Page 92 of So, I Met This Guy . . .

After what’s happened?

I swear on my life. Just don’t tell anyone, right?

OK.

Thanks, Mags. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.

Liar, liar, liar. Maggie stared at the screen, then typed one letter:

X

Mallorca

Day Seven

Seven more days to go

Viva España!

The Spanish flamenco dancer wore a red frilly dress with gold spots and black netting, her shiny black hair piled high in an elaborate bun and fixed with a comb from which hung a lace mantilla, while in her tiny plastic hand, lifted high above her head, she held a fan.

As a little girl, Flick had loved that doll. It might have only been seven inches high, but it was her most prized possession and took pride of place on the mantelpiece of their pebble-dashed two-up, two-down. It had been a gift from Auntie Pam and Uncle Dave, who’d once swapped their traditional two weeks on the Isle of Wight for a package holiday to Spain and had returned home with sunburn, dodgy stomachs and a steely resolution to never leave for foreign shores again.

‘I mean, can you believe it, they eat octopus!’ had shuddered Uncle Dave, while digging into a plate of tripe and onions in the safety of his limed-oak kitchen.

‘And all that sunshine can’t be good for you,’ observed Auntie Pam, applying calamine to her red and peeling shoulders while she waited for the rain to stop so she could hang out their holiday clothes on the line to dry.

But seven-year-old Flick hadn’t listened. Instead she’d looked with wide-eyed wonder at her souvenir from Spain. She’d never been into dolls before, with their boring pinafores and blonde plaits, or worse still, the ones that looked like babies and which you were supposed to feed with a bottle and change its nappy. But this doll was different.

With her brightly coloured clothes she looked like an exotic bird and Flick was fascinated. She was so beautiful and so bold; with her arms thrown defiantly over her head and leg kicked out high, she felt less of a doll and more of a superhero. Whenever Flick had a bad day at school, she’d come home and take her down from the mantelpiece and together Flick and the Spanish flamenco dancer would run away from the bullies who picked on her in the playground for not having a dad, away from her mum who worked three jobs and was always tired and cranky, away from a two-up, two-down terrace in a northern industrial town and go on exciting adventures to Spain.

‘I wonder what happened to that doll . . .’

‘S’cuse me?’

Flick snapped back to the present to see Maggie staring at her from across the back seat of the cab. They’d just flown into Palma from Sicily and were travelling to their hotel.

‘Oh, I was just daydreaming.’

‘About a doll?’

‘About being in Spain,’ she corrected, embarrassed. ‘I can’t believe I’m here, finally.’

Buzzing down the window, she gestured to the palm trees and promenades and parasols whizzing by.

‘I know.’ Maggie nodded. ‘We’ve been travelling for hours. It was that three-hour layover in Barcelona that did it.’

But that’s not what Flick meant by finally. Finally wasn’t about a few hours, finally was about all the years that had passed since she was that confused and upset seven-year-old who played with her Spanish flamenco dancer and dreamed of visiting Spain one day. And now here she was and she couldn’t quite believe it.

But how can you explain stuff like that, in the back of a taxi on the way from the airport, to someone you only met a couple of weeks ago? Maggie was no longer a stranger; they’d grown close, yet when it came to sharing certain details of her past, she wouldn’t know where to start.

So instead she just nodded in agreement and glanced at her watch.

‘It’s six thirty.’

‘Perfect timing. We can dump our bags and go get a sundowner.’

‘I’m not sure we can afford one. Did you see the price of the car rental?’