Embarrassingly, her first comment when Hugo opened the door to the villa after she’d rung the bell wasn’t ‘How are you?’ or ‘It’s great to be back’. It was ‘I just saw a lizard!’
Hugo’s eyebrows rose a notch and his lips twitched. ‘This is good?’
‘Erm… yes?’
‘Then I am happy. Come in. Remind me to give you a key.’
He reached out for one of her bags, but Sophie brushed him away. ‘Oh, no, you don’t. You don’t need to be lifting anything heavy. I can manage.’ She might be hot, sweaty, and panting a little, but she could definitely manage to carry her bags from the doorstep into her room.
‘I’m not old and… what is the word? Weak, that is it. I’m not old and weak yet,’ Hugo protested.
Sophie shot him a glance but didn’t say anything. In the week since she’d seen him last, Hugo was looking frailer and more gaunt, and she suspected he was in some pain, recognising the signs in the tightness of his mouth and his sunken eyes. The sooner he had the operation, the better.
‘I’ll just pop this little lot in my room, then I’ll make us a nice cup of tea,’ she said.
‘I don’t drink tea.’
‘Oh, OK, coffee then?’ She made a mental note to buy some teabags when she went to the shop.
‘Bueno.’
She watched him for a moment as he shuffled off in the direction of the living room, then she picked up her bags, deposited them in her room, and went to the kitchen to make the promised coffee.
‘Hello, Paco.’ She ruffled the dog’s ears as he wandered into the kitchen to greet her, his tongue lolling as he looked at her with big brown eyes. By his sorrowful expression she guessed he probably hadn’t been out for a decent walk in a while. She intended to make that her first task after coffee, then she wanted to tackle the kitchen and the bathroom, because Hugo clearly wasn’t coping that well with keeping on top of the cleaning, she noticed with a small shudder. On the surface the kitchen didn’t look dirty and it was fairly tidy, but closer inspection revealed dried-on stains on the counter top, a rather sticky floor, and – God help her –she almost let out a cry of dismay when she opened the fridge and a decidedly unsavoury smell assaulted her nose.
As she carried the cups into the living room, she was once again taken aback by the astonishing view. She didn’t think she’d ever become fed up of looking at it. Although the vista was essentially the same, it was continually different in the way the sun tracked across the sky, the direction the clouds scudded in, the play of light on the water, and the variety of vessels bobbing on the waves. Right now the sea was quite lively, but she knew from her last visit to the island that the water could calm in an instant, and it was this constant change that she particularly loved. It was a bit like British weather but without the rain, and with considerably nicer and more uniform temperatures.
It might be breezy today but it was also warm, verging on hot; a fact that she’d discovered on her trek from the coastal road to the villa. Thankfully, Hugo had opened the large doors, letting the scent of the sea drift through the house, and she breathed in the salty seaweed smell, relishing the freshness.
Hugo was sitting on the terrace and, after placing the coffees on the old wooden table, she took a seat next to him and sat back with a deep sigh, lifting her face to the sun.
‘I love it here,’ she said. ‘The island, this place, your villa.’
He smiled at her. ‘As do I. I don’t want to have to live anywhere else.’
Sophie reached for her coffee as his words sank in. ‘I don’t want to’, not ‘I wouldn’t want to’, and she would have assumed it was a translation thing if it hadn’t been for his tone of voice. He’d sounded sad, regretful, and she wondered why – questions flitting through her head but remaining unasked. She didn’t feel she should pry – if he wanted to tell her, then he would. Besides, she might be mistaken, and it hadn’t been sadness in his voice that she’d heard but a different emotion altogether.
‘Right.’ She swallowed the rest of her coffee and stood up. ‘I’m going to take Paco out, then have a bit of a potter in the kitchen.’ She didn’t like to tell him that it needed a darned good scrub from floor to ceiling, in case she hurt his feelings. ‘Have you got anything planned for tonight in terms of food?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘What were you thinking of having for your evening meal?’
Hugo looked out to sea and shrugged. ‘There is plenty of pasta and bread.’
When he avoided looking at her, she realised that he probably hadn’t had a proper home-cooked meal in a while. She bet that Paco, with his biscuits and tins of dog food, ate better and more regularly than Hugo did.
Well, that was going to change and pretty damned sharpish too. For one thing, the elderly gentleman needed to eat properly to keep his strength up, otherwise he’d be in no fit state to have an operation, and secondly, she didn’t intend to live on bread and pasta for the next few months. No matter how ill her mother had been towards the end, Sophie had always made sure to prepare a well-balanced, nutritious meal for the pair of them, and if her mum had only been able to manage a mouthful or two, then so be it. At least Sophie had tried, and sometimes she’d felt that cooking for her mother and persuading her to eat was the only thing she could do to help her in her fight against the inevitable advance of the horrible disease.
There was no way she was going to let Hugo’s health deteriorate – not if she could help it – so she added shopping to the list of things she wanted to achieve that afternoon.
Actually, the afternoon was fast turning into the evening, as it was already four o’clock. Thank God she’d managed to get an early morning flight, or they would be dining on little more than fresh air tonight. She could hardly go out to eat and leave Hugo on his own, so she would have had no choice but to eat with him, regardless of how unpalatable the food was.
‘Change of plan,’ she announced. ‘I’ll go shopping first.’ She knew there was a supermarket in Playa de la Arena and there was undoubtedly one in Alcalá, but with the villa halfway between the two towns, her shopping trip was going to involve a decent walk whichever direction she decided to go in. And she wouldn’t be able to carry much either, what with having to haul it all that way. Not only that, but afterwards she wouldn’t then feel like taking poor Paco for his walk. It was a pity she couldn’t combine the two…
‘Will Paco be OK if I tied him up outside a shop?’ she asked.
Hugo frowned. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
Sophie explained, adding, ‘I’ll get a taxi tomorrow and do a big shop, but for now we need something more substantial for supper.’
‘You’re not to take a taxi.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it myself – I don’t expect you to.’
‘Why don’t you drive my car?’
‘You have a car?’ She glanced over her shoulder into the living room as if she expected it to be parked next to the sofa.
‘Yes, of course. Didn’t I tell you?’
Sophie shook her head. A car? Wonderful.
Hang on a sec, did that mean she was expected to drive it? Oh, hell, yes, that’s exactly what she was expected to do.