ANNE WEALE - The Youngest Sister

Almost at once the woman Cressy had glimpsed earlier came from a room leading off the main room.

Nicolas introduced her and, like Señora Guillot, she smiled and shook hands. But behind the show of friendliness Cressy sensed she was being subjected to a critical appraisal.

‘Catalina will show you a bathroom where you can have a shower before we go to the hospital. I need to get into clean clothes, and I also have some telephone calls to make. I’ll be down in forty minutes,’ said Nicolas. ‘If you’re ready sooner Catalina will bring you tea or a cold drink out on the terrace.’ He gestured towards the door at the rear of the house, then translated all this into Mallorquín for the housekeeper’s benefit.

A few minutes later, mounting the stairs behind her, Cressy smiled to herself at the memory of her dismay when the travel agent had said there were no economy seats left on the flight to Palma. For, although all her expenses were being paid by her father, she had learnt thrift from Maggie and never liked wasting money.

However, as things had turned out, being obliged to travel more expensively had actually been a stroke of luck. If she hadn’t met Nicolas it would have been a major problem to locate her great-aunt’s cottage, let alone find out what had happened and discover Miss Dexter’s present whereabouts.

The window of the bathroom where Catalina left her overlooked the roof of a single-storey part of the building. Patches of golden lichen spattered the weathered clay tiles, and a creeper with orange flowers had climbed the wall at the end of it and was spreading up the gable of another wing of the building.

When Cressy started running a bath she found that almost boiling water gushed from the hot tap with a vigour suggesting that, in matters of mod cons, Ca’n Llorenc was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Miss Dexter’s primitive living quarters.

Having adjusted the flow to lukewarm, Cressy added some bath oil from a selection of toiletries Catalina had indicated were for visitors’ use.

While the bath filled she sat on the window ledge and thought how lovely it must be to live here, surrounded by beauty and peace, instead of in noisy, fume-ridden central London.

In his bathroom, Nicolas had stripped off and was enjoying a shower. After a long time away, it was always good to come back to the creature comforts missing from most of his trips. When he had cleaned up and changed, he intended to make some enquiries about where an elderly lady would get the best medical care which wouldn’t involve her great-niece helping to nurse her.

In some Spanish hospitals, patients were fed, washed and watched over by their mothers, daughters or other close female relations. The hospital staff provided medical care only. But he had other plans for Cressy, as she’d said she was called.

Usually, Catalina being an excellent cook, he would dine at home on his first night back. Then, having already made some duty calls to his Mallorquín relations on the island, he would ring one of several numbers in the address book on his desk.

They were the telephone numbers of women who had come to the island as wives but had since been discarded in favour of younger models. It was something which happened quite frequently in the various groups of high-living foreigners who frequented the small resorts. As a result, the island was littered with ‘thirty-somethings’ and ’forty-somethings’ on the lookout for a man—either a replacement meal-ticket or a lover. It meant that anyone who had had to batten down his sex drive for weeks or months had no problem in finding someone to let off steam with if that was what was required.

This time, by a stroke of luck, it looked as if he wouldn’t even have to make a phone call. Someone far more alluring than any of his usual bed partners had turned up. Cressy was the most delectable creature he had seen in a long time. Far more attractive than any of the women in his address book.

Luckily she wasn’t as young as he had first thought. As far as he was concerned, girls with no previous experience were like wild flowers. Not for picking. But at twenty-three Cressy had to be a lot more savvy than she looked. The thought of her lying in the bath on the other side of the house was a turn-on. He wished he had her here with him now, that gorgeous Amazonian body sleek and slippery against his.

Taking Cressy to bed would be the perfect reward for four months’ celibacy, he thought with a growl of anticipation.

Cressy was drying herself on a fluffy white bath-sheet. Then, as there was plenty of time, she massaged her legs with an after-bath lotion scented with the same subtle fragrance as the bath oil.

She was humming to herself, her spirits unaccountably buoyant in spite of her concern about her great-aunt’s injuries, when she remembered something that instantly changed her mood.

Nicolas’s behaviour wasn’t prompted by disinterested kindness; she mustn’t forget that he had an ulterior motive. Aunt Kate, in her day, had been as famous as Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem. He was hoping the end product of being helpful to Cressy would be an exclusive interview with her, like the profile of Edward James which had been his first journalistic coup and the foundation of his career.

Still in her jeans, but wearing a clean white T-shirt, she went downstairs and outside onto the terrace, and found Catalina there before her. The housekeeper was transferring an earthenware jug and two tall glasses from a tray to a large low table surrounded by comfortable chairs.

‘Limonada, señorita.’

‘Muchas gracias, Señora.’

This, plus hello and goodbye, was the limit of Cressy’s Spanish.

The housekeeper filled a glass with the juice and then, using a ladle which hooked on the side of the jug, fished for a couple of ice cubes to drop in the glass. Then she left Cressy on her own.

The terrace was paved with clay tiles in the same mellow terracotta colours as the Roman tiles on the roof. Here and there a few had been removed to make a space for a lemon tree to grow. It must have been from one of these trees that Catalina had picked the fruit whose chilled juice now left its tangy freshness on Cressy’s tongue.

Above her, forming a canopy, grew an enormous vine dripping bunches of half-ripened green grapes from a tangle of leafy branches. In the blazing light of a Majorcan afternoon it was heaven to sit in the shade, sipping freshly made lemonade and gazing at the hazeveiled mountains.

Footsteps on the stone stairs announced the arrival of her host. But when he came into view he was not the long-haired, heavy-booted traveller whose back-view she had admired at Gatwick airport.

‘You’ve cut off your hair!’ she exclaimed.

He laughed, showing excellent teeth. ‘I don’t wear it long at home, only in places where there aren’t any barbers. Tomorrow I’ll have it cut properly, but this will do for tonight.’

Because it was naturally curly—with a looser curl than a perm gave—no one would have guessed he had cropped it himself. It was the kind of hair which, like animals’ fur and birds’ plumage, would always spring back into place after a vigorous shake. The silver climber on his ear had also disappeared, she saw. He was wearing a shirt of dark blue and white striped cotton and a pair of dark jeans. When he sat down and crossed his long legs, she noticed that his ankles were bare and that his trekking boots had given way to a pair of dark brown deck shoes.

He took a long swig from his glass. ‘Mmm ... Catalina makes great lemonade. Felió has some bee-hives in the hills, where the wild thyme grows. Lemonade sweetened with honey tastes better than stuff made with sugar.’

He looked her over, his eyes taking in, but not lingering on the curves defined by the T-shirt. ‘You look very cool and fresh. I’ve told Catalina to make up a bed for you.’