‘I can see why you find her so mesmerizing.’
I open my mouth to say I don’t find Bianka mesmerizing exactly, and that that’s a bit of a weird way to put it, but Anette has already stalked through the metal-detector gate and the security lady on the other side motions for me to follow. The machine beeps as I walk through, even though I’ve removed jewellery and my belt. I’m asked to step aside and wait a moment. Bianka comes up to me, a sly smile creeping across her face.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to pat you down, madam,’ she says, winking at me, placing a light hand on my hip. Though she’s only joking and I laugh it off, I’m taken aback by the feeling of complicity between us and the fact that I find myself wishing that it is only Bianka and me heading to Ibiza. Anette is right: I do find her mesmerizing, and being in Bianka’s company makes me feel both exhilarated and completely out of my depth.
Eleven
Charlotte
The taxi pulls up to the broad, bronze automatic gate, which slides open when I press the key fob. The driver urges the jam-packed car up the long drive to the property at its crest, high above the azure Mediterranean. As he parks in front of the glass front entrance, Bianka whistles between her teeth and turns around from the front seat.
‘Shut up,’ she says. ‘This is your actual house?’
Can Xara must come across as a very extravagant holiday home to someone arriving here for the first time, and I feel a little embarrassed at how spectacular it really is – I don’t want Bianka to think I’m some insanely loaded rich lady who could just point to a house like this in a property magazine and buy it. Because that couldn’t be further from the truth. Can Xara is my mother’s legacy, the only thing I have left of her.
I disable the alarm systems and we file into the house, dropping our bags to the floor in the hallway and naturally gravitating to the wall-to-wall panorama windows of the main living space, overlooking the beautiful little bay of Cala Azura and beyond the jagged cape, Cala Xarraca. I press the button of the automatic sliding windows and they swiftly open, obliterating the boundary between indoors and outdoors, making the living spaces merge with the giant teak wraparound terraces. We step outside and in this moment, being back at Can Xara is even better than the fantasy I’d built in my head, all those long evenings spent dreaming, because though I’d pictured how good it would feel to turn my face toward the hot sun, drinking in one of the most spectacular views one could possibly imagine, it’s impossible to fully evoke all the more subtle details of this magical place: the breeze carrying the particular scent of Mediterranean pine, verbena, hydrangea, eucalyptus, and the occasional drift of marijuana from one of the beach bars at Cala Xarraca, shielded from view.
‘Oh, my actual God,’ says Bianka, and it’s quite sweet, really, how utterly blown away she seems to be by Can Xara. ‘What does Can Xara mean?’
‘Can means house,’ I say. ‘I think Xara is a name. Not sure where it came from, to be honest.’
‘Wait until you see the pool and the yoga platform,’ says Linda.
‘I mean, I would literally kill for this house,’ says Bianka. I laugh and step onto the lower terraces that lead to the pool area, motioning for the others to follow. Bianka coos some more and then we all just fall silent standing on the wooden yoga platform, jutting over the cliffs on the steepest part of my property, looking out at the calm, patterned sweep of silvery sea stretching out ahead.
*
I show Bianka to her room, a large guest suite opposite the master bedroom. Linda and Anette are in their usual rooms upstairs on the top floor, and we can hear rummaging around as they unpack their suitcases.
‘I’m right across the hallway, so if you need anything…’
‘I have everything I need right here,’ says Bianka, letting herself fall back onto the pristine white bed and smiling up at me.
‘Okay, great,’ I say and turn toward the door. I’ll leave her to get freshened up and unpacked before we head back down to the yoga platform for some stretches before dinner.
‘Hey, come here,’ she says, patting the space on the bed next to her. I sit down and she pulls me gently back so that I’m lying beside her, looking up at the unblemished white ceiling.
‘I’m so excited to be here,’ she says, her face only inches from mine.
‘Good. Me too. I’m so glad you came. We’re going to have so much fun.’
‘All the fun.’
‘Yep.’
Bianka reaches out and strokes my bare upper arm and it feels like such an intimate gesture I’m momentarily taken aback, but at the same time, I realize it feels good; it’s been a long time since anyone deliberately touched me, and besides, I think it’s sweet that Bianka is so affectionate. I sit back up after a long moment and slip from Bianka’s room but bump into Anette in the hallway.
‘Everything okay?’ I ask. She nods and smiles, looking past me through Bianka’s open door where she is still lying reclined on the bed, and I wonder whether she was stood there for a while and saw the way Bianka stroked my arm. I feel suddenly awkward and can feel myself blushing so I turn away from them both and step into my room, shutting the door behind me and leaning against it.
*
At sunset, we sit in a circle on the yoga platform and Linda guides us through a series of slow, deep hatha poses. I focus on my breathing and try to remember when I last did yoga – probably in this exact same spot, last year. Sometimes I feel like my life is so rushed and so demanding day to day that even a task as simple as breathing properly seems insurmountable. Linda knows I struggle to relax and properly guide the air deep into my stomach, and smiles encouragingly at me as I give single-nostril breathing my best shot. By the time we finish, the sun is burning red on the horizon and my stomach growls; I haven’t had anything to eat today except for eight unsalted almonds on the plane.
‘I’m so ready for a soak in that gorgeous tub,’ says Anette, releasing her amazing hair from its tight topknot.
‘I’m going to need a nap,’ says Linda, yawning as if to justify her need for a little lie-down.
‘Dinner will be ready at eight,’ I say. ‘It’s a surprise.’ I can’t wait to see the looks on the girls’ faces when they learn what I have planned. ‘We’ll be eating at home, but cute dresses are most advisable.’
‘Hey, I really want to pop down and see the beach,’ says Bianka, slowing down so that we drop out of earshot of Linda and Anette who have started on the steep path back up to the house. ‘Come with me?’
‘Sure,’ I say. I’d rather spend the next hour pre-emptively burning off dinner’s calories in Bianka’s company by power-walking down to the beach than scrolling through my phone in my bedroom answering emails, which I know is what I’d inevitably end up doing. I need to let go and trust that Caty, my manager, is completely able to handle affairs while I’m away.
We walk side by side on the narrow path that is fringed by rows of olive trees on one side and a thick, low hedge on the other side, designed and planted to mark the sheer drop of the cliffs. When my mother first came here, she had the hedge put up after ‘feeling unsafe walking down to the beach at night’, she wrote in one of her many, early letters. She built the whole world of Can Xara for me in those letters, evoking its scents and sights, trying, I imagine, to convince me to come and live here. I wish I had.
I bring my focus back to Bianka and take pleasure in her effusive delight at being here. It makes me wonder whether she perhaps isn’t as sophisticated as I’d assumed she was – as lovely as Can Xara truly is, it’s not like I haven’t seen other equally spectacular homes on this island, in the South of France, or Italy. It occurs to me that as much as I like and crave Bianka’s company, I don’t actually know that much about her. In London it feels as though we’re part of the same world: big houses in Wimbledon and our husbands in the same company, but I don’t know much about her outside of all that. It feels as though she is very firmly focused on me, and as much as that’s gratifying on some levels, it also means our relationship is necessarily somewhat one-sided.
‘So where do you guys usually go in the summer?’ I ask.
‘Nowhere, really,’ she says.
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, because of Storm’s skiing career, he usually trains throughout summer to build muscle for the winter season so he and Emil head to our cabin in Valdres most weekends to roller ski and run long-distance. And those really aren’t my thing, so I’ve just ended up staying in Oslo. You know, mooching around the galleries, having dinner by myself in restaurants in parts of town I’ve never been to before, that kind of thing. And moving forward, I guess I’ll be doing the same thing, only in London, when Emil travels for work or to see Storm in Norway.’
‘Oh,’ I say again, sounding like an absolute idiot. I try to imagine spending long weekends by myself in the city when my family is elsewhere, catching up on the cultural scene and eating by myself but find I just can’t. ‘That sounds pretty cool.’
‘It is. I love it. I guess you guys come here for most of summer? I mean, I know I would if I had a place like this.’
