Formentera, present day
I’ll never forget the day I saw the villa for the first time, sparkling like a clean sheet in the sleepy Spanish sun. The shutters were the colour of pale lichen, and dusky bougainvillea trailed over the whitewashed stone.
It was a simple place, in a sparse cubic design, that was centuries old, as old as this oft-forgotten slip of an island itself. The house, dominated by views of the sea: a paint swirl of turquoise that met darkest navy across the horizon, vast and unknowable and full of promise.
The air seemed somehow to whisper with it, and I had this feeling, there in the warm, citrus-flavoured sunshine, the scent coming from the orange and lemon trees that had grown wild and abandoned in the forgotten garden, of something inside me stirring. Like some bone tapestry had threaded beneath the ground and called out to my flesh to bring me home.
The feeling was powerful, yet fleeting, over in the length of a sigh, but for the first time in months I felt something shift and, for a moment, as if just maybe I’d be all right.
The villa was a chapter from a familial past of long before my birth. It belonged to a sepia-coloured photograph of an almost-forgotten corner of my family history. People whose names had been all but washed away by the changing tides.
Yet here I was. Like a message in a bottle washed ashore from the wide arms of the ocean, like flotsam. Not by chance, though. But by love. By my husband, James.
Because one of the last things he did before he died was buy this house.
He always did have a flair for the dramatic. I found out about the villa on the day of his funeral. Like we were in some epic film, the drama of which he would have loved. I can almost imagine him planning it. The way he would have pictured it in his head, arranging all the players and waiting for the last possible moment to make his announcement – to have the final word, even in death. I found out after the guests had left.
Sage, my teenage daughter, was in bed, cried out and exhausted, and the house was quiet. Too quiet. The sort of stillness that demands a scream. I was sitting in the living room with the curtains closed, the twin doors pulled shut, a tumbler of whisky on the side table, wearing the black silk dress we’d picked out together, when we could almost convince ourselves that it wasn’t really for this occasion. He’d chosen it because he’d liked that it showed off my legs.
But that was then; it hung off me like a sack now as I sat, my head between my knees, while I tried and failed to contemplate the future without him.
Charlotte Woolf: forty-five, mother, mystery-novelist-has-been, widow. I’d made peace with my advancing age and my flagging career, but I wanted no part in the last. None at all.
There was a faint knock on the door and Allan, my brother, came in. He was wearing that smile, excavated from somewhere deep and broken. The smile, the living reserve for those left behind.
He took a seat and put the letter down on the side table, propping it up against my whisky glass.
‘It’s from James, his last wishes and all that, Twig,’ he said.
My brother has called me Twig for most of my life, even when I’d long since stopped resembling a stick insect with twig-like limbs, even when the nickname seemed more ludicrous still when I put on a load of baby weight that never quite went away for a decade. He appeared a little nervous as he crossed and uncrossed his slim legs, hands brushing his wool trousers.
Allan always appeared a little anxious, though, as if a loud noise would make him bolt, but he was made from stronger stuff than he appeared. I knew this only too well, considering how much I’d been relying upon him these last few weeks – this whole year, in fact.
I blinked. ‘He left me a letter?’ I repeated, dumbly.
When had James had the time to write me a letter? And why would he have when we’d been together every day since he was diagnosed? It made me sad to think of it. Him writing me some last wrist-slashing note in those last days in the hospital, as his body shut down after its long fight against the cancer that had spread through every inch of the six-foot frame I’d loved so much.
Stage four melanoma.
In the end his death had been quick, and not as drawn-out as it might have been. That’s what all of his doctors said. There were five, so I suppose they knew best. I was meant to take comfort in that. The short answer was: I did not.
I didn’t want him to have suffered, of course not, but I couldn’t help wishing that there could have been some middle ground. A few more months or even weeks, when he wasn’t in pain. Horribly selfish, I know. But how could he have died at the age of forty-six? It’s not what we’d signed up for. Not by a long shot. I wanted the midlife crisis complete with the too-flashy car that had never quite arrived. The grey hair and age spots. Him walking Sage down the aisle. The day he would hold his grandchild for the first time.
Not this.
I closed my eyes and leant my head against the sofa, where the tears coursed up onto the brushed linen of the sofa, melting into the pale blue fabric. You’d think I’d have used up all my tears by now, but they just kept coming, as if that’s all my body knew to do – like a wound that seeped regret.
Allan clutched my hand, the one that had James’s wedding ring on the thumb, where I’d worn it since he’d told me that there was no point in him being cremated with it on. Allan squeezed my hand, then got up and poured himself a whisky too, his eyes clouded with unshed tears.
‘What does it say?’ I asked.
He sighed. ‘I don’t know, Twig. He told me that it was something he thought might help. You know James.’
Present tense, I noted. Like James was still here. Like he was just in another room.
God, how I wished that were true.
I wiped my eyes, took a gulp of whisky and reached for the letter.
Allan looked as if he was going to leave, perhaps to give me some privacy, but I shook my head. ‘No, stay, please.’
He nodded, and then sat down next to me again. I unfolded the letter from the envelope, my vision a blur of tears. A loose photograph fell onto my lap. I frowned. There was only a one-line sentence from James, written in his messy scrawl.
I bought you a house. Don’t be cross.
I blinked, then made a sound between a snort and a laugh. I kept staring at the note. Trying to make sense of it. What the hell?
‘What?’ asked Allan. ‘What is it?’
I looked at him, realising that I must have spoken aloud.
‘He bought me a house.’
‘What?’ Allan said, blinking his grey-green eyes. Clearly James hadn’t told him of his plans either. I handed him the letter and he looked at it just as blankly as I had.
‘That’s it – no explanation or anything?’ He turned the letter over to check, in case the words had somehow scuttled onto the next page, as if all the things James had left unsaid were somehow gathering up their courage overleaf.
They weren’t.
I picked up the photograph that had fallen onto my lap, and felt a little jolt of recognition. The small sepia-coloured image fitted into the palm of my hand in a perfect square. The corners had serrated edges, and the picture looked oddly familiar, like something I’d seen in the distance years before but couldn’t quite remember where.
The image was of a small white stone villa, surrounded by trees, looking out to a vast, foamy sea. The picture was faded, and much worn, by time and, perhaps, the longing touch of fingers. I turned it over and sucked in my breath.
‘Marisal,’ I breathed, reading the name written in a beloved, familiar hand.
Allan’s eyes widened. We both knew that name – we’d heard about it from our grandmother often enough as children. It had been a promise as kids, when we begged her to tell us stories about her old family home and she’d told us only enough to tantalise our imaginations, never more. Allan and I used to promise each other that one day we’d go there, that we’d uncover the secrets we knew were somehow still there, secrets we could never prise out of her lips. A promise I’d forgotten about during the whole business of growing up and starting a family of my own.
Till now.
I took a deep breath and lifted my gaze to the golden sky, making the sun penetrate my retinas. I didn’t want my first time seeing the villa to be through a veil of tears, and neither would James.
It was that thought that pushed me forward more than anything else. Towards Marisal.
I opened the small, low garden gate, where I could see the name, almost faded into the carved stone.
I was here at last.
A month before
‘So, let me get this straight,’ said Sage, my daughter, who was nineteen going on thirty-five. She was packing her bag and I was pretending that it wasn’t breaking my heart that she was going back to university.
It was a week after the funeral and we were trying to be normal, and failing miserably.
There were two lists on the bed next to her open suitcase, written in her neat, capable hand.
One for her, the other for me. Hers a checklist, mine a survival guide, with emergency numbers, useful information and reminders. Like I was the child, and she the grown-up.
Her way, I supposed, of coping, knowing she was leaving me in our family house, alone. The house James and I had slowly turned into a home over the years. It had taken me a few days to tell her about what her father had done. I hadn’t known where to start really, till I’d run out of time and ended up blurting it out just before she was about to leave.
She looked at me, incredulously. ‘Dad bought you a villa, in Spain? Do you think that he’d lost it a little in the end?’ She was part serious, part not. She paused her packing to stare at me with her solemn ebony eyes, her dark blonde hair scraped up into its customary ponytail, and for a moment I was reminded of the little girl whose laugh reminded me of soap bubbles and hundreds and thousands of sprinkles, the little girl who lives for ever inside my heart, alongside this heartbreakingly grown-up version.
I took a seat on the edge of her bed, picked up Scruffy, the old stuffed grey rabbit she used to carry around with her everywhere, and touched his worn ears. I held back a laugh as I looked at the list, which said things like: ‘Go for a walk every day. Eat three square meals (chocolate is not a meal, Mum).’ This was underlined, twice, so it was obviously very important. ‘Maybe phone your editor, ask for an extension for your novel, again? Stay away from Grandma.’
The last made me snort, then grow sad again. My mother and I had a somewhat strained relationship at the moment. It had been that way for a while, since James was diagnosed; her way of ‘helping’ had been to try bringing all sorts of baffling New Age remedies for him to try. I had known, even as we fought, that she was just trying to be kind, just trying to help, really, but it drove me insane. It was hard enough trying to accept the impossible – that the love of my life was about to die – without having her keep trying to get my hopes up with some wild goose chase. One that only ended in disappointment, and made us constantly keep causing each other pain.
Sage stared hard at me, her eyes welling up. Then she shook her head fast and started unpacking. ‘I’ll defer or something. Start again next year. This is ridiculous. I can’t just leave you alone and go back to uni as if nothing happened. I won’t.’
‘Yes, you will,’ I said, putting on my little-used stern voice. ‘You’re going into your second year of med school, it’s your dream – that’s where your life is now, all your friends. You don’t need to worry about me, all right?’
Sage had been born an old soul. Wise, competent, hard-working, sometimes too hard on herself. James had always had to tell her it was okay to have fun, to just let go, to not have everything add up the way it ‘should’. To wear the pricy, yet fashionable clothes that fell apart in the wash, instead of sensible Marks & Spencer jumpers and shoes. There’d be time enough for old and sensible later. It was okay to just be nineteen without a plan for everything, and to not feel responsible for everyone. Those talks would be up to me now. I put her clothes back inside the bag.
‘Staying won’t solve anything, for either of us. I’ll just have something else to worry about if you do that.’
I suppose Sage feared that I might live off sugary cereal and never get out of my pyjamas with her gone. I was forty-five, and a widow, with a job that meant I never had to leave the house (or the job I would have if I ever finished the new manuscript I’d promised my editor a year ago). Working in my pyjamas and eating rubbish was my right.
‘And no – I don’t think that Dad had lost it. I think, actually he was a lot like you. He was worried about what was going to happen to me – to us, really – and he thought this was a good way to move forward.’
This was guesswork. Mostly.
She looked at me incredulously. ‘With a house in Spain?’
‘Technically it’s on a little Spanish island, right next to Ibiza.’
Her dark eyes popped in surprise, and she snorted. ‘Oh my God, Ibiza? Dad wanted you to go partying?’
I laughed. I could well understand her shock and confusion. ‘No. It’s different on the little island. Much quieter, far away from the crowds and noise, thank God.’
According to Google, the tiny island of Formentera is inhabited by a few thousand people. It’s long and narrow and covered in grassy farmland, pine forest and miles of untouched, sandy beaches. It’s only eighty-three kilometres in size and on each of its rocky headlands there is a solitary lighthouse.
Since I’d found out about the house, I’d spent some time looking at pictures of the island, trying to imagine going there and when I’d ever feel up to it. The colour of the sea arrests the eye, a dazzling sweep of turquoise that glitters as it mixes into the dark swirling blue of the vast ocean that surrounds it.
The real problem is that the only way to get there is by flying to Ibiza first, then getting the ferry to the smaller, sister island. It seemed incongruous, to say the least; me heading off to the world’s most famous party isle, filled with loud, drug-fuelled nightclubs, ageing hippies and hedonists after my husband had died. Perhaps he had lost it, a little.
But I knew the truth, of course.
‘It was your great-grandmother’s house. That’s why he bought it – he wanted us to get to know it, I think, and for it to be back in the family, where I’m sure he felt it belonged.’
Though he hadn’t explained it as such in his note, I knew that was the reason. We’d spoken about Marisal over the years, and the promise Allan and I had made to each other as children to go to the island and find it. James had always been supportive of it, but somehow, I just never got around to doing it and Allan’s interest had waned the older he’d got. Mine hadn’t, but somehow, I’d just never found the time. Perhaps buying the house, making the decision to do it, was James’s way of ensuring that I did. I handed my daughter the photograph, then held her shoulder.
She looked at it and frowned. ‘This was your grandmother’s?’ she said, taking a seat and holding the photograph in both hands as she stared at the grainy, sepia-toned image of an old white house surrounded by a wild sea. Her dark eyes were solemn.
I nodded. Sage hadn’t met my grandmother; she’d died not long after my daughter was born. ‘A long time ago. She escaped in the Spanish Civil War in the thirties, I think, and not long afterwards she met my grandfather and they came to live in his home country. The house – Marisal – was lost somehow. I’m not sure of the details, she never really told us much, but I know that it hurt her that it wasn’t in the family any more.’
‘Didn’t she ever tell you what happened?’ asked Sage, turning to look at me with a frown.
I shook my head, gave a small sigh. ‘No – she didn’t like to talk about the past. Especially the tough times. But she loved it there.’ I knew that much at least. ‘And she would have been pleased at the thought that it ended back with us somehow, particularly through Dad.’
I couldn’t help thinking of what it would have meant to her.
Sage smiled. ‘She liked him?’
I shook my head. ‘She adored him. It was embarrassing. He was always trying to speak to her in his terrible Spanish, and she loved him for it.’
‘That sounds like Dad.’ We shared teary grins, and dashed away the moisture from our eyes.
‘So when are you going to go? To Formentera… to Marisal?’
Not an if, I noted. I suppose we both knew there wasn’t much choice in it. Though the thought of jetting off there now seemed impossible. Too bright, too beautiful… too much, really.
‘In a couple of weeks, or months, maybe,’ I hedged. Perhaps when the urge to ask them to cremate my body, too, passed. I didn’t say that, of course. ‘Maybe you could come out when you have your next break, see it for yourself? I don’t know what sort of state it’s in so we’ll just have to see. The lawyer, you know, Steve Linberg?’
She nodded.
‘Well, he didn’t mention if it was habitable or not when I checked in with him but I got the sense that it’s a bit neglected. He said that no one has lived there for a few years.’
Sage snorted. ‘When you blasted him to find out what the hell Dad was thinking, you mean?’
I grinned. She knew me very well.
‘Pretty much. Anyway, who knows, maybe we’ll have somewhere to spend Christmas this year. Margaritas on the beach?’
Her eyes widened. ‘That could be good.’
It could. I hadn’t done much thinking about the future, apart from just trying to keep breathing and getting from one day to the next, but Christmas away from the memories of our family home seemed like a good plan, I thought.
I’d got hold of some of the details behind James’s decision to buy the house from Steve. Including the name of the estate agent he’d used when I’d tried to follow up James’s short, mysterious note.
I’d found out that Steve had been the one who’d taken care of everything for James when he’d told him what he wanted to do. His plan for buying Marisal.
I’d told Steve that perhaps he should have consulted me, but he assured me that James had been of sound mind when he’d instructed him to look into buying the house several months ago, when he’d discovered that it had gone to auction.
Financially, it had been a good deal. The money had come from James’s own private fund, from when he sold off his design business, so he had been within his right to buy it. It hadn’t caused any financia. . .
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