Bay of Secrets (49 page)

‘You’ll miss it.’ She turned to him. She was wearing a simple cream linen dress and in the moonlight with her blonde hair she looked almost ethereal.

‘It’s worth it.’ He touched her hand. ‘I am so glad that I found you, Ruby,’ he said.

‘And now?’ she asked. ‘What will you do now? Will you come to Barcelona? Will you try to find her?’

He took her in his arms and held her like he’d never let her go. God, she smelt good. Of orange blossom and the day’s sunshine. He knew who she meant. His birth mother. Florentina Chavez. What was her story? Did he want to know? Did he need to know? How had she felt about giving him up and how did she feel now? Did she ever wonder … ?

There was almost too much to think, to say. Andrés closed his eyes and felt it wash over him. The stillness. The quiet. Peace. ‘Not yet,’ he whispered.

He wasn’t ready yet, not ready to take the next step. And he wanted to get to know his own family again first. At least for his father, there wasn’t much time. He bent his head close
to Ruby’s and put his hand around her hand that was still holding the piece of green sea glass. ‘What can you see?’ he whispered.

She tucked her head in close to him. He felt her hand on the small of his back. And suddenly Andrés didn’t feel alone any more.

Sister Julia put her rosary beads to one side. She was not worried about the task that lay ahead of her. She knew exactly what she should do and she had complete confidence that the young woman who had listened so carefully and so kindly to her story would help her – on a practical level. On a spiritual level, of course, she had her God. When she took those first simple vows all those years ago Sister Julia might not have believed in Him; she only experienced the first stirrings of comfort that believing in Him could bring. But her faith today was unshakeable. He had helped her so much over the years and now He had finally given her His sign. The chance for atonement. The opportunity for peace.

It was simple enough to pack for the journey. What did she need in the way of material things? Very little. She had learnt to make do; indeed, to value the simplicity of having little. Having little enabled you to become rich in other ways, ways that Sister Julia was thankful for.

She opened the battered brown suitcase that she had brought here to the island at the time of her banishment, many years ago. She would not take the personal effects she kept in her desk drawer, though it was not easy to leave
behind the family mementoes she held dear. Apart from her Bible and psalm book – which she now placed reverentially in the case – the only thing she really needed was this. She picked it up, felt the weight of it in her heart now beginning to lift, beginning to soar. Her book of names.

It had already helped someone – had it not? Not just Andrés, but his father and his mother too could now be at peace. Enrique Marin … Sister Julia had always thought she remembered that voice, though in truth that day in the square when she first read of the scandal, she had not quite made the connection.

Ruby had told her that once they arrived in Barcelona they would be handing the evidence – her book – over to an official who would be meeting them at the airport. She had arranged it. She was a clever girl – Sister Julia had the utmost admiration for her. It was vital, Ruby had said, that the book was placed in safe hands as soon as possible so that they would not have to worry about it, so that they would be free to concentrate on their job – which was the telling of the story.

And how Sister Julia longed to feel free.

How would she react when she went back to the Canales Clinic? Sister Julia placed her wash things in the case and the changes of underclothing she would need, and snapped the lid closed. It did not matter, she told herself sternly, how she felt. What mattered was what they were to achieve – for others, for the children who had been mistreated. The
Niños Robados
.

And what would the consequences be? Ruby had warned
her that there would be repercussions – for her, Sister Julia. That she might be facing a criminal sentence, that she might not be free to go, free to return here to the island after it was done.

But that hardly mattered either. She was old. Her time was drawing near. Indeed, she was weary and more than ready to meet her maker once this was done, once her conscience was as clear as it would ever be. She was more than ready to unburden, more than ready to atone for the wrongs she had been part of, to find the peace she so longed for at last.

‘Remember, Sister Julia,’ Ruby had told her, ‘there is no going back.’

And Sister Julia did not want to. Indeed, she did not.

The day that Ruby and Sister Julia were due to leave for Barcelona dawned grey and still. At midday Ruby and Andrés had arranged to collect Sister Julia from the convent so that he could take them to the airport. Ruby wasn’t looking forward to that. It felt like no sooner had she found him – properly found him – than she was leaving. But before that …

‘Time for one last walk?’ Andrés suggested. And he seemed to know instinctively where she wanted to go.

They walked hand in hand along the beach, heading for the rocks that bordered the bay, in a silence that seemed to be underlined by the heavy, grey clouds above, by the wary stillness of the day. They’d said so much, Ruby reflected. Apart from the one thing that mattered the most.

She was eager, though, to drink in the last of the island landscape that she would see – at least for a while. She couldn’t believe that she’d only been here a week. Already everything seemed so familiar to her. Sand fine as gold dust,
corralitos
built with the black volcanic rock which surely was the island’s heartstone, and in the distance those gentle, mushroom-coloured mountains streaked with rust
and lichen. Andrés’s landscape. But was it still his home?

They began to climb up the rocks, Andrés leading the way. He was sure-footed and confident. And she saw it – the way he belonged here.

When he had turned up like that at the convent, the facts of his adoption as he had explained them to her, the expression in his eyes when he saw that entry in Sister Julia’s book of names … It had been a shock – for both of them. But it all made sense. The pieces slotted together. Enrique had sent Ruby to the convent because he knew about the book of names and because he had realised immediately that the journalist in Ruby could help Sister Julia in her resolution to reveal the truth of the adoptions she had witnessed at the Canales Clinic. And of course Enrique was the only person to whom Sister Julia had told her story, because he had told her his story first. She had known then that he too was involved. That he too had something to pray for forgiveness for. That he had been there and part of it.

As indeed they all were.

They reached the top of the rocks and Ruby looked out once again – over the perfect horseshoe crescent of the bay, in the distance the red and white
faro
and Laura’s Dali beach house built by that German boy with a crazy dream where Ruby had met Trish a few days earlier. The clouds were gathering and the bay was deserted.

Just you and me
 … Ruby looked at Andrés. She had come to the island to find her birth mother and had unknowingly
uncovered the birth story of the man she had fallen in love with. Because she had, hadn’t she? Fallen in love?

Would Andrés try to find his natural parents now that he knew the truth? Would he ever feel that same pull that Ruby had felt? That need to know? Maybe in time. Before he made any decisions, she guessed he would want to make his peace with the family he already had. That he would need to forgive, even though he would never forget what they had done. At least the reconciliation was on the family table. And, like Vivien and Tom, they had only done it because they so much wanted a child of their own to care for. It seemed to Ruby now that they were delighted to have him back in the family fold. Enrique Marin had done wrong by Andrés, there was no doubt about that. He had never bonded with his adopted son and he had unfairly resented him – both for the artistic talent that he knew he couldn’t possibly have passed down and for refusing to be controlled by him as the rest of the family were. But Enrique was not well. He was clearly a shadow of the man he once was, and he was sorry. When he had raised his glass at that first family dinner and offered a toast to ‘our son’ with tears of emotion in those dark eyes, Ruby had almost cried herself. Because she had been right and in the end it was all about love, wasn’t it?

Or was it? It was impossible to read Andrés’s expression. There was a slight frown on his face. Ruby wanted to reach out; wanted to run her fingertips along those slanting cheekbones, to smooth away that frown, to gently touch his mouth. But she held back. He was looking out to sea, where
the wind was picking up and the tide was heaving, the waves rising high before breaking and crashing into the rocks below where they stood. On the other side of the rocks the bay was serene. But it felt as if it were waiting.

Ruby thought about the trip to Barcelona. She had already done some initial research. The Canales Clinic still operated, although it was now run by Dr Lopez’s son Rafael. Ruby wondered what he knew of what had gone on before? That, she decided, was where she would start.

Where the investigation would take her, she didn’t know. But she would ask some questions and hopefully get a few leads. Most of her information would come from Sister Julia herself. She had already emailed Leah her editor and received a positive reply:
Sounds good. It’s a definite for us. Get a feel for how you want to play it and contact me again when you know a bit more
.

She would do that. And then she would write it up. The whole story. It would be a challenge. And she’d have to handle it in a sensitive and compassionate way. The last thing she wanted was to hurt Sister Julia but she would write the truth. She had to. And then— She heard a faint rumble and glanced up at the sky – surely it wasn’t going to rain on her final day on the island? She didn’t know exactly what would happen then. But Sister Julia’s book of names would certainly cause quite a stir.

Andrés turned to her, his green eyes troubled. ‘How many do you think you will be able to help?’ he asked.

She knew what he was talking about; his mind had been
travelling along the same direction as her own. How many children were looking for answers? How many of the
Niños Robados
would ever be reunited with their birth parents? She shrugged. ‘It depends how many of them come forward.’ On how many mothers admitted that they had never believed their children had died. And on how many adoptive parents – like Enrique – ever told their children the truth. For some, there would be DNA testing; a long search, in many cases, for a match. But for others there would be Sister Julia’s book of names.

The rain came in a deluge as if someone had unbolted a gigantic hatch in the sky.

Ruby gasped and Andrés swore. He pulled her towards him so suddenly that she gasped again. ‘It happens like this sometimes on the island,’ he muttered into her hair. ‘It is very sudden. Very dramatic.’

He could say that again. ‘Shall we make a dash for it?’ The raindrops were massive. Ruby was soaked to the skin already.

‘Where to?’ He laughed.

And he was right. There was nowhere to run. What should they do then? Just open their arms and embrace it?

‘Come over here.’ He pulled her round to the other side of the rocks where there was at least a bit of shelter, and held her into his chest, his back to the worst of the rainstorm.

She was warm there. She could feel his heart beating, the fabric of his linen shirt rough but strangely comforting against the skin of her face as it had been once before. Around them the wind howled like a banshee, the sea
whipped over the rocks below and the rain continued to pour from the leaden sky. But Ruby didn’t care. She was in his arms, safe and held. She breathed in the scent of him – amber and resin. It was such a good place to be that she felt she could stay there for ever.

After a while, she felt the rain ease and Andrés loosen his hold. She emerged, blinking, and laughed. His shirt was sodden. His dark hair was plastered to his head and to the brown nape of his neck. He was blinking too – blinking raindrops out of his eyes. He looked gorgeous – like a wild man of the storm. Ruby wasn’t cold, but still she shivered. He was worth waiting for, she realised. Worth fighting for. She wanted to have the sort of love that she’d seen first-hand while she was growing up. And he was the man she wanted to have it with.

‘Come and look,’ he said. He beckoned.

‘We should get back.’ Ruby didn’t want to linger. She didn’t want to say goodbye. She hated goodbyes. In some ways Andrés was just at the beginning of his journey. But Ruby worried that she might have come to the end of hers. Coming to this place and hearing about Laura’s life might be the closest she would ever get to her birth mother, let alone to her father. She might never find out everything she wanted to know. But over the past few days she had come to an important realisation. She was the same Ruby she’d always been. In a way Mel had been right back then when she’d said it.
Ruby Rae is still Ruby Rae.
And would always be. She fingered the gold locket of Vivien’s that she still wore around her neck. The parents who had brought her up were the same
loving people they had always been too – and they were her parents. She couldn’t be angry with them. They had loved her. They had nurtured her. They had shown her what really mattered. Through them she had become who she was now. So in a way it was the end of a journey, wasn’t it – even if a new one was beginning?

‘In a minute.’ He held out his hand and helped her back over the rocks. ‘Be careful. It’s slippery.’

And it was.

‘Look,’ he said when they got to the top.

She followed his gaze. It was incredible. The sand hadn’t just shifted; the bay had been washed out by the rainwater and the tide. It had been swept clean. No more secrets, she thought. The sun was out again already, bursting through the clouds and making the black rocks glisten. The golden sand looked as if had been sprinkled with diamonds and the clear turquoise water was spangled with light as the sun shone through.