‘Oh crikey, I’m getting everything wrong here, aren’t I?’ Jeannie shook her head dizzily and burst out laughing. ‘Well, except for the bit about your mum being a witch.You have to admit, that was a pretty beastly thing she did. I mean, that’s messing with people’s lives, isn’t it?’
‘Excuse me.’ The bored stallholder nodded at the scarf being twisted in Blythe’s hands. ‘Are you going to be buying that or what?’
‘So did Doug ever find out about the money?’ Jeannie said avidly.
Blythe carried on twisting the scarf. ‘What money?’
Lola closed her eyes and breathed deeply; when she’d gone out to Alcudia she’d made a point of explaining to Jeannie that her mother didn’t know about the money thing. How, how could Jeannie forget something as important as that, yet remember a detail as small and irrelevant as Dougie’s surname?
‘Yes, Doug found out.’ Sally, attempting to ride to the rescue, said hastily, ‘But that’s all in the past, everyone’s moved on, it’s—’
‘Oh, don’t try and change the subject, I’ve always wanted to know what you spent all that money on. God, I wish someone would’ve given me ten grand to dump any of the loser boyfriends I’ve hooked up with over the years.’ Apologetically, Jeannie touched Sally’s arm. ‘Not that your brother was a loser. I met him a couple of times before they broke up and he was totally fit.’
He still is. Desperate to get away — although it was too late now, the cat was out of the bag —
Lola grabbed the blue and silver squiggly scarf from Blythe. ‘Mum, are you going to buy this?’
‘No she isn’t,’ Sally repeated, earning herself a glare from the stallholder.
‘Why not?’ Lola gave the scarf a flap to try and get the creases out. ‘It’s pretty!’
Useful too. She could strangle blabbermouth Jeannie with it.
It’s obscene.’ Jeannie pointed to the silver squiggles, which Lola hadn’t realised were scrawled words. ‘Rude Spanish word. Rude Spanish word.’
Sally helpfully pointed out another squiggle. ‘Very, very rude Spanish word.’
God, it was too. Lola hurriedly put down the scarf.
‘That’s disgusting.’ Rounding on the hapless stallholder, Blythe said, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, selling something like that.’
‘I don’t speak Spanish.’ The man shook his head in protest. ‘I didn’t know’
Nobody was listening to him, nobody cared. Blythe had already swung round and pointed an accusing finger at Lola. Her expression intent and her voice scarily controlled, she said, ‘But he shouldn’t be as ashamed of himself as you.’
‘I can’t believe this.’ Blythe’s cup of coffee sat in front of her untouched. She shook her head and gazed across the tiny café table at Lola. ‘I can’t believe you did something like that. In God’s name, why?’
Lola felt sick with shame. She’d never imagined her mother would find out about the money.
She wished she still had Sally here to be on her side.
‘Well?’ Blythe demanded.
‘I’ve told you. Because Dougie’s mother hated me and Dougie was moving up to Scotland. We were so young, what were the chances of us staying together? I mean, realistically?’ Lola’s coffee cup rattled as she tried to lift it from the saucer.
Her whole life, she’d loved earning praise from her mother, making her happy and proud of everything she did. Blythe’s approval was all that mattered and until today she’d known she’d always had it, unconditionally.
Until an hour ago. The coffee tasted bitter and she’d tipped in too much sugar. What were the chances of bumping into Jeannie and the whole sorry story spilling out like that?
‘And the money,’ said Blythe. ‘The ten thousand pounds. What happened to it?’
Lola shifted in her seat. She wasn’t completely stupid, she did have a plausible lie put by in case of absolute emergencies. And now appeared to be the time to drag it out.
‘OK, it wasn’t ten thousand pounds. It was twelve and a half.’ May as well get as many of the facts correct as possible. ‘And I used most of it to buy a Jeep so I could get around the island.’
‘A Jeep? Dear God! But you hadn’t even passed your test!’
‘I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you. It’s also why I couldn’t get it taxed and insured.’ Her palms growing damp, Lola forced herself to carry on with the lie she’d concocted years ago and hoarded for so long. ‘Which is why, when it was stolen a week later, I couldn’t do anything about it. I’d spent the money on a Jeep then, boom, it was all gone. I was back to square one.’
‘No you weren’t.’ Blythe was shaking her head again. ‘At square one you had Dougie. Oh Lola, what were you thinking of? I thought we’d brought you up better than that. Relationships are more important than money! Look at Alex and me, we were happy whether we had it or not. If you love someone, money’s irrelevant. You sold your chance of happiness with Dougie for a ... a Jeep! That’s a terrible thing to do.’
‘I know. I know that now.’ Lola was perilously close to tears, but she wasn’t going to cry. She forced herself to gaze aroundthe crowded, steamy café, listen to Dexy’s Midnight Runners playing on the radio, concentrate on the jaunty music.
‘It’s like that coat today. It cost far too much but you just didn’t care, you had to have it.’
‘OK, Mum, can we stop now, please?’
But Blythe hadn’t finished yet.
‘And you know what? If you were capable of doing that to Dougie, you don’t deserve him. How could you be so stupid? I feel like phoning that boy up and apologising to him myself, I really do.’
Oh God. Her mother’s disappointment in her was too much to bear. Telling herself not to cry hadn’t worked. Tears rolled down Lola’s cheeks as she clenched her fingers and blurted out, ‘I was seventeen, I was stupid and I did a terrible, terrible thing. I don’t blame you for hating me,’
she shook her head in despair, ‘because I know it was wrong. And I’ll regret it f-for the r-rest of my 1-1-life.’
Blinded and sniffing helplessly, she fumbled in her pocket for a tissue. None there. The next moment she felt her mother’s arms go around her and a paper napkin being pushed into her hand.
‘Oh sweetheart, of course I don’t hate you.You’re impetuous and you don’t always think things through, but you’re my daughter and I love you more than anything in the world. There, shh, don’t cry’ Blythe rocked her, just as she’d always done as a child. ‘You made a mistake and you’ve learned your lesson. And you’ll never do anything like it again, that’s the important thing.’ Pulling away, she smiled and tenderly wiped rivulets of mascara from Lola’s wet face with her finger. ‘My God, the antics you’ve got up to over the years. Just you wait, one of these days you’ll have children of your own and then you’ll know how it feels when they do things that shock you.’
Chapter 49
Sally, who still didn’t have the faintest idea what she’d done to upset Gabe, was getting more and more frustrated.
‘The omelette pan’s missing.You were using it yesterday. What have you done with it?’ He was crashing around the kitchen, banging cupboard doors open and shut, as exasperated as if she’d deliberately tipped the contents of the bin all over the floor.
Which Sally was quite tempted to do, what with all the fuss he was making.
‘I washed it up, dried it and put it away.’ Biting her tongue, she opened the final cupboard door and took out the omelette pan. ‘There, panic over.’
Gabe looked irritated. ‘It’s never been kept in that cupboard.’
Every time she felt bad at having lost the letter that had arrived for him — and not mentioning it
— Gabe said something to make her feel less guilty. Like now. Evenly Sally said, ‘Gabe, up until a couple of weeks ago, I’d have left the omelette pan on the stove or dumped in the sink and I wouldn’t have got this much grief about it. Why are you being like this?’