19
The Indalo Man on my wrist may be driving away storms with his magical rainbow shield, but he’s failed to protect me from the whirlwind force of Nancy. She’s been in Mojácar for a week now, which is all it’s taken for her to steal first my sanity, then my bed, then my best friend.
By forcing myself to focus solely on work yesterday afternoon and refusing unequivocally to speak to Tom about anything not relating to the documentary, I somehow made it through to the end of the day. Theo could tell something was wrong, and asked me at least four times if I was okay, but I was so dumbfounded by what Tom had confessed that I couldn’t even feel comforted by his attention. Uncharacteristically for me, I made my excuses to leave as soon as we wrapped for the day and took the bus right to the other end of the beach. I needed time alone to stew, and to call Rachel and fill her in on what had happened. She was naturally as appalled as I was at the idea of Nancy and Tom together, and it made me feel a lot better about the fact that I was almost mute with anger. I didn’t even know how I’d react if I set eyes on Nancy, so I waited until after eleven before heading back to the apartment, only to find no sign of her. Claudette, who was wrapped around Carlos on the sofa clad in just a bra and shorts, informed me cheerily that my sister had, in fact, gone to stay the night at Tom’s place.
Waking early on Saturday morning with a full day off stretching ahead of me, I pulled my new favourite flower-patterned dress on over my bikini and came straight down to the beach, hoping that I could somehow swim away the turmoil raging inside.
As it turns out, the turbulent Mediterranean does little to calm my disgruntlement. First, I stand heavily on the sharp edge of a stone on the way in, only to lurch sideways and get unceremoniously smashed in the face by a wave. There’s a whole seventeen kilometres of beach to choose from in Mojácar, but I appear to have waded into the section with the most seaweed, and it insists on wrapping its slimy tentacles around my legs and arms as I do my best to front-crawl through the surf.
I’ve just given up and am staggering back into shore when I see Theo jogging along the sand towards me, his dark, muscular arms glistening with sweat and the white wire of his headphones bouncing off the front of his black vest.
I think he’s going to run right past me, but at the last second he turns and almost trips over in surprise.
‘Hannah!’
‘Morning, boss.’
‘Good swim?’ he enquires, looking over my shoulder at the frothy swirl of the sea.
‘It was actually awful.’ I grin at him. It feels nice to be smiling again – moodiness really doesn’t suit me. ‘Good run?’
‘Hard run,’ he admits, wiping his brow. ‘I’m glad that I have seen you – now I have an excuse to stop.’
He’s glad to see me. I let those sweet words settle over me like jam atop a crumpet.
‘It’s very hot,’ he adds, lifting the bottom of his vest and using it to remove the sweat from his top lip. My nostrils are assailed by a mixture of limes and delicious man-smell, and it’s all I can do not to leap open-legged into his arms.
‘Can I offer you some breakfast?’ he asks, and I accept wholeheartedly, running back to the lounger where I left my towel and bag. I deliberately avoided the patch of beach close to his villa because I wanted to be by myself, but now that I’ve bumped into Theo all the way down here, it feels like fate.
I assume that he means breakfast at one of the many beachside cafés, but Theo leads me past each of them in turn, chatting all the while about the time he ran the London Marathon and how it was ‘the most painful experience of my life’. I laugh politely and exclaim in awe at his impressive finishing time of three hours fifteen minutes, but inside I’m a tangled mess of lust.
Theo is taking me back to his villa.
‘I don’t have churros, I’m afraid,’ he says, retrieving his key from a little hidden pocket in the back of his running shorts and slipping it into the lock. ‘But I do have eggs.’
‘Eggs sound perfect,’ I assure him, wondering how I’ll force any food at all past the wedge of adoration that is stuck fast to the inside of my throat.
‘Take off your dress, if you like.’
‘WHAT?’
Theo turns at the sound of my surprised yelp and laughs.
‘Your bikini is still wet,’ he says, and we both look down at the two circular wet patches on the front of my dress.
‘Oh. Right. Of course. I will in a minute, after …’ I give up speaking and shut my mouth, but Theo is smiling. He’s pushed his sunglasses up into his hair, which is plastered flat from sweat.
‘You can have a shower, if you prefer,’ he offers, peeling off his vest only for it to get caught in his headphones.
‘Here,’ I say, desire propelling me forwards through the shyness. ‘Let me help you out.’
It’s impossible to rescue him from the tangle of damp material and twisted wire without touching his bare torso, and my hands immediately turn clammy with longing. His stomach is firm and taut, his chest hair wet, and his face when it finally emerges is lit up with a genuine smile. Sometimes he looks so gorgeous that I can’t even comprehend how he can be real.
‘Thank you,’ he says, balling up the vest with both his hands. ‘Now I must shower, but help yourself to a towel or a drink – whatever you like.’
What I’d like most is to help myself to you, I think, but instead I thank him and cross to the pile of fresh towels that are stacked on a chair by the bathroom door. I wait until Theo has disappeared into what I assume is his bedroom before yanking off my dress, which has, rather embarrassingly, got a large wet patch across the bottom as well as on the front. Sliding open the patio doors and crossing the smooth wood of the decking, I toss the part-soaked garment over the balcony railings. Bikinis really should be better designed, I think, wrapping one of Theo’s dark-blue towels around my body and knotting it across my chest – I appear to have brought back half the Mediterranean in mine.
I hear the shower start to run and allow myself to imagine Theo standing under the water, his eyes closed as the soapy residue from his shampoo runs down across his face and chest, then lower down, into the dark cleft of his buttocks and along the length of his— Bugger, my phone’s ringing.
‘Mum, this really isn’t a good time.’
There’s a tut at the other end of the line.
‘Why? What are you doing? You told me you had a day off.’
Since when did my mother turn into Miss Marple?
‘I do,’ I hiss, cupping my hand around the phone so Theo won’t hear me and tiptoeing away from where I’d been lurking next to the bathroom door. ‘But I bumped into my boss and we’re having a, erm, very important meeting.’
‘Do you mean Theo?’ my mum asks loudly. She’s never really picked up on the fact that you don’t need to shout when you’re having a telephone conversation. ‘He’s so dishy.’
I should never, ever have shown my mum those photos I’d covertly taken of Theo at last year’s Christmas party.
‘Like I said, Mum, it’s not the best time to chat,’ I repeat, wondering why I even answered in the first place.
‘I was just calling to ask you about Nancy.’
‘What about her?’ I reply, my tone instantly cold.
‘You didn’t tell me she was there with you,’ says Mum, trying and failing to sound disinterested. I didn’t tell her, it’s true, but only because I don’t like discussing Nancy with her. Talk of my half-sister inevitably leads to a conversation about my dad, and I hate having one of those with Mum.
‘I didn’t think she would be for long,’ I tell her honestly. ‘I certainly didn’t invite her out here.’
‘I thought that you probably hadn’t,’ Mum muses. ‘That’s what I told your dad when he called.’
Oh God, here we go.
‘What does he care?’ I mutter, unable to prevent the bitterness creeping into my voice.
‘He’s relieved that she’s with you,’ Mum says. ‘The thing is, she didn’t tell him she was going over to Spain, either. I don’t think she told anyone.’
‘Well, she always has been selfish,’ I retort, and am rewarded with another tut.
‘She is okay, isn’t she?’ Mum says, and I picture her soft, pretty face etched with concern. How does Nancy do this? How does she manage to make herself the centre of attention all the bloody time?
‘Oh, you know Nancy,’ I drawl, opening Theo’s fridge door and closing it again. ‘She always gets whatever she wants and to hell with anyone else.’
‘Sounds like her mother,’ puts in my mum, then immediately begins to chastise herself. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry, darling – that was unfair of me. Susie’s a very nice woman. You know I like her very much.’
I know full well that she does not.
‘Don’t worry, Mum – it’s not like I’m going to tell on you, is it?’
The shower has stopped now and I can hear Theo cleaning his teeth.
‘I really do have to go now,’ I tell her, catching sight of my reflection in the mirror on the wall behind the sofa and grimacing. The salt water from my swim has helpfully turned my hair into Shredded Wheat. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise.’
‘Okay, darling. Love you. Bye!’
I hang up and stare at my phone. While I was talking to Mum, a message has come through from Tom.
Can we talk? it says, very simple, no kiss.
For a few seconds my fingers hover, ready to type back a reply, but then I realise that I don’t know what to write. For the first time since I met Tom nine years ago, I have nothing to say to him – and it’s all Nancy’s fault.
By the time I’ve nipped into Theo’s shower and washed away the remnants of my swim, the man himself has chopped up fresh tomatoes, red onions and green peppers and is whisking eggs in a glass bowl. He’s dressed in navy shorts and a crisp white T-shirt, and I watch the muscles in his back moving beneath the material. It’s so hot outside now that my dress is almost dry, so I pluck it off the railings and duck back into the bathroom to put it on. My bikini, on the other hand, is still far too wet to wear, so I have no choice but to go commando. Usually this wouldn’t freak me out all that much, but then usually I wouldn’t be standing beside Theo as he made the two of us a breakfast omelette. I don’t think I have ever felt more naked.
‘Can you grate?’ he asks, reaching into the fridge and handing me a healthy chunk of Manchego.
‘Of course,’ I babble, happy to be given a task. ‘You could say I’m great at it.’
He nods.
‘You know – I mean I’m great. At grating,’ I add.
Theo gives me a sideways look. ‘Yes. I got it.’
Oh. Right.
‘Can I taste?’ he adds, opening his mouth.
‘Um …’ Does he genuinely want me to feed him cheese?
‘My hands are busy,’ he says, even though it’s not completely true. He could easily put down either the bowl or the whisk, but he’s choosing not to. He must actually want me to do it for him.
I use a knife to cut a generous corner off the Manchego and bring it up to his lips, laying it across his pink tongue with tentative fingers.
‘Perfect!’ he announces, grinning at me. ‘Or, as the Spanish would say: perfecto!’
‘That’s an easy one to remember,’ I trill, smiling right back at him.
‘Do you know what goes very well with this type of cheese?’ he asks now, dashing oil into two frying pans and turning down the heat underneath each one.
‘Omelettes?’ I guess, and he shakes his head.
‘Of course omelettes, yes – but also almonds.’
‘As in the nuts?’
Of course he means the nuts – why am I such a cretin?
‘Yes, but they must be salted.’
‘Sounds, er, perfecto,’ I joke weakly, stepping backwards out of the way as Theo starts cooking the onion and peppers. He’s very flamboyant in the kitchen, just as he is at the dinner table, adding dashes of seasoning here and there and picking up bits of grated cheese from the huge pile I’ve created.
‘Do you cook, Hannah?’ he asks without turning around, which is a blessing because it means he can’t see my face turn red. I sense that this is an important question, because it’s clear to me now that Theo definitely does enjoy cooking. He’s a mature, independent, modern man who is good in the kitchen and understands enough about flavours to know that salted almonds go perfectly with Manchego. If I tell him that my culinary expertise is limited to jacket potatoes with tuna and mayonnaise or, if I’m feeling really daring, the odd plate of Welsh rarebit, then I fear he will not be very impressed.
‘I’m very keen to learn more,’ I say eventually, diplomatic as ever, and he seems to like this answer, as he ushers me forwards to join him by the stove.
‘The trick to a good omelette is not to overcook your eggs,’ he begins, lifting one of the pans to show me just how far he’s turned the heat down. ‘And you want your onion and pepper to retain some bite, but not be raw. These two things can make you have some gas in your stomach, you know, if you do not prepare them correctly.’
Gas is something I definitely do not want today.
‘And when we add the cheese,’ he continues, picking up two large heaps of it and sprinkling them on top of the omelettes, ‘we must put the pans under the grill, so that it bubbles.’
‘Yum,’ I say, for want of anything more articulate to contribute.
Theo catches my eye. ‘Yum indeed.’
We eat out on the wide balcony, my wet bikini dripping droplets of water on to the wooden decking beside us and the wind doing its best to flash my bare bottom to the chef. In the end, I have no choice but to clamp the cotton skirt between my thighs and then firmly cross my legs, kicking Theo under the table as I do so.
‘Sorry!’ I cry, reaching down to rub his leg and then veering back up in horror when I realise what I’m doing.
‘Do I make you nervous, Hannah?’ he asks, regarding me with bemusement.
‘No!’ I fib, picking up my cutlery with shaking hands.
The omelette is so delicious that I eat the entire thing, plus the two slices of bread that Theo passes me. Thankfully he hasn’t gone full Spanish and smeared garlic mayonnaise all over them, but he is very generous with the butter. Everything tastes rich and fresh, the saltiness of the cheese balancing the sweetness of the red onion, and the oil adding an earthy depth to the plump chunks of tomato.
‘Perfecto!’ I tell Theo when I’ve finished, making full use of the newest Spanish word in my vocabulary.
He refuses my offer to wash up and takes the empty plates back inside the villa himself, only to re-emerge five minutes later with a huge cafetière of black coffee and a little pot of vanilla yoghurt for each of us.
‘This is a real treat,’ I tell him, peeling back the foil lid and sticking my teaspoon through the set surface. ‘Thank you for inviting me.’
‘I told you before,’ says Theo, licking his own lid. ‘I like spending time with you, Hannah. You are very easy company.’
I blush with joy.
‘But I don’t want to keep you here if you have plans,’ he adds, propping his tanned bare feet up on the seat of a spare chair and wriggling his toes. ‘It is your day off, and I’m sure you do not want to spend it with your boss.’
‘Oh, I do!’ I tell him, probably with a touch too much enthusiasm. ‘What I mean is, I didn’t have any other plans. I don’t have a plan.’
‘What about your sister?’ Theo asks, and my smile closes up like a clam.
‘She’s with Tom.’
‘Oh?’ It’s clear what he’s asking, but I pretend not to understand. I don’t want to say the words – not even to him. But he’s not letting me off the hook.
‘And they are together?’ he queries, raising an eyebrow when I nod in reply. ‘Wow. I am surprised to hear that.’
I don’t want to talk about Nancy and Tom. I wish he wouldn’t. I want to forget that either of them exist for a few hours.
‘Do you have any more old-Mojácar stories to tell me?’ I say instead, driving us down a new path of conversation – one that I know Theo will like. ‘I really loved the one about Mariquita and the wizard.’
He hesitates for a moment before replying, perhaps wondering whether to allow me to change the subject, and then he puts his feet down on the floor and pours the coffee.
‘As a matter of fact, I have many.’