a few more weeks and work at this language school, fine – but I’m going to help Gabi with her prisoners.’
Harry is silent for so long, I start to wonder if he’s heard me. I stare out at the vast expanse of mountains and unexplored city stretching out below us, hardly daring to breathe. Eventually I turn to look back at him, and see he hasn’t moved from the spot, and is staring at me with the same baffled expression as before, rubbing his hand over his hair in a familiar sign of stress.
‘I don’t understand why you’re suddenly so determined to do this,’ he finally says, grumpily.
‘You don’t have to understand,’ I say calmly, stepping past him towards the bathroom. ‘But you do have to support me. Now, I’m going to have a shower.’
As the bathroom door closes on Harry’s still-bewildered expression and the hot water streams down around me, I feel a churn of different emotions. A sense of triumph at having put my foot down and imposed some conditions of my own on this whole venture. Mixed with a healthy dose of nervousness at the thought of actually going through with the idea of visiting the prisons – now I’ve said it to Harry, I will simply have to do it.
Too scared to go downstairs and lock up for the night – pah! I’ll show him…
But underneath all this I also feel a deeper unease, a sense of misgiving about Harry and me that I have not ever fully admitted to myself before. If we’ve only been here a day and are already talking at cross purposes over our plans for this trip… what do the next three months hold for us? Surely it shouldn’t be necessary to negotiate, to lay down conditions to your own boyfriend about a mutual adventure?
Going abroad won’t solve anything, you know. My father’s voice bursts unbidden into my mind.
Determinedly I block him out again. Dad knows virtually nothing about my life, so how could he comment on my relationship with Harry?
If he was even talking about my relationship with Harry?
It’s not that by agreeing to go travelling with Harry I wanted to solve anything… but somehow I had felt that if we left our old life behind for a while we would draw closer together again, realign on the same wavelength.
I close my eyes and let the water stream over my face, holding on to the sense of strength, of conviction, that filled me just now when I told Harry I was going to volunteer with the prisoners. A feeling, I realise in an instant, that I’m not going to let anyone take away from me.
‘Here we are!’ Gabi pulls up her clunky old Chevrolet and turns to smile at me in the back. Harry, in the passenger seat, has his eyes closed. ‘This is Liza and Roberto’s house.’
My heart starts to pound in excitement as I look up at the modest, yellow-painted, box-like house standing before us among a row of similar, colourful houses in this narrow, pot-holed side street. A few minutes from now, not only will we meet our potential new landlords, but also – far more excitingly – I’ll finally be able to find out more about the prison volunteering.
We’re only about fifteen minutes from Casa Hamaca but I’ve watched the bustling town centre give way to quieter, residential surroundings. Now we’re parked in a narrow side street, lined either side with more of the box-like, tumbling apartment buildings we saw in the city outskirts on the drive from the airport. Some are well cared for and neatly painted, others faded and stained with graffiti, while others are still bare concrete blocks with ugly corrugated iron roofs. A reflection, I suppose, of the varying economic circumstances of their owners. As we step out of the car into the blazing sunshine, I find myself marvelling again at how almost all of Quito is built on some degree of slope. We seem to be about halfway down one side of a steep valley – like gradient seats in the cinema, our road is just one of many parallel lines scarring the side of the hill. It has taken five minutes of bumpy downhill driving, during which Gabi has surprised me by unleashing a series of colourful Spanish swear words, before a sharp left turn brings us on to one of the narrow streets branching off to the side.
Harry is rubbing his eyes and looking around him.
‘You okay?’ I reach for his hand as we follow Gabi a few feet down the road.
‘Gnnnrgh. Yeah. Just didn’t sleep too well last night.’
As Gabi stops outside one of the better-cared-for buildings and presses the buzzer beside a heavy iron door, I search Harry’s face and realise how tired he looks. His usually alert blue eyes have heavy shadows under them and there are some new frown lines on his forehead.
‘It’s just the altitude.’ He smiles down at me and squeezes my hand. ‘Don’t forget we are over two thousand metres above sea level. I think a lot of people find it hard to sleep here to begin with.’
I’d almost forgotten about the altitude. Climbing stairs is a bit harder than usual, but it certainly hasn’t stopped me sleeping. In fact, after staggering my way through the first two days of horrendous jetlag, I feel more energised than ever, thanks to the constant supply of fresh, delicious food and perfect weather.
Needless to say, Harry’s trial teaching day at the English school went well, and he came back raving about how laid-back everything was and how they let him use art materials as part of the English classes for adults. I haven’t even seen the school yet, but Dreadlocked Luke has stopped by Casa Hamaca several times (notably, only when the bar is open) and also raved about what a great job Harry is doing and how grateful he is for the last-minute help.
The problem is there doesn’t seem to be any particular schedule, with Harry being called in to work every day for either a few hours in the morning or the afternoon, usually at the last minute. So, after nearly a whole week in Quito, we haven’t been able to plan any trips or visits anywhere. Almost all my free time has been spent with Ray and Gabi, who have naturally taken on the role of friends as well as hosts in the few days we have spent at Casa Hamaca. On Harry’s first day at the school, Ray took me to the top of the Pichincha volcano, one of the imposing peaks surrounding Quito and after which the whole province is named. We stood at the top and took panoramic photos of the city spread out before us, legs trembling and pulses racing from the nearly 4,000-metre altitude, then rode the dizzying cable car back down the mountainside, where Gabi was happily devouring a large ice-cream sundae while waiting for us in the café at the bottom.
Every morning they have invited me into the back room of the hotel for a coffee and some form of homemade local treat – yesterday it was llanpingachos, the impossible-to-pronounce fried potato cakes typical of the mountain region, the day before pristiños, sugary deep-fried types of mini doughnut. After the first few days I stopped thinking about calories or cholesterol and just tucked happily into the colourful, delicious, horrifyingly fattening food.
I would have preferred to spend more time with Harry, of course – especially in moments like seeing the sun set from the top of Pichincha and riding the cable car – but I keep telling myself we’ve only just got here, and he’s only doing this job temporarily. Harry’s weird phone call is there at the back of my mind all the time, too – like a tiny splinter in your finger, aggravating enough for you to know it’s there, but not enough to make you want to prod around and sort it out… yet.
Gabi reaches out to press the door buzzer again, turning to smile apologetically.
‘Sorry about this. Sometimes they’re a bit…’ She doesn’t finish her sentence, but makes a ‘crazy’ gesture and rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, and they don’t speak a word of English…’
What? Oh no… we’ll have to communicate solely in Spanish…
I don’t have much time to dwell on this unnerving prospect, because we hear a woman’s voice cry out from inside, in perfect Quiteño dialect:
‘They’re here! It’s them!’
Then a man, in a lower, measured tone: ‘Calm down woman, we don’t