Chapter Fourteen

Ronda, July 2018

Charlotte stared down at the landing strip, an anomalous rectangle in the vast plain. It had been a punishing summer and the long grass around it was bleached calico. The pilot had explained that these huge tracts of land had once been the grazing pastures for the bulls that had made the Mendoza family’s name and fortune; now, they stood bare – converted into a private airfield – the family’s attentions directed these days towards large-scale citrus farming. But then, Charlotte and Nathan already knew all that. They had sheaves of paper on these people: how they’d made their money, how much there was of it, where they invested it. There was only one thing they didn’t know about them and it seemed to be the most important thing, the only thing worth knowing: why the prodigal daughter had run.

Señora Quincy was catnapping, one of the chairs converted into a chaise for her, Marina beside her, sitting with her face pressed to the window and fogging the glass. She had been to the toilet four times on the short flight, prompting Charlotte to suspect she was just enjoying looking around and the autonomy of moving about as she pleased. Nathan was sitting towards the front of the plane, keeping to himself and absorbed in reading on his iPad; he had said barely a word in the car and hadn’t lifted his head since wheels-up.

She looked down as the plane circled in the hot sky. Even from up here, the hacienda looked impressive: a vast, sprawling white building with peach roof peg-tiles, it was arranged around an inner courtyard with two large and newer-looking wings spanning out at either side. There were numerous outbuildings too: a clay tennis court, two pools, an equestrian arena and what looked from here like a polo pitch. All the toys and trappings in other words, it read almost like an inventory of what the modern magnate’s estate should be.

The landing was hard, but then so was the ground, and they were greeted off the steps by a team of young white-jacketed staff who took their bags and fawned over Señora Quincy as though she was a queen returned from exile. Charlotte watched on with interest, wondering what Mateo had told them. Did they know who she really was?

They drove over the arid ground in golf carts; Señora Quincy and Marina were in the one ahead, her and Nathan following behind. Occasionally, his thigh knocked against hers as they bounced over the rough ground but he said not a word and she wouldn’t look at him; she didn’t trust herself to, the shock of his betrayal seeming all the worse for the fact that he’d tried to cover it up, instead pushing all the blame onto her. She concentrated instead on admiring the ‘view’, although, as with any airfield, there was nothing to see – just vast expanses of flat, fallow land. She would be gone again in a few hours, she told herself over and over. She could get through this. She would be back with Stephen tonight – her loyal, steadfast fiancé who deserved so much better than this, than her; she would step back into their careful life and it would fold around her and keep her safe. Nathan had a family, yes, but so did she. She could turn her back too.