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 had not been Douglas Haig’s idea to take on a casa rural. As with most of their attempts to make money, or at least keep a roof over their heads, it was Cally’s mother who had been the driving force. But he didn’t mind running the bar and playing the genial host.
‘Yes…all present and correct,’ said Cally. ‘I expect they’ll be down before long.’
As she spoke, the wicket door opened and a small plump woman with an old-fashioned cotton wraparound pinafore over her dress came in. This was Juanita, a widowed neighbour who cooked the evening meal when Mary Haig had one of her migraines or, as now, was away.
Juanita and Cally were chatting in Valenciano when a couple who had introduced themselves as Jim and Betty came down the stairs. Their room had been booked by Jim whose surname was Smith. But it wouldn’t have surprised Cally to learn that Betty had a different surname. That they might be in a partnership rather than a marriage mattered not a jot to her. She had never had a long-term partner or relationship herself. What other people did was their business. But Jim and Betty were of the generation who had grown up when ‘living in sin’ was something people frowned on, and it might be that they did not feel entirely comfortable about their present status. There has been an occasion when two elderly couples who hadn’t met before had been staying at the casa rural and one of the women had made a remark about ‘your husband’ to the other, causing visible embarrassment. Since then, Cally had been careful never to jump to conclusions that might not be correct.
‘Good evening. Would you like a drink? The bar is open,’ she told them, as Juanita bustled away to start preparing the menu they had agreed on earlier.
Sometimes, when all the guests were reserved types, it was necessary to do some ice-breaking to encourage them to socialise. Tonight, however, they were all outgoing personalities and were soon talking nineteen to the dozen, the men discussing golf courses and the women comparing notes about children and grandchildren.
To her surprise, while pre-dinner drinks were still in progress, Señor Llorca appeared. This was unexpected. Even in country areas the Spanish had their evening meal much later than most of the foreigners, and in the big cities they dined very late indeed.
Her father had joined the golfing-talk group, and Cally was behind the bar, reading El Mundo, a Spanish paper she had bought that morning but hadn’t had time to look at. As the Spaniard approached the bar, Juanita came to the hatch that connected the bar with the kitchen and asked a question.
Cally answered her, then turned back to face the Spaniard. ‘Another San Miguel?’ she asked.
‘No, I’ll have a glass of wine—red, please.’ He sat down on one of the bar stools, which reduced his height slightly but still kept his eyes on a level well above hers.
‘The house wine is “on the house”, but if you’d prefer something better we have quite a good cellar.’ She handed him their wine list.
As he scanned it, she studied his face, taking in the details that combined to give it as powerful an impact as the lean and authoritative features of the Moor who had once ruled this region and whose followers, by intermarrying with the indigenous people of Spain, had bequeathed their dark eyes and proud profiles through many generations to people living today.
In this man the evidence of his lineage was particularly striking. His cheekbones, the cut of his jaw, the blade-like bridge of his nose and, above all, his dark-olive skin and black eyebrows and hair, combined to give him the air of having stepped down from a painting of a time in Spanish history that had always strongly appealed to her.
He gave the list back to her. ‘I’ll try your house wine.’
Perhaps he couldn’t afford the expensive wines, she thought, as she filled a glass for him. Though he didn’t give the impression of being hard up. Lightweight, slimline computers, such as the one he had been using in the office, were usually a lot more expensive than bulkier laptops.
‘You speak Valenciano,’ he said, referring to her brief exchange with Juanita. ‘Were you born in this village?’
Cally shook her head. ‘I was born in Andalucia. I’ve lived in several parts of Spain. Which reminds me, I forgot to ask for your identity card when you arrived. We have to keep a record of our visitors. If you don’t have it on you, later will do.’
‘I have it.’ He reached into his back pocket and produced a wallet. His identity card was slotted into one of the pockets designed for credit cards, of which he had an impressive array, she noticed.
‘Thank you.’ After making a note of the details, she handed it back, noticing, as he took it, the elegant length of his fingers and the absence of a wedding ring.
‘Is there room at the table for me to eat with the rest of your visitors?’ he asked.
‘Certainly. We can seat twenty people. If we don’t have a full house, the proprietor and I eat with the guests. But I ought to warn you that, although the others all live in Spain, they’re unlikely to speak more than a few words of Spanish. They come from the expat communities on the coast where they don’t need to be fluent, or even to speak Spanish at all.’
For the first time, he smiled at her. The effect of it startled Cally. Even when younger, she had never been as susceptible to masculine charm as most of her girlfriends. Now, at twenty-seven, she was almost immune to it. Yet when this man flashed his white teeth at her, she felt almost as powerful a reaction as if he had leaned across the bar and kissed her.
‘I have some English,’ he said. ‘Enough to make polite conversation. But they’ll be too busy talking to each other to pay much attention to me. If it’s possible, I’d like to sit where I can talk to you…about this village and the valley,’ he added. ‘Or, if you will be busy keeping an eye on the guests, perhaps I can talk to the proprietor. Does he speak Spanish?’
‘Not very much,’ said Cally. ‘Señora Haig has a better command, but she’s away at the moment.
