I Was Waiting For You (9 page)

“I visited her there,” Eleonora said.

“Me too,” Jack said. Which they both knew.

Eleonora snapped her laptop screen down.

“She's left Paris. We both agree on that. People often return to places they have been happy in, don't they?”

“So they say,” Jack confirmed.

In books, yes. In real life?

“We should go to Barcelona,” Eleonora decided. “I know the names of some of the friends she met there. Boys. Girls too. The bars she enjoyed drinking in.”

“Maybe.”

“We have to do something,” she said. “Have you any better ideas?”

It might work. It might also make things worse, Jack reflected, returning to the steps of Parc Güell or that café on Plaza Catalunya where they'd had their first serious row.

How would he feel setting foot in Barcelona again? At least, they could stay in a different hotel, not the Condal where the uniformed men manning the reception desk always gave him strong disapproving looks or smirked when he picked up his room key, hand in hand with a young woman visibly half his age. As Giulia had been. And Eleonora was too.

“Barcelona it is,” he said. He would confront the ghosts of the past. He had little choice.

The beach went on for miles. Sand of gold and the sea a shimmering blue against a cloudless horizon. They had travelled across a set of undulating dunes for half an hour after abandoning the main coast road as it bent inwards. It was as if a desert extended straight into the warm waters of the Atlantic, melting into the rhythm of the lapping waves as they caressed the shore with white endless tongues.

Giulia caught her breath. It was like a vision of paradise.

In Italy, most beaches were heavily regimented, with deck chairs and parasols organised into geometric configurations, straight lines and right angles that allowed no fantasy or freedom. She had been told there were some unspoilt, wild beaches in Sicily and Sardinia, but she had never had the opportunity to go there.

As far as her eyes could see the sea merged with the sky.

“Worth the journey, no?” Stieg remarked.

The two young women agreed.

“There is a small village a further three kilometres down the coastline, I gather. With a few shops where one can get food and drink, and a handful of buildings and a scattering of huts, it's pretty basic but I'm told most people stay in tents on the beach at this time of the year.”

“Feels like the end of the world,” Marta remarked, gazing at the sun-scorched vista unfolding before them until the distant point where land and sea melted into each other.

Giulia followed the couple as they marched briskly down the sand. By the time they reached the colony the sweat was pouring down her back and her whole body felt as if she was wading through an open-air sauna. She should not have worn jeans.

It was just a hodge podge of fragile beach shacks and dozens of tents of all colours dotted in a zigzagging pattern across the sand beyond the reach of the tide line.

“We're here,” Stieg shouted out.

“Is this it?” Marta queried, visibly disappointed by the Spartan aspect of the place. They could hear voices further down in the water where the stick insect silhouettes of a dozen or so people were playing around in the sea. A red and green flag floated above the nearest tent.

“Isn't it great?” Stieg remarked, throwing down his heavy rucksack to the sand, taking the weight off his shoulders. Giulia did likewise. All she could feel was the discomfort of the heat holding her body in a vice.

“I take it all back,” Marta said. “It's not the end of the world, more like the beginnings. Before civilisation established itself.”

Giulia could understand it. It was bare, sparse, primitive.

Next to her, Stieg was pulling his soiled T-shirt off above his head.

“Let's swim,” he shouted out. “Wash all the grime of the journey away …”

Marta enthusiastically followed his example. Giulia copied her and slowly unbuckled the belt of her jeans. By now, Stieg in his haste had already stripped totally, and stood there naked, the sun already deepening the deep tan of skin. Giulia looked away. Turned to Martha as she unbuttoned her wet shirt. The Hungarian girl was down to her smalls. With no hesitation, Marta unclasped her black bra and swiftly pushed down her matching panties. Giulia hesitated. She had on occasion gone topless on beaches, but had never stripped down in public totally. She peered ahead. The others in the sea all appeared to be nude too.

“Come on,” Stieg said. Marta giggled. “It's the way we were all created. Naked. You'd stand out, if you were the only one here to keep your bikini bottom on. Don't be such a prude, Giulia.”

Her two friends began running towards the soft lapping waves, leaving her behind. Sounds of laughter breezed across the beach, or was it the shriek of distant birds? Giulia braced herself and stripped. She felt self-conscious about it. Her small breasts, the whiteness of her skin, the increasing bushiness of her pubes, the size of her bum. Only five men and members of her family had ever witnessed her naked.

She took a deep breath and trooped down to the edge of the water, dipped her toes in. It was surprisingly warm. Stieg and Marta were already well beyond the crest of the waves, up to their waist in the sea, splashing water at each other and shrieking with delight. Giulia raised her arms and waded in.

Barcelona had proven a dead end. No one there had seen or heard of Giulia since she had completed her Erasmus exchange programme and duly returned to Rome, although many had fond memories of her and expressed dismay at the news she had disappeared. Eleonora had tracked down a girl who had been in the same Catalan Literature class at the University and had visited Giulia in Italy six months later, on which occasion the three young women had all met up for a late night drink in a joint off Via Veneto which had always been one of their teenage haunts. The Spanish girl, Mariana, had remembered how Giulia had once mentioned she had spent a wonderful time in Sitges, a beach resort thirty minutes south of the city.

Jack and Eleonora had conveyed this sparse piece of news to Giulia's father who had flown in to Barcelona for the day to enquire about the progress, or lack of, of their investigation. Giulia's uncle, his brother, was a pilot for Alitalia, so members of the family had easy access to cheap flights.

They met up in the café of a bookshop that Giulia had been known to frequent, a few blocks off the Ramblas.

“I still don't understand why she has left,” the surgeon said. “She never missed for anything at home, you know. She was spoilt even.”

“She just wants to live her life, Dottore,” Eleonora pointed out. “I'm sure it's nothing personal against you or your family.”

“But why run away?” he sighed.

Jack stayed silent.

“I'm sure she's all right,” Eleonora said. “Once she has satisfied her curiosity, she will come back, I am sure.”

“I hope so,” her father said. “Her mother and I worry so much.”

“None of us believe any harm has come to her,” Jack intervened, not that he had any evidence of the fact. They all looked at each other with concern. The possibility of suicide was like an elephant in the room.

“She wouldn't,” her father firmly said. “I just know. Not my daughter.”

He had to make his way back to the airport. They walked him to the coach stop on Plaza Espaňa.

“Any news, we will be in touch. Absolutely,” Jack assured him. Eleonora nodded approvingly and kissed the doctor on both cheeks. Jack and he shook hands.

It was the last week of the tourist season, fiesta time, much fireworks the following weekend theyhad been informed at reception, and they had been unable to get two separate rooms in the same hotel. He had offered to place a cushion between them in the large king-size bed they would have to share on this night, but Eleonora had just shrugged her shoulders in response. They both felt emotionally drained, sensing that their hapless quest was reaching yet another dead end.

Jack woke up several times during the night, as he usually did. A thin sliver of moonlight peered through the open window which looked over a panorama of flat roofs and terraces where a variety of neighbouring houses hung their washing out to dry overnight. Eleonora slept soundly, the warmth of her body reaching him in peaceful waves, the muted sound of her breathing like an even serenade. Her partly naked back faced him. She was wearing a long purple silk night-gown. He, just his underpants. He had turned his back to her when she had changed before bedtime. Once, he realised she was also awake and looking at him in the darkness, the cadence of her breath now different. Were they both thinking the same thing? Or of the same person? He kept his eyes closed, willing sleep to return.

At five in the morning, he woke again, noted the time on the LCD of the radio alarm on the bedside table. In her sleep, Eleonora had moved nearer, and was now barely an inch away from him. Somehow, the thin blanket had been pulled away to her side and Jack was now only half-covered. Not that it was cold by any means. Jack turned over. The movement was more instinctive than deliberate as he navigated in a blur between sleep and consciousness. He just wanted to smell her, decipher that distinctive sweetness in her fragrance. As if she was sensing this, it was Eleonora who shifted imperceptibly and slid over the sheet until their bodies met.

Spooned.

Through her skin, he could feel her heartbeat, its strong vibration swimming across her skin like electricity. Jack's arm was in an awkward position, unready as he had been for Eleonora to bridge the gap between their bodies and he knew that if it remained where it now was under his flank, he would soon cramp badly. He pulled his arm out and his hand grazed her rump. Her night-gown had hitched up during her sleep. Her softness overwhelmed him. He knew she was now awake. Neither said anything.

His hand slowly journeyed across the skin of her arse. It felt as if she was on fire. Silk and flames.

He felt himself hardening. His cock growing against the back of her thighs. There was no way she could not feel his arousal. Eleonora could have moved away to her side of the bed, but she didn't.

Now fully awake and encouraged, his heart beating the light fantastic, Jack moved his wandering hand away from her rear and moved it upwards under the thin material of her slip until he reached her right breast, cupping its firmness, almost weighing it. He extended his finger until it grazed her nipple, landing on its sharp promontory, rubbing against its uneven texture then circling it slowly but steadily. Now it was her time to harden.

Eleonora moaned.

“You OK?” Jack whispered.

“Hmmmm …” Her voice had deepened.

Another lengthy curtain of silence settled across them. They both had known for a few weeks that this moment might come. There had been an inevitability about it. They had always been attracted to each other, even when they had both been with others. Only a sense of betrayal had slowed the progress of the lust.

“Yes,” Eleonora said. The sound came from the depths of her throat.

Jack's fingers sharply pinched her nipple while he adjusted his position so that his cock now faced her opening. Immense heat radiated outwards from her. He breached her tenderly. She was very wet. They docked. Below the distant and invisible ghost of Giulia. As if she were giving them her blessing.

The Atlantic night was littered with a million stars. They had spent the day swimming, playing in the waves and snoozing on the beach, Giulia carefully sheltered from the sun's rays naked under her old
Strangers in Paradise
T-shirt, now punctured with small holes, and the billowing white skirt. Her pale skin reddened much too fast. Tomorrow, she had decided, she would acquire a sun hat at the shack where you could also find sunglasses, shawls, second-hand tourist souvenirs and all sorts of African knick-knacks. They'd found a free tent and stocked up on mineral water, fruit and cans at the hut where food was on sale, dispensed by little black kids in djellabas sporting sparkling ivory teeth who spoke pidgin English and always appeared to be taking the piss out of the visiting foreigners and hippies who'd migrated down here.

Half a dozen fires burned at regular intervals along the beach, with small groups of young people huddled around them. Guitar playing here, off-key singing there, lazy conversations drowning the sound of the waves dying against the shore. Most of the kids in the group Stieg, Marta and Giulia had now joined around the campfire came from Eastern Europe, boys with hair down to their shoulders, unkempt, rangy, girls with plump lips and voluptuous curves. Everyone was still naked after the afternoon's exertions.

Joints were passed around and Giulia, light-headed, relaxed. Her mind floated in a soup of warm pleasure. Sitting cross-legged, now oblivious to the fact that everyone could see all the way inside her, beyond her burgeoning-anew forest of pubic curls no doubt, she took yet another deep puff from the thick hand-made cigarette making its leisurely way around the circle. A hand landed on her shoulder just as she we was beginning to lean back, on the point of blissfully dozing off.

“Hey,
piccola signorina,
try this one,” a stocky guy with a severe buzz cut so unlike most of the other men at the colony, was handing her another joint. “This is the real stuff, the good stuff. I see you're a fan …”

Giulia extended her hand and took the new cigarette between two fingers and brought it to her lips. Inhaled.

Jesus. It was powerful . A wave of drunkenness surged across her brain and she could feel the vibrations extend like tendrils through every cell in her body.

“Wow,” she mumbled,”this is good. Really good.” All of a sudden she felt as if she were pinned to the ground.

She closed her eyes to surf this powerful new sensation.

Someone laughed. Close to her or was it maybe miles away?

Giulia could feel the blanket of the night surrounding her, protecting her, as every single past memory haunting her until today slowly began fading away into the gulf of yesterday. She felt in the darkness for her bottle of water and drank the rest of it down in one single gulp. Then inhaled again from the magical joint that killed all bad memories. Sighed. Then cried a little, a thin line of tears gliding down her warm sun-streaked cheeks. She was floating on air. A pair of hands lowered her head to the ground and settled her on an improvised cushion created by wrapping a partly-empty rucksack with some discarded piece of clothing.