Free Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach Page B

then said, ‘Did your mum mind not having a partner?’
    ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘We had each other. She always said she didn’t need anything else as long as she had me.’
    Annie asked me about my father, and I told her what I knew: that he used to work in Ireland selling cars, that his dream was to own a racehorse and that he had elegant hands, like mine.
    As we drove, I noticed the landscape changing. Now we were out of the hilly area and onto level ground, the trees had been replaced by large low tents made out of tatty white plastic, one following on from another so that they seemed to form one never-ending structure. I asked Annie what they were, and she said they were greenhouses, growing salad for supermarkets.
    ‘It’s where your tomatoes come from,’ she said. I could have told her that I didn’t eat tomatoes, but I didn’t.
    When Annie stopped the van for Milo to have a pee I got a closer look at the greenhouses. The plastic was opaque but you could see shadows inside, and in places the sheets were torn or had come away from the structure so you could glimpse behind. I saw endless rows of leaves and shapes of black men, stooped amongst the greenery. It must have been unbearably hot in there. What was especially noticeable was the silence. The manual labour sites I’ve passed before are always quite noisy, but there I could hear no sounds of voices or music, just the soft hiss of the water sprinklers. Annie had told me that there was a drought in the area – the river near the commune had almost dried up – so it seemed odd that these greenhouses were using up so much water. Immoral, almost.
    Back in the van, Annie explained that the workers were African, mostly illegal immigrants. The coast on this part of Spain was almost the nearest part of Europe to Africa, she said, and the immigrants would get on boats and cross over secretly at night in search of a better life. Some would venture further into Europe but most stayed here, working in the greenhouses, because they had no papers.
    After an hour and fifteen minutes we reached the town. Annie parked crookedly by the road and said we should meet back there in an hour, and then she took the children off with her to the bank. I walked in what felt like the direction of the town centre. It was a sprawling, dusty place, with low-level buildings, and seemed oddly quiet and deserted. I found a sign with a picture of waves on it, which I took to be the sea, and followed it. Towards the beach the buildings grew in height, which seemed wrong to me, like tall people standing at the front of a crowd and blocking the view for everyone behind.
    The streets were busy nearer the seafront, full of holidaymakers. They couldn’t have looked more different from the people in the commune. Their clothes were normal, shorts and vests, and they were either very white, very pink, or overly tanned, but not in a way that made them look more attractive. People were sitting at tables outside cafes drinking beer, although it was only 4.30 p.m. Shops sold cheap plastic beach equipment and blared out pop music. One, oddly enough, was full of toasters and microwaves. All the signs on the shops and restaurants were in English, and the rows of newspapers outside the shops were English, too.
    I don’t know whether I was just relieved to be out of the commune, but I found it all quite pleasant. There was a breeze coming in from the sea, carrying on it a comforting blend of smells – chips, suntan lotion – and everyone looked familiar, like the people in Tesco Extra, only happier and more relaxed.
    After a few minutes wandering around, I found an Internet cafe. I paid two euros and logged on. At the terminal next to mine, a hugely fat woman with a breathing problem was looking at pictures of lawnmowers on eBay. First, I went to Facebook, but when I put in my details found that I had forgotten my password; it had been supplanted in my head by Tess’s. It took three tries to remember