6
Lorna
It’s raining heavily and Lorna curses under her breath as her umbrella spoke suddenly springs free of the fabric so that it concertinas over her head, no longer providing adequate cover for her freshly cut hair. And now her hair, which took the stylist – the strapping Marco – for ever to blow-dry into a sleek finish, will fluff out to resemble the shape of a bell. She’d wanted to look nice for Alberto, make an effort for their date tonight. After nearly two years together she fears things have become stale between them; she works during the day while he’s out late supervising the bar he owns. She can just imagine him flirting with the young women, pretending he’s Tom Cruise from Cocktail. Why, oh, why does she always choose the wrong men? Too young. Too handsome. Too egotistical. She’ll be forty-one in three months’ time. She should know better. But, no, she won’t think negatively. That’s not her style. And, anyway, he’s promised to take the night off from the bar so they can go dancing. Maybe they can get some of their fire back.
She’s only wearing a light linen blazer over the boring hotel uniform （off-white blouse and dark green knee-length skirt, although she’s paired it with a bubblegum pink scarf） as it was hot when she left her apartment this morning. Her wedges are rubbing her heels. By the time she makes the ten-minute walk back to the apartment she shares with Alberto she’ll be drenched. But she keeps up her stride across the busy plaza, trying to ignore the scraping of flesh on her heel. She dares not stop or someone will careen into the back of her. Not that she’s complaining. She loves the hustle and bustle of San Sebastián. The sea is rough today: angry white waves roll towards the shore and some fool is surfing in the froth. Despite the bad weather a group of holidaymakers are perched on the beach, determined not to let the showers put them off.
It’s been a hard day at work. The hotel where she’s a receptionist has started to get busy as it always does at this time of year. They’ve had quite a few families from the UK this week, some of whom have complained about the weather, not expecting to leave an early-May heatwave in England for spring showers in Spain. She’d pointed them in the direction of the indoor aquarium. She understood their disappointment – they’d come on holiday for the sun and the beach and the outside tapas restaurants. She’d felt the same when she first moved here, surprised that it does indeed rain in Spain. But she loves it here, loves their little apartment with its own courtyard in a beautiful old building off a cobbled street in the Old Town. And the food. She could eat paella and prawns and squid, not to mention the pintxos, every day.
She touches the ends of her wet hair. All afternoon, while sitting behind her desk watching the hotel residents come into the lobby, drenched and disappointed, she’d been looking forward to getting her hair done, and now it’s ruined.
After another five minutes’ walk through a maze of crowded streets and tall stone-coloured buildings with their black wrought-iron balconies rearing up at either side of her, she’s reached her apartment. She lets herself through the enormous front door into the lobby. She continues down the long, thin hallway, passing the glass lift that goes up to the second floor, and enters through another door at the end of the corridor. It leads across an open-air courtyard to two maisonettes perpendicular to each other: hers and Mari’s. You’d never know from looking at the front of her building that all this was hidden behind.
Mari, a petite woman in her late fifties with waist-length dark hair, is standing at her threshold banging dust from a rug. ‘Buenas noches,’ she calls, as Lorna walks carefully across the courtyard so as not to slip on the rain-slicked terracotta tiles. Lorna smiles and waves back, aware that she must look like a drowned rat. She lets herself into her own front door. It leads straight into the dining-living area, with wooden stairs that go up to a mezzanine level where the en-suite bedroom is. The kitchen and cloakroom are at the rear of the apartment, looking out onto the backs of buildings where there is also a concrete basketball court covered with graffiti. Sometimes she can hear the local kids playing out there, or listening to music late at night. It’s comforting, makes her feel she’s not alone while Alberto is working.