The Hideaway Read online

  I heard footsteps on the gravel and then the woman appeared.

  She was tall and elegant, her long legs encased in skinny jeans, and bright-red high-heeled sandals on her feet. She wore a loose white blouse over the jeans, and her dark hair was tied back. Her eyes were hidden by a pair of Ray-Bans. She could have been anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-five, and I had no idea who she was or how she’d got past the gate.

  ‘Hola,’ she said. ‘You must be Juno. I am Ana Perez Moralles.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘Pilar’s mother,’ she added.

  ‘Oh!’ I was still holding in my stomach. Ana Perez was so startlingly chic that it was the only way I could feel even vaguely adequate in her company. I hadn’t imagined that Pilar’s mother would be as poised as a fashion model. If I’d thought of her at all, it would have been as a nondescript motherly figure. I was annoyed at myself for falling into the kind of stereotyping that I’d actually been irritated by just a few moments earlier.

  ‘It’s good to meet you.’ She held out a perfectly manicured hand but didn’t try the customary kiss on the cheek. I was too wet for that. ‘Pilar has talked of you a lot.’

  ‘Nice things, I hope.’ I picked up the towel, which I’d draped over the stone bench, and wrapped it around me.

  ‘But of course,’ said Ana Perez. ‘She says that you and your colleagues have been very helpful to her. That you are kind and generous with your time and your knowledge. She is happy working with you.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said.

  ‘I, too.’ Ana smiled. ‘She is my only daughter and I want very much that she be happy.’

  ‘She’s good at her job,’ I told her. ‘She gets on well with the patients.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Ana.

  I shifted a little uncomfortably. I was conscious that I was still wet and dripping beneath the towel.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was swimming and . . .’

  ‘Would you like to change?’

  I nodded, then hurried into the house and up the stairs, where I dried off and put on a bright-pink sundress and my jewelled flip-flops. Nothing in my wardrobe could possibly make me feel equal to Ana Perez but at least now I was wearing clothes. I came downstairs again. She was sitting at the stone table.

  ‘I must apologise to you,’ she said as I joined her. ‘I should have phoned to say I was coming.’

  ‘It’s your house,’ I said. ‘You can come any time you like.’

  ‘Not while you’re renting it,’ she said. ‘But this was my first free day since you arrived, and I wanted to welcome you. I believe you have already settled into life in Beniflor and have even given first aid to Xavi Ruiz.’

  ‘Anyone would have done the same,’ I said.

  ‘Nevertheless, you were very kind. As for Elena Navarro – she has spoken of the work you are doing to the house.’ She glanced towards the villa, where this morning’s shutters were still drying. ‘Pilar did not tell me you would do so much. I must pay you for it.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ I cried. ‘I didn’t do it to be paid. I did it because I wanted to. It’s not like I had anything else to keep me busy.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you are a radiographer not a carpenter,’ said Ana. ‘And I’m very grateful.’

  I laughed. ‘I can do both.’

  ‘And you are happy here at the Villa Naranja?’ she asked. ‘You are enjoying your stay? You are not too lonely?’

  ‘How can I be? I’m taking children to hospital and varnishing the shutters.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Well, if it gets too boring for you, you could come to Valencia for a few days,’ she said. ‘I would be delighted to have you stay with me. You should see something more of the country while you are here.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly impose on you like that,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ retorted Ana. ‘Beniflor is my home town and very beautiful, but it would be a shame not to come to the city too. To be truthful . . .’ her voice dropped and she looked around as though we could be overheard, ‘although I like to visit Beniflor, this house . . . well, it will always be my mother’s house to me, even though I lived here. It has more of her presence than mine or my brother’s.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘All the same, as a weekend retreat or somewhere for the summer it must be nice.’

  ‘It is good to have somewhere different,’ she agreed. ‘But as you have seen yourself, the villa is a little too much for us to manage. It needs more maintenance than we have time for. Better to sell it and buy an apartment in Beniflor Costa for weekends. That is what I hope to do. At the same time . . .’ she looked around again, ‘I feel guilty about it. Because it has been in our family for a long time, and it’s hard to let it go.’

  ‘How long have you lived here?’ I was genuinely interested in the history of the villa. I felt an ownership, after all.

  She glanced at her watch. ‘Let us have something to eat,’ she said. ‘Then we can talk.’

  ‘Um . . . I only have salad in the fridge,’ I told her. ‘I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘I do not expect you to prepare food for me,’ she said. ‘We will go to Beniflor Costa. There is a nice restaurant overlooking the sea.’

  ‘Oh, but—’

  ‘Come along.’ Her voice was firm. ‘I will drive.’

  She wasn’t the kind of person you could say no to.

  So I nodded in agreement and fetched my bag.

  Ana’s car was a silver-grey Mercedes cabriolet. The soft top was down, and when I got into the passenger’s seat I couldn’t help feeling a little chic and glamorous. At least until she gunned the car down the twisting road to the coast and I didn’t feel glamorous at all, just scared.

  So I was relieved when we turned the last corner and stretched out in front of us was a small bay of golden sand and the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Despite the cloudy day, the beach was still dotted with multicoloured sunshades, and there were plenty of people swimming in the sea and lying out on loungers.

  Beniflor Costa was much bigger than Beniflor itself. There were lots of apartment buildings and villas overlooking the sea, and I could easily imagine Ana spending her summer weekends in one of them. I wondered suddenly about the rest of her family. Would they like a holiday apartment or would they prefer to keep the villa in the hills? Did Mr Perez – if there was a Mr Perez – agree with the idea of selling the family home? Rosa had mentioned a brother who actually lived in Beniflor Costa too, so perhaps Ana wanted to be closer to him.

  She turned the car towards the wide promenade that encompassed almost the entirety of the bay. It was crammed with restaurants, bars and the kind of shops that sell all things beach related, from inflatable balls to bikinis. She drove past them and eventually pulled up outside a small wooden building, a few hundred metres after the prom.

  ‘Lucky to find a space,’ she remarked as she killed the engine.

  We both got out of the car and walked into the restaurant. I’d been expecting something equally small inside but it opened out on to a wide wooden deck, which overlooked the sea. About half the tables were already occupied and others had a reserved notice on them. I wasn’t surprised, because it was clear that the view had to be one of the best in the town.

  ‘How lovely!’ I said as I turned to Ana. ‘I’d never have guessed this was here.’

  Ana grinned. ‘It’s my favourite place. Ah, Iker, buenos días. Qué tal?’

  The restaurant owner, a man with curly grey hair and an extravagant moustache, had come to greet us. He and Ana exchanged the customary kisses and then Iker led us to the best table in the place – at the corner of the deck, with uninterrupted views of the sea.

  ‘Iker and I were at school together,’ Ana told me. ‘We hated each other then. But we grew up and now we’re good friends. I’ve asked him to bring the tapas menu, is that OK for you?’

  ‘Perfect,’ I said.

  Apart from at the fiesta, the only eating out I’d done in the l
ast couple of weeks was coffee and pie in the Café Flor, so I was looking forward to the opportunity of sampling some tapas. After studying the menu for a while we ordered patatas bravas, calamari, olives and mussels. Iker then brought us a large jug of water, infused with lime.

  ‘This is lovely,’ I said. ‘It really is. Thank you for bringing me here.’

  ‘It’s the nicest place on the Costa,’ said Ana. ‘Iker is a great chef. The food is good but simple. I hope you like the mejillones.’

  The mejillones were the mussels. I’m not a big shellfish eater, but Iker recommended them and so I thought I should give them a try.

  ‘Not bad,’ I said, after I’d doused one with lemon and popped it into my mouth. ‘I don’t think I’d order them on a regular basis, but maybe from time to time.’

  ‘By the time you go home you will be accustomed to all of our wonderful seafood,’ she assured me. ‘You must visit some more of our good restaurants while you are here.’

  ‘Oh, I’m living the simple life,’ I said. ‘My eating out is usually coffee and cake at the Café Flor. It’s in Beniflor.’

  ‘I know it,’ she said.’The owner is another person I went to school with.’

  ‘I suppose everyone knows everyone around here,’ I said as I helped myself to some spicy potato.

  ‘In the past, yes,’ she agreed. ‘Of course the town has grown and changed over the years, and there are lots of new people we don’t know. But the Beniflorencos all know each other.’

  ‘Has your family lived in the Villa Naranja all your lives?’ I asked. ‘It’s a much grander house than a lot of them around here seem to be.’

  ‘That’s because it’s not a finca. It was originally built as a country home for a Valencian nobleman,’ she told me. ‘In 1931, after a new government was elected and the King went into exile, Don Fernando and his family left Spain too. My grandfather supported the new government, but not everyone in Beniflor did, and there was a lot of civil unrest in Spain at that time. The country moved closer and closer to civil war, and when that broke out the house was taken over by nationalists and my grandparents moved in. It became a safe house for those who opposed Franco’s forces.’ She sighed. ‘My family was very involved in the war, and they paid the price.’

  ‘What price?’

  ‘My grandfather was executed,’ she said. ‘He was hanged from a tree in the garden.’

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘It was a turbulent and difficult time in our history,’ she told me. ‘The fascists tried to take my grandmother too, but she was prepared. She shot the local leader and became a bit of a heroine.’

  ‘Ana!’

  ‘I know. It sounds so unlikely and unbelievable now, doesn’t it? But the scars are still there, although the tree is not. My mother chopped it down. She was a baby when it happened, so she didn’t remember it, but her mother kept the stories alive. When she died, my mother decided that it was time for the tree to go too. She didn’t like to talk about it, but she often said that it was important to get rid of the symbols while keeping the memories of the people alive. However, she marked the spot where it happened and she planted a jacaranda there instead of the olive tree they hanged him from.’

  ‘Oh!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ve seen the jacaranda. There’s a stone beneath it.’

  Ana nodded. ‘It was an old sundial. It would probably still be effective at telling the time, but of course it’s in the shade of the tree now. We weren’t allowed near it when we were children, but over time, it just became part of the garden.’

  ‘Does Pilar know?’ I asked. ‘She never said a thing about it to me.’

  ‘Of course. But to her it’s just an old story that means very little. And we tend not to talk about those times very much.’

  ‘I suppose we need to learn from them.’ I was still coming to terms with the Villa Naranja’s violent past, so at odds with its tranquil present.

  ‘That’s true. Although somehow we seem to repeat the past, over and over, just in a slightly different way. Anyhow . . .’ she filled my glass with more water, ‘there is no need for us to be depressed about it now. The house was legally given to my family, and my brother and I grew up there. We didn’t know anything about the politics, but whenever we were naughty my mother used to tell us that our grandfather was watching us, and that if we disobeyed her we’d see his ghost standing on the sundial.’

  ‘That would have freaked me out!’ I cried.

  ‘It had its uncomfortable moments,’ admitted Ana. ‘My brother and I often spent nights peering out of the window hoping to see Grandfather’s ghost. My brother, Pablo, insisted he had seen him once or twice – but that’s nonsense, of course. He was only trying to scare me.’

  Once again I had to remind myself that I didn’t believe in ghosts. And yet I was recalling the noises I’d heard on the first night I arrived, and the broken glass and how I’d reassured myself that it had been caused by Banquo. If I’d been a believer in anything else, the fact that a man had been hanged only a few metres from the house could easily have accounted for a restless spirit!

  ‘Have I scared you now?’ asked Ana when I didn’t speak. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. It’s just a house, and there was never a single day that I thought my grandfather haunted it. I never said that to my children – I wouldn’t have dreamed of it. It’s just that it’s such a long time since I’ve spoken of it, I couldn’t help myself.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I assured her. ‘I’m fine. It’s just hard to believe, that’s all. The Villa Naranja is so peaceful and serene. I’m struggling to picture it as a hotbed of rebel activity.’

  ‘It was called El Rincón then,’ she told me. ‘It means a corner, a little place, hidden away. My parents renamed it. They thought it was a good idea.’

  I nodded. ‘I don’t know how you can possibly want to sell it,’ I said. ‘It has such history.’

  ‘It’s good to remember, but knowing when to move on is also part of life,’ said Ana. ‘My husband and I have our home in Valencia. My son has his own apartment here and divides his time between Beniflor Costa and Madrid. And Pilar is living in Ireland. The Villa Naranja is neglected, and that’s not the legacy I want to leave.’

  ‘Would the Navarros buy it?’ I asked. ‘After all, they own the finca next door.’

  ‘We have talked about it,’ said Ana. ‘But when it comes to negotiations, Miguel Navarro is a total shark. He won’t pay anything like what I want. We will see, though. You have already made it look more attractive to buyers. I have to thank you for that.’

  ‘Actually I was wondering if I could do a little more,’ I said.

  ‘More! What have you got in mind?’

  ‘Painting the inside,’ I replied. ‘Those mustard walls are so depressing.’

  Anna laughed. ‘I hate them too,’ she said. ‘My mother would have changed them, I think, but she felt they were her mother’s choice and she couldn’t do it.’

  ‘If you’d prefer that I didn’t . . .’

  ‘If you want to spend your holiday doing up my house, you are welcome,’ said Ana. ‘I feel bad that you feel the need to do it.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘I’m just not good at lounging around. I like to keep active.’

  ‘Allow me to give you money for paint.’ She reached for her bag.

  ‘Oh, no,’ I protested. ‘I want to do this. You mightn’t like it, and then you’ll have to pay to have it redone. So—’

  ‘I will hardly dislike it more than I do already,’ she said. She took out her purse and handed me a couple of hundred euros. ‘Buy what you need. If there is any money left, you can treat yourself to a nice bottle of wine.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll spend that much on paint,’ I said.

  ‘But there may be other things,’ said Ana. ‘Brushes and . . . and . . . well, whatever. I appreciate you doing it.’

  ‘I want to,’ I said. ‘I was thinking an off-white.’

  I smiled inside as I said i
t. Back in Dublin I’d dreamed of changing the walls from a neutral colour to something more vibrant. But here, the vibrancy was all around. The walls needed to be a focal point of calm, not call attention to themselves.

  ‘I will leave it to you,’ she said. ‘You seem to know what you are doing.’

  ‘I hope you find the right buyer,’ I said.

  ‘So do I,’ said Ana. ‘It’s a nuisance having to travel backwards and forwards from Valencia to look after it, especially since I do it so badly!’

  ‘Do you work in Valencia?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m a curator at the City of Arts and Sciences,’ she said.

  I’d seen pictures of the futuristic buildings, designed by Santiago Calatrava, in the city’s reclaimed river bed. They looked amazing, and I said so.

  ‘Our current exhibition is about the body as a machine,’ said Ana. ‘You might find that interesting.’

  ‘I probably would.’

  ‘So come to Valencia,’ she suggested again. ‘We would love to have you stay.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. But—’

  ‘Let’s exchange numbers,’ said Ana. ‘And if you want to visit, just let me know.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s my pleasure,’ said Ana.

  She signalled for the bill and I picked up my bag. But she refused to allow me to pay or even to pay my share.

  ‘You’re a guest in my country,’ she said. ‘When I come to Ireland you can pay. Besides, you’re working for me as my decorator now, so this is a business lunch.’

  ‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘I’m doing something I enjoy.’

  ‘And I’ve enjoyed chatting to you,’ Ana told me. ‘Now, accept lunch as my gift and let’s go.’

  It was late in the afternoon by the time Ana left for Valencia again. I waved goodbye and then walked through the garden, stopping at the sundial beneath the jacaranda. Some of the purple blossoms had fallen from the tree on to the stone. Suddenly I could visualise Ana’s grandfather being dragged from the house by factions baying for his blood. His wife and children shrieking in terror. And then the moment he was strung up – it was a truly horrific scene. And it had happened less than a hundred years earlier.