Ray and Gabriela arrive in a characteristic explosion of noise and energy.
‘OVER HERE!’ I hear Gabi squeal just as their ancient Chevrolet screeches round the corner of Liza’s street, unidentifiable rock music thumping from the open windows. I’d been sitting on the curb outside the house for twenty minutes already, getting increasingly impatient.
‘Quick, get in!’ Ray leans out of the window, lowering his shades and dramatically revving the engine, causing it to spew out a thick stream of black smoke into the road behind. ‘Terrible traffic, there have been more protests about the prisons in the town centre and loads of roads are closed. But it’s okay – I know a back route.’ He revs the engine again.
‘He thinks he’s Sean Connery in a Bond movie,’ explains Gabriela, rolling her eyes apologetically, leaning round from the passenger seat to kiss me on the cheek. No sooner have I shut the back door behind me than we’re off with a squeal of tyres and more black smoke.
‘Seriously, cariño, we’re just going to pick up Kirsty’s dad from the airport, not escape a mob of angry terrorists,’ Gabriela insists, but Ray’s shades are back down over his eyes and his jaw set in concentration.
‘Hey, are you okay?’ I feel Gabi peering in concern at my face, and wish I had remembered to put on sunglasses as well to hide my puffy eyes.
Just then my phone rings again and I dive for it, grateful for the distraction.
Liza’s shrill voice pierces my ear.
‘YOU DIDN’T COME DOWNSTAIRS TO SAY BYE!’ she shouts accusatorily. ‘I MADE EMPANADAS!’ I open my mouth to apologise but her tirade continues. ‘WE’RE INVITING YOUR FATHER FOR DINNER THIS EVENING!’ she informs me, getting louder. Why is it that older people feel the need to yell at the top of their voice when using a mobile phone, as if technology had not advanced any further than holding a plastic cup to your ear and shouting?
‘DOES HE EAT LASAGNE?’
I hold the phone away from my ear. ‘Yes, Liza, I think so, but honestly you don’t have to go to any trouble. I’m sure Dad will be tired after the flight and just want to…’
‘GREAT! BRING RAY AND GABRIELA AS WELL!’ Then she hangs up, leaving me no further chance to object.
It takes us nearly three hours to get there. Endlessly punctuated with awkward roadside toilet breaks for poor Gabi, and, eventually, me as well, the journey is a nightmare of twisting country roads and bumpy detours. Twice we come to a dead end due to road closures and have to turn back. It would be a beautiful drive, as we leave the city behind us and reach an unspoilt horizon of clear blue sky and rolling green hillsides – if it were not for the painful rattling of the clunky little car and pitiless sunlight blazing in through all the windows, slowly welding us to the leather seats. With each passing mile, Ray becomes less Sean Connery and more Shaun the Sheep, slumping further and further down in his seat and smoking dejectedly out of the window.
By the time we finally clatter to a halt outside the shiny new airport, the sun is lower in the sky and a radio announcement is cheerfully informing us that the crowds of protestors have been dispersed by police and the main bypass to the airport is now open again. I still haven’t heard anything from Harry.
While Gabi runs off to the toilet again, Ray and I hurry to look at the big winking boards displaying all incoming flights.
‘The fourteen-fifteen from Madrid, right?’ Ray is nudging me. ‘It looks like it’s already landed!’
But I don’t need him or the board to tell me that as, already, like a sniper honing in on his target, I’ve spotted my father. A head taller than most of the people in the crowd also flocking out of the sliding doors away from immigration, his salt-and-pepper hair and determined, striding gait are unmistakable. He’s wearing a dark-blue jumper I bought him about four Christmases ago, in the Tesco sale, I think, and dragging two enormous unwieldy suitcases that keep bumping into each other as he walks. It strikes me that he looks more tired, and older somehow, than when I last saw him.
My heart starts to pound. Will we hug each other in greeting? Our sporadic visits usually begin with only an awkward cheek-kiss. But when you’re meeting someone who has just crossed an ocean to visit you, surely that warrants a hug…
A moment later Dad catches sight of me and begins laboriously steering the suitcases in my direction. He can’t let go of them to wave, so the only sign of recognition on his face is a slight raising of eyebrows and a curt nod.
‘Hi, Dad,’ I say, suddenly feeling shy, then lurching forward to catch one of the suitcases just as it starts to teeter and wobble precariously. Well, that precludes any hugging, but I’m sure there will be another opportunity.
‘Hi, love.’ He nods at the suitcase. ‘Thanks. Harry hasn’t come with you?’
Great, he’s picked up on Harry’s absence straight away…
‘No, Harry had to work this morning at the language school, but my friends Ray and Gabriela kindly offered to drive us instead…’ I trail off as Dad turns away from me to shake their hands and for the first time I notice his companion, following several feet behind him with a mobile phone glued to her ear.
She is only about five foot three and very petite, with a lot of vividly dyed red hair piled up on top of her head with a clip. Dressed head to foot entirely in khaki, I can’t help but imagine her immaculate clothes adorning the pages of a designer outdoor-wear catalogue, sported by women much younger than her, grinning at the camera from a windswept mountain scene.
As she marches up to my father, in what I notice are bright-turquoise, pristine, child-sized hiking boots, she clicks the phone shut and says to him in a businesslike tone, ‘They can have a driver here in five minutes.’
Driver?
‘Dorice, this is my daughter, Kirsty, and her friend Ronald.’ He pronounces her name strangely, elongating the vowels: Doreeees. Is that even a real name?
‘Ray,’ I correct him, shaking Dorice’s perfectly French-manicured hand, strangely incongruous against her ready-for-anything combat gear. ‘What driver?’
‘Um…’ Dad flicks his gaze uncomfortably from Dorice to me, then back to Dorice, then at Ray, finally letting it come to rest on the floor somewhere over by the bureau de change. ‘Kirsty and her friends have come to pick us up,’ he mutters almost inaudibly, and it takes us all a few moments to realise he’s talking to Dorice.
What’s going on? Surely my dad, experienced businessman and independent bachelor, can’t be acquiescing to this… person?
Dorice and I stare each other out for a few tense seconds, then eventually she, also, lowers her gaze. ‘Well, I must sit in the front,’ she insists, pouting. ‘I get terribly car sick in the back.’
Ray breaks the tension by stepping forward and offering to take the suitcases from Dad.
‘Thank you, that’s so kind,’ Dorice beams at Ray, before turning to my father and hissing, ‘David, the equipment!’
‘Oh, yes, right,’ mutters my father, mumbling a further apology to Ray and taking back the larger of the two suitcases. ‘Photographic equipment,’ he says to Ray, by way of explanation.
‘Extremely expensive photographic equipment,’ Dorice adds, striding after my father as he begins hauling the grotesquely large suitcase after him again. I find myself wondering crossly why ‘the equipment’s’ monetary value means my fifty-five-year-old father has to be in charge of carrying it instead of twenty-years-younger Ray, but I don’t get the chance to ask as my father and Dorice are already halfway towards the airport doors ahead of us.
Ten minutes later we have all managed to wedge ourselves into Ray and Gabriela’s Chevrolet. Dorice occupying the front seat means that my father, Gabriela, Gabriela’s ballooning belly and I are all crammed into the back, with one end of the largest of the suitcases pressing uncomfortably into our necks. I glare at the back of Dorice’s head, already wishing she had gone straight into the cloud forest. And stayed there.
Luckily the main roads have reopened so it takes us less than an hour to get back to inner-city Quito. Nobody speaks much on the journey. Dorice stares stiffly out of the window the whole way, and Ray seems quite happy with the radio on and one arm hanging casually out of the window in the fading afternoon sunshine. Gabriela dozes off soon after we set off and my father and I are obliterated from each other by her sleeping bulk. Despite my growing sense of anticipation about my dad’s arrival over the last few days, I suddenly cannot think of a single thing to say to him.
As we finally stop outside their hotel, a fancy-looking building tucked away in a quiet, wealthy sector of the city, I lean awkwardly around Gabriela and smile at him.
‘Liza and Roberto would like to invite you over for dinner tonight. They’re our landlord and lady, although they’ve become more like friends. I know you’ll want to rest and freshen up here first, but…’
‘That would be lovely,’ Dad replies, smiling back.
Momentarily I forget about Dorice’s haughty presence in the front seat, and feel a surge of hope. This is going to work out…
Back at Liza and Roberto’s, as soon as we open the door, the wonderful, rich, savoury smell of baking lasagne meets us, closely followed by Harry, wearing an apron splattered in red sauce.
‘How did it go?’ he asks, bending to kiss me and inadvertently getting sauce on my top. ‘I just got back from the school. So, what’s she like?’
‘Hmmm, you’ll see soon enough,’ I tell him, stepping past him into the kitchen. How on earth would you describe Dorice?
‘Right, what needs doing in here?’ I ask the kitchen at large.
The room is even more chaotic than usual, every work surface taken up with dishes and utensils in various stages of use, colourful vegetables spread out on chopping boards, plates and wine glasses piled on the table ready to be laid out. A light salsa beat pulses in the background from the ancient radio, and Liza is swinging her hips to the music as she stirs something on the stove. She turns and sees me and exclaims joyously,
‘Kristie! Sweetheart, about time. Try this please?’ She thrusts a wooden spoon dripping cheese sauce towards me. Unable to protest, I sip the sauce and realise it is absolutely delicious. ‘Good? Great. Now, if you could get on with the salad, please. And this needs chopping.’ She presses a large aubergine into my hands then turns back to the stove.
‘Er, Liza, you really didn’t have to go all this troub—’
‘Nonsense. Your father is visiting. I killed a chicken specially. Now, Harry, can you please watch this sauce while I see where Roberto’s got to with the dessert.’
***
Dad and Dorice show up two hours later in a private cab from the hotel. Dorice is wearing a different pair of khaki combat trousers and a soft, expensive-looking coral fleece with about six zip-pockets up each side, topped off with matching pink lipstick. Thankfully Dad has changed out of the Tesco jumper – I feel an unexpected pang of guilt for ever buying it for him – and is now wearing a cream shirt that looks in good need of an iron, and clutching a bottle of apple juice. He looks more tired than I have ever seen him look before.
‘Wanted wine, but all shops, no sale…’ he fumbles in broken Spanish to Liza as he hands over the apple juice and they exchange cheek-kisses.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. Ecuadorian licensing laws are complicated and you won’t find a bottle of wine for love nor money anywhere after five o’clock,’ Liza witters on, taking the bottle from him and indicating for him to sit down. Dad is nodding politely but I can tell he doesn’t understand a word.
Ray and Gabriela arrive just behind them, looking refreshed and smiling despite our pointless ordeal earlier. Ray immediately starts chatting animatedly to Harry as they carry plates and glasses out from the kitchen to the dining table.
‘Kristie, be a good girl and take this out to the table,’ Liza puffs, slapping a pair of oven gloves into my hands then a vast, oozing lasagne dish on top of them. Nearly buckling under the weight, I stagger out of the kitchen towards the dining table, but something I hear Liza say stops me just outside the doorway.
‘Roberto, do you think we should have invited Sebastian?’
Hearing Sebastian’s name I can’t help but hover to listen, edging closer to the doorway, straining to hear over the clanging of kitchen implements and ignoring the feel of the heavy lasagne getting slowly hotter in my hands. Liza is fussing over a salad with her back to me, Roberto beside her rummaging in the kitchen drawers for cutlery.
‘I’m not sure that would have been a good idea,’ Roberto replies, his voice muffled as he bends over the drawer. ‘I think he’s still very…’ His voice is drowned by the metallic sound as he gathers up an armful of knives and forks. I lean as close to the crack in the doorway as I dare, nearly losing my balance with the hefty dish.
Liza won’t give up. ‘But it would have been nice to cheer him up. After everything that happened I don’t think he…’
Suddenly my fingers are burning despite the oven gloves and I’m forced to jerk away from the door and rush to thud the dish down heavily on the dining table, blowing on my hands in pain.
What had they been going on about… after everything that happened? Everyone else seems to have dark secrets around here… surely not lovely, friendly, silly-tie-wearing Sebastian, too?
I don’t have much time to dwell, as Roberto has come in to lay the table and propose a toast to ‘los viajeros’. Making sure everyone’s glass is filled, he raises his own high and claps my father on the back. ‘Welcome to Ecuador, and above all, congratulations on your marriage!’
Wait… what?
As everyone clinks their glasses together and chants ‘welcome’ and ‘congratulations’ in both English and Spanish, my eyes meet Harry’s over the table for the first time of the evening, and I realise there has been a horrible misunderstanding.
When explaining my father’s visit to the staunchly Catholic Liza and Roberto, I’d referred to my father and his ‘wife’, for fear of delving too far into the reality that this is actually a woman I’ve never met before and who will probably only be around five minutes before being replaced by a newer model. I never thought my white lie would actually see daylight, as my dad only speaks basic schoolboy Spanish from forty years ago and everyone will rely on me to translate everything.
To my immense irritation I see that Harry is turning a brighter red than the tomato topping on the lasagne, trying to control his silent laughter. Perhaps I’ll get away with it, I think, as everyone lowers their glasses and starts to tuck in. But then I notice my father, considerably perkier than when he arrived, is also laughing heartily. To my horror he leans across the table and says in a stage whisper to Roberto:
‘That’s great, thanks,’ he guffaws, ‘but we’re not married! What’ve you been telling everyone about us, eh, Kirsty?’ He laughs again and clinks wine glasses enthusiastically with Roberto, who is laughing along but looking at me strangely out of the corner of his eye. Oh God… I plaster a good-natured smile on my face and try to divert everyone’s attention to Liza’s homemade chicken lasagne in the centre of the table.
‘Um, yes, great, please help yourselves, it’s getting cold…’
Dorice, however, is staring down at her plate with a look of wide-eyed alarm on her face.
‘Oh dear, oh no, oh dear me, no…’ she mutters, lifting the top off the slice of lasagne with her fork.
‘Love, what’s wrong?’ Liza jumps up and bustles over, and Dorice turns her delicate face up imploringly.
‘I can’t eat cheese.’
What? Who on earth can’t eat cheese?
‘Yes…’ Dorice is nodding tragically. ‘It makes me dreadfully ill. Plays havoc with my digestive system, gives me terribly painful bowels. I’m sorry, I can’t eat this.’ And she pushes the plate of lasagne away, not looking remotely sorry.
Miserably I translate for Liza, omitting the word ‘bowels’, and she is immediately galvanized into action, fussing around, piling more salad on to Dorice’s plate and going off to grill some extra chicken.
‘You could have told me,’ she whispers fiercely as I trail miserably after her to the kitchen to help. You don’t get it, I didn’t even know the bloody woman existed until a few weeks ago, I just manage to stop myself from saying.
When eventually I sit back down again, Gabi squeezes my hand and gives me an encouraging smile, as if to say ‘don’t worry, it’s nearly over’.
Feeling like a marathon runner seeing the ‘20 mile’ sign loom on the horizon, I take a deep breath and prepare to translate Dorice’s long and complicated description of her son’s job in ‘The City’ to a politely nodding Roberto. I notice crossly that Harry and Ray at the other end of the table are engrossed in something on Harry’s phone, and my father is looking more and more embarrassed with every passing adjective Dorice uses to describe her son’s ‘burgeoning’ financial career.
‘Er, yes, well, that’s very nice,’ he eventually interrupts awkwardly, before turning to Liza and Roberto and attempting to ask in Spanish, ‘You… to have… children?’
I stop chewing and my breath catches in my throat. The question that has been at the back of my mind since I got here, but that it somehow got too late to actually ask. Suddenly the only sound at the table is of Dorice’s knife obliviously sawing away at a slice of aubergine. I see Roberto’s hand reach out to cover Liza’s, in a gesture so natural and instinctive that I know immediately he’s done it a hundred times before, in a hundred situations like this.
‘We had a daughter,’ he says softly. ‘Abigail. We lost her when she was at university.’ I flick a glance at Liza whose face is set in a long-practised, expressionless mask. ‘That was eleven years ago,’ continues Roberto. ‘No, please don’t worry…’ He smiles graciously at my father’s mortified apologies. ‘It’s fine to ask. People often ask.’
I remember the photo of the pretty young girl in the spare bedroom. Her slightly crooked smile and thick, shining, brown hair, just like Liza’s. Suddenly I feel cold and desperately tired. Even Dorice has put her knife and fork down and looks subdued.
‘Your daughter is a credit to you, David,’ says Liza finally, clearing her throat. She nods in my direction and only then do I realise she’s talking about me. ‘The way Kristie has settled in here, made friends, and not to mention speaking such excellent Spanish – you should be very proud.’ There’s a tense moment when no one speaks, and I can feel the blush rising hotly up my cheeks at Liza’s words.
Then my father clears his throat. ‘Thank you, Liza… it means a lot to hear that.’
I turn my head slowly to gape at him, hardly daring believe my ears, but he’s already turned away to Roberto, who has got to his feet, jovial and smiling again, to offer everyone dessert.
As everyone, including my father, clamours to start piling their plates up and pass them over to him, I realise the moment has passed.
‘Wait, we forgot to say grace!’ Liza suddenly exclaims, letting her spoon fall to the table with a clatter.
‘Oh, come on, let people finish their desserts,’ I hear Roberto mutter, but she’s not listening and has scraped her chair back and got to her feet. Roberto puts his cutlery down, too, with a sigh, and I notice Harry and Ray rolling their eyes at each other, but despite that, everyone gets to their feet as well.
‘Let’s all hold hands,’ decrees Liza. ‘I think now is a perfect time to say thank you to God for all that we have in our lives.’ I take Gabriela’s soft hand in my right, and Dorice’s icy cold one in my left, her large ring digging uncomfortably into my palm. Liza looks around at us all, standing obediently round the table, then continues. ‘Thank you, Lord, for Kristie’s father, David, and Dorice, whose journey brought them safely here to spend some quality time with their precious daughter.’ Please let it work out that way, I find myself silently adding to Liza’s prayer. ‘Ray and Gabriela, on the threshold of beginning a family together.’ With a mind of its own, my right hand squeezes Gabi’s and I feel her squeeze it back. ‘And finally, thank you for this house, this table, and this food, that Roberto and I share together with so much love.’
Everyone mutters ‘Amen’ and I find my voice joining theirs. As we all sit back down, I think of Liza and Roberto’s daughter, Abigail, and feel suddenly humbled that they are still able to feel such gratitude about anything, let alone all the things happening in other people’s lives around them.
As everyone is leaving, I go over to help Dad and Dorice into their coats.
‘See you tomorrow then? For a tour of the old town in the afternoon?’ I smile warmly at them, already filled with what feels like childish hope and excitement at the thought of showing Dad around this city that has become home for me over the last few weeks.
Dorice nods and graciously leans up to kiss me on the cheek. But as she disappears in front of him down the stairs, Dad turns to me, his brow knitted together crossly.
‘Thanks for stitching me up with that “marriage” stunt,’ he blurts out. ‘I suppose that was your and Harry’s idea of a joke?’ He looks genuinely cross, and I’m so shocked I feel incapable of forming a reply, so just stare at him, mouth half-open.
‘Anyway, see you tomorrow,’ he mutters, looking down, then heads off down the stairs after Dorice, one arm still hanging out of his jacket.
I’m so taken aback that I don’t know what to do with myself for a few moments and just stand there, holding on to the open door, tears of disappointment prickling behind my eyes. He’s only been here a matter of hours, and already my grand reconciliation is hardly going to plan. Until now it had seemed, however briefly, to be getting off to a good start. He had looked genuinely moved by what Liza said about me earlier. And something about seeing him hauling Dorice’s ridiculous luggage around, and his fumbled attempts to speak Spanish with Liza and Roberto, had already softened me towards him. I suppose I had dared hope, just for a moment, that he had been feeling the same towards me.
I blink back my tears and close the door, firmly telling myself not to give up at the first hurdle – we have all day together tomorrow, and I’m determined to make that more of a success.
‘Kristieeee!’ Liza’s voice is calling from the kitchen. It still takes me several seconds to realise she is addressing me with that name. ‘PLEASE CAN YOU GET THAT?’ Snapping out of my reverie about Dad, I notice the telephone, right next to me on the hallway table, is ringing.
‘Er, Liza and Roberto’s house?’ I say in Spanish, feeling childish.
‘Is Liza there?’ a woman’s voice shouts, sounding muffled. ‘Please, can I talk to Liza?’
‘Oh, yes, sure, hang on, just let me…’
‘Wait! Kirsty?’ I hear in English. I realise the voice is thick with tears, and a split second later, I recognise that it belongs to Naomi.
‘Oh, Kirsty, please will you come to see me? Marion’s away in the US visiting her son… the embassy man has already been twice this month, I can’t keep asking him… I’m just so alone. It’s my dad…’ She lets out a gasping, desperate sob. ‘I got a phone call this morning…’
As I listen grimly to the rest, Liza comes and stands before me in the hallway, holding a tea towel and looking worried. After another few moments, I replace the receiver and turn to her.
‘It’s Naomi. Her father was moved to a hospice this morning – they think he hasn’t got much longer. I’ve agreed to go and visit her tomorrow.’