Читать книгу Offering to the Storm - Долорес Редондо, Dolores Redondo - Страница 16

They had spent the afternoon at the shopping centre on Carretera de Francia on the pretext of buying clothes for Ibai, and to escape the cold brought by the fog that was thickening as night fell; by the time they left for dinner in the evening, they could scarcely see beyond the far bank of the river. The Santxotena restaurant was relatively lively, the murmur of laughter and voices reaching them as soon as they crossed the threshold. They were in the habit of reserving a table by the kitchen that opened on to the spacious dining room, so that they could watch the orderly bustle of three generations of women, clad in starched white aprons over black uniforms, moving about the kitchen as if it were a formal dance they’d rehearsed a thousand times.

After choosing from the wine list, James and Amaia were content to enjoy the atmosphere in the restaurant for a while. They hadn’t touched on the subject of the funeral, and had avoided bringing to a head the palpable tension that had arisen between them that afternoon. They knew they needed to talk, but had made a tacit agreement to wait until they were alone.

‘How’s the investigation going?’ James asked.

She looked at him, debating how to answer. Since she joined the police force, she had been meticulous about never discussing her work with her family, and they knew not to ask. She had no desire to talk to James about the more disturbing aspects of her job, in the same way she felt there were scenes from her past it was best not to mention, even though he already knew about them. She found it difficult to talk about her childhood, and for years she’d buried the truth beneath a false veneer of normality. When the barriers holding back all that horror had burst open, driving her to the edge of sanity, confiding in James had been the chink in the wall of fear that allowed light to flood in, creating a place for them to come together – a place that had delivered her back to a world where, if she was vigilant, the old ghosts could not touch her.

And yet, she’d always known that fear never goes away completely, it merely shrinks back to a dark, dank place, where it waits, reduced to a tiny red light you can still see even if you don’t want to, even if you refuse to acknowledge its existence, because it prevents you from living. She also knew that fear is a private thing, that no amount of talking about it, or naming it, will make it go away; that the old cliché ‘a burden shared is a burden halved’ didn’t apply where fear was concerned. She had always believed that love would triumph over everything, that opening the door and revealing herself to James with all the baggage of her past would suffice.

Now, sitting opposite him, she still saw the handsome young man she had fallen in love with. The self-assured, optimistic artist no one had ever tried to kill, with his simple, almost childlike way of looking at things that enabled him to follow a steady path, safe from life’s cruelties. It allowed him to believe that turning the page, burying the past, or talking to a psychiatrist for months about your mother’s desire to eat you, would help her to overcome her fears, to live in a world of green meadows and blue skies sustained by simply willing it to be so. This belief that happiness was a choice struck her as so naïve as to be almost insulting. She knew James didn’t really want to know how her work was going, and that when he asked he wasn’t expecting her to explain that she had questioned a psychopath about where her mother or her vanished sister’s body were.

She smiled at him, because she loved him, because his way of seeing the world still intrigued her, and because she knew that part of love was making the effort to love someone.

‘Quite well. I’m hoping to wrap up the case in a couple of days,’ she replied.

‘I spoke to my father today,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t been feeling well lately. My mother insisted he have a check-up and they’ve found a lesion in his heart.’

‘Oh, James! Is it serious?’

‘No, even my mother is relaxed. Apparently he has a small blockage in one of his coronary arteries due to early stage arteriosclerosis. He needs a bypass to prevent future heart attacks. However, he’ll have to stop working. My mother has been pressuring him to hand over the day-to-day management of the company, but he likes to keep busy, so while his health held out he was content to carry on indefinitely. She seems almost happy about it, and is already talking about the trips they’ll make when he gets over the surgery.’

‘I hope it all goes well, James, and I’m glad you’re taking it this way. When’s the operation?’

‘Next Monday. That’s why I asked how your work was going. I was hoping the three of us could fly over there together. My parents haven’t seen Ibai since the baptism.’

‘Hm …’

‘We could leave after the funeral. Flora stopped by this morning to tell us she thinks it’ll be on Friday. She’s going to confirm tomorrow. We’d only stay for a few days. I doubt you’ll have a problem taking vacation at this time of year.’

Too many loose ends, too much that needed sorting out. Yes, the investigation would be officially closed in a few days, but there was that other business; she had yet to receive confirmation from the commissioner’s office about whether she’d be attending the seminars at Quantico, and she hadn’t even mentioned that to James.

‘I don’t know, James … I’ll have to think about it.’

The smile froze on his face.

‘Amaia, this is really important to me,’ he said solemnly.

She instantly grasped the implication. He had given her a glimpse yesterday. He had his own needs, his own plans, he wanted a place in her life. The image of the stalled works at Juanitaenea flashed into her mind, together with Yáñez’s words: ‘a house isn’t the same as a home’.

She reached across the table to clasp his hand.

‘Of course, it’s important for me too,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘First thing tomorrow, I’ll put in a request. As you say, I doubt they’ll object, no one goes on holiday at this time of year.’

‘Excellent,’ he replied cheerily. ‘I’ve been looking at flights. As soon as you’ve got permission, I’ll book our tickets.’

James spent the rest of the dinner planning their trip, excited at the idea of taking Ibai to the States for the first time. She listened, saying nothing.