardrobe door open – and though she expects it, even though it’s best this way, she is defenceless against the silent howl of rage that splits her in two.

27

She can see the white heads of the waves slamming into the cliff as she crosses the little wooden bridge. The river bed, usually bone dry, is a fierce and racing torrent. From the bridge she can see the rocky cove, fully submerged. It is unthinkable that Emma, with her leg, could have approached the hippy cave from the beach; yet the only other way is via the cliff path – even more dangerous, in these conditions. For the first time, Jenn starts to fear for Emma.

A green-pink light is starting to rinse the sky. The stone steps are steep and uneven, hewn from the rock’s natural ridges. No way could Emma negotiate these on crutches – and yet some inner motor propels Jenn on. Somehow, she knows that this is where she’s gone. She sits like Emma did, out on the terrace, and shuffles up
the steps backwards, one at a time, using just one leg to help lever herself up. The last step, a sliver of stone that’s not much wider than her foot, is partially blocked by a huge tree-trunk, uprooted overnight. If Emma is up there, then she went before the storm. She didn’t see her, cavorting; unhinged. Relieved, despising herself, she hauls herself over the trunk and forges onwards, and upwards.

Even in the low light, she can see the devastation that the storm has wreaked. The path is blocked by huge, severed branches and the big orbs of rock the uprooted trees have dislodged. She moves slowly, planting each step with caution. The storm has gone, but the terrain still feels vulnerable in its aftermath: up above, the creak and groan of tree limbs warns her to turn back. But she is out there. She knows her girl is there, somewhere.

It’s useless. The further up the cliff path she penetrates, the more dangerous it becomes. She rounds a familiar bend expecting a gentle, staggered skip down to the next level only to find a gouged-out ochre hole. The path has simply slipped away with the headland. She stands there, beaten. That monumental promontory squats still, devoid of any life, human or animal. She could just stay
here and never go back. A gunshot reverberates from the mountains above. Something is moving, then. Life goes on. Jenn holds the slender waist of a sapling with one hand and, timidly, begins her sideways descent.