She’d taken some of her things to the villa the following day, but as that was the last day of her holiday she’d not had much time to do anything else other than to change the sheets on the bed in what was to be her room and hang a few clothes in the wardrobe, after clearing out the items that were already in there and putting them in the third and smallest of the bedrooms. It was full of stuff (junk mostly, she guessed from looking at it) and she was looking forward to giving it a good sort out.
Hugo had shown her where things were and how they worked, then she’d taken Paco on a nice long walk before she’d said her goodbyes, promising to be back in a week. Finally she’d returned to the apartment, packed the remainder of her things in her case, and booked a single flight from the UK to Tenerife in exactly one week’s time.
Therefore she now had five and a half days in which to pack up her life in England and prepare for a new one in Tenerife.
And she’d hardly scratched the surface of what she needed to do, so she’d better get a move on.
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. She’d not anticipated just how painful it would be to sift through box after box from both her life and her mother’s. It was amazing what had been stuffed up there, from her first pair of tiny shoes to school reports from when she’d started school right up until she was eighteen. She found herself reading each one, a half-smile on her face as she recalled those innocent days filled with childhood worries and carefree joy. How she longed to go back to a time when the only thing she had to concern herself with was that her music teacher wanted her to practise the violin more, or that she was a bit too chatty in class. It had all seemed so very important then.
Maybe what she was fretting about now would seem equally as unimportant in ten years’ time but, being realistic, worrying over forgotten homework was hardly in the same league as a complete overhaul of her life.
How she wished her mum was here to talk it over with. Although if she was still alive, then there wouldn’t be any need for such upheaval in the first place, would there?
Feeling lost and adrift, Sophie hurried to finish what she needed to do. She couldn’t think straight in this house – it still felt as though her mother was just in the other room. And sometimes, as she was going about the business of packing her life away, it was almost as if her mum was standing right next to her.
‘Am I doing the right thing, Mum?’ she whispered on her last night in the house she’d lived in for nearly all her life. Soon all the things she either couldn’t or didn’t want to take with her would be packed into the back of a van and locked away in a storage unit until she set foot in England once more.
She took a very long time indeed to drift off to sleep, but as she finally succumbed she could have sworn she felt a cool kiss on her brow and a soft breath of a whispered ‘I love you.’
Chapter 7
The odd thing was that on stepping out of the doors of Tenerife’s main airport for the second time, Sophie felt as though she was coming home. It was such an unusual feeling that it made her pause for a moment. Technically, she had never been so alone or so adrift in her whole life – despite the temporary job and temporary place to live – and by rights she should be feeling terrified, but she wasn’t. She felt liberated and confident as she contemplated making her way up the coast by public transport while carrying so much luggage that she felt like a pack horse.
Before she worked out where to get a bus, she needed to let her aunt know she’d landed safely. Anne had been most insistent yesterday when Sophie had called to say goodbye, and there had been tears on both their faces. She’d found it hard to walk away, to leave her aunt and those two gorgeous little girls behind, but as she’d told Anne more than once, it wasn’t for long and three months would soon fly by.
‘I’ve arrived safely,’ she said when her aunt answered, and she was immediately treated to a barrage of warnings about eating right, being careful in the sun, not speaking to strangers, and a host of other things that had Sophie trying to stifle her giggles.
She ended the call by promising to take extra care. ‘Give those babies a hug and a kiss from me,’ she said, a lump in her throat, ‘and remind Denise to send me photos. Lots of photos.’
With a deep breath, she pushed thoughts of home to the back of her mind, and approached a holiday company rep to ask her where to catch a bus. The rep pointed her in the general direction and Sophie negotiated the crowds of people and hordes of cars, vans and coaches, and made her way towards the public bus stops. On asking again, a nice gentleman showed her which bus she needed to catch and even asked the driver to let her know when she needed to get off.
As the journey progressed, she began to recognise certain landmarks – and not just the great big volcano in the middle of the island, either – and eventually, after travelling down a straight stretch of road, she spotted the towering cliffs of Los Gigantes in the distance and her heart lifted as she realised she was nearing her destination.
Ooh, look, they were passing through the busy little town of Alcalá, then out the other side and through the familiar banana fields on either side of the road. Finally, the bus rounded a bend and there it was, her home for the next three months. She craned her neck to see through the windscreen and squinted a bit to make sure, but it was definitely the little villa she’d fallen in love with, perched all on its own, on a low rocky outcrop in the middle of the sweeping bay. Its tiled roof glowed terracotta in the mid-afternoon sun and the leaves of the palm trees in its garden fluttered and swayed in the breeze like so many flags set out to welcome her. Beyond the villa, the sea sparkled, the deep blue topped by flecks of white foam as the warm wind whipped up the waves, sending them hurrying for the shore. Even from this distance she could see the spray as the breakers rolled in and crashed against the rocks. The whole scene was exotic and wild, and extremely beautiful.
The driver helped her with her luggage then drove off, leaving her staring at a barrier beyond which a straight narrow track led directly to the villa, with another barrier at the other end, by the coastal path. The track led between fields either side of the road, but on closer inspection she realised they were rather derelict, the plants in them neglected and scruffy, the walls crumbling, and the protective nets either removed or shredded by the wind. As she walked down the road, dragging and carrying various pieces of luggage, she wondered who these abandoned fields belonged to. Were they attached to the villa? And if they were, what did Hugo intend to do with them? Maybe he’d been forced to leave them to their own devices because of his health, but hopefully once he was back on his feet again, he’d be able to restore them to their former glory. It was such a shame to let them fall into disrepair, although she guessed that Mother Nature would claim them back eventually and the bananas would gradually be replaced by the hundreds of varieties of cacti and other native plants.
What was that?
A rustling caught her attention and she stopped, looking around her fearfully, worried that there might be snakes or scorpions hiding in the undergrowth. Did such creatures even exist on Tenerife? She had no idea, but she wasn’t prepared to take any chances.
To her relief, she saw it was a lizard. She quite liked lizards, and this one was small and greenish and really rather cute. It had frozen and for a moment she stared at it and it stared back at her, before it found its courage and darted back into the spiky bushes, gone in the blink of an eye.