Finding You

By Giselle Green

Finding You - the standalone sequel to Little Miracles.

Julia and Charlie are ecstatic to be reunited with their stolen child, Hadyn. A year after he was snatched from a beach in Spain during a family holiday, they had feared that he would never be found alive.
Now the couple are eager for their lives to return to normal – but something is very wrong. Hadyn is still in many ways a 'lost' child. He seems to have been badly affected by the abduction, making it impossible for the family to simply pick up the pieces and move on.
In their efforts to unravel exactly what happened to their son and to find a cure, Julia and Charlie clash as to the best way forward. As their own insecurities surface, their relationship comes under threat - a situation not helped by the appearance of a former lover who is only too happy to rock the boat. 
As dark secrets are uncovered, the couple's love for each other is tested to its very limits, and they begin to doubt that they will ever be able to help their troubled little boy...
Until, at last, they stumble across an unexpected truth. A truth that might be the only thing left that could save their family. 
Emotionally intense and deeply moving, this follow-up to Little Miracles will grip you from the very first page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: YULE PRESS
• Release date: Mar 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386507567

Giselle Green

After gaining a BSc at King's College London and MSc at City University, Giselle worked for British Telecom and Unilever, London. Giselle is now a full-time mum to six boys, including twins, and a part-time astrologer. In 1999 she qualified as an Astrologer with the Faculty of Astrological Studies and now specialises in medieval astrology. Pandora's Box is her debut novel

Book preview

Julia

When I call out to my son, walking ahead of me along the sandy shore, he does not stop or look back at me.

He’s growing older, I tell the part of me that yearns to run along behind him like a shadow, never letting him go.  He’s two-and-a-half now; they grow up so very fast, and the truth is we were robbed of almost a whole year together.  A whole year. Because he was taken from me.

He was taken from a sparkling Spanish beach, just like this one. 

One moment, I had Hadyn near me. He was playing. I remember he was stamping on the golden sand and he was laughing. We were happy. Then the weather changed. The clouds came over and in an instant, the day changed. Everything changed. All our lives, all my dreams and hopes.  I had no thought of danger at that moment but ... danger was present. It was present and I should have known it and I didn’t. 

I stop abruptly, the water seeping away from my feet, sucked back down into the swell, and call his name again, but he doesn’t look back. He just keeps on walking; a small, lone figure who acts as though he’s got no connection with me at all and I feel my heart shrivel a little inside.  I am no longer the one he looks for, am I?

I worry about this all the time, though Charlie and everyone else around me have been quick to reassure me on this.

Oh, he’s just got to get used to you again, everyone says. Be patient! He was gone from you for eleven months—that’s a lifetime for a little child. He’s only been back with you 16 weeks. The main thing is he is healthy and well.  He’ll come around. You just need to enjoy him now, Julia. Relax. Enjoy your time. That’s all you need to do.

And perhaps ... they are right? Perhaps I have not been patient enough.  Without taking my eyes off him, I make myself go and sit down on the biscuit-crumb shore.  With my fingertips exploring the wet granules behind me, I let myself consider the possibility. It is, after all, what I want to believe: that perhaps, given enough time, everything will revert to how it was before. On a peaceful, gentle spring day on an Arenadeluna beach such as this, I could believe it, too.  Charlie—I glance up to the walkway along the top of the beach—he went to take a call; he’ll be back soon, but apart from a lone fisherman mending his nets and a huge flock of gulls that have been parading the shore, we are practically alone on the sand today.  It may be comfortably warm, but it is too early in the season for the locals. The mist wavers up off the warming sand in long, snaky columns. It is early morning; the sunlight is sloping, gentle, and Hadyn’s safe now, the breeze whispers over me, caressing my skin. You don’t have to worry anymore.

In truth, I do not want to worry. The story of what happened—it’s like a piece in a newspaper, yesterday’s news. It’s still fresh in all our minds but really, it’s gone and done now. He is back with me and Charlie and very soon, I am praying, we will be allowed to take him back home. 

What was it like when you found him, everyone wants to know?

What happened next? Everywhere I go in the town, people stop me and ask this. The locals are shy but curious. All this has all happened in their own little patch and they feel they have a right to know. What happened after you found him that day in the park?  It’s natural that people should be curious. After all, I am the devoted mum who kept on looking for her missing son after everyone else involved had long given up.

I’m the one who risked everything to discover the truth. I’m the one who risked ridicule and alienation from the family and nearly completely destroyed my relationship with my son’s father. And apart from Hadyn, Charlie meant pretty much everything to me. I kept going for so long, I know in the end I risked my very sanity. And then, just on the point of accepting that I would never see Hadyn again ... I found him. I found him on a chilly, bright blue day in a deserted park in Spain just hours after attending his grandmother’s funeral. He was being looked after by a large woman wearing a comfortable, baggy cardigan who spoke Spanish to him and clearly doted on him.

After a whole year of looking, I found him.

And what do I remember about that day?

Precious little, really. I recall I lifted up the dyed-red curls at the back of his neck and then the pure physical shock of finding what I had been looking for; the birthmark that would identify this was unquestionably our son Hadyn in front of us. I was jubilant, yes. Oh yes! But I was also shocked. And ... confused. How can anyone else really understand this?  I was confused because all along, even when not one other soul had understood what kept me going, I had been right.

And then I felt sad. 

Even in the midst of my sheer and utter joy, I felt like weeping. Because of the sheer pointless cruelty and the waste of it; all the pain and suffering that we went through when all along, he had been here. Alive. Living and breathing and eating and sleeping, somewhere in the world. He’d been alive. He had been, all along. Not lying cold and dead at the bottom of the sea or in the belly of some fish like we’d been led to believe.

Nobody wants to hear about that, though. What they all want to know about are the hard facts.

What was it that actually happened? Everyone keeps asking, all our friends and relatives and colleagues; all the police and the other officials and the people from the British Embassy who came in, most surprised, after the event, and the paparazzi and the other people from the local media; what happened then? They’ve got this scene stuck in their heads with me and Charlie in the park and this woman—this stranger—who’d been secreting our son away for all these months and suddenly there she was, bang in front of us. And him. Our child. I mean, how do you react to a scenario like that? Did you pick him up and run with him? Did you remonstrate with the woman, Illusion, who had him? I imagine she wouldn’t have been too happy, people say; did she try to run? 

No. Illusion didn’t try to run.

She didn’t run, but she did do something else. Something I only half-saw, I only half-remember now ...

‘Hadyn, stop!’  I call after him again. He’s strolling a little too far away for my comfort now. 

But Hadyn doesn’t stop. Nor does he acknowledge me at all and so I get up, the sand pouring off my legs and lap in an untidy flurry.  

‘Wait for Mama, Hadyn. Wait for me ...’ As I run towards him, all the gulls take flight. As one, they lift off into the air, a swirling mass of grey feathers and flashes of white against the deep blue and this—finally—is what stops my son in his tracks.

‘Pretty,’ I tell him, my mouth close up against his ear.  ‘Pretty birds?’ I crouch down beside him, his face upturned in joyous wonder. ‘When we get home,’ I say, ‘you can put food out in your bird feeder again.’  We briefly watch the birds fly off together and I feel a swell of pride now, watching him.  Hadyn has hair that is the colour of golden molasses and skin the colour of a dusky peach.  He has strong, chubby legs that will one day be athletic, I think, like his father’s.

And then I hear him laugh. On one or two occasions since his return, when something has taken his fancy, I have heard this gruff, mirthful chuckle. It puts me in mind of the sun peeping over the horizon. Like a morning in early May, his laughter is full of unknown potentials, promising as a rose bush full of buds still unopened, the hint of a summer yet to come. And it fills my heart with joy. Because it means that—even if I can’t get through to him right now—something ... something can still make him happy.

Be patient, Julia, and he will return to you, all in his own good time, but patience is hard and I wish ... I still wish I could find some way into his heart.  He still likes the birds, I remind myself, and that is a glimmer of the person he was before, is it not?

‘Soon we will be home,’ I add encouragingly, more for me than for him. Hadyn glances at me briefly now. Was it the word home that did it? Does he even know where his real home is anymore? Is it wishful thinking on my part to hope that he even understands me?  I breathe out, and it sounds like a sigh. Since we’ve had him back, he barely speaks.  He was starting to talk when they took him, and I know his captors spoke Spanish to him for that year, but he doesn’t even speak that. It makes it so hard for me to know what’s on his mind or what he is feeling. And if he’s had a whole year to get used to that other woman who was looking after him, does he even have the first idea who I am?  He must be feeling so confused ... He’s looking up at the sky again. 

What are you thinking, Hadyn?

I touch his chubby arm briefly—not for too long, because he does not seem to like being touched. ‘Birds all gone?’ My observation, like my previous comment, falls on deaf ears.  Can he even hear me at all? It has occurred to some of the family to wonder if there might not be something up with his hearing, but ...

He heard her well enough that day we found him at the park, I remember. He responded promptly enough to her commands.

I don’t want to think about that day anymore, though. And we need to get back to the house.

‘All done here?’ A familiar voice calls out, cutting through my thoughts. I take Hadyn’s hand and we both look up just in time to see Charlie jumping over the stone wall at the top of the beach.

——————————————-

‘Daddy’s back.’ I stand up, a little breathless. Charlie’s wearing his hair a little longer these days than he used to. It suits him. He’s got on a skinny white t-shirt that shows off the tan on his arms, a pair of casual blue jeans, and nothing whatsoever on his feet: the overpowering sense of his physical beauty hits me just like it always does. How lucky am I, I think. But the thought is tinged, as ever these days, with a little sadness.

The first time we visited Spain just over a year ago, it was originally to introduce me to his late mother’s Spanish side of the family and plan our wedding. How happy I had been that day. How proud, arriving at Malaga with my clever, handsome fiancé and our infant son at my side. I’d had so many hopeful plans back then about how I’d win them all over—especially the grandmother, Agustina—how they’d all fall madly in love with Hadyn and then of course we’d both become part of this close-knit clan. I’d wanted that so much, to know what that would feel like, that effortless belonging. I’d wanted it for Hadyn as much as for myself. For him to have the kind of start in life that I could only ever have dreamed of.

I sigh. The bit about the family loving Hadyn had worked out, at least. Everything else had slipped through my fingers at nightmare speed. Hadyn, Charlie, any hopes that I’d once harboured of living a happy, normal life ... 

‘Hey,’ Charlie’s kiss on my mouth as soon as he reaches us is sweet and tender. He ruffles his son’s hair affectionately but gingerly, I see, with the lightest of touches. He takes Hadyn’s other hand. He looks pleased, I think.

‘Good news?’ I murmur.  That phone call was from his brother. He couldn’t get any reception down here, had to go ring Roberto back.

‘Very good news.’ Charlie’s got the slightly startled air about him of someone who can’t quite believe what he’s just heard. I feel a frisson of excitement in my belly. Oh, God. Good news? How good? I hold my breath for a moment. The warm rays of the sun dance gently on my arms. The gentle sound of the surf over many rounded pebbles breaks and fizzes behind us and the moment comes into sharp focus but still, he does not speak. 

‘Charlie?’ I step in a little closer.

‘They’re going to allow us home next week, J ...’ He pulls me close to him in a hug. For a moment, I can feel his heart beating, and it’s going as hard and as fast as mine.

‘Next week?’ I say faintly. How strange that sounds, how close by, when we have been waiting in the dark for so many weeks without a hint of how much longer would be left before our release from Spain. ‘Is it true?’ I wipe away the relieved tears that spring to my eyes.

‘Roberto just got off the phone from the jefe’—the Chief of Police, he means— ‘and it looks like it, Love. The embassy just rung and confirmed it, too. It looks as if they’re ready to let us go.’

I can hardly take it in.

‘No more interviews then?’ I ask slowly. ‘The Embassy, Interpol, everyone—they’ve finished? Really?’

A hundred questions, like impatient schoolchildren jostling for attention, all tumble into my mind now at once; how, why? Didn’t the authorities still have to speak to us some more about things? The last time I spoke to Sally, our contact at the British Embassy, she’d hinted that there was a lot of work that still needed to be done, a lot more red tape that would need to be waded through, but now suddenly, we’re free to go. 

‘They’re finished with us, Julia.’ He bends and in one sudden movement, he swoops Hadyn up, twirling him round and round. I think Hadyn is going to yell at this unexpected manhandling, and his eyes grow wide when he’s lifted up so high. But he doesn’t object. He’s flying like a bird, another one of those seagulls enjoying the whole of the blue morning sky. The breeze ruffles his curls, like golden feathers. He spreads out his arms and he laughs.

And we laugh, too. 

‘Roberto was able to expedite things for us, honey. It really is true. We’re going home.’

Home. Blackberry House on the outskirts of Richmond. The place where we used to live together as a family but which I left way back at the beginning of August after Hadyn was lost and Charlie and I had split up over it. That was eight months ago now. Can it really be eight months? When I left it, I never expected to return to it again, not with my family intact.

And yet, this is exactly where we’ll soon be headed.

‘It’s fantastic; the best news in the world. We’d better start thinking about how we’re going to handle things ...’ He’s right, of course. As soon as we get back, there’ll be any number of curious people, both official and unofficial, just waiting to barrage us with questions.

What happened that day that you found him, these people will ask me again, all those same questions that I have already answered so many times before; who said what and who went where and what did the police do and when and how did you actually get him back? And oh, I am so tired of talking about it all.

Never mind what has passed. In a few brief days, this will all be over. All these terrible months, they will be gone. Already, my memory is becoming a haze and a blur around the events of the last year and a quarter, and I wish now I could bury them all so deep in my mind that I never had to think of them, ever again. We have Hadyn back in our custody; the authorities have accepted at last that we should be allowed to take him home.

‘We couldn’t have hoped for more, could we?’ I look at Charlie’s relieved, slightly shocked face and I know he’s barely taken it in, just like me. Good news can come as such a shock sometimes. Hadyn has been gazing at us both intently all the while, and I smile at him now. But the minute he sees me pay him any attention, he just looks away.  He is self-contained, I think. He is with us and yet ... sometimes he seems so very alone. 

‘Once we get home to England,’ Charlie squeezes my hand, ‘everything can go back to how it should have been.’

‘I hope so, Charlie.’ When I see the sadness in his face, I curse myself because I just can’t say it. Why can’t I bring myself to say what I know he’s longing to hear; that yes, of course everything will now revert to how it was before any of this horrible episode ever happened? That our lives will now go back to how they should have been.

I don’t know why. But I can’t say it. 

Charlie

‘We’ll be fine.’ Julia leans across the open car window, her face bright, still buzzing from the earlier news that we’re free to go.  I’ve just dropped her and Hadyn off at the market where she wanted to browse—one last chance before we leave here, she said, but now that we’re here, I don’t know ... The place is packed out, milling with cars and people.

‘I want to pick up something nice for when you finish your shift at the hospital tonight,’ she insists. ‘Something to celebrate our departure.’ Then she pulls a rueful face. ‘What rotten timing, eh? In all the months we’ve been here, you’ve not been asked to help out once, and now ...’

Now I’ve been requested to assist with the re-attaching of an infant’s digits following a nasty accident at her home. It’s a favour to the family. The girl is my sister-in-law’s niece.  A lack of consultants has meant a delay that might compromise her chances.  I know Julia understands.

‘Me being there to assist saves transferring the child to a facility a lot further away, honey. They were also talking about there being a chance that they couldn’t save her fingers, but I’ve seen the x-rays and it’s perfectly do-able. I suspect they knew I’d be able to do it, too.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘Your reputation precedes you, Charlie.’ I can tell she’s both pleased and displeased by this; proud that I am so well-regarded, and at the same time a little jealous, maybe, of the attention my work sometimes requires that I must give to everyone else? 

‘Any idea what time you’ll get back from Malaga?’

‘What time?’ I shake my head, glance automatically at the clock on the dashboard. There’s a long queue on the only route out of here and I’m due at theatre in two hours—what time am I even going to get in?  ‘I couldn’t tell you, honey.  But whenever it is, I can’t go straight home tonight.’

‘You can’t?’ Julia smiles tentatively, hoists our son up a little higher on her hip.

Not tonight. She does that funny thing she does with her mouth when she’s trying to hide her disappointment.  I shake my head, lay my hand apologetically over hers where it rests on the window frame. 

‘Not coming home early to celebrate, then?’

‘Afraid not, hon. Roberto’s asked me to meet with him after work. We’re going out on his boat.’

‘What, today?’ She’s disappointed. She lowers her face so I won’t see it, rummages in her bag for Hadyn’s beaker.  ‘Why does your brother want you to go out with him today?’

Good question. Today of all days, I think wearily, when the news we’ve just had would have been the perfect excuse for us to end up in each other’s arms tonight. She wants it. I want it. More than she knows, but ...

‘We won’t be here in Spain that much longer,’ I remind her gently. ‘Rob’s been hankering to take me out in his new boat ever since I got here.’ There’s a small silence while she takes that in, that I’m choosing my brother over her.  Regretfully, I shake my head, and now Julia straightens. The sunlight catches her hair, picking up hints of auburn. If the spell of good weather continues till we leave in the next few days, she’ll have a sprinkling of freckles over her nose, which I find charming but I know she hates.

‘New boat, new house ... Roberto’s bought a lot of shiny new things in the last year and a bit, hasn’t he?’ she muses, and I see that her mood has changed. She’s cross, isn’t she? She lifts her chin a fraction. ‘That new job of his with the town council must be proving a lucrative one.’

‘If it is and he’s happy, then ... I’m happy for him, J.’ Not just lucrative for him, I think, remembering how hard Rob’s worked to get us out of Spain as fast as it might be done.  If he’s used his position to help us out, she shouldn’t knock it, should she? 

‘I’m grateful for what Rob’s done for us, J.  He’ll have needed to ... call in a lot of favours to help us get going out of here so soon.’

‘So soon?’ she says doubtfully. ‘We have been here since December.’

‘You have no idea, honey. Really.’ This is Spain. Has she forgotten we are not in England, that things take a little longer here? That they take, in fact, as long as they take. And if you kick up a fuss, you’re more likely to get slapped down and sent to the back of the queue? 

‘These matters are delicate, and Roberto’s had to stick his neck out for us. He’s done everything he could and I am grateful for the goodwill he’s shown. You should be grateful, too.’

‘Everything is all right isn’t it?’ She scans my face now. ‘I mean, there’s nothing ...’

‘Everything’s just fine, J.’ I hide a frown now.  Roberto hinted at something earlier. Just hinted at it, but in my taciturn brother’s books, that’s almost as good as a full-blown confession. We’ll meet up later. I’d like to hear how the op went, and ... there’s another matter. A little something that we need to speak about. In private.

‘Well,’ she concedes. ‘Okay.’ She squashes up a little nearer to my car as another vehicle squeezes past us. She shouldn’t stand holding Hadyn there for too long. There’s not much margin for error in these narrow streets. Too many people and motorcycles.  There’s a second’s hesitation before she adds, ‘Do I take it that means you won’t be coming along to Lourdes’s son’s birthday party that we’ve all been invited to this evening?’

I blink.

A motorcyclist weaving his way in and out of the traffic zips right past her and my son now. He comes so close that I can smell the scent of his aftershave. He comes so close, he nearly knocks my boy right out of his mother’s arms, and when the sunlight catches his mirror it momentarily dazzles me. I curse him loudly, beeping the horn, and he looks back, wobbling but unperturbed. I take in a breath and then I turn to Julia. 

‘No,’ I tell her quietly. ‘I will not be going to Lourdes’ house for Antonio’s party.’

‘You’re not?’

There is another moment’s silence while she processes this.

‘If you’re not coming, then I guess it means that Hadyn and I won’t have to go either?’ Her face is neutral. I have no way of knowing whether this means anything to her or not. ‘She’s ... she’s probably expecting you,’ Julia points out now a little stiffly. ‘I can’t see that your ex-fiancée will be all that happy if just me and Hadyn roll up.’ She’s right, but I’m not going to fall into that one.

‘She’ll be perfectly delighted to see you both,’ I tell her. ‘It’s a child’s party, so why wouldn’t she be? Besides ...’

Her eyebrows go up questioningly. Besides, what? 

‘Lourdes will be expecting you,’ I finish limply.

‘Lourdes will be expecting you,’ she corrects. 

‘Well, she isn’t getting me, is she?’ I give Julia a direct look and she stares at me thoughtfully for a while before breaking into a slow smile.

‘No,’ she says. ‘So ... when might we be expected to get you back?’

I pull an apologetic face. 

‘Rob has made plans for us to go out fishing,’ I tell her.

‘Fishing? That takes hours.’ The disappointment in her voice is palpable. ‘What are you hoping to catch?’

‘My brother in a good mood,’ I admit.

‘Why?’ she wants to know now. The man with the parrots has set up his stall just on the pavement behind me; I can see him in my rear-view mirror. I can see Hadyn’s legs kicking a little; he wants to be let down now. He wants to go look at those parrots and there’s a big delivery truck about to come up alongside us on the road. He’s not going to be able to get by, is he? 

‘Roberto in a good mood is always an asset, sweetie.’ I hesitate. How much to fill her in on? The truth is, I don’t want to go out on Roberto’s bloody boat. I hate boats.  Look, my brother had said to me when I’d tried to get out of it; say nothing to Julia. And I don’t want you to worry. We have to speak, okay? You come out on the boat with me later, where we’ll be away from all the women, and we’ll speak.

Speak about what? I’d pressed him on it, but Rob’s not one to be easily drawn. He never says much over the phone and I’d consoled myself with that thought, but his words had shot little bullet holes of doubt into my peace of mind. I knew that much.

‘My brother’s been asking me to take this trip with him since I got here,’ I return to Julia now. She’s heard him ask me a dozen times, she must have.

‘And as we hopefully won’t be in Spain for too much longer ...’ I glance apologetically at the truck driver stuck behind us in my mirror and he pulls a comradely face; women ... he mouths at me. 

‘Hopefully?’ Julia queries my choice of words. Because that’s what women do. They pick up on everything.

That’s also why I won’t be at Lourdes’ party later on. Frankly, it’s the last place I want to go right now.

I spread my hands.

‘Hopefully. Nothing is ever certain in this life, is it?’ I smile at her, feeling a sudden sadness, but the clock on the dashboard has moved on too far, too fast. I’ve got less than two hours before the pre-op briefing at Malaga hospital and the day is streaming out of my hands.

I indicate behind us with my head, and she sees the truck driver at last. He gives her an appreciative whistle as he streams slowly past us. He winks at me and says something in Spanish that I hope she doesn’t get.  There’s a lot of things about my mother’s native country that Julia doesn’t get; the fact that Antonio’s party is something she will certainly be expected to attend, whether with or without me, is just one of them.

Exactly how my brother has wangled it to get us out of Spain as quickly as he has done is another one.

Julia

After Charlie goes, I push Hadyn’s stroller down past all the stalls that are set up for a Friday  market.  Later on, on the way home, I meant to browse but right now, it’s a balmy spring morning, the sunlight bright in our faces, and I know Hadyn likes being pushed. As long as we keep moving, he won’t struggle to get out of the stroller. And as long as I keep walking, I can ignore the growing discomfort in my belly at the fact that Charlie’s done it again.

He’s arranged to go off to a meeting with someone else—be somewhere else—when he’d already committed to coming out with Hadyn and me later on.  Oh, he’s got a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. Charlie always does. He is nothing if not reasonable. But, really, would it have been too much to ask that he spend the evening at home with us tonight? Even if it had not been for Lourdes’ blessed party—which I have zero desire to go to, and which we are only roped into because of his ties with her—he could have spent this evening with me, helping with the packing and the planning. We are leaving on Wednesday, for pity’s sake.

‘I can understand well enough why Daddy needs to honour his promise to help that little girl who needs her operation,’ I say to Hadyn, who isn’t listening. ‘But going out on a leisure trip with your Uncle Rob is not the same, is it?’

It’s hardly the same thing at all.

The man with his big wheeled fridge full of cold bottled water walks by, smiling back at us. I shake my head. No water today, thank you. Several people wave at us or call out in greeting as we go by. They’ve got to know us a little over the past few weeks and months, and we’ve gotten to know them. The woman at the fruit stall always calls me over to pass Hadyn a handful of grapes and a few segments of orange which he takes, but never eats. Today, her stall is piled high with ripe figs and bananas but when she stops us, it’s to hand over a couple of slices of a bright yellow sugar melon, wrapped in a greased brown paper bag.

‘Para tu hijo’ she says. For my son. She’s got a faint smile in her eyes this morning, and I wonder if she knows about us leaving.  Or if I should tell her?  Knowing the way this town works, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the jungle drums had been busy spreading the word already. While I’m still debating whether to say anything, a customer comes and she turns to serve him. I thank her and we carry on walking , the excitement of my news simmering like an untold secret in my belly along with the growing dissatisfaction that I’ve been feeling for the past half hour that Charlie’s just left me in the lurch over this evening’s party.

We pass on by the next stall—fresh fish—and then the familiar smell of churros frying in a deep oil pan wafts down enticingly from the barrow ahead of us.  They taste like big, greasy doughnuts and my sister-in-law’s family all like to eat them for breakfast in the morning with lots of sugar. Charlie doesn’t approve of churros, but Hadyn seems to love them, so I stop and buy him a round.

‘You won’t be eating these anymore once we leave Spain,’ I tell Hadyn. He turns his angelic face towards me.  Although he makes no response to anything I say, I always get the feeling from something in his wide green eyes that he understands right enough.

‘You won’t, you know.’ I crouch down beside his stroller and touch his arm. ‘You have to say goodbye to this place, Hadyn. After today, we won’t be coming back here anymore.’ As I say it, I realise it is true, and now—along with the shimmer of excitement and happiness of going home—I feel a splinter of unexpected sadness that we will be leaving.  I look up and breathe it all in for a moment, all the colours and the smells, the movement of the people and the beauty of it. Directly in front of us, the guy is setting up his stall with his two powder-blue parrots. He lets the tourists pose for a photo with his birds for a fee. From the next stall down comes the warm scent of leather, soft shoes and handbags, and now there is the bright, passionate strains of the zarsuela playing on Rafaela’s radio in the corner. 

Rafaela is the girl with the long black hair that she always keeps tied back with a silver headscarf. She comes out of her little white tent now.

‘Good morning you two,’ she says in perfect English. She’s been studying languages at Bristol University but she’s back for the Easter holidays, and she spends her Fridays here, garnering trade for her grandma’s fortune-telling booth.

‘All on your lonesome today?’ From here, I can peek inside the white tent, and I see her abuela’s not there.

‘Just me,’ she grins. ‘I can do it, too, you know. Want to come in?’ She steps out of the way as if to beckon me in now and I can see the set-up inside. One small metal table and two folding chairs. A well-worn pack of playing cards. No candles. No incense burning. No pictures of the Madonna or anything remotely like it. They need to work a little harder on getting the atmosphere right, I think. The set-up in here is nothing like the time when I went to see that clairvoyant Silas when Hadyn was missing, I recall wryly. Now that was spooky. Silas brought my Nana Ella through and told me a few things that turned out to be so true. And at the time, reassuring. If it hadn’t been for what Silas told me, I don’t know if I’d have kept on looking for Hadyn as long as I did.

Still. I step backwards. I’m not looking for reassurance now, am I? 

‘I’ll pass,’ I say, though a part of me wants to have my fortune told. Not because I believe Rafaela is a psychic, I tell myself—and bearing in mind that Charlie hates all this stuff anyway—but because she is young and friendly and she speaks English so well that I know I could spend a pleasant half hour just chatting to her. ‘I don’t really need to anymore, do I?’ I point towards my son, drowsing now in his stroller, and Rafaela smiles.

‘Apart from anything else,’ I confide, ‘we’ve just heard the news this morning that we’re finally going to be allowed home.’