‘No. Maybe not. But what if someone really was all bad? What if they were a murderer? What if they had planned to murder your friend? What if you could prevent them murdering—’
‘I hardly knew Christina,’ I snapped. ‘She wasn’t my friend!’
And Alberto nodded. He looked like I actually had slapped him. ‘Well, maybe. But she was my friend. She was a good person. Complicated? Yes. A poor mother? Maybe. But good. A rare person.’
And I thought for a second he might cry, and to my shame that seemed to make me more rather than less angry.
‘I am not special.’ I said it again, like a maniac. ‘I am a selfish person. I failed at the one thing a mother should be able to do. I am Grace Good-for-Nothing. I don’t save people. I let people die. Like I let my own darling Daniel die. I have never done a single brave thing in my life. Apart from move to Ibiza. Which I now realise was the biggest of all my mistakes.’
‘You were a teacher. What is better than being a teacher?’ Alberto wasn’t giving up. His slappable face kept talking. ‘It saw something in you. Not who you have been but who you could be. La Presencia isn’t concerned with surfaces. It is concerned with depths.’
‘I’m in my seventies. I’m too old for sentimental fridge-magnet theories and way too old for who I could be.’
Alberto tutted, doubtfully. ‘Well, I am seventy-nine. And I don’t own a fridge. And I love sentimental theories. I am a sentimental man. And I am booked in for my first samba class next Tuesday. Then I am going to Cova Santa to dance in a cave and drink lemonade. This is Ibiza. Age is nothing.’
‘This may be Ibiza. But this is not me. I don’t belong here.’
‘I sometimes think people who don’t like sentimentality actually don’t like feeling anything at all. They prefer to look at the whole world with scorn.’
‘Well, I don’t care what you think. I was very fine not feeling anything at all. I don’t want to feel a single thing. And you had no right to make me.’
It had all been a trap. The house. The photo of the necklace. Every word that had come out of Alberto’s mouth.
And besides, I would not be able to save anyone. I would only make things worse. That was my way.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I said, starting the car. ‘I’m going home. I can help people with the talents at home. I’m going to drive to the airport—’
‘My research suggests that the further away from La Presencia you are, the less power—’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Shall we wait till tomorrow when you’ve had time to digest?’
I didn’t want a tomorrow of this. I wanted to go back. I would rather never have tasted the infinite new joy of orange juice than have all this. I didn’t want to dance in a cave. I wanted to sit on my sofa and numb myself in front of a quiz show. Allowing myself to feel infinite joy would ultimately lead me to feel infinite pain. And I had felt that and I didn’t want to go back there. I craved, suddenly, uneventful, familiar emptiness. I was actually missing anhedonia.
‘No. I am going home. Home. Home.’
The word gave me comfort. It felt solid. Like a rock in the ocean.
‘But the island needs you. The people and animals here need you. You will be able to do good. Not just for…lobsters…but in general. And there is still a potential killer out there. Someone human or something else. And you could stop them. And you won’t be able to do that at home. The further away you are, the fewer talents you have.’
I ignored him. I tried to block out his words the way I block out tinnitus. I drove with one single feeling.
I can’t wait to leave this island.
Horse
It was a twenty-minute drive to the airport, but I was trying to make it in ten. Alberto was coming with me. The only reason he was coming with me was because I couldn’t leave him in the middle of nowhere at Es Cubells. Well, that and he wanted to come with me. And someone would have to have Christina’s car.
We drove inland and passed a man whizzing along the road on an e-bike, smiling in the sun. The bike was red. I ran through the first numbers in the Fibonacci sequence.
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…
I realised that is what my time on the island had been like. A continuing rising up of everything that preceded it, incident added onto incident, things rocketing skyward into madness.
As we drove on, we passed a giant billboard with Lieke’s face on it. It was like looking at an illusion. I remembered her pain, her inner fragility and outer fury, and there she was dominating the skyline like something stronger than feelings.
I looked at her face and saw her mother’s eyes.
I kept driving. I ignored Alberto. I drove ahead underneath that cloudless blue sky, clenching the steering wheel so tight I caught another memory of Christina’s.
She was outside a hotel. There were a group of protesters at a building site. I saw a sign in my mind. Eighth Wonder, Cala Llonga, Coming Soon. Christina was with a woman with messy dark hair and glasses. I knew this woman. She had been in a vision. The woman sitting in this very car with Christina. And now I realised I had seen her before. At the airport. She was the first person I had ever seen on this island. The woman with the Einstein T-shirt who had smiled at me. But just as I recognised her the vision shifted.
The day became a night and the air became a flood.
She was now in the sea.
Christina, I mean.
She was swimming down and down, through dark water, towards the glowing sphere that didn’t become a cloud but this time held and even expanded, and a hole emerged right through it. A widening aperture. Right through the sphere. It became a tunnel, even brighter than the sphere, a silvery and impossible brightness. And she swam through it, through the portal, thinking of her daughter and hoping she would be safe.
And when I came out of this micro-trance Alberto’s hand was on my arm. He was shouting my name as loud as my father used to. There was a large chestnut horse and rider up ahead. I nearly hit them but swerved in time. The mare reared, but the rider stayed in the saddle, her feet pressing hard into the stirrups. I felt the animal’s panic beat through me like a drum.
‘It’s okay,’ said Alberto, his voice fading like a wave as I focused on the road. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…’
Airport
‘The next available flight to anywhere in England,’ I told the woman with the strained smile behind the flight desk. Her name badge told me she was called Gabriela, but it didn’t tell me she was feeling a bit bloated and crampy and wishing she had more peppermint tablets. Or that she was six and a half hours into her shift. I really wished I knew no more than her name badge.
