tried gamely to keep the stupid conversation going.
‘Strange, isn’t it,’ she said quietly, ‘that we who talked about everything under the sun should be reduced to tourist-talk? But now that Ella has found her land legs after the journey, perhaps it is time for you to meet her properly.’
She turned, calling to her daughter, who’d selected a book with a red cover, settled herself into a tattered armchair and was reading herself a story from it. As it was almost certainly in Spanish and quite possibly a lurid medical text, Caroline wondered what Ella would choose to make of it. At the moment she was hooked on The Three Robbers, which also had a red cover, so possibly that was the story she was telling herself.
‘Ella!’
The little girl looked up from the book as Caroline said her name.
‘Come over here and meet Jorge properly.’
Caroline pronounced his name as best she could, although she’d never fully mastered the deep-throated ‘h’ sound that was more like an x than the English pronunciation of g.
Ella came to stand beside her, her lips moving so Caroline knew she was trying out the name.
‘Hor-hay?’ she queried, and to Caroline’s surprise Jorge knelt in front of her and politely shook her hand.
‘It is a hard name for you to say,’ he told her. ‘Perhaps before long we can find something else for you to call me, something easier.’
‘My name is easy,’ Ella, ever confident, ever up for a chat, told him. ‘It was my grandma’s name—the grandma I didn’t know. I knew my other grandma but I don’t really remember her very much because she went to be a star in heaven when I was only two.’
The child’s innocent remark made Jorge glance up at Caroline and saw pain whiten her cheeks, the wound of her mother’s death still raw, but the child—Ella—was talking again and he turned back to her, fascinated by the resemblance to his younger self, captivated by a small person who was now telling him about the big plane that had flown up in the sky.
‘Not high enough to see my two grandmas who are stars,’ she explained seriously, ‘but too high to see down to the ground except when we went over some mountains before the plane came down again. Mummy says you used to go walking in those mountains and maybe when I’m a bit bigger I could go too.’
Not all the words were crystal clear but her story still came through, each syllable tightening a band around his chest, the innocent chatter of the child all but suffocating him.
‘Mummy talked about me?’ he asked, though he knew it was wrong to question a child this way.
‘She told me lots of stories about her friend Hor-hay who worked with her in—’
She broke off to look up at Caroline.
‘Where was it, Mummy?’
‘Africa,’ Caroline supplied, and the restraint in her voice suggested she’d have preferred to put her hand over her daughter’s mouth to stop the revelations rather than helping out with the conversation.
‘Afica!’ Ella declared triumphantly, then she pointed at the gourd, still in Jorge’s hand. ‘Can I have some of that?’ He passed the gourd to her, letting her hold it but keeping his hand on it as well. He was vaguely aware of Caroline’s anxious ‘Is it cool enough now?’ but mostly he was swamped by unnameable—even unfathomable—emotions as, for the first time, he shared mate with his daughter.
‘Yuk!’
So she didn’t take to it, but that mattered little. She would, in time, grow accustomed to the taste.
In time?
Was he seriously considering getting involved in this child’s life?
How could he, living as he did, virtually a hermit?
But even as the objection surfaced he remembered that his bare existence in this place where he felt most at peace was coming to an end—and soon. Nine days from now the local government was taking over the clinic, and he was returning to Buenos Aires to be with his father, to live with the man who had first taught him the strength of love.
Ella was telling him an involved tale about a doll Caroline had made her leave at home, but the words barely penetrated, his brain swamped by the revelation that peace might be achievable in other places if the right elements were in place—elements like a wife and a child…
Not without love, common sense reminded him. In his search for peace after the accident he’d tried relationships without love, and peace was the last thing they had brought him.
Impossible, too, that Caroline could love him. Not after the way he’d treated her. Uncertain of his future, thinking he might be an invalid for life and not wanting to tie the woman he loved to him, he’d deliberately worded that email to kill whatever love she’d felt for him, driving a spear of harsh, hurtful words into her heart.
Caroline’s heart ached as she watched father and daughter together. With her usual sunny disposition, once Ella had felt comfortable in the hut she was chatting away to Jorge as if she’d known him for ever. If only she had! If only Jorge had been there to share the early joys and triumphs, though he’d have been there for the bad times too, in that case, the endless sleepless nights, the time they’d battled croup, her mother’s death.
Don’t think about that now—think positive, think forward. There are obviously two bedrooms in this hut, so I will work with him. One month isn’t long but surely it will give me time to learn if what he said was true, or if it was his stupid pride that split us up.
‘Caroline?’
His voice suggested he’d spoken while she’d been lost in her own determined thoughts, but she’d missed whatever question it might have been.
‘Jorge?’ she responded, feeling almost light-headed with the sheer delight of being close to him and saying his name again. Not that she could let such pathetic reactions show. She, too, had pride, and she wasn’t going to fling herself at this man and be rebuffed again. No, time would tell her if any of the fire that had flared between them still existed, and until she’d seen some hint of his, she would have to keep hers well tamped down.
‘I was saying you can’t stay here, but there is a hotel not far away. It is clean, the food is excellent, and there is a big plaza—a park—with a children’s playground just across the road. If you insist on this foolish notion of working in the clinic, there is a bus you can catch each day, a small commute.’
She found a smile, knowing it would hide the hurt caused by him pushing her away, although it was only what she’d expected.
‘No, I’ll stay here,’ she said, picking Ella up to cover her hesitation before replying. ‘The information on the internet said there was simple accommodation for visiting doctors and simple is okay with me. We’ve got a sleeping mat and sleeping bags. We’ll be fine. Also, staying here, eating meals with you, Ella will get used to you and when you have time off, she’ll be happy to be with you.’
Ella joined the conversation at this stage, putting her hand on Caroline’s cheek to turn her face.
‘Are we really staying here, Mummy, in this little house? With the kids outside to play with?’
Jorge heard the words and knew he’d lost the first battle of this war he didn’t fully understand. But looking at the child clinging to her mother, he wondered just how hard it was for Caroline to be parted from the little charmer who was her daughter, to go to work and leave Ella in someone else’s care.
And was he thinking this to stop himself thinking about the pair of them living here, sharing his house, his meals, always there, tormenting him with their closeness? It would be bad enough being near Caroline while they worked, but to have her in his home as well?
A totally inappropriate excitement sizzled to life within him but he ignored