Surprise Me(63)

There’s no way we could afford to stay at Los Bosques Antiguos. I’ve looked it up – the houses are way out of our league. But we could find a little hotel and go to Los Bosques Antiguos for the day, at least. Wander among the white houses. Dip our feet in the communal lake. Crush the scented pine needles of the neighbouring forest underfoot. Revisit my past.

‘Why?’ says Dan again.

‘Lots of people go on holiday there,’ I assert.

‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea.’ His face is closed up and tentery. Of course it is. ‘It’s too hot, too expensive …’

He’s talking nonsense. It’s only expensive if we stay somewhere expensive.

‘Flights to Spain are cheap,’ I retort. ‘We could probably find a campsite. And I could go back to Los Bosques Antiguos. See what it’s like now.’

‘I’m just not keen,’ Dan says at length, and I feel sudden fury boiling over.

‘What is your problem?’ I yell, and Anna comes hurtling in from the garden.

‘Mummy!’ She looks at me with wide eyes. ‘Don’t shout! You’ll scare Dora!’

I stare at her blankly. Dora? Oh, the bloody snake. Well, I hope I do scare it. I hope it has a heart attack out of fright.

‘Don’t worry, darling!’ I say as soothingly as I can. ‘I was just trying to make Daddy understand something. And I got a bit loud. Go and play with your stomp rocket.’

Anna runs outside again and I pour out more tea. But my words are still hanging in the air, unanswered. What is your problem?

And of course, deep down, I know what his problem is. We’ll walk among those huge white houses and Dan will see the wealth that I had when I was a child and it’ll somehow spoil everything. Not for me, but for him.

‘I just wanted to go and see where I went as a child,’ I say, staring down at my new tablecloth. ‘Nothing else. I don’t want to spend any money, I don’t want to go there every year, I just want to visit.’

In my peripheral vision, I can see Dan gathering himself.

‘Sylvie,’ he says in what is clearly an effort to be reasonable. ‘You can’t possibly remember Los Bosques Antiguos. You only went there until the age of four.’

‘Of course I remember it!’ I protest impatiently. ‘It made a huge impression on me. I remember our house with the verandah and the lake, and sitting on the jetty and the smell of the forest and the sea views …’

I want to add what I really feel, which is: ‘I wish Daddy had never sold that house,’ but it probably wouldn’t go down well. Nor will I admit that my memories are a tad hazy. The point is, I want to go back.

Dan’s silent. His face is motionless. It’s as if he can’t hear me. Or maybe he can hear me, but something else in his head is louder and more insistent.

My energy levels are sinking. There’s only so many times you can try. Sometimes I feel his issue with my father is like a huge boulder, and I’m going to have to push it and drag it and heave it along beside us, our whole marriage.

‘Fine,’ I say at last. ‘Where shall we go next year?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Dan, and I can tell he feels defensive. ‘Somewhere in Britain, maybe.’

‘Like an organic garden?’ I say pointedly, but I’m not sure Dan gets my little dig. I’m about to add, ‘I hope you’ve got your snake-sitter lined up,’ when Tessa comes running in, her mouth an ‘O’ of horror.

‘Mummy!’ she cries. ‘Mummeeee! We’ve lost our stomp rocket!’

As Professor Russell answers the front door, his eyes seem to have a glint of humour in them, and I suddenly wonder: did he hear me yelling at Dan just now? Oh God, of course he did. They’re not deaf at all, are they? He and Owen probably sit and listen to Dan and me as though we’re The Archers.

‘Hello,’ I begin politely. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I think my daughter’s rocket has landed on your greenhouse. I do apologize.’

‘My stomp rocket,’ clarifies Tessa, who was determined to accompany me on this little visit and is clutching my hand.

‘Ah. Oh dear.’ Professor Russell’s eyes dim, and I can tell he’s got visions of Dan climbing up and cracking his glass.

‘I’ve brought this,’ I say hastily, and I gesture at the telescopic broom in my hand. ‘I’ll be really gentle, I promise. And if I can’t reach it, then we’ll get the window cleaner to do it.’

‘Very well.’ The professor’s face relaxes into a smile. ‘Let’s “give it a go”, as they say.’

As he leads us through the house, I look curiously about. Wow. Lots of books. Lots of books. We pass through a bare little kitchen and a tiny conservatory furnished with two Ercol chairs and a radio. And there, dominating the garden, is the greenhouse. It’s a modernist structure of metal and glass, and if you put a kitchen in it, it could totally go in an interiors magazine.

I can already see our stomp rocket, looking incongruous and childlike on the glass roof, but I’m more interested in what’s inside. It’s not like other people’s greenhouses. There aren’t any tomatoes or flowers or wrought-iron furniture. It’s more lab-like. I can see functional tables and rows of pots, all containing what looks like the same kind of fern at different stages of growth, and a computer. No, two computers.