Kat

Now

​

It was the temperature that hit Kat first; the kiss of warmth which always greeted new arrivals when they stepped from the plane into Mallorcan sunshine. Even though it was still early morning, heat rose from the tarmac and the air shimmered with a promise of more to come. The percussion of the airport filled her with anticipation, a symphony of activity from the drone of planes taxiing, the thump of landings, the whine of trucks snaking along to collect luggage, and the rumble of buses lumbering from the terminal to meet dazed arrivals. Above all this was the musical cadence of a foreign language. Spanish. Her mother tongue. Music to her ears.

​

Kat blinked as she stepped out onto the mobile stairs. Almost as shocking as the sudden blaze of sunshine was the realisation that her body and her head were not in sync. She no longer moved as she expected to, and now she stood swaying like a sapling in a gale. Frailty was a frustration she would never become accustomed to, and she was certain nobody ever did. The me who dwelt within her, the one who inhabited that deep-down place where she was purely herself, was still twenty-one: dark-haired, rebellious and strong.

​

Kat sighed. What ever happened to the lively girl who’d first landed here, when disco ruled the pop charts and people looked at one another rather than at their phones? The girl who had thought nothing of rickety steps and had walked to the terminal with a heavy rucksack slung over her narrow shoulders. The girl who had hitched a ride to a sleepy fishing town surrounded by mountains and olive groves, with narrow streets, whitewashed buildings and bougainvillea spilling over stone walls, and with no more to guide her than an address scribbled on an envelope?

​

Where was that girl? When had she vanished? Kat hadn’t noticed her slip away until it was far too late. She had returned recently to berate her older self for being cautious and boring, and she was here now, urging Kat to give the stairs a go rather than wait for the promised assistance. Independent to the last, that’s me, thought Kat with a surge of pride. And if she tripped and toppled down, it probably would be the last thing she did. Death by aeroplane steps. What a way to go! Darling David would die laughing.

​

Or he would if he were still alive. Oh dear. It was still a shock to remember that he wasn’t here. Time to try those steps. How hard could it be?

​

“Señora Beauchamp! Be careful! We’ll assist you.”

​

An air stewardess materialised at Kat’s side. She laid a French-manicured hand on Kat’s arm as she did her best to stop a silly old biddy from throwing herself head first down the steps.

​

Although Kat longed to say she was perfectly capable, she knew this would not be true. It had been enough of an effort to walk through the aeroplane from her seat to the door unaccompanied, and at Gatwick she had been driven to the plane on a special cart complete with flashing light and beeper. People had scattered and Duty-Free whizzed by in a blur. It would have been fun if it had been a choice. Since the annoying episode with her heart, Kat’s choices seemed to narrow daily.

So she admitted defeat and stood back while all the other passengers disembarked. She picked her battles more wisely the days, but the twenty-one-year-old version of her was seriously unimpressed with this surrender.

​

Pipe down, Kat told her sternly. One foot in the wrong place and we’ll have a broken hip. How much would you like to spend the next two months in Palma Hospital? No pool there.

​

Twenty-one-year-old Kat did not like the sound of this at all. She had packed a new crocheted bikini and bright red nail varnish that would have outraged her mother (Katalina! ¡ Madre de Dios! Only harlots paint their toenails red!) She had backed off, though not without sulking.

​

Kat smiled at the stewardess: “Thank you, my dear. That’s very kind of you.”

​

“Oh, not at all! Sunshine Air is the airline that cares!” the stewardess trilled.

​

Deep inside, twenty-one-year-old Kat rolled her eyes.

​

Then she was helped slowly, and rather ceremoniously, out of the aeroplane and down the steps to where a young man was waiting at the foot with a wheelchair and a cheery “Hola!”

​

He was very handsome. Twenty-one-year-old Kat was very impressed by his sloe-dark eyes, slightly too long raven hair, and muscles clearly visible beneath his tight white Sunshine Air T-shirt. Her elderly counterpart was simply glad he had the strength to push her all the way to the bus and, once they’d arrived at the terminal, through the busy arrivals area.

​

Thank goodness she still held an EU passport and could bypass the long queues. The noise and bustle were overwhelming, and she felt quite dizzy. When had Palma’s airport grown so big? It was as though she’d blinked and missed the change. The world was moving on without her, it seemed. She couldn’t keep up.

​

Kat felt this way a lot lately. Change was coming to her, too. It had crept up on her like a game of grandmother’s footsteps, and it was too late now to stop it. She was older and times were changing. Her life was changing, too, which was why she had returned to Mallorca for one last summer.

​

Outside the airport terminal, which had quadrupled in size since her first visit all those years ago, José was waiting for her with the Mercedes. The roof of the faithful car was lowered, as Kat always insisted it was on her arrival, and the blue paint gleamed as brightly as the day it rolled out of the factory. But it was a shock to see that José’s hair, what remained of it, was as white as the clouds hugging the mountaintops beyond the streets of Palma.

​

When had he grown old? Kat wondered, with a jolt. It seemed like only yesterday that he and Jenny had applied for the housekeeping role at Casa la Colina. They had been a young couple, full of excitement, and utterly thrilled when David hired them, but now they were nearing retirement age, if not already past it, and her beloved husband was gone. It would be four years this autumn – four years which felt like one hundred and four without him.

​

Grief was etched into the landscape of Kat’s life these days. It was an ingested loss lodged deep in her very soul, and she felt close to tears, for David should be here now, dressed in his favourite linen suit, the one he always wore travelling to La Colina, and calling greetings to José while cutting a path through the crowded concourse with his wheelie trolley like a fedora-hatted Moses. Loss ambushed her anew, and for a moment Kat could not speak.

​

“Señora Beauchamp! ¡ Hola! Welcome home!”

​

José was out of the car – more slowly than usual, she noticed with a pang – and he hurried to help her out of the wheelchair. A rapid-fire exchange in Spanish followed between Kat’s long-time handyman and the handsome wheelchair attendant, who was insisting he was owed a big tip for escorting the old English lady so far.

​

Kat was amused. So much for Sunshine Air’s caring ethos! She was also tickled, as always, when a local assumed she was a typical wealthy Brit whose Spanish extended only as far as asking for the bill or requesting directions to the loo. She still laughed on remembering how David had once asked a bartender for two toilets, mixing up the words for ‘toilet’ and ‘beer’. The bartender and Kat had been in stitches. No wonder she had always done all the speaking here. It was no hardship, since Spanish was Kat’s second language, courtesy of her mother. Kat’s full name was Katalina Innes de Morales Brown, quite a mouthful for a five-year-old, so Kat Brown she had become.

​

And later, much later, Kat Beauchamp.

​

“José, just give the man a tip,” she said sharply in Spanish. “Ten euros should cover it.”

​

It was gratifying to see the surprise on the young man’s face, closely followed by horror as he realised she had understood all his insults about having to wheel this old English lady so far. But Kat let it go. Her twenty-one-year-old self might have relished a fight, but the older version was more than happy to be relaxed. This dear boy probably hated his job and was tired of watching British people buy up all the property on his beautiful island. Kat sympathised. Besides, she was tired from the flight, and only wanted to be on her terrace watching sailing boats head out to sea as she sipped a glass of ice-cold wine.

​

Where did confrontation really get you? The moral high ground was a lonely old place.

​

With the luggage stowed, José helped Kat ease into the passenger seat. She pulled her sunglasses from the glove box. Faithful old friends, they were big Chanels given for a special occasion, now lost in the fog of memory. She had a vivid memory flash of wearing them while David hunched over the wheel of this very car, guiding it round a hairpin bend near Sant Elm. She had laughed at something, before shrieking as he swerved to avoid a man with a donkey and almost drove them off the road and into thin air. Shaken, they had gone into the small town and recovered at a waterfront restaurant. David had ordered a large glass of Albariño, and Kat had driven home.

​

Funny, the things she could remember. That must have been over fifteen years ago, but it felt like yesterday. Sometimes she could barely remember what she’d had for breakfast. The mind was a strange thing. More and more, she found herself falling through crevices in time. What if one day she could not claw her way back?

​

“You look deep in thought, Señora,” José remarked, finally sliding the gear stick into fourth as they hit the main road out of the city. The engine and Kat heaved a sigh of relief.

​

José was a more cautious driver than David. Her husband would have been flooring it out of Palma, weaving through traffic like he was at Brands Hatch, taking exception to anyone who honked, and cutting up all and sundry. He would have been home in under half an hour, unlike José, who pootled along in the slow lane.

​

Probably metaphorical, Kat thought. There was another man who had once driven fast along this road, but in a bumpy old truck. Her head resting against the soft linen of his shirt, she had breathed him in and wanted that ride to last forever. Of course it could not. Nothing ever did.

​

She smiled at José: “I was just thinking that there aren’t many donkeys on the roads these days.”

​

“No indeed, Señora. It is very busy now. Because … porque …”

​

He frowned, searching for the English required to continue, so Kat switched to Spanish as nonchalantly as changing hats, and they chatted easily all the way to Puerto Andratx, catching up on each other’s news and swapping stories of their respective families. José and Jenny’s children had played with hers. Now those children had children of their own, almost impossible to believe.

​

How was she a grandmother? She did not feel any different from the girl who had first stumbled, blinking, into the sunshine at Palma Airport all those years ago. Where had the time gone? And why had she not appreciated the humdrum more? Known the beauty in the everyday? Kat wished she had paused to savour each second, instead of always rushing forward to the next milestone. If only she could go back and tell her younger self to slow down. To relish being young and not be in such a rush to hurtle through her life.

​

The road swung south, and as the land peeled away to the sea Kat spotted the first outlying indications she was close to Andratx: a large supermarket, a sprawling garden centre, a towering billboard advertising a waterpark. Then came the houses. So many houses. When she had first arrived here, the town was small and none of these buildings existed. The roads were quiet. The hillsides still bare. Tourism was in its infancy, and Andratx little more than a sleepy town in the hills, its ancient church watching over the narrow streets and the port below as it had done for centuries.

​

By force of habit, she looked up into the hills, searching for Clara’s finca. The glass cube that had replaced it decades ago glinted in the late morning sun, bright as a migraine and with edges as sharp as the blade Clara had used to slice the haunch of Serrano ham which swung from a beam in her kitchen. Kat ached for what had been, but accepted that Clara would have approved of the modern design. Maybe it was not the building itself, though, that Kat missed, but the people they had been. Young. Hopeful. Dreaming. Thinking only of parties and kisses. They had had no idea of the pain to come. Of the losses.

But that unawareness was youth’s gift, was it not?

​

Another memory surfaced: an ink-dark night: moonlight like chalky thumbprints on the sea, guitar music, lips that tasted of limoncello, her hands on his face pulling him closer …

​

She blinked, and the image dissolved. There was only sun and road and traffic. The past was long gone, but it underlay everything, and had made Kat Beauchamp the woman she’d become.

​

“The island’s very different now,” José was saying as he navigated a roundabout, cutting up a Jeep as he switched lanes.

​

“There’s a lot of unrest about tourism and holiday homes, Señora. People are angry. There is no well-paid work. They cannot afford houses, and their children must leave the island. Ours did. I do not know where it will end.”

​

Kat nodded. It was the same everywhere, but she understood the frustration people felt. Was she part of the problem, with her second home and half-life here? Probably, but she loved this place and La Colina was part of her. Besides, she was half-Spanish, if not Mallorcan, and the island was her home too. Kat accepted that change was inevitable, and she knew it was coming for her and for La Colina. It had to. Although that made her sad, Kat understood that the old must make way for the new. This was how life had always been. There were beginnings and endings, not all of which were wanted or happy, and in her life Kat had seen plenty of these. An ending was to be the focus of this stay for this summer at La Colina, one of more than she could count, would be a first in a way. It would be her first last summer.

​

José was busy describing how the island had changed since the 1970s, when Kat had first visited. As he talked, she let her thoughts drift, blinking several times to distinguish the present from the past. Time was peculiar; ebbing, flowing, accelerating, dragging. If José slowed the car just a little more, and if she squinted, Kat was sure she would see her younger self on that scooter, long black curls tangling in the wind, bare legs sun-kissed, arms around a lean boy in front of her, her cheek resting on his back. The place between angel wings of shoulder blades that smelt of lemons and rosemary and him. Oh, so much of delicious him.

​

Over six decades later, her pulse still kicked and her blood fizzed when she recalled how it had felt to be that girl. What a gift to be young and carefree and utterly, gloriously, totally in love, with no idea of what lay ahead. What would she say to that girl now? she wondered. What advice would she give her younger self?

​

Stay away from scooters, she thought sadly. You’ll fall from one, and it’ll break your heart.

​

But twenty-one-year-old Kat would not have listened to such sage advice. She had followed her heart and chosen adventure, as young people will. Kat had no regrets, but she wished she could spare that girl the pain that had followed her first summer in Mallorca.

​

Now José was talking about Jenny, his wife. Her health was not so good. Her knees were painful, and she was struggling with the housework. She had done her best to prepare the house, but he wanted Kat to understand things might not be quite as she remembered. Not as perfecto. There might be some dust. Not all the rooms were made up …

​

Kat reached out to touch his arm and halt the flow of worries. She and José straddled a curious line – more than employee and employer, yet not quite friends. The Mallorcan couple had been unobtrusive wallpaper for decades of holidays. They had facilitated parties, fresh croissants, blue pools and clean linen. They had cared for the house while she was away, and loved it as dearly as she did. They had witnessed the triumphs, joys and sadnesses of Kat’s life, but she had been on the periphery of theirs. They knew her friends, could remember who liked black coffee or who always made a fuss if the newspaper was not on the table at breakfast, but she knew nothing of their social circles. They were as familiar with La Colina as she was – perhaps more so, for they spent every day there – but she had never stepped foot inside their apartment in the back streets of the old town. Their lives were interwoven with hers yet separate. When she left for good, life on the island would continue for them. Maybe as though she had never been?

​

“… and Jenny struggles with all the steps to the tower room,” José continued, still worried. “She was relieved when you requested the garden room, Señora.”

​

Kat sighed. Jenny was not alone with this struggle. Kat adored her bedroom in the old guard tower. It boasted an almost three hundred-and sixty-degree view across the blue sea to the island of Dragonera, then sweeping over the port and up into the hills and cloud-scarved mountains. It was her very own princess’s room. The restoration had taken years – and too much money, David had often sighed; but it had been worth every penny, for it was their private kingdom and a peaceful place to retreat when parties, guests, children and teenagers became overwhelming.

​

The tower bedroom was reached by a steep flight of open-slatted wooden stairs, polished to neck-breaking perfection and with nothing to save someone who tripped from plummeting to their doom. Kat had not thought twice about this when she was in her thirties, but once the grandchildren had arrived she saw danger everywhere, so David had quickly attached a heavy blue rope to the wall and secured the open landing with a glass balustrade. Then in later years he had struggled to climb the stairs. On her last visit, Kat had hauled herself up with sheer willpower, only to fret over managing the descent without falling.

​

This time she’d admitted defeat and opted to sleep in the garden room. Once the old kitchen of the original house, it boasted original beams and walls with deeply recessed windows. It was on the level, adjacent to the new sitting area, and possessed French doors which opened out into the garden, a splash away from the pool and with a breathtaking view out to sea.

​

From the garden room Kat could, were she so inclined, use her field glasses to spy onto the houses and apartments clustered on the other side of the port, buildings which had mushroomed from the pine-spiked hillside without her noticing – and which had caused David to huff at the change. He had hated La Colina being overlooked, but Kat quite enjoyed it. She liked to imagine the lives going on behind the walls, and invented stories about who might live there. Sometimes she had to remind herself it was all in her imagination, just as she did when she caught herself weaving narratives about the superyachts which wallowed outside the port, laden with helicopters, jet skis and goodness only knew what. How dear Clara would have laughed at such ostentation. She would no doubt have wangled an invite for one of the glamorous parties, holding court as she smoked theatrically and telling mesmerising stories before falling into bed with the billionaire owner, then leaving him broken-hearted.

​

There I go again, thought Kat, making up stories. The younger version of her had loved doing that, too, and now she was older Kat found she spent more and more time daydreaming. She dreamed of her first summer here, of swimming naked, dancing at fiestas, limoncello kisses, sitting on the terrace at Clara’s, dining with David at their favourite fish restaurant in the back streets … Where was the harm in daydreaming, apart from the shocking moment when you jolted awake and remembered the present? That abrupt slam into reality never grew any less painful. It seemed a high price to pay for a few minutes’ escape.

​

Now, the hillside across the water from La Colina – bare pink-and-orange rock and sage gorse when she had first stood outside the ruin of this house and gasped at the view – was peppered with development. One apartment block resembled an Inca temple, a similarity Kat always thought apt, since its holidaying occupants worshipped the sun and the steps ran blood-red with its setting rays.

​

Whenever she ventured from the garden room and strolled to the end of the terrace, Kat could lean on the balustrade and peer down at the butter-yellow mansion a dizzying drop below. This house had starred in The Crown as the home where Dodi wooed Diana, Princess of Wales. All make-believe of course (if Diana had ever visited Andratx, Kat and David would certainly have noticed), but she’d loved seeing a glimpse of the house on the small screen, and knew that the extravagant display of garden lights which danced in the inky water was not put on for the cameras. If she lay in bed with the doors open to the garden she could hear the waves, smell the mimosa-scented air and listen to the strains of chatter and music from the yachts moored in the bay.

​

Yes, the garden room was a beautiful room. Kat felt privileged to stay there, and it was where so much had started – but oh, how she longed to be tucked away in her tower with David. She ached with the knowledge that those nights in his arms would never come again.

​

“Señora? You did want the garden room?” José was worried. Sometimes he got a little confused, or so Jenny had confided to Kat. 

​

A sudden realisation hit Kat: caring for La Colina was a lot to ask of them, for they were ageing too. Although they were devoted to La Colina they were slowly peeling away from the house towards their retirement. Kat had noticed in May that the garden was less crisp, the paint on the shutters was flaking and dust bunnies were gathering in unseen corners. The couple were trying hard, but it was a struggle; they were ready to move on, too.

​

Soon, Kat would have to tell José of her decision, but not yet. First, a holiday. A swan song of sunny days, apricot-ribboned sunsets and dreams of the past. Before speaking to them, she would find help for this summer. Maybe she could place an ad on the board in the supermarket? Was this still how young people found jobs? Maybe they used Facebook. Or Tik Tok – whatever that was all about. Kat didn’t use the ‘Devil’s Diary’, as David had always called Facebook, but her children did. The grandchildren were even worse, constantly glued to their screens.

​

Perhaps it would be better to ask José and Jenny to put feelers out; they knew a lot of people. Kat was just about to suggest this when José slowed the car and the town came into view. The thought slipped away. She must have seen this reveal a thousand times, but it always took her breath. The deep V of the valley. The houses dotting the apricot-and-sage hillsides, some sharp and modern, others weathered and whitewashed. Best of all was the first glimpse of the sea, cupped by the valley and harlequined with diamonds. This was all beautiful, but Kat’s eyes were trained on a smudge of orange set high on the far hillside. Even with dimming sight, she recognised it immediately.

​

Casa la Colina. Her Eden. Her heart-home. The place where she had found love.

 

“Home, Señora,” José said gently, following her gaze. “You’re home at last.”

​

“Yes,” said Kat softly. “I am.”

​

And though the tears she blinked away were happy ones, they were bittersweet too, because Kat knew, as much as she was coming home, this would be the very last summer she would describe La Colina that way.

​