‘I hope you’ll be comfortable here. There’s a shower with plenty of hot water.’ She indicated the door leading off the bedroom. ‘Dinner is from half-past seven because we have a lot of foreign guests. We’d be grateful if you’d be at the table not later than nine. Our cook doesn’t live in and likes to go home by ten. If there’s anything you need, you have only to ask.’
While she was speaking, Señor Llorca had been giving the room a comprehensive glance, taking in the furniture that had seen better days before being refreshed and made harmonious by a coat of paint and some simple stencils, the inexpensive rush mats and the pictures picked up for a few hundred pesetas at rastros.
What he thought of it—whether it was better or worse than the rooms he was used to sleeping in—was impossible to tell.
‘Thank you,’ he said politely.
‘There’s a roof terrace with a nice view of the valley just across the landing. If you’d like a cold beer, there’s an honour bar on the landing,’ Cally informed him. ‘It would be helpful if you’d bring used glasses down to the main bar when you’ve finished with them.’
With that she removed herself from his presence.
Left to himself, Nicolás opened his pack, took out his wash pack, put it on the end of the bed and started to strip off.
For reasons of his own, this morning he had left his car in the care of a reputable garage in a town ten kilometres away and spent the day following tracks through the mountains which eventually had led him here, to the village of Valdecarrasca, where he intended to stay for as long as was necessary to achieve his several objectives.
As the girl who had let him in had promised, there was an ample supply of hot water. Removing the fiddly little freebie of wrapped soap from the soap rack, he replaced it with his own larger bar, and enjoyed an all-over lather to remove the sweat brought on by a long tramp under a hot sun.
Although it was October, and the leaves on the vines he had passed on the road leading into the village were turning brown or dark red, the weather was still very hot by northern European and North American standards.
Thinking about the girl, as he used the freebie mini-bottle of shampoo on his hair, he was puzzled by her. All the people in these parts spoke two languages: Valenciano, the language of this region of Spain, and castellano or Castilian, the lingua franca of all Spain.
She had welcomed him in castellano, speaking it with an accent that would not have surprised him in his own milieu in Madrid but was unusual coming from a cleaner in a small village environment. But then her whole manner had surprised him: her self-possession, amounting almost to an air of authority, and her total lack of what he categorised as girly come-ons. He might have been sixty for all the personal interest she had shown in him.
Accustomed to a level of interest that might have flattered him when he was eighteen but that he could do without now, Nicolás found her indifference to him refreshing.
Thinking about her narrow waist and trim but rounded backside going ahead of him up the staircase, he found himself becoming aroused. Amusing oneself with country girls had been acceptable in his father’s and grandfather’s time. But it was not his style. There were plenty of sophisticated young women in Madrid willing to co-operate when he needed feminine companionship, and perhaps, one day, he would marry one of them. But unlike his brother he was under no obligation to choose a bride. Also having seen at close quarters the uncomfortable relationships into which marriage usually deteriorated after a few years, he was in no hurry to try it.
Turning the shower’s control from hot to cold, he also switched his thoughts to the reasons he was here.
At six o’clock, Cally was laying the long table where everyone staying with them would eat, when she heard male footsteps on the stairs. Moments later she heard the Spaniard asking if anyone was about.
She went round the corner from the dining area of the ground floor into the lounge area. ‘I’m here. How can I help you?’
He had shaved, she noticed, and changed into light-coloured chinos and a check cotton shirt in place of the jeans and navy T-shirt he had been wearing on arrival.
‘I suppose it would be too much to hope that, in a building of this age, you have a socket where I can plug in the modem of my computer?’ He was carrying a small black case.
When she was in Spain, a computer was Cally’s lifeline. But she didn’t tell him that. She said, ‘The office has a modem socket. We’re too rural to have broadband here, but we do have two telephone lines so you won’t be blocking incoming calls. Just make a note of how long you’re online, please.’
She showed him the small room, off the lounge, she had fixed up as an office. As it had no window, she switched on a wall light and desk lamp. The desk was clear of clutter. She gestured for him to use it.
‘If your cable isn’t long enough to reach the socket—’ pointing to where it was ‘—there’s an extension lead you can use.’
‘Thanks, but that won’t be a problem. Do you have many guests who want to use the Internet?’ He sounded surprised.
‘Not many, but we do have business people staying here on week nights. Until you arrived with your backpack, I thought you were probably one of them. If you have any problems, just call. My name is Cally.’
When she would have left him, he forced her to pause by asking, ‘What is Cally short for?’
‘Calista…but no one uses it.’
‘Would you rather they did?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve been used to the short form since childhood. Can I get you something to drink while you’re picking up your mail?’
‘A lager would be good.’
‘Coming up.’ She went to fetch it.
Like him, she had changed, he had noticed. Now she was wearing a black skirt that hugged her hips but was full at the hem and a T-shirt that showed the shape and size of her breasts, neither too small nor too heavy. Her waist was cinched by a red belt, and her shoulder-length hair, which earlier had been secured by one of those stretchy things, was now held by a red plastic clip. Like all Spanish women, she had pierced ears. He hadn’t noticed her earrings earlier, but this evening she was wearing small silver beads that caught the light when she turned her head.
By the time she came back with a tall glass and a bottle of San Miguel on a small tray, Nicolás had logged on and was waiting for his emails to finish downloading.
He looked up at her and said, ‘Gracias.’
Without glancing at him or the bright screen, she murmured, ‘De nada,’ and turned away.
She had a musical voice and good ankles, he noticed before she disappeared. Then, starting to open the emails, he forgot about her.
As Cally finished laying the table, her father came home. Shortly before Señor Llorca’s arrival, he had gone to the ferretería in a neighbouring village to buy some screws. She knew why the errand had taken so long but, unlike her mother, she wouldn’t make a sarcastic comment and he wouldn’t make an excuse.
Cally had learnt long ago that her father and mother were not like ordinary parents. They were the adult equivalent of juvenile delinquents: irresponsible, bolshie, sometimes endearing, more often exasperating.
She had loved them when she was small but gradually, over the years, her affection had been eroded by the realisation that neither of them loved anyone but themselves.
Fortunately she had also had a grandmother—dead now—who had rescued her from some of her parents’ worst excesses by paying for her to go to a boarding school in England and having her to stay for much of the holidays.
‘Have all the punters shown up?’ her father asked. When they were not in earshot, he always referred to his paying guests as the punters.
It