Free Nyctophobia by Christopher Fowler Page A

interest. Then it reverted to the bank when the owner stopped his payments.’
    ‘Right now every bank in Spain is keen to dump their property,’ said Mateo. ‘Did I tell you there was a stipulation in the contract that wouldn’t allow them to lower the asking price? There’s other stuff as well. It turns out Rosita and Jerardo are still getting their salaries paid through a bequest in the will of the owner-before-last, and it’s not due to run out for another five years. How weird is that?’
    ‘It’s no different to France,’ I told him. ‘You buy a house and discover you also have a part-share in an onion field two miles away. I think it’s going to be very good for us, being here.’ The walls were angled in shafts of golden light, and it cheered me just to look at them. ‘And Bobbie. Rosita’s got her room ready. I can’t wait to get started on everything.’
    ‘Good, I was hoping you’d feel that way,’ said Mateo. ‘Why don’t we go into Gaucia tomorrow morning, and you can see what the village is like. There’s someone I want you to meet. It’ll be your last chance for some peace and quiet before Bobbie arrives. She’s very excited about seeing you again.’
    ‘I wish I’d been able to see more of her before the wedding,’ I said. With deliberate bad timing, Mateo’s ex-wife had whisked his daughter away to France before the celebrations, returning her only for the day.
    ‘Don’t worry, if I’d thought for a second that the two of you wouldn’t get on, I’d have brought her back to meet you again, but she’s a very easygoing child. There won’t be any problems.’ I found his confidence in me astonishing. It was one of the things I loved most about him.
    The next morning we rose early and headed into Gaucia.
    The tiny town was tucked into the base of the mountains and, according to my Dorling Kindersley guidebook, wasn’t famous for much; it produced raspberry-coloured gin and small plates of dried acorn-fed ham, and there were tiny, brightly coloured birds on all the telephone poles. The houses were whitewashed and shuttered against the searing heat, and had blue and yellow geckos painted on the walls, and were edged about by orange trees in earthenware pots. The wives washed their front steps and balconies first thing every morning, just as the wives of England once had. Wherever we walked I could hear someone talking or sweeping. Apart from that, the place was silent. Apart from a couple of vans parked outside shops, there were hardly any cars.
    However, there were a couple of small tourist hotels here, and a few ex-pats. The Spanish children played ball games in the street and the English ones stayed inside on their Playstations. The local bar manager told us that by May it was usually so hot that you could cook an egg on the iron plate that covered the town fountain. The best hotel had eight rooms, there was a square where the older boys hung out and fishtailed their bicycles past the café, a church the English never attended except at Christmas, and a restaurant the locals wouldn’t use because the owner once cheated his neighbour in a game of cards. Everyone knew each other.
    Celestia was a tall, elegant Englishwoman, a former artist’s agent in her early seventies who had passed most of her life in Marylebone. She had moved here to Gaucia because of a divorce, a devotion to bullfights and a passion for chain-smoking cigarillos. She knew everyone in town, including the man who had once robbed her house. She gave his children money to show that he had been forgiven, and her displays of largesse brought a certain amount of distant grave respect. She told me that she did not miss Marylebone in the slightest, because who in their right mind would, but she did on occasion miss England.
    ‘How do you two know each other?’ I asked as we sat together in the shaded town square drinking thick dark cortados and sharp orange juice.
    ‘Oh, I met Mateo’s mother centuries ago in