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It hadn’t taken her long to realise Ana was still somehow convinced they were secretly athing—which was beyond ridiculous, the man could barely stand the sight of her. But she had also figured out that Ana’s exuberant determination not to follow any of her brother’s rules stemmed from a desperate desire to attract his attention. Attention which the austere man seemed determined to withhold. He only made time for his little sister once a day, when he would summon her to his study after breakfast for a ten-minute lecture to which Cerys was cordially not invited. He never ate any meals with Ana, or spent any quality time with her, not since Cerys had been given the job of ‘watching her’ anyway.
She’d wanted to ask him why, when she’d rounded the corner and nearly run him down. But when he’d grasped her arms to stop her from falling on her face—the hot spurt of sensation had stopped her from saying anything at all. And by the time she had untied her tongue he’d been gone. She hadn’t told Ana about the encounter, though, because it would only feed her friend’s obsession about their non-existent affair.
‘This is the first summer Santiago has let me stay at thecastillofor years—and only because you are doing a good job keeping me out of his way,’ the girl announced, the defeat in her voice making Cerys feel bad for her. And angry with her brother.
Why couldn’t he ever spend any time with her? Ana was so generous and witty and smart. Cerys had warmed to her instantly—even though her livewire personality still exhausted her.
‘I don’t consider it much of a job. I still can’t believe he’s paying me just to have fun with you,’ Cerys said.
She wasn’t about to look that gift horse in the mouth though, especially as her memory was still so patchy. At least she’d been able to let go of the crippling fear and confusion of those first few days after she’d found herself at thecastillowith no idea who she was. It was good to have a purpose, and she was convinced now her memory would return. She had acquired a working knowledge of Spanish so swiftly she must have been able to speak it before, and she was also getting weird insights into her past and her personality. Nothing concrete, nothing useful yet—like her surname! But those flashes of recognition made her optimistic that Dr Mendoza’s assessment was correct. That if she just relaxed and tried not to stress about it, her missing memory would repair itself. And what could be more relaxing, and invigorating, than accompanying Ana on a series of excursions in this incredibly beautiful place?
They’d become inseparable in the last three weeks. Ana knew the area well and had made suggestions for excursions each day which Cerys had been happy to follow, doing everything from cycling to the nearest village for ice creams, going on a tour of the winery with the young bodega manager Joaquín—who Ana had flirted with mercilessly—or having regular picnics at this glorious swimming hole about an hour’s trek from thecastillothrough the estate’s woodlands.
‘Santiago does not consider spending time with me fun at all,’ Ana said, the dejection in her voice making Cerys want to shout at the man.
‘Well, he’s an idiot then, isn’t he?’ she said. She reached for the fruity sangria they had packed for their picnic. ‘If he took the time to get to know you better, he’d see what an incredible person you are,’ she added, determined to defend her friend and take the sadness out of her eyes.
Ana smiled, but the sadness remained. ‘He does not want to know me better. It is because of our mother, I think. María once said I was like her. And now I think that is why Santiago hates to be with me—because it brings back the memories of when she died.’
Cerys straightened. She’d heard whispers about the terrible tragedy which had engulfed the Montoya siblings fifteen years ago and left both their parents dead. But that was all, because it seemed the household was sworn to silence on the issue. Even Ana had never mentioned her parents’ death before now. Cerys had also discovered that Santiago had an aversion to the use of mobile phones other than for business purposes, because he had a pathological hatred of social media, but she’d never really got to the bottom of why that was either. Now she wondered if the two things were linked. She hadn’t wanted to probe and as she still didn’t have a phone of her own she couldn’t search the internet for clues. But she also wanted to respect the family’s privacy, convinced any hang-ups Santiago had were none of her business.
But as she reached forward to place a comforting hand on Ana’s arm, and saw the abject misery on the girl’s face, she couldn’t help thinking all this secrecy about the past might not be a good thing. Wasn’t it always better to talk about your feelings, your emotions? However painful they were. Why couldn’t Ana’s brother see that isolating and ignoring his sister for something she had no part of—because she’d only been two when her mother died—was only perpetuating the trauma of those events? And making the behaviour he wanted to correct all but inevitable.
How exactly was Ana supposed to get his attention, without causing trouble?
‘If that’s true, he should address it,’ she said softly. ‘He’s the adult here, Ana. He ought to be able to see whatever happened to your mother is not your fault.’ A wave of emotion—strong and visceral—rose up her chest, making her sure her assessment was correct. ‘He certainly shouldn’t punish you for it, just because you take after her.’
Ana raised her head, her eyes misty with emotion. ‘I think he does not mean to be cruel. But it was a very difficult time for him. Alejandro told me once that the scandal was awful. Santiago was only sixteen, trying to be theDuque. I think he is still very angry with our father.’ Ana swallowed, swiping her eyes, and showing a maturity Cerys had never seen in her before. The wordscandalthough, seemed to echo in her subconscious, triggering a selection of shadowy images she couldn’t seem to suppress or interpret.
‘Do you… Do you know how your parents died, Ana? Or what the scandal was that Santiago’s so angry about?’ she found herself asking, suddenly desperate to know more, even though she wasn’t entirely sure why.
Ana shrugged. ‘I don’t know all the details. I tried to look it up once on the internet and Santiago had my phone confiscated for a whole month! It was horrible. He told me it would be very upsetting for me—and that it was all lies anyway. At school, the other girls would whisper, but they were scared of being punished too if they said more.’ But then her face lit up as she shifted onto her knees on their picnic blanket, the energy Cerys was used to returning in a rush. ‘But what I do know—and Santiago doesn’t know I know, so you must never ever tell him—’ she added, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper ‘—is that our father, who was very, very handsome, fell deeply in love with a very beautiful woman, who was also married, and he ran off with her that summer. Then they were burned alive in a terrible car accident! Mymadrewas pregnant and she was so upset she lost the baby and died too, from a broken heart, only days later… It was so dramatic!’ Ana gave a hefty sigh, but the feverish excitement on her face was that of a teenage girl who couldn’t empathise with her family’s terrible losses because she had been far too young to know any of the people involved. To Ana, this was just a romantic story that had happened to strangers.
But as Cerys’s stomach clenched, her insides churning, her heart throbbing painfully in her throat, the story felt personal somehow, the trauma hideously real to her—which made no sense at all because she didn’t know these people either…
She clasped her arms around her waist, trying to ride the vicious wave of emotion sweeping through her body, and contain the visceral pain in the pit of her abdomen.
‘Cerys, what’s wrong? You have gone very pale…’ Ana’s panicked whisper seemed to come from far away. But it managed to pierce through the churning agony in Cerys’s stomach, the cramping pain.
She dragged in a jagged breath. And then another. And clasped her stomach tighter to brace against the shadows as they transformed into faces, sights and sounds which seemed to punch her in the gut as each one appeared—a young woman, her smile warm and sweet, a forbidding man, his face devoid of emotion, an angry voice telling her that her mummy was never coming home again, cold rain on her skin making her shiver and shake.
‘She’s dead now, and she deserves to be—for what she did to me.’
She shook her head, struggling to break free of the images. Were they memories? They had to be, memories lodged deep in her psyche, which had nothing to do with Ana’s family or their long-ago tragedy. But something in Ana’s story must have dragged them out of her subconscious.
At last, she managed to breathe deeply enough to stop shaking, to feel the warm afternoon sun on her skin. Whatever those images were, wherever they came from, all she knew was that she wasn’t ready to deal with them, not yet.
‘I am so sorry, Cerys.’ Ana’s concerned voice drew her the rest of the way out of the nightmare, and back to the sun dappled riverbank. She listened to the calming sound of water trickling over rocks, inhaled the bittersweet scent of the tamarind trees, the heady fragrance of the wildflowers, waiting for her friend’s face to come back into focus and the last of the vicious tremors to subside.
She nodded, determined to make it so, but suddenly wary now of letting those nightmares back in. Whatever had happened to her in her past, she didn’t want to go back there again until she was ready. Certainly not yet. Was that why her mind had sealed off her past?
‘It’s okay, Ana. I’m okay really,’ she said.
‘What happened?’ Ana asked, her dark eyes filled with curiosity now as well as concern.
‘I… I really don’t know. One minute you were talking about your family’s past. And the next…’ She sucked in another shaky breath as it occurred to her, whatever had once happened to her, Santiago must have suffered what sounded like a terrible trauma. One that, unlike her, he had never managed to escape.
Guilt and sympathy washed over her. And he’d only been sixteen, thrust into what sounded like a media storm—because his was an aristocratic family in the public eye—after the violent death of both his parents in a matter of a few days.