Baby Blues and Wedding Shoes (18 page)

Good festival photos were going to make
or break her trip. Fun as they had been to take, the pictures of
Gehry’s fish and Gaudi architecture were unlikely to bring in
significant income. They were too common, with every amateur
tourist-come-photographer loading their snaps to stock image sites.
As she slumped against a wall and waited for the train Helen tried
not to dwell on her main assignment. Taking pictures at night was
not her strong suit and she hadn’t taken any professionally since
completing her course.

I guess now’s the time to find out if
I’m good enough to cut it. All I really want to do is take the
weight off my feet and force some food into my squashed
stomach.

At last a train whooshed into the
station and Helen groaned. It teamed with a living wall of suits
and jeans, as workers heading home pressed against early revellers
heading to the festival. Helen edged into the carriage and clung to
a strap, trying to rest one aching ankle at a time. She longed for
a seat but knew she wasn’t nearly pregnant enough for someone to
give up theirs.

A prickling sensation informed Helen
that someone was watching her. She looked up into the heavily lined
face of a petite Spanish lady. The old woman smiled and stood up,
gesturing for Helen to take her seat. Helen felt her heartbeat thud
heavy in her chest.
What the hell do I do now? The old dear is
three times my age, and I’m barely halfway through my
pregnancy.
The lady gestured again, more insistently this time.
Unsure what else to do, Helen sank gratefully to the seat and the
lady’s beaming smile confirmed she had made the right decision.

Through gestures and sign-language the
lady asked how far along she was, holding up nine fingers and
counting along them. Feeling a bit daft, Helen held up five fingers
in response. The lady looked surprised and gestured to indicate a
large bump for five months.
Okay, so maybe I look more pregnant
than I think I do! Great.
She smiled wryly at her new friend,
trying to work out how to communicate twins. She held up two
fingers, then rocked to indicate she meant two babies. Her heart
beat slightly faster, as it always did when she contemplated twins.
The lady’s face lit up brighter, and her signs indicated twice the
blessing, twice the love.

Helen’s chest tightened and she felt a
lump form in her throat. She shoved the feelings away.
I have
cried enough for one lifetime
. The lady’s words floated through
her fear.
Twice the love?
Is that to make up for them not
having a Daddy? For me doing this by myself
? Looking along the
carriage she could see couples, snuggled together or holding hands,
talking into each other’s ears to be heard over the general noise
of the busy carriage.

Her sadness must have been visible on
her face as the old lady looked at her with pity. She indicated the
rings on her finger and pointed at Helen’s hand, shaking her head.
Helen wasn’t sure how to respond. She shook her head in turn, to
indicate there was no husband, and waited for the woman’s censure.
It didn’t come. Instead there was a question in the lady’s eyes and
she spoke her first words in heavily accented English.

“He die?”

“No,” Helen responded, wondering why
she felt the need to be honest to this stranger even though it
would surely cause condemnation in such a religious country.

“He scared? He run?”

Helen raised her eyes in surprise, then
nodded. “Not scared.” Helen wondered how much English the lady
understood. Trying to think of a way to describe Daniel in simple
terms she paused, then said, “Babies not part of his life plan
right now. Work is his number one.” She emphasised the point with
an upright index finger.

The lady thought through the words for
a moment, before comprehension dawned. She frowned, and Helen
thought she would turn away in disapproval. Instead the lady patted
her shoulder in a motherly way and leant down to whisper in her
ear.

“He stupid. You do fine, babies bring
joy. You strong.”

Helen shivered and once more tears rose
in her throat. How could the words of a complete stranger cut
through to her soul?
What does she see that I don’t?

Dawn had also told her she would find
strength. She didn’t feel very strong. Some days it took every
ounce of energy to fight the urge to call Daniel, just to have
someone to share the burden with.
And the babies haven’t even
been born yet.

Seeing the sign for her stop outside
the window, Helen pulled herself upright and sought out the kind
eyes, buried in the tanned, wrinkled face, to say farewell. The
eyes twinkled with compassion and understanding, and Helen felt she
had been given a blessing as she departed the carriage.

The warm glow cocooned Helen as she
made her way along the silver corridors to exit the Metro. As she
came out blinking into the afternoon sunshine, the brightness
seemed to clash with her happy feelings rather than enhancing them.
The lady’s words,
babies bring joy,
echoed in her head but
now they chilled her rather than warmed her. These babies hadn’t
brought much joy so far.

Nodding at the bored woman on
reception, Helen walked to the lift and hit the button for her
floor so hard it left a mark on her hand. She was only two floors
up but even that short climb seemed beyond her strength.

Once in her room, she set her alarm for
six p.m., sank her head heavily into the pillow and was soon lost
to restless sleep.

Helen’s dreams were frantic and she woke
exhausted. Her mind twirling with images of party-goers in festival
masks that resembled Daniel, his face twisted with rage. Sometimes
the faces more closely resembled the stranger she had bumped into
twice since arriving in Barcelona. She wondered what it meant and
why the sexy Spanish man with the London accent intruded in such a
personal space alongside Daniel.

They’re both city suits, cut from
the same cloth. And they can both sod off out of my head! I don’t
care if he wore the nice mask in my dreams, no-one who can afford
to stay at the Hotel Arts is going to be anything other than a git.
Besides, he let that kid get away.
She felt her stomach
knotting as she remembered the sardonic look on the stranger’s face
when she’d demanded he call the cops.
God I hope I don’t bump
into him again.

Helen swung her feet off the bed and
grimaced as her blistered feet touched the tiles. Pregnancy seemed
to have made her feet bigger and even her most comfortable shoes
rubbed. The prospect of walking more miles around the city centre
made her want to lay back down on the bed and weep.

Stop whinging, get on that train, get
your pictures and get home. Every day in this flea-pit is using
money you don’t have. You can feel sorry for yourself once you’ve
been paid.

Helen had discovered the downside of
being freelance – it was rare to be able to claim travel costs on
expenses. Maybe once she was more known, had more experience, she
could negotiate for that, but until then she had to swallow the
costs herself and hope the payment she received for her photographs
covered it. She nearly hadn’t taken the Barcelona assignment for
that reason. Unfortunately, with the babies due in less than four
months, she wasn’t in a position to turn down work.
Speculate to
accumulate, isn’t that what they say? Well I hope I accumulate big
from this otherwise the babies and I are going to be living in a
cardboard box. Or with my parents.

As she gathered her photography gear
together, and dressed to blend in with the revellers, Helen once
more thanked her lucky stars for the work she had secured so far.
Aspiration Publications had been good to her, sourcing every tiny,
low-paying job, at her request. She had been surprised to find
support in what she’d always imagined to be a cut-throat
industry.

Looking back Helen wondered what
decision she would have made if she had known from the beginning
that she was carrying two babies. It seemed foolish to have moved
back to London, evicted her tenants so needlessly. She could have
stayed with her mum in Devon, at least until the babies were
born.

You still could
, part of her
mind observed.
It’s hardly difficult to find new tenants and you
know Mum would love to have her grandchildren born on the
farm.

It was the sensible choice but she just
couldn’t imagine not being in the city, with all the effervescent
life fizzing around her. She wondered if she would feel differently
when the babies arrived.

I can’t think about that now
,
Helen muttered, seeing the time on the digital clock by the bed.
Pushing thoughts of the future out of her mind, she shouldered her
rucksack and hurried out the hotel.

She had decided to set herself up in
one of the many squares that led off from Las Ramblas. Any thought
of taking pictures along Las Ramblas itself had been quashed by her
experience the previous evening.

I’ll be safer with some space around
me, or a wall behind me
, she thought, as she joined the crush
on the next train heading for the centre.

Helen walked up the steps of the Metro
into a wall of sound. The station was halfway along Las Ramblas and
she emerged from calm into chaos, like a rabbit coming out of his
burrow to discover a rave had kicked off in his field.
If I
thought it was busy yesterday that was like a graveyard in
comparison. Definitely the right decision to find somewhere
quieter.

The milling crowd jostled her as she
stood stationary trying to get her bearings. The sound of shouted
laughter and music tunnelled into her ears and vibrated through her
skin. She felt one of the babies kick and rubbed her hand
protectively over her bump.

Sorry little ones, this is a bit
crazy.
Guilt stabbed under her ribcage as it occurred to her
for the first time that perhaps this wasn’t the best environment
for her unborn children. As if to emphasise the thought she inhaled
the scent of cigarette smoke all around as people stood in groups
smoking and chatting.

Helen searched around, trying to decide
which way to go. To one side a procession of masks, like the ones
in her dream, bobbed along several feet above the crowd. From what
she could remember in the festival brochure they were heading for
the market. Helen shivered as flashes of her dream washed over her
and she quickly snapped a few shots before seeing a gap in the
throng. Feeling like someone finding a path out of the jungle,
Helen pushed through the space and left the busy street. Her bag
snagged as she moved forward and her heart jumped into her throat.
Please don’t let anyone try to pickpocket me today.
She
turned and checked the zips on her rucksack but everything looked
fine. With a last lunge for freedom Helen left the street and
hurried down a half-empty alleyway.

The noise dropped as soon as she left
Las Ramblas. Resting her shoulder against a stone wall Helen took a
deep breath. Her skin itched from the jostling and she felt as if
she’d come up for air after being underwater too long.

Really, was this the right job for
me?
I grew up in Devon, for heaven’s sake: Their idea of
busy is when sheep block the road and a three-car queue forms
waiting for them to clear.
The thick Londoner skin she had
taken ten years to construct had apparently been shed with
pregnancy.
It’s like being a green little grockle again.

Spying a church circumnavigated by a
small alleyway, Helen pushed her way through the meandering crowd
and headed for the relative solitude. She followed the path around
the church and her ears picked up quiet strands of classical music,
vying with a heavy beat coming from speakers in the square behind
her. As she rounded the corner she saw two people sitting against
the church wall with a few bystanders quietly observing. Strands of
cello music coiled up from where a young girl cradled the
instrument, head bent low. The melody raised goosebumps on Helen’s
bare arms and wrapped around her like a blanket, smothering all
thought of the Festival or why she was there. Next to the girl sat
an old woman with her eyes closed. She seemed to be meditating and
Helen wondered if she was there as a chaperone for the young
cellist. Then, as the cello music changed tempo, the old lady
inhaled and began to sing. The voice that emerged was strong and
pure, scattering Helen’s expectations. The song was in Spanish but
Helen didn’t need to understand the words. The music resonated with
emotion, first wondering and longing, then moving into
understanding and finally joy.

Helen felt tears well in her eyes as
the incongruous buskers reached the end of their performance.

Damn hormones.

There was no rapturous applause, just a
sigh of shared experience as the onlookers tossed coins into the
open cello case.

Helen searched in her pocket for
change, nearly dropping her camera as she discovered her hands were
shaking. She felt someone reach out to steady her and was
immediately on the defensive. Looking up she saw the man from the
beach.
Is he following me?
Her heart skipped and thudded
like startled rabbit.

The handsome face broke into a warm
smile as the man recognised her, but his demeanour, with half his
body turned towards the performers, suggested to Helen that the
meeting was accidental; that he too had stopped to listen to the
lady sing and the girl play.

“Thank you,” the man said, when Helen
eventually located some Euros and dropped them into the
velvet-lined case. She looked up at him, a question in her
eyes.

“The cellist is one of my sisters; I
said I would come listen to her play.”

“She plays beautifully. Is the singer a
relative too?”