It was a hot evening in mid-September when a thunderstorm rumbling across the Mediterranean from North Africa brought the meal at their little restaurant in Santa Ana to a premature end. They saw the storm approaching across the water, like a giant rolling cloud of mist, blotting out the blue of the evening sky, and finally the sun, before the wind that accompanied it began whipping large stinging drops of rain in under the awning. Day turned to night in the space of only a few minutes.
Sergio took her hand and they ran to where he had parked his car in the narrow Calle Condesa de Arcos. But, still, they were soaked by the time they had thrown themselves into the seats and slammed the doors shut. Rain streamed down the windscreen, and all the windows in the car quickly misted.
Ana was alarmed by how little she could see as they drove up the hill towards Marviña. The storm seemed to be following them, surging up the slope in their wake. The rain hammered out a deafening tattoo on the roof, and even though her hearing was fading, Ana felt it fill the car.
Marviña was deserted as they drove past the police and fire stations before turning down to their right, the view across the valley to the mountains obliterated by the storm. Sergio wanted to take her as close as he could to her apartment. It was almost dark out there, and the rain was obscuring the far end of the street. But Ana told him to stop. She could make it home from here, she said. It would be dangerous to get much closer because it was likely that in this weather her father would head out to meet her off the bus in the square.
Reluctantly, Sergio pulled in. He reached over to brush the wet hair from Ana’s face and leaned in to kiss her. A long, lingering kiss that left the taste of him on her lips. She would have given anything to stay with him, safe and warm in the car. But the threat of an encounter with her father was too great. He would be incandescent if he knew that Ana had continued seeing Sergio, after he had made her promise him that she wouldn’t.
She let her fingers trail gently across the fine stubble on his cheeks. ‘See you Wednesday,’ she said, and slipped out into the night.
She was startled in the rain by a figure that appeared out of nowhere. A shadow disengaging itself from the dark, brushing past her to round the front of Sergio’s car and open the driver’s door.
‘Get out, you pervert!’ It was her father’s voice.
In the rain and the gloom, it was a shadow play that acted itself out before her. Her father dragging the hapless Sergio from his car, a fist swinging through the night to impact with the face she had so recently touched with loving fingers. She screamed as she saw Sergio fall into the road, raindrops hammering the surface of it, bouncing off the tarmac all around him. She saw her father pull back his leg to swing repeated kicks into the chest and stomach of the now foetal curl of the young man who had just kissed her.
‘Stop it!’ she screamed, and tried to intervene, to prevent this madness. But she stumbled on the kerb and fell.
‘Just stay away from my fucking daughter! If I ever see you with her again, I’ll kill you.’ Her father’s words falling, literally, on deaf ears.
He hurried around the car to pick his daughter off the road and drag her away, weeping, into the rain.
By the time he got her back to the apartment, it was impossible to tell the tears from the rain on her face. She pulled herself free of him. ‘I hate you!’ she screamed. ‘I hate you!’ And she fled to her bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her, and collapsing in a sobbing heap on the bed.
It was into October before her father let her return to the centre to resume her lessons in touch-signing. But he was leaving nothing to chance, dropping her off and then going to meet friends for a coffee before returning to drive her home again.
In the intervening weeks, the atmosphere in the house had been febrile, simmering tempers and Ana’s bubbling resentment. The tension was palpable, and she could not bring herself even to speak to her father. She would address him only through her mother, and spent most of her days, and quite often evenings too, at the home of her sister, unburdening herself, confiding her secret feelings and deepest fears. Isabella’s husband might have resented her constant presence, but for the fact that Ana would babysit the girls, allowing the couple to go out dancing, or for meals at restaurants down on the coast. It was during this time that she formed the bond with Cristina and Nurita that would long outlive their parents.
Ana had been dreading that first night back at the centre, not knowing how she could possibly face Sergio after what her father had done to him. And so it was with a mixture of relief and disappointment that she discovered he was not there. Had not, in fact, been there for several weeks. She feared that perhaps her father had inflicted more serious injury than she had imagined and was filled with concern.
Every night she returned she hoped that he might be there. But he never was, and after a month she went to the administrator to ask for his contact details. The young woman had been very nice, but politely declined. Personal details, she said, were confidential. And, in any case, Sergio had deregistered with the centre, and she had no expectation that he would ever be back.
It was as if the bottom had simply dropped out of Ana’s world. And with the acceptance that in all probability she would never see Sergio again, came the realization that she had been in love with him. Deeply, hopelessly, in love. And that while he, in an unguarded moment, had inadvertently confessed his love for her, those words had never passed her lips. Now they never would, and he would never know. And all that lay ahead in the desert that defined her future was a world of darkness in which the only possible light had already been extinguished.
Chapter Twenty
The little vibrator clipped to her blouse vibrates twice against her chest, alerting her to the presence of someone at the door downstairs. It is too soon to be Sergio, and she supposes it will be Nuri or Cristina. Since Nuri’s illness she is never sure which of them will turn up.
She feels for and finds the little panel of rocker switches on the tabletop in front of her, releasing the electronic catch on the door at the foot of the stairs. She sits perfectly still then, eyelids lightly closed, and senses the faintest of footfalls on the wooden staircase.
She is still aquiver with the excitement generated by the call from Sergio, but determines to say nothing about it. Neither Nuri nor Cristina knows anything of her history with Sergio. Both were just children at the time, absorbed in their own worlds, and Ana has not the heart to recount a story that still pains her. And, in any case, Sergio might lose courage and never come. If there is one thing that Ana has learned over all these years, it is that hope only ever brings disappointment.
She breathes deeply as the change of air in the room signals that the door has opened. She knows Cristina’s scent by heart, the distant sweetness of orange blossom carried by a single spray of her eau de cologne. But today the air brings her another, different scent. A masculine tone. Distinctive and musky, male hormones transmitted by the oil in perspiration. And she is confused.
‘Who have you brought to see me today, Cris?’
It is a moment before she feels the scrape of a chair on the far side of her computer, and the vibration of fingers on a keyboard raising braille on her screen. She scans the dots lightly with sensitive fingertips.
— It is a policeman from England, Ana. He has come to help us find the man who has threatened me.
‘And does he have a name, this man?’
— Mackenzie.
‘Ah. So he is Scottish, then.’ Ana smiles