Bay of Secrets (46 page)

Andrés could believe that.

Even now Enrique couldn’t let it go. ‘Can you credit it, boy?’ He paced over to the easel in the centre of the room. ‘She wasn’t impressed by the artist and she wasn’t impressed by his studio either.’ He flung his arms out to embrace the space they were standing in, though Andrés knew of course that he had not had this studio when Laura had been around. When Laura had been around, Andrés must have been a
young boy of four or five. The studio had still been on the top floor of the little
casa
 – but it had been a very different space in those days. ‘Not one tiny bit. None of it meant a thing to her. The parties, the paintings, the exhibitions.’ Enrique let his arms fall to his sides. ‘The money. The fame. No. She was impressed by none of it. It was a job of work for her, that was all. She sat for me so she could earn enough money to buy food. No more, no less.’

‘As it should be, perhaps,’ Andrés said drily.

Enrique shot him a sharp look. ‘She was a bloody good model though.’

‘I can see.’

There was a sound from the open doorway. Andrés looked over. His mother was standing there. ‘Enrique … ’ she began.

His father ignored her. Instead, he came over to Andrés and held both his arms at the elbow. He gripped him hard. ‘I said that there was something I needed to tell you, boy.’

Andrés could feel the pressure from his fingers. He looked into his father’s eyes. It was an odd sensation. He realised how rarely he had been in this position; how rarely he had looked into his own father’s eyes; how rarely Enrique had touched him.

‘What?’ He met the flinty gaze. ‘What do you need to tell me?’ Nothing could be as bad as what he had been imagining. Now, if she could forgive him, at least the way was clear for him and Ruby …

‘You must prepare yourself, boy,’ Enrique said. ‘Prepare for the truth.’

The truth? What was he talking about? Andrés frowned. He looked across to where his mother was standing. ‘Mama?’

She had tears in her eyes.

‘Please don’t cry.’ What was this all about?

‘Enrique … ’ His mother moved towards her husband. Tugged at his arm. ‘Don’t.’

He brushed her away. ‘It is true, Reyna. Why should he not then hear it? He needs to hear it. Do you not realise even now how wrong it would be for him not to hear it?’

Hear what? What were they talking about? Andrés felt his mother’s hand slip around his waist. His father was still gripping his arms. Like a bloody vice.

‘That question you wanted answering,’ his father said. ‘About Laura.’

Andrés glanced at his mother but her face was impassive. ‘What?’ He felt a dip of panic.

‘It would not have mattered to you,’ his father said.

‘What do you mean?’ Why would he not just say it?

‘It would not have mattered for you and your Ruby.’

‘Enrique … ’ But this time his mother sounded only sad and accepting.

His father let go of Andrés and put an arm around his wife. ‘It is time, Reyna,’ he said. ‘You must accept that. It is time.’

‘Time for what?’ Andrés was getting fed up with this. ‘For Christ’s sake—’

‘And my time – that too is coming to an end.’ Enrique stroked her hair. ‘I will not go to my grave not telling him what he needs to know.’

Andrés felt his own breath – shallow in his chest. He waited.

‘It is a wonderful thing for you as an artist when you start selling your work.’ Enrique sounded almost philosophical now. He left the other two standing by the window and walked slowly to the far side of the studio. ‘Your wife is behind you.’ He indicated Andrés’s mother, who nodded. ‘You have a good life, you know?’

Andrés just watched him. He did not think that at this moment he could even speak.

‘But what is it all for, hmm, if you have no one to leave it to?’ His voice carried across the room with almost as much strength as Andrés remembered from the old days – when he had raised it so often in anger.

‘What are you saying?’ Andrés tried to control the flutter of foreboding deep in his belly.

‘I had contacts.’ Enrique put his hands in his pockets. He seemed to have recovered his old swagger now too. ‘I had contacts here and on the mainland who put me in touch with the right people.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve never made any pretence about who I am. I might even be called a national institution – by some.’ Even now, just as he once had, he was preening himself.

He might have lost some of his old fire, Andrés thought, but he hadn’t lost his ego. It was true that he had done a lot for his country, even for Spain, perhaps. But what could this have to do with Andrés? He looked sadly at the figure of his father. He had become almost grotesque. Not even a shadow of his former self. More like a desperate caricature.

‘People who mattered knew what I believed.’ He struck himself on the chest.

What was he talking about? Had he lost his mind? Andrés looked at his mother but she seemed to be barely listening. Of course his father was one of the old school, Andrés knew that. Politically, at least. He had never been religious – though it might have been useful from time to time when he needed to confess his sins and be forgiven – and despite being an artist he had always been on the side of the Establishment. But …

‘And so your mother and I … ’ For the first time, Enrique hesitated and looked back towards his wife. He cleared his throat. ‘We – among others – were given the chance to adopt a child.’

‘Adopt a child?’ Andrés heard the words but they didn’t make any sense. ‘Adopt a child?’ he echoed. He looked once more at his mother. Why didn’t she say something?

His mother looked down, wrung her hands. ‘Andrés … ’

‘Adopt? You mean … ?’ But he still couldn’t quite formulate what his father did mean.

‘You were the child we adopted,’ Enrique said quietly.

And then Andrés felt her arms around him; the mother he’d always loved, only ever wanted to protect.

‘Me?’ He still couldn’t think properly. How could that be? The thoughts careered through his head. ‘What are you talking about?’ Roughly, he moved out of his mother’s embrace, grabbed Enrique by the shoulders, hardly able to prevent his hands from squeezing that scrawny neck. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘Andrés, please!’ His mother was there too, and she was hanging on to Andrés again with that surprising strength of hers.

And the fury left him. Just like that. He let go.

His father coughed and wheezed and spluttered. Andrés stood there, fists clenched.

‘I don’t blame you, boy,’ Enrique said at last. ‘I don’t blame you at all.’

Ruby listened open-mouthed to the story Sister Julia was telling her.
Niños Robados
 … She scribbled fast and furiously, not wanting to interrupt the stream of information that was coming from the old nun. And wanting to get it all down. It was dynamite.

‘Stolen children,’ she breathed. She had heard of the
Niños Robados
 – vaguely; she’d mentally collected and filed a lot of stories over the years. But she couldn’t recall the details.

‘
Si
.’ Sister Julia nodded. ‘And they were stolen, my child. They really were.’ Her eyes were filled with a heavy sadness.

What had it cost her – to tell this story? What had it cost her in bravery and in personal anguish?

Ruby leant back for a moment against the pockmarked wall. The sun was getting hot and they were sitting in the courtyard of the Nuestra del Señora Carmen Convent, on one of the stone benches in the shade of the fig tree heavy with ripening fruit. Despite what Sister Julia had just been telling her, there was an air of tranquillity in the courtyard and now that the old nun had fallen silent, all Ruby could hear was the faint rush of wind and ocean, the scrabbling of the chickens in the dusty earth and the trickle of the fountain.

She scanned her notes. The stolen children might have been covered before but this was different. This was a personal angle – and not from one of the victims. This was straight from the voice of someone directly involved with the scandal. And not just directly involved, but a nun, which surely compromised the whole ethos of Spanish Catholicism at the time. She looked up at Sister Julia, who was watching her patiently. Did she realise the magnitude of what she had been telling her? She certainly seemed to. And Ruby didn’t want to upset her, or bring back unhappy memories, but she needed to know everything.

‘Was the mother superior involved?’ she asked.

But Sister Julia remained serene. No shock or horror reaction from her – she must have seen it all. She considered. ‘I do not believe so,’ she said at last. ‘Not directly, at least. She always professed the utmost respect for the doctor.’ And she gave Ruby a gentle look.

Ah. The clue was in the language she had used.
Professed
. So the mother superior might have suspected he was not whiter than white but she would never have rocked the boat. Still, Sister Julia had now done enough boat-rocking to make up for it.

‘And for how many years do you think the practice continued?’ Ruby asked.

Sister Julia sighed. ‘Certainly from the time of the Civil War,’ she said. ‘And up to the mid seventies, at least, maybe even longer.’

Ruby shook her head almost in disbelief. Though she
could see how it could have gone on for so long – in a dictatorship or where there was poverty, corruption and an unequal distribution of power. After all the emotions of the past few days, after all she had learnt from Trish about Laura, she hadn’t thought anything more could touch her. But this …

‘Do you think others have come forward?’ Sister Julia asked. ‘Have others told their stories?’

Ruby guessed what she was thinking. If she had been plagued by guilt then so would other people who had been involved. Some would speak out, others would remain silent for ever. ‘I have no idea,’ she said. She’d have to check on the Internet when she got back to her hotel. But who would admit to such a thing? She felt a tingle in her spine. This story could be a first.

Who would be interested? Ruby leaned back and let her gaze drift past the small bell tower and on to the endlessly blue sky above. Who wouldn’t be interested? Automatically, she scanned her internal editor list for possible candidates. The story was risky and it was hot. It was red-hot. There would be accusations.

And it was international. Ruby needed help, she realised. She remembered her conversation with Leah Shandon back in London, one of the editors she wrote for regularly. No contest. She could trust Leah.

Sister Julia rose to her feet. She was so old, so fragile. And yet she had shown incredible strength already. ‘I have something I must show you,’ she told Ruby. ‘Will you wait here?’

‘Of course.’ As Sister Julia left the courtyard, Ruby listened to the distant sound of the ocean. It was so far away that it wasn’t much more than a pulse, a heartbeat.
Andrés, Andrés
 … it seemed to say. Because everywhere she went, everyone she spoke to, everything she saw, reminded her of him. This was his landscape. And she had already decided that she had lost him. So why had his island already crept into Ruby’s very soul?

Was Mel right? Was Andrés worth fighting for? Ruby thought of her parents – of Tom and Vivien and that special something they’d shared. How often had she watched them together and wished she could have that with someone? But perhaps it didn’t come so very easily. Perhaps you had to be patient for that sort of love. Perhaps you had to wait and overcome obstacles, like she knew Vivien had waited for Tom, fought for him too when her parents had pressurised her to go to college in Kingston; stayed loyal to him even though they were both so young and he was living in Dorset – a hundred miles away from Vivien. Like Stuart and Mel, it couldn’t have all been plain sailing – her mother had longed for a baby, for a start. And when Ruby had appeared on the scene, the pressure must have put strain on their relationship. But in the end it had only made them stronger.

After several minutes, Sister Julia returned. She was holding something close to her chest. It was a big notebook, Ruby saw, plain on the front with navy blue binding.

‘No one else has seen this, my child.’ Sister Julia sat beside Ruby on the stone bench. ‘You are the first.’

Goodness. What could it be? Evidence of what had gone on? Was that possible? Ruby put her hand on Sister Julia’s arm. ‘Are you sure you want this story to be told?’ she asked her. ‘I can’t say exactly what the consequences might be.’ Because Sister Julia had committed a crime, surely? Hundreds of crimes of aiding and abetting abduction of children over a period of over thirty years.

She looked at the old woman sitting beside her – her lined face, her brown eyes milky and faded with age. She had not truly been the one responsible. But would she go unpunished? Or would her age and her vocation give her the pardon that Ruby reckoned she deserved? For a moment Ruby put herself in Sister Julia’s place. Would she have spoken out? Would she have risked being thrown out of the convent – or worse – in punishment for what she had witnessed? Would she have been able to stand up to those figures of authority – the doctor, the mother superior – who had claimed that they were doing their God’s work? She shook her head. Taken in the context of the times she was living in, probably not. And how could you make any judgement unless you’d been there?

‘The consequences will be as God wishes,’ Sister Julia replied, bowing her head. ‘For those who have done wrong, they will take their punishment on earth – and in heaven if God so decides.’ She passed the book to Ruby. ‘But he is a merciful God, my child,’ she said. ‘We may put our trust in Him and in His wisdom.’

Ruby hoped she was right. She took the book from her
and opened it. The pages were covered in faded, almost illegible writing. Spanish writing, she realised. Someone – Sister Julia? – had divided the first page into three columns. Each one had a heading. Each column was full.

Sister Julia pointed to the first heading.

Ruby recognised that word.
Niños
.

‘Children,’ Sister Julia said. Each one was listed
chico
or
chica
, sometimes with more writing next to it, perhaps a mark of identification. Next to each entry was a date. She pointed to the second heading, under which there were either one or two names for each entry. ‘Birth parents,’ she said. And to the third. ‘The people who took the child away. Who adopted.’