The menu was delivered in loud Catalan by the maybe-Comte. The Italians seemed to understand but Quin and I hadn’t a clue and there was no written menu to translate. However, when the first course arrived, our new friends did their best to demonstrate. From their flapping, it seemed to be a bird.
‘Chicken?’ Quin was deep into Google translate. ‘Pollo?’
‘No, no, no!’ They did bombing motions.
‘A bird of prey? Seriously?’ Quin was looking up words on his phone. ‘Falco?’
‘No!’ some of them said, but just as many others exclaimed, ‘Sí!’
‘Aquila!’ a voice yelled from the gloom.
‘Aquila? Is that not Spanish for “grandmother”？’ I remembered it from watching Dora the Explorer with JJ.
‘That’s abuela,’ Quin said.
The others overheard this and took up the cry. ‘Abuela!’ they declared, pointing at their plates and laughing their heads off. ‘Abuela!’
God, this was hard. It was too dark to distinguish which bits on my plate weren’t meat, so it wasn’t safe to chance eating anything. Then Quin discovered that ‘aquila’ was Italian for ‘eagle’ so it was official that our new friends were laughing at us.
Next thing, two of the fabulous women opposite us began kissing each other, in a very ‘perform-y’ way. I turned to Quin. ‘I’m too hungry for this.’
‘Okay.’ He was already standing. ‘We’re off.’
Our departure triggered a riot of hugs and yelling and the whole place felt moments away from descending into an orgy. I felt sad and ashamed, a non-wine-drinking, non-eagle-eating, non-orgy-attending failure.
Quin and I didn’t speak until we were side by side in an Uber, halfway back to the hotel.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry.’ Then, ‘We can get room service. Or anything you’d like.’
‘Quick is all that matters.’
‘We’ll go to the marina. There are stalls there, they’d be fast.’
The car dropped us at the seafront, where we sat on a wall and had churros and hot chocolate from a stall. Because the night was once again breezy, Quin put his jacket around my shoulders, the way he had the previous night, but this time, neither of us mentioned our perfume.
72
‘… for an actual moment, I wondered if I was dead?’ Quin said, laughing. ‘If this was hell? Having the chats with friendly Italians for all eternity.’
After the churros on the marina wall, we’d slept heavily and had woken up in a better mood.
‘To me,’ I said, ‘it felt more like a zombie movie. The black teeth, the eyeliner … And as soon as we got free of one lot, another popped up in their place.’
‘Seriously, though.’ He rolled over in the bed and looked up at me. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘No way, Quin. It was a risk and this time it didn’t pan out. But if you play it safe all the time, nothing exciting happens.’
‘And playing it safe is the most dangerous thing a woman like you can do.’ He said that to me a lot. I loved it even though it wasn’t true, not even remotely.
‘So, this morning, the Gaudí house?’ I said. ‘And then the airport?’
‘And if we’ve time, I’d like to drop in on someone. There’s a man here, deals mostly in furniture, but he’s always got beautiful, interesting pieces, things with a story. I like going along, just to see what he has. You’d like it.’
‘Okay. Great.’
‘Oh my God, I’m in love,’ I said to Quin, turning in a circle in one of the rooms in Casa Batlló, letting the colours from the stained glass wash over me. ‘Like, he didn’t hold back, did he? Gaudí? Not a man for restraint? I’m getting my house redone soon as we get back. Make it wavy! All of it, the floors, everything!’
I was genuinely mad about this beautiful house but I was overdoing the delight. My unsettling memories from six years ago were casting a long shadow. Pushing back against it, desperate to reach baseline normal, was hard work.
Finally, I let myself admit that for a lot of this weekend I’d been impersonating my happiest, most carefree self. Because Quin deserved it. He’d put a lot of thought and effort – and money – into these few days.
But there were other reasons – I needed touchstones. Things being good with Quin mattered because it was proof that, Yara aside, my life had worked out. The facts were: I was clean today; I was good at my job; and I’d met a lovely man.