“Some things need space to flourish,” Evelyn said, giving Bertrand’s arm a squeeze. “I’d advise you to carve your initials into a pink candle. Add a little rose oil before burning it at midnight while chanting the name of the person you desire. It really worked for me.”
Bertrand’s face flooded with color and Jess broke into an embarrassed cough.
Mimi gave Jess’s knee a nudge, obviously relishing her self-appointed role as the family oracle. “You simply must share your other news with us, too.”
“No way,” Jess said under her breath.
“Don’t hide your light under a bushel. You should own your successes, like I do. You can’t expect anyone else to congratulate you, if you don’t do it yourself.”
Jess shifted her eyes away from the camera, focusing on her lap instead. “I’ve been offered a new job.”
“Customer services director, no less,” Mimi chimed in, breaking into a solo round of applause. “It’s simply fabulous. And there’s a fountain in the courtyard of the building, so Jess will be working near water. Everything Myrtle predicted is coming true.”
Jess’s words sounded in Carla’s head like the peal of church bells. Had things really been so bad that her sister wanted to leave Logical Love? She hated the frostiness between them and made a clumsy attempt to clap, too. “Brilliant, well-done, Jess,” she said through gritted teeth. “That’s great news.”
“I haven’t accepted the job yet,” Jess reassured her. “I’m talking it over with someone tonight.”
“Mr. Forty-Nine Percent.” Mimi nodded knowingly. “We’ll have to stop calling him that if things progress.”
Jess puckered her mouth and exhaled.
Carla noticed that her gran had remained uncharacteristically quiet throughout the whole conversation. Lucinda’s cheeks had a gray tinge rather than their usual rounded rosiness, and her upholstered curves looked like some stuffing had been removed. She plucked at the sleeves of her cardigan.
“How are you, Gran?” she asked hesitantly.
“Lucinda’s been a bit peaky,” Mimi chipped in.
“I don’t need a spokesperson, thank you very much.” Lucinda let out a huff and found a weary smile for Carla. “I’m fine, honey, just old age catching up with me a bit. Comes to us all, I suppose.”
Carla thought about the letter she’d seen with the hospital logo on top. “Are you sure it’s nothing more serious? Maybe you should see a doctor...”
Her gran shook her head. “I’ve just got a touch of the melancholies, so don’t you fuss. I’ll be back on my feet in no time. We want to hear about your travels, not about me. Where have you been so far?”
Carla gave her relatives a few details about her visits to Blanca del Mar, Barcelona and Carvoeiro, leaving out the finer details about meeting up with Adam and Pedro.
“Passionnante.” Mimi grinned. “Where to next?”
Carla asked herself the same thing. Logistically it made sense to visit Daniel, if he was still in Majorca. “Maybe the Balearic Islands,” she mused.
At the end of the call, Mimi blew her a kiss as Lucinda, Evelyn and Bertrand waved goodbye. Jess stood up, tossing her head before walking off-screen.
Carla studied her travel journal, tracing her finger across a map of Europe. She wondered if Daniel still wore his blond hair in matted dreadlocks, and chunky beads around his neck and wrists. She remembered him as a gentle soul who’d sat cross-legged on a rock to sketch the sunset.
She’d lived with him and a bunch of other travelers in a ramshackle, derelict house on a patch of wasteland, where he was their natural leader. Their commune had been a supportive tribe who ate beans from the can while sitting around a fire on the ground where the kitchen used to be. She could still feel the heat on her face and could picture orange embers floating into the night through a huge hole in the roof.
They’d washed with either a watering can or a trough in the yard, though sometimes Carla cheated by using the shower cubicles on the beach. She pulled a face, recalling the bucket in the yard they’d used as a toilet and how she’d used her skirt to gather up eggs the chickens had laid.
What had started off as a camping adventure had soon left Carla longing for a comfy mattress and pillow, not a blanket on the floor. Itchy tick bites all over her ankles had spurred her to decamp to a nearby hostel instead. Daniel had called her a princess and they hadn’t parted on the best of terms. Even so, she remembered their time together fondly and wondered if he’d ever thought about her, too, over the years.
She looked him up on the internet and read how he’d made a fortune by setting up a solar panel business. He owned an eco-house in London and had built his own sustainable mansion in the Majorcan hills, complete with five toilets and showers that used harvested rainwater.
The profile photo on his Facebook page showed Daniel’s hair had paled to gray and was now cropped short. Carla was pleased to see he still had a touch of determination in his kind green eyes, like he wanted to change the world.
His most recent post showed him holding an eco-award aloft and she glanced at the comments beneath it.
The first one said, RIP. Sleep tight, Dan.
“What?” Carla gasped aloud and scrolled on.
What followed was a stream of messages from Daniel’s friends and family, sharing their condolences, goodbyes and memories. Carla pieced together that he’d died of a major stroke at forty-three while taking part in a climate-change protest. He’d left behind a wife and two children, aged four and eight.
Carla clamped a hand to her mouth and screwed her eyes shut, taking several minutes to try to digest this information. She imagined Daniel’s children at his funeral, gripping their mother’s hands, just like she and Jess had grasped Lucinda’s at Suzette’s funeral.
The thing she remembered most about her mum’s funeral was one of her gran’s sayings. Touch a button if you ever see a hearse. It connects you to the living and stops it collecting you next.
Even though Carla knew it couldn’t be true, she’d clutched a silver button on her coat so tightly it fell off and rolled into the road. It lay there like a shiny eye looking up at the gray sky, until a car ran over it, squashing it flat. She remembered how her relatives had paced around the streets several times after the service so spirits couldn’t follow them home.
It seemed a bit glib to express how sorry she was by adding words to Daniel’s Facebook page, so she was glad to discover his family had set up an online memory book.
Carla took a few photos of Daniel from her travel journal and uploaded them to the site. While she thought about what to write, she bit the skin at the side of her thumbnail.
We didn’t know each other long, but you left a lasting impression on me and the world. You helped me to be resourceful and resilient and I wish there were more people like you around. Thanks for some lovely memories.
Love, Carla
Despite having just eaten, she felt suddenly empty and bereft. A thought crossed her mind and she picked up her pack of tarot, plucking out the Death card. The hooded skeleton holding a staff made her shiver. Could Myrtle really have foreseen Daniel’s passing?
Carla spread the cards out on her bed, examining all the pictures. The Death card undoubtedly represented Daniel, and Adam was most likely The Magician. Pedro must be The Knight of Wands, which left her with three cards unaccounted for. She ran her fingers across her chin, not sure where to go next or who she should try to meet.
Glancing at her watch, Carla saw it was 2:45 p.m. Damn it, she hadn’t replied to Adam’s message, and her decision whether to meet him or not had been taken out of her hands. She could see from his gig list that he was performing elsewhere that evening, so she wouldn’t get to see him again before she left Portugal. She sent him a brief text to apologize and to explain she’d been busy.
Carla noticed she’d placed her damp towel on the bed, and water had bloomed across the corner of the family tree, making the paper translucent. She tutted at herself, gently picked it up and tried to blot it with a tissue. The paper was now so fragile that she placed it inside her travel journal for safekeeping and to allow it to dry flat. As she stroked it with her hand, she noticed some very faint lettering had appeared next to Lars’s name. She couldn’t be totally sure because of the sloping handwriting, but it looked like his surname was Aakster.
Carla promptly looked it up online, discovering it was based on the old Dutch word ekster, which meant “magpie.”
She immediately thought about the birds strutting along Silverpool pier and she scratched the back of her neck. Could they have been some kind of omen or sign, connecting Myrtle’s prediction to the family tree, or was she just being silly?
Carla usually relied on maps, flight times and logistics to inform her where to travel next, but she couldn’t ignore a sensation deep inside her telling her to go to Holland.
Perhaps her journey to trace a mystery man from her past was also about finding out the origins of her family curse, just as she now sensed her own mother had been trying to do.
Without any further consideration, Carla traced one of her exes, Ruben, to the University of Amsterdam and sent him a quick email, asking if he’d like to become reacquainted.
Fifteen
Pancakes
Carla growled when she saw her flight to Amsterdam had been delayed by several hours. Her body sagged and she patrolled the shops and duty-free at the airport, spraying perfumes she wasn’t interested in and browsing the extortionately priced chocolate. If this had happened while she and Tom were traveling, they’d have checked into an executive lounge where they could read posh magazines and eat freshly made guacamole and tortilla chips. It was a stark contrast to her gap year, when she’d curled up on airport floors to sleep, using her sweater as a pillow and hugging her backpack in case anyone tried to steal it.
