She was the only one who’d waited for him.
*
Maria was already at the picnic spot. She’d cycled away from the group. She’d beat Lola there if it killed her, she’d said to herself, Paloma too. Nothing would distract. Not even the car.
‘I’m hot now!’ Maria threw herself under the tree as she hurled her bike to the ground letting the back wheel spin round and round. She gasped as she leant against the trunk and looked on victorious as Paloma followed her, close behind.
Lola turned up ten minutes later.
Paloma watched her sister suspiciously. Lola had nothing more than a few delicate beads of perspiration across her forehead, though she pulled the straps of her dress down to expose her shoulders, fanning herself as if exhausted. She was about to say something to her big sister but bit her tongue, momentarily distracted by the shallow breathing of Richard following on close behind. All three girls looked at him. His face flushed brightly. He nodded, too hot and short of breath to say a word.
Paloma noticed her sister rub her bare shoulder in the way that she’d only ever seen her sister do, in a way that was somehow indecent though she couldn’t explain how. But Richard’s reaction, Paloma was relieved to see, wasn’t the one Lola was expecting. English men with pale skin weren’t made for cycling under an almost cloudless sky in the heat of the day. Richard Johnson let his bike drop to the ground. He let his body fall soon after, grateful that these sun-hardened Spanish girls had seen fit to set their picnic up under the shade of a tree.
‘Who were the people in the car?’ he asked when he’d eventually cooled down enough to speak. ‘Are they from here?’ Maria chose not to answer. The sisters shared a look of deep concern. ‘Owners of the estate, Don Felipe and Dona Sofίa.’ Lola was the first to break the silence. She gave her shoulder another rub as she looked the still panting Richard in the eye. But it was no use. Her heart was no longer in it. The thought of her mother’s employers had unsettled her. ‘Mother said she was expecting them soon,’ she said turning to Paloma and dragging Richard’s attention with her. He sat back and listened.
‘I couldn’t see the son with them.’
Maria pounced on Lola. ‘Disappointed? And anyway, I didn’t know they had one.’
‘You don’t know everything.’ The older girls’ antipathy towards one another was showing through. ‘And yes, it’s a pity he’s not with them. Mother says they’re better when he is.’
‘We’ve never seen him, but I know they sent him away,’ Paloma whispered, waiting for her friend’s questions. Not a single one came – Maria had no wish to expose her ignorance about the mysterious son any further in front of Richard Johnson. She imagined his eyes boring into her wondering what else she didn’t know. She would leave the stage to the sisters while the hole closed up. ‘Poor Cecilia!’
The sisters talked quickly, angrily, conjuring back up for him the image of the dusty black car, thundering its way furiously along the lanes to unleash the blackest of storms upon their mother …
‘They drive her like a slave.’ Lola pulled up her shoulder straps in a temper. Richard, touched by the intensity of feeling in her words, looked at her. She looked straight back and for a moment he was disarmed. The shock of her vulnerability passed through him. He looked away, afraid to relive the experience. Instead he fixed his gaze on the calm, self-assured face of Maria.
She was at the top of the pecking order once more. She smiled at him but in doing so she noticed the damp patches under the armpits of his shirt, observed how his breathing was still heavy, that his face looked like the skin of a blood orange. He didn’t look like much of a catch. Still, his eyes were upon her, not Lola.
She looked at the girl who was not her rival. Lola. Cool, strong, almost regal. Though Maria found her difficult she could not deny that Lola was indeed beautiful. With her dark, long eyelashes framing deep brown, sparkling eyes, glossy dark hair that shone in the light, and her flawless olive skin, she reminded Maria of Manuel. She looked back at Richard Johnson. She crinkled her nose with displeasure at the unwelcome comparison. He really was a rather unimpressive physical specimen, she thought again.
Maria stood up. She walked out into the sunshine, away from Richard in all his weak, disappointing reality in order to better preserve the perfect dream of him. ‘Coming?’ she asked, knowing Richard could not. He’d had enough full sun for one day. Paloma got up. Lola and Richard remained. They sat in silence, watching the two girls walk away, their bodies breaking up in ever-growing ripples of heat.
Richard was the first to speak. ‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ he said to a subdued Lola. She said nothing. She had wanted to flirt with the English boy. That was why she’d put her best clothes on. But now concern for her mother had quashed all lighter thoughts. Confusion filled her mind forcing genuine tears to well up in her eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand and apologised. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me!’ she laughed. He offered his handkerchief and touched her tenderly on the shoulder.
‘Oh, don’t be kind to me,’ Lola said, fighting back the tears.
‘Let’s play a game,’ Richard said. ‘Take your mind off it.’
Instinctively, he pushed Lola’s cascading hair away from her eyes, and cupped her face in his hands. ‘I’ll look after you,’ he said, not really knowing what he was saying nor why he was saying it. The words came of their own accord. Easier to utter for being in a language that wasn’t his own, perhaps. Yet no sooner were they out than he let his hands drop down. His eyes plummeted to the ground.
A small brown hand with pretty pink-tipped nails squeezed his still pale hand gently in response. She didn’t touch him for long but it was enough. The shock he’d felt earlier when he’d looked into her eyes surged through him once more.
Flustered, Richard looked around. What could he speak to her about? English. Yes, he could teach her some English. ‘Say a word, any word. Ask me anything! What would you like to know?’
She looked at him, put her lips to his ear and whispered ‘Qué pasa?’ He cupped his hand around her ear in response. ‘What’s happening?’ he whispered, tickling her neck with his warm breath. An hour slipped past, lips getting ever closer, shoulders rubbing, heads getting thrown back by the strength of the laughter that grew more assured the more comfortable they felt in each other’s company. Lola’s fingers worked their way bit by bit over the back of his hand, along his arm, around his shoulder, until by the time they came to rest on the back of his neck they felt as if they’d always been there. She brushed the fine hair at the nape of his neck lightly. It made him tingle inside. ‘Te quiero.’ Whispered words wove themselves magically around his heart, pulling his lips towards hers.
The sound of Maria’s laughter as she finally decided to grace them with her presence once more shattered the spell. Richard stiffened. Both he and Lola moved as far away from each other as they could. They looked at the ground. A joint expression of guilt. Maria mistook it for boredom. She sat herself down between them as if filling the conversational void she assumed must have occurred in her absence.
‘I’m hungry,’ Maria said as she rummaged through the picnic basket she’d packed. She now knew as much as Paloma did about the landowners’ son having pumped her friend full of questions on their walk: and it wasn’t very much. She couldn’t even tell Maria what he looked like, having seen him only a handful of occasions herself many years ago. All Paloma could remember was that Cecilia had said that he was a ‘good boy’. Maria recalled that Cecilia had also said Dona Sofίa and Don Felipe were ‘good employers’ and so that was no recommendation. She smiled at Richard. ‘You must be hungry too,’ she said, as she handed him some bread and ham. She sighed as she looked into the distance, satisfied that she’d restored him to his rightful place in her heart.
Paloma’s eyes settled a little closer to home. The look on her big sister’s face unsettled her. The more familiar expressions of defiance