Catherine O’Flynn - Mr Lynch’s Holiday

He considered giving up on the idea altogether, but the thought of returning to the flat with Dermot stopped him. It was one thing to avoid work, to waste hours on YouTube, to moon about the flat and write pleading emails to Laura. It was another thing entirely to do that with your father sitting on the futon constantly saying, ‘Don’t mind me now, just get on with whatever it is you have to do.’

‘I suppose we could give Ian and Becca a try.’

‘You’re the boss.’

Eamonn hesitated. ‘They’re just acquaintances. Not friends.’

Ian and Becca had moved in three months after he and Laura and it bothered him enormously that anyone might think the two couples, both in their thirties, both having emigrated to Spain, both having bought property in the same modern, purpose-built development, could have anything in common. Ian and Becca had been ‘bitten by the property bug’ in the 1990s, a phrase Becca actually used, leading Laura to later comment that it was a shame the property bug wasn’t of the venomous Japanese Giant Hornet variety. They had been picked up and carried along in a giddy wave of property renovation and speculation at the very zenith of the laminate era. Eamonn would sometimes imagine them back then, sitting glassy-eyed and open-mouthed in front of a vast wall-mounted flat-screened television, watching any one of the seemingly identical programmes featuring spivvy presenters and an endless procession of minutely differentiated couples buying, decorating and then selling houses, over and over again.

Assuming a curiosity that was not there, Ian would often give Eamonn his earnest advice and insights into the vagaries of the property market. It was apparently a tricky game, hard to second guess. Logic might dictate that a cheap area adjacent to a more sought-after neighbourhood would inevitably improve and increase in value, but some stubbornly refused to do so, retaining their high crime levels, their underperforming schools and, worst of all, their native populations. You had to have enough of the right kind of people moving in and enough of the wrong sort of people moving out.

Ian and Becca thought that the only people who lived in poor housing in deprived areas were people who had failed to watch enough Channel 4 programmes. Eamonn had watched Laura’s doomed attempts to find any trace of awareness or responsibility in Ian and Becca with some amusement.

‘So do you think you’re helping to improve those run-down areas?’

‘Definitely. We buy a house, do it up, nice people move in, you get better shops, better schools — it all starts to happen.’

‘But haven’t you just shifted the problem somewhere else?’

Becca would nod enthusiastically. ‘Exactly.’

Ian and Becca were hurt and bewildered by their fall from grace. Like the innocent victims of a fairy tale they had simply followed the trail of breadcrumbs, never suspecting that it might lead to disaster. They had seen great opportunities in Spain. Who hadn’t? Many Britons were at an arrested stage of development, locked for ever in adolescent crushes on another country. They watched TV shows about it, bought magazines about it and dreamed for fifty weeks of the year of escaping their loveless marriages with Maidenhead, Sutton Coldfield and Altrincham for fresh starts with Mojácar, La Manga and Nerja. Ian and Becca bought the house in Lomaverde as a home and base for their new business; from there they would scout out and buy new investment opportunities in the ever-expanding Spanish property market to sell on to other Brits. They were stuck now, with three half-built apartments on the Costa del Sol and their home in Lomaverde, unable to sell up and leave and having to live off their dwindling remaining capital. They had been the last to move into Lomaverde, which made them, in Eamonn’s eyes, reprehensibly dumb. He thought that they of all people should have seen that the cruise liner they were boarding was already beginning to list.

‘Hello, Becca.’

She took a step back from the door.

‘Eamonn! We’ve not seen you for ages.’

‘Yeah, I’ve been tied up with work, that kind of stuff. This is my dad. He’s popped over for a visit, so I’m just showing him around.’

‘Ahhhhhhhhh,’ said Becca, putting her head on one side and looking at Dermot as if he were a kitten. She glanced back at Eamonn. ‘Funny. Never imagined you having a dad.’

Dermot cleared his throat and put out his hand. ‘Hello there, Dermot Lynch.’

‘Ooh. You have an accent! Wait till the others meet you.’

Eamonn started to retreat, realizing his mistake. ‘Oh, look, if you’ve got company, we’ll come back another time.’

‘What do you mean, “company”? It’s only Roger and Cheryl. Who else is it going to be? Come in! We’re just having a barbecue, tons too much food as usual. Roger was saying earlier that he’d not seen you for ages. Where’s Laura, she not with you?’

‘We shouldn’t have just dropped in like this …’ but it was too late, Roger’s voice came echoing down the hallway.

‘Is that Lynch I hear? Get in here, you insufferable streak of piss!’

‘With his father!’ Becca called out in warning as she ushered Eamonn and Dermot into the lounge.

Roger was standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips — a peculiarly disconcerting way he had of greeting people. Part-King of Siam, part-Matalan billboard.

‘Eamonn’s father, eh? Well, this is interesting.’

Roger was somewhere in his early fifties. His features had a kind of Le Bon-like swollen-bully quality to them. Handsome to some, perhaps, in the past, but chubbed-up now. Fleshy in an affluent kind of way. His accent hovered between the south-east of England and the west coast of America. He spoke with a somewhat sardonic inflection, making him sound like a jaded commentator on all he saw.

Dermot held out his hand: ‘Dermot Lynch.’

Roger squeezed and shook: ‘Ah — a proper Paddy at last. Very good to meet you.’

‘Roger!’ said Becca.

‘What? Jesus, don’t you start. Normally it’s PC Lynch there policing my every comment. Paddy? Paddy? Really? I can say “Paddy”, can’t I? “Paddy!” There. It sounds affectionate to me.’

Ian came in from the terrace where the barbecue was smoking, and after further introductions were made, asked, ‘Can I get you a beer, Dermot?’

‘I’m grand, thanks.’

Roger feigned shock. ‘What? A good Irishman refusing a drink?’

Dermot smiled, but Eamonn detected the note in his voice. ‘It’s a little early in the day for me.’

Becca steered the conversation on to safer ground, asking Dermot about his journey, which led to a lengthy discussion about different possible routes from the airport, rip-off taxi drivers and public transport in the region. Dermot mentioned his bus-driving days and Becca clapped her hands, both delighted and amazed that the conversation appeared to have some cohesion.

Eamonn watched Roger and Ian back at the barbecue. He and Laura thought there was something slightly vampiric about Roger and Cheryl’s need for ‘young blood’. The older couple exerted a certain pull, having been the first settlers in Lomaverde, and had positioned themselves at the very heart of the small community. In their first three months there he and Laura had spent a lot of time with them. On the surface all was great bonhomie, endless beer and barbecues, but underneath there seemed to be something darker. Initially, they interpreted the older couple’s constant invitations as an uncomplicated desire for company, but over time they came to feel that Roger and Cheryl needed the presence of spectators in order to be able to function. They each had the habit of appealing to their guests to support whatever aspersion they were making about the other; their relationship at times taking on an almost pantomime quality, demanding audience participation. Roger and Cheryl seemed to assume a greater intimacy between the four of them than either Laura or Eamonn felt comfortable with, the younger couple often finding themselves fending off prying questions, pretending not to notice heavy-handed innuendo. They had tried to extricate themselves from the friendship, but it hadn’t been easy. Finding your hosts indefinably creepy was not an acceptable reason to give for declining an invitation; instead they had to fabricate excuses, an exercise made very difficult by their close physical proximity and the stark absence of other people or things to do. They longed for the day that the development would be fully populated and they could melt away unnoticed in the crowd, and, while that day hadn’t (and was unlikely ever to) come, Ian and Becca’s arrival had provided some respite, as they became the prime object of Roger and Cheryl’s attentions. Eamonn and Laura engaged in fierce and scandalous speculation as to what went on between the four of them.