“There’s a few gaps and question marks, and the tree ends in the 1920s.” Carla stirred the ice cubes in her glass with her straw for a few moments. When an image of Pedro and his ruby-capped tooth appeared in her mind, she squirmed in her chair. “I’ve actually moved on to Portugal now.”
“Right.” Tom fell quiet as he absorbed this fact. “That was quick. What was wrong with Spain?”
“Nothing at all. I found out someone I know is performing here tomorrow night and I want to check out his gig.” She followed her words with a pause, gathering the courage to tell him more about her mission. “He’s actually someone I met ages ago, during my gap year...”
“Oh, great, that’s a coincidence,” Tom interrupted. “The same thing has happened to me, too.”
Carla placed down her glass with a thud. “It has?”
“I bumped into someone I went to university with, Sara. We both studied engineering and then worked for the same business for a while. It’s been nice to have some company out here.”
Questions queued up in Carla’s head, such as, was Sara the smiling blonde in his Instagram shots, and how close had she and Tom once been? She pictured them laughing over after-work cocktails and tried not to affect a cool tone. “Is she also working at the convention?” she asked, trying to feign indifference.
“Yeah, she’s a designer, too, though more on the electronic side of things. I really love her work and she’s been singing my praises to all her contacts.”
“Fabulous,” Carla said, using a word not usually in her vocabulary. Her guilt and jealousy battled for supremacy, and she reminded herself that Tom and Sara had met by accident, whereas she was meeting her exes intentionally. “I need to be honest with you about something,” she told him. “That musician I’m going to see, well, we once had a bit of a thing together.”
Tom was silent again for a few seconds. “What’s his name? Have you told me about him before?”
“It’s Adam. We only dated for a couple of months and it wasn’t a major love affair or anything.” She shook her head, trying to convince herself, too.
“Good, or else I might feel jealous.”
A question itched on Carla’s tongue and she decided to let it out. “Did you ever date Sara?”
“Ah...” Tom started, followed by a short cough. “Only for a year or so and nothing came of it. We were both too dedicated to our work.”
Carla had expected him to say no. A cloud drifted in front of the sun, darkening the sky, and she took off her sunglasses. One whole year? She’d thought her fiancé was in Denver with a lot of games fanatics, not an ex-girlfriend. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned her before,” she said, forcing a smile when the waiter brought her omelet.
“I didn’t think it mattered. Do you really want to know about my exes? I’ve never asked about yours.” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “There’s nothing to worry about. Sara and I are just good friends.”
As Carla assembled her thoughts, readying herself to tell Tom more about Myrtle’s prediction and the tarot cards, a woman’s muffled voice appeared on the other end of the line.
“Tom, Tom. You’ve got to come and see this... Oh, whoops, sorry, didn’t see you on the phone.” Giggling followed.
“Five minutes...” Tom whispered to this other person.
Carla bit the end of her straw, chomping it flat. “Is that Sara? I thought you were waiting for eggs and bacon...”
“I’ve ordered room service,” Tom said. “Sara’s shower isn’t working properly and I said she could use mine. We’re grabbing a quick bite to eat before a meeting this morning. It’s an important one for both of us.”
Carla’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t she call the hotel maintenance people?”
“She did, last night, and they’re fixing the problem this morning. It made sense for her to use my bathroom and order brunch and, oh...” Tom trailed off, as if only just realizing how things might appear. “You don’t think that...? Honestly, Sara’s only been here for ten minutes. I’ve been looking out my window, talking to you.”
Carla cut a piece of omelet with her fork and pushed it around her plate.
“You can trust me, one hundred percent,” Tom said. “Just like I trust you.”
“I know that, but—” Carla’s words were interrupted by a knocking noise sounding on the line and Sara’s voice again.
“Tom, hun, our food has arrived.”
“Sorry, I’ve got to dash,” he told Carla. “Wish me good luck for this morning. Love you.”
“Love you, too. I need to tell—”
The phone clicked before she could finish her sentence.
Carla ground her teeth and glared at her phone screen. She quickly checked out Tom’s social media again and saw he’d added several photos of him in a bar with colleagues. In a couple of them he stood next to the pretty blonde woman again and had tagged her as Sara Jenkins. The photographer had caught them midconversation, gazing at each other and laughing.
Carla shoveled a piece of omelet into her mouth, hardly bothering to chew it before swallowing.
She should be pleased Tom was doing well in the States, but all she could picture in her mind was Sara in the shower, crooking her finger and asking Tom to pass her the soap. She tried to drink through her flattened straw and made a slurping noise so loud a woman at the adjacent table threw her a stare.
Carla returned it and felt even more lost and confused, as if her parachute had failed and she’d dropped onto a desert island with no sign of habitation.
More people gathered at the tables around her, ordering cocktails, laughing together and talking until the noise seemed to crescendo around her. She stood up and threw too much money on the table to cover her bill.
Leaving her food and drink half-finished, Carla set off back walking to her hotel, feeling very much alone.
Thirteen
Roses
Carla spent the next morning traipsing around Carvoeiro town, dropping into boutiques to browse gemstone rings and white linen dresses edged with broderie anglaise, with no intention of buying anything. Her conversation with Tom had taken the veneer off her holiday and she ate an ice cream with two chocolate flakes stuck in it without really tasting it or thinking about the fit of her wedding dress. Fortunately, Babs’s leopard-skin-print dress she was wearing was comfortably spacious.
In the afternoon, Carla lay around her hotel pool, trying to read a romance novel she’d picked up from the hotel library. Her thoughts were still with Tom rather than the lovelorn couple in the book and she had to keep rereading the pages.
