‘I knew it!’ she screamed. ‘I just knew it. I never doubted it for a minute.’
‘And I never doubted you either,’ he replied, wondering how they could possibly have argued earlier.
‘Oh, I love you, Alex,’ she said.
‘I love you too,’ he said, suddenly realising it was the first time he had ever said it to her. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’
Hanging up, he bounced back outside, where he sank on to the grass and smiled. Champagne fizzed in his belly, the sun was warming his face; he felt like he’d just finished a very long race and – to his surprise – had actually won. Across the grass, he watched as Jez climbed out of the water, stripped off his wet clothes and, naked, began to chase the unicorn across the lawn, whooping, ‘Number nine, horsey! Number nine!’ And for once, all Alex could do was chuckle.
21
October 1992
‘How long have you known this friend exactly?’ said Isabella Hernandez, her tone dripping with disapproval. Grace turned away from the window to face her formidable mother-in-law. She had been staring out past the Hernandez estate El Esperanza, across miles of velvety rainforest, hoping to catch a glimpse of the car bringing Caro to visit her, but as usual, Gabriel’s mother wanted to talk. Or rather, to grill her. Isabella was not yet sixty but looked much older, her face creased with a lifetime of worry for her menfolk, her raven hair streaked at both temples with silver. If Grace had been ten years younger, Isabella Hernandez would have terrified her, but now as an adult, a wife and mother, she accepted her, enduring the daily interrogations and frosty looks, yearning for the day when she could set up a family home of her own. Not that she didn’t appreciate living in one of the largest and grandest houses in Parador, but when you had to share that space with an indomitable, interfering mother-in-law, even in the wide hallways and drawing rooms sometimes it felt hard to breathe.
‘Oh, we’ve only been friends a couple of years,’ said Grace. ‘Caro was there the day I met Gabriel actually. In fact if she hadn’t sent me out to buy supper, I don’t think I’d be here now.’
Isabella raised an eyebrow that, in one tiny gesture, communicated her general disdain. ‘And will this “friend” be gone before the rally in Palumbo?’
Grace knew exactly where this conversation was heading. ‘I don’t know. Even if she has left, I’m not sure I’ll be going.’
‘Really? How so?’
‘Well, Gabe has turned out to be a natural politician, hasn’t he? I’m not sure he needs me hanging around, trying to drum up extra support.’
‘Oh, but you must,’ said Isabella urgently.‘It’s important to understand that you’re not just married to the opposition leader, Grace, you’re a part of the election. And you are the lady of the house here now.’
Grace was in no mood to be bullied into anything. Motherhood did that to you. Sleepless nights and demanding children toughened you up.
For weeks she’d been pushed by Isabella and Gabe to get more involved in ‘the cause’, and transform herself into some Latino Jackie Kennedy. But politics, or at least the South American version of it, swinging between the chilling isolation of a bulletproof limousine and the complete emotional overload of a rally – the weeping, the screaming, the thousands of hands reaching out to her in adulation – left her cold. The real truth of it was that she felt a fraud. To accept the adulation felt self-indulgent and, more importantly, hypocritical and wrong. She wasn’t a saviour. She was a twenty-three-year-old woman struggling to find her own place in life and she certainly didn’t have the answers to Parador’s many problems.
Nor could she really blame her mother-in-law for her frosty reception: it was not as if Grace was anybody’s idea of a perfect daughter-in-law. Appearing out of the blue the night before Carlos’ funeral to announce that they were getting married was never going to be a great start, especially when it became clear that she was a foreigner, albeit a wealthy one. She was still pregnant and, even worse, a Protestant. Of course, Gabriel had gently suggested that Grace could convert to Catholicism, but she had refused point blank, not from any strong spiritual conviction, more that she could picture herself locked in a confessional booth being forced to tell a priest that she had left a young man dying on a beach. In fact, in this recurring nightmare she would have to confess that she suspected her brother of having killed the boy and that she had done nothing about it except flee to the other side of the world.
Outside there was the crunch of car tyres on the drive.
‘I think your friend is here,’ said Isabella flatly before sweeping out of the room.
Grace clattered down the marble stairs and out into the courtyard as the dusty car drew up. It was hot and humid and the white linen fabric of her skirt stuck to her calves, but as Caro stepped into the sweltering Parador heat, Grace ran forward to hug her.
‘Oh honey, you don’t know how good it is to see you!’ she cried, grinning all over her face.
‘Hey, you too. You look amazing. Like a proper lady of the manor. And tell me that’s just a shiny green rock on your finger and not a big chunk of emerald.’
‘It’s an emerald.’
‘I can’t believe it. And to think I gave Gabriel to you.’
Grace laughed happily. In fourteen months Caro hadn’t changed a jot. She was still thin and her clothes still looked as if they could do with a good wash, but most of all she still had that irreverent twinkle in her eye, something Grace had missed more than she had realised.
‘Well come and see the manor.’ She smiled, moving to take her friend’s rucksack.
‘No, no, Señora Hernandez, allow me,’ said José, Gabriel’s driver, stepping forward.
‘Ooh, servants now.’ Caro giggled.
‘It’s a long way from Macrossan Street, put it that way,’ said Grace.
She gave Caro a guided tour of the house, smiling as her friend gasped at the long formal dining room, the mosaic-adorned indoor pool, their huge bedroom, the voile-draped windows giving an amazing view of the hazy valley below.