Ava laughed out loud. Having been afraid that she would be lying in the dark in hopeless panic, she suddenly found the familiar links to her childhood – the Google images of Love-Struck, her mother’s possessions, her grandmother’s knick-knacks – strangely comforting, coupled with the gentle lull of the waves, the scent of warm dust and juniper and the heat pressing down like a blanket as she curled up around her phone.
‘You’ll be alright on your own?’ Rory said, putting the last bag in the car and closing the boot. It had stopped raining and the sun was somewhere behind the fog of early morning cloud, making the air smell like a greenhouse, warm and muggy like wet grass.
Claire nodded. ‘I’ll be alright. You’re sure you’ll be alright?’ she asked, her hands on Max’s shoulders, stroking the tips of his too-long hair, her son just on the cusp of an age that he would allow it.
They had decided at three a.m. that Rory would go to Spain for a couple of weeks, or however long it would take for all this to die down. And given that Max was due to break up in just over a week he would go too. It didn’t seem healthy for him to weather the Twitter storm alone at school. And it felt like a good bonding opportunity.
Claire would stay for the time being. She had her interview coming up and Home Style magazine, where she was currently deputy editor, was so busy this time of year that taking a last-minute holiday would crucify her chances.
They also both seemed to know instinctively that this was something Rory needed to do alone. That somehow being together wasn’t delivering their most successful selves at the moment.
Max picked up his battered old school rucksack.
‘Hang on,’ said Claire, taking the bag from him.
Max looked confused as she rested his hand luggage on the wall and unzipped it. As she pulled out his laptop, his little face fell. ‘What?’ he said with a whine. ‘No way.’
‘You’re going to go on a digital detox,’ she said.
Max kicked the wall. ‘I don’t want to go on a digital detox. I like digital. What am I going to do without my laptop? What am I going to do on the plane?’
Claire ruffled his hair as he sulked. ‘Get your dad to buy you a book at the airport.’
‘I don’t want a book. I want my laptop.’
Claire shook her head.
‘This is so unfair,’ Max said. ‘This is so unfair.’ He turned to look at his dad, but the deathly paleness of Rory’s face and the aura of holding-it-together-hopelessness meant Max didn’t repeat his protest for the third time.
Rory opened the passenger door. ‘Come on, mate. In the car.’
Max tried Claire one last time. ‘Please let me take it, Mum?’
‘No.’
Rory had an inkling the laptop ban was as much for his benefit as Max’s. To stop the obsessive Twitter refreshing. Rory himself had reverted to an old Nokia that could do nothing more whizzy than send and receive black and white texts of 160 characters.
Max stuck his bottom lip out.
Rory saw Claire hold back a smile as she bent down to hug him. Reluctant at first, he rolled himself round into her arms and Rory heard her whisper in his ear something along the lines of, ‘Be good, look after your father, and I love you,’ as she gave him a huge, bone-crushing hug. Then she stood up, face to face with Rory.
‘Take care of yourself,’ Claire said, pushing her hair back behind her ears, then clearly not knowing what to do with her hands, folding her arms across her chest.
It started to rain slightly. Just the odd tap-tap on the pavement.
Rory nodded.
‘Be nice to your sister,’ Claire said.
Rory nodded again.
‘Have you told her you’re coming?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Rory!’
‘I will.’
Claire rolled her eyes.
The rain tap-tapped heavier.
Rory stepped forwards. ‘We’d better kiss so I don’t leave on an eye-roll,’ he said.
She smiled.
He bent down, a bit nervous, and kissed her on the corner of her mouth. Claire reached up and held his face, kissed him square on the lips, quickly. Then she put her arms around his neck and hugged him.
Rory could smell the Chanel and Max’s shampoo because she’d run out of her flash stuff. He thought he might cry again. Hold it together, you pussy, he told himself.
‘Have fun,’ Claire said brightly as she stood back.
‘I’d have more fun with my laptop,’ said Max, cheeky this time.
Claire swiped his hair.
‘I love you,’ she said as they both went round to their respective sides of the car, and Rory wondered how much of it was for him.
The café was almost unrecognisable in the morning. Ava had woken early, the air humming with oppressive heat and the sound of car horns, street sweeping and bells ringing. From the window she could see the café tables full of people, hear the scraping of chairs, see the hands waving in greeting. A completely opposite atmosphere to the previous evening.
Showered and dressed in denim shorts and a white T-shirt, she tried to do her make-up and sort out the kink in her hair, but the gradual pooling of heat in the room got the better of her and she left the house, rubbing the line in her cheek from the pillow and trying to ruffle up her hair. As she went to shut the front door she caught a last glimpse of her indent on the living room sofa cushions where she’d slept, and remembered waking at three o’clock in the pitch-dark morning. She had felt exactly as Tom had suggested she might. Spooked and afraid, absence filling the space with the same intensity as the heat. She had felt the same unease as she had at her grandmother’s funeral. That of having a life not quite lived right. But lying there she found herself perplexed as to what one did with a second chance. She was still Ava, just Ava in Spain. The problem was that she had taken herself with her on her adventure. Afraid still of her aloneness. Afraid of everyone pairing off and moving on. Afraid that her closest next of kin was Rory. Who was right this minute ringing, presumably to have a go at her for coming back to Spain. She looked at his name flashing on her phone screen and made the instant decision to silence the call. Remembering that she’d had the courage to defy him by coming out here, and the unfamiliar frisson of power that decision had given her, was enough to make her shut the door on the view of her night and go and find out why Café Estrella was suddenly doing such a roaring trade.
The air outside was still as glass. Electric fans whirred on the bar, ineffectual against the mirage of heat. Ava took a table in the shade of the ripped awning. The café was less packed than she’d thought when looking down from the window, but there were definitely more bums on seats. All of them pensioners’ bums, dressed in polyester trousers, drip-dry powder-blue skirts and opaque tights, brown tweed slacks and polished black lace-up shoes. She recognised faces from the funeral. There was knitting. There was chatter. The sound of newspaper pages turning. The scents of warm bread, cigar smoke and strong coffee merged with the salty sea air. Everyone, it seemed, over the age of seventy-five descended on Café Estrella for breakfast.
As she was