Carla smiled. “He’s one of my favorite artists, too. I didn’t know Mum liked him.”
Diego nodded. “I think she liked the culture here, but she also missed her life at home.”
Babs appeared in the kitchen and performed a twirl. “Ta-da.” She wore the zebra-print dress again and gold sandals. Her eye makeup was still bold and inky, but her lips were simple and nude.
Diego nodded in appreciation. “Now, where would you ladies like to go? The castle is beautiful, though perhaps a little hot today. Or there’s a lovely local olive grove and vineyard close by. You can sample the olive oils and they serve simple lunches.”
Babs glanced at Carla and they both grinned. “That sounds perfect,” Babs said.
The wind danced in Carla’s hair as Diego drove along the narrow roads. The olive grove was only a couple of miles away, and light dappled her face as she admired quaint whitewashed houses and the occasional bodega. Red poppies swayed in fields where the grass had dried to the color of sand and she glimpsed a tiny church made of peach stone.
When Diego pulled up in front of the vineyard, Carla looked around her in wonderment, already knowing this was somewhere special.
A tour of the gardens and olive groves took ninety minutes and she loved learning how the owners had bought a former bakery and the land in the seventies. They’d put an irrigation system in place and planted one thousand trees, a good distance apart to give them space to grow. They picked the olives by hand and pressed them using a traditional stone mill, then bottled the extra-virgin olive oil to use for cooking or as a food dressing. It could also be used to moisturize skin, tame flyaway hair or turn into soap. In the vineyard shop, Carla bought a bottle for her gran to use in her cooking, along with bars of soap for Jess, Mimi and Evelyn.
After shopping, Carla, Babs and Diego sat on a terrace so high that the olive trees below looked like rows of cabbages. The sun shone fiercely overhead and Carla was glad their table was shaded by a huge umbrella.
Their lunch consisted of crusty bread served with slabs of cheese and big juicy grapes. There were small pots filled with olive oils in shades of yellow, deep ocher and sage green. Carla took a few nibbles of everything, but traveling and her preoccupied mind seemed to have stolen her hunger away.
“Black olives are great as a snack with red wine. White wine goes better with green olives,” Babs informed them.
Diego raised his eyebrow, impressed.
“I’m not just a pretty face.” Babs patted her hair.
Diego was good company, telling them stories about interesting injuries he’d encountered at work, such as old people falling off roller skates or how one child got a plastic cowboy’s head stuck up his nose. “He ran around the waiting room and it fell out before his appointment.” He laughed.
“How long have you been a doctor?” Carla asked him.
Diego performed calculations in his head. “Over forty years. I have always worked at the hospital in Calella, not too far from Blanca del Mar. My mother was English and my father was Spanish. We moved to Spain when I was ten years old, so I consider myself to be a mix of cultures. My parents were doctors, too, and they also own several properties that they rent out to vacationers, including the one you are staying in. Barbara and your mother stayed in their Lloret del Mar apartment for some time.”
“He collected more than the rent from me.” Babs winked.
Diego smiled despite himself and shook his head slowly at her.
“Calella.” Carla ran the name over her tongue. “I think I went to the hospital there once for a stupid injury.” She recounted how she’d fallen from a horse during her gap year and hurt her arm. “I felt like such an idiot.”
Diego let out a cough then recovered quickly. “It is unfortunately very common. There is something about the sunshine that makes people think they can ride animals. Sometimes even I think I am John Wayne.”
Carla laughed. She noticed how Babs’s eyes sparkled when she glanced at Diego and how, when Babs wasn’t looking, Diego gazed back at her, too. They were like chalk and cheese, and Carla doubted they’d have ever matched through Logical Love, but she could sense something between them. It was like she knew they should be together.
She could also tell there was a barrier that was somehow keeping them apart, something other than their inability to have children. Spending time with the both of them filled her with a glow, but also a fierce determination. The truth of her own family’s curse made her want to rally against this indictment against love, and she wondered if she was capable of matchmaking in an organic way rather than through questions and algorithms. “Babs has been such a caring, kind host,” she told Diego, looking at Babs out of the corner of her eye. “She really knows how to make people feel at home.”
An olive fell off Babs’s fork and she looked at Carla quizzically. “Me?”
“From the minute I arrived, you made me feel welcome.”
Babs toyed with a napkin. “Of course I did. You’re Suzy’s daughter.”
Carla continued to gush about Babs to Diego, mentioning how she’d invited Babs to her wedding.
“It has been many years since I visited England to see my friends and family there,” Diego mused. “A visit is long overdue for me, too.”
“You should come,” Carla urged, ignoring the look of surprise on Babs’s face. Astonishingly, she found she didn’t care if Babs’s and Diego’s presence might alter her numbers, meals and seating plans. “I bet my gran, Lucinda, would enjoy meeting you both, especially if you share stories about my mum.”
Diego and Babs flicked questioning looks at each other, waiting for the other to take the lead and respond.
“Sounds smashing,” Babs finally said with a nod of her head.
Carla stood up and gave a fake yawn, stretching out her arms. “I think I’ll go for a little walk and give you both time to chat,” she said, sending Babs a secret wink. “I’ll see you both in an hour.”
She strolled among the olive trees, dipping in and out of the mottled shadows cast on the ground by the branches. An elderly lady wearing a long black dress and a bright orange scarf in her hair used a small handheld rake to harvest the olives. She gave Carla a gap-toothed smile. “English?” she asked.
Carla nodded.
“This place is a farm and also a museum,” the lady said in a melodic Catalonian accent.
“Why is that?”
“Olive trees live between three hundred and six hundred years, but they do not produce olives for the first forty or fifty years of their life. They need time, patience and care to thrive. Like my husband.” She laughed to herself and set about her work again.
Carla carried on walking, at first interpreting the woman’s words as light and fun, before drawing a deeper meaning from them. She began to wonder about the women in her own family. Did they ever allow their relationships to grow and flourish, or did they look for problems and bail out early, self-fulfilling their family curse as Anastacia had suggested?
As she stopped to admire the gnarled trunks of the beautiful old olive trees, Carla realized she was not exempt from this tendency of Carter women.
She’d physically shoved Pedro away (though warranted) and had supposedly refused to meet Adam’s parents. She’d left Daniel and fled to a hotel with running water, and she’d jumped on a plane to avoid Ruben’s overkeenness. It made her question if she could be a common denominator in the end of her relationships. Was she also inadvertently pushing Tom away, too, by questioning their upcoming marriage? Especially because there was a curse in place?
In Carla’s family, only Lucinda had fully committed to her relationship, compromising her own desires, and it was something Carla wasn’t willing to do.
