‘And there were fish in the pool, too,’ Amy said.
‘In the swimming pool?’
‘Yeah, a lot of wildlife in Spain,’ Ant commented. ‘Pigs in the streets, fish in the pool. Goats on the road.’
‘I was scared they were going to bite, too,’ Heather said. ‘They were all a bit deformed.’
‘The goats?’ I asked.
‘No, the fish, silly,’ she said.
‘They were sort of Chernobyl fish,’ Ant said.
‘So, the pool is freshwater, right?’ Amy explained. ‘There’s a hot spring that just, like, bubbles up at one end.’
‘It’s lovely and warm,’ Heather said.
‘But years and years ago, someone put some fish in it. And they’ve reproduced, so there are loads of them. But they’re all a bit inbred. So they’ve got weird heads and lumps and things.’
‘Ooh,’ I said, pulling a face.
‘But it’s kind of fun, swimming with the fish.’
‘And are we talking big fish, or little fish?’
Ben held up his hands to represent a fish of about four feet in length.
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ Ant laughed. ‘That one was called Jaws, but only Ben saw it. No, they were the size of trout, maybe ten or twelve inches.’
‘The biggest one was like this,’ Ben insisted, waving his hands around again. ‘You saw it, Lucy, right?’
‘Yes,’ Lucy said, nodding seriously. ‘That looks about right, Ben.’
‘But you had a nice time?’ I asked. ‘No one got mortally wounded by the pig or the fish?’
‘It was lovely,’ Amy said. ‘We have to go back there together. The pool’s pretty big, and free. The water’s crystal clear and no chlorine or anything, obviously.’
‘Just fish.’
‘Exactly. Just fish. And all around it there’s a lawn, so you can just lounge around in the shade of the trees.’
I glanced at Ant, who nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s cool,’ he said. ‘Phone picks up there, too.’
I looked at Heather then, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, it was nice,’ she said, smiling falsely, and I wondered what had gone wrong.
Five
Heather
I had not had a particularly nice day in Orce, as it happens.
Amy had driven us into town. She’d parked in the centre, and I’d looked out at the deserted streets. It was 2.20 p.m. and the car thermometer, I noticed, read forty degrees. ‘Here we are,’ she said.
‘Wouldn’t it be better to go to the pool first?’ I suggested. ‘Then we could come back here when it’s cooler. And when the shops are open.’
‘Oh,’ Amy said. ‘But we’re here now. The pool’s on the other road, out of town.’ She turned to Ant, who was in the passenger seat. ‘What do you think?’ she asked him.
‘Ignore her,’ he said. ‘She’s never happy, that one.’
‘That’s unfair!’ I protested. ‘It just makes more sense to do it the other way around because it’s so hot, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Yeah, well, you should have spoken up before,’ Ant said, which was also unfair, as I couldn’t possibly have known where Amy had decided to go first. He opened the door and the air that rushed in was so hot it was like someone had opened the oven in my kitchen back home.
Amy turned to me with a pained expression. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I mean, we can go now, if you really think it’s better.’
But Ant was already unstrapping Sarah from the seat beside me and lifting her out into the death-ray sunshine. Luckily, I’d slathered us all with sunblock. ‘It’s fine,’ I said, thinking, It isn’t fine, but Ant can own this one. ‘It was only a suggestion.’
‘It was only a suggestion,’ Ant repeated in a childish voice.
Amy wiggled a finger at him. ‘He’s naughty, that one,’ she said, laughing.
No, he’s a knob, I thought angrily.
As things turned out, I had been totally right, of course. It was fiendishly, unbearably hot – in fact, I can’t really find words to describe to you just how hot it was in the centre of town that day. The paths shimmered, the sun beat down and even the walls of the buildings radiated heat . . . it came at you from every angle. The air was so hot it seemed to scorch your lungs when you breathed in. Every single shop was closed for lunch and those shops that had a sign indicated they’d be reopening at five, or sometimes even six. Despite glasses of Coke beneath parasols that were so hot they also seemed to act like radiators, within ten minutes Lucy and Ben were complaining and little Sarah was in tears. ‘I want to go swimming like Mummy said,’ she sniffled.
‘Well, that’s Mummy’s fault for not saying so sooner, isn’t it?’ Ant told her, making her misery unexpectedly my responsibility.
‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ Amy said. ‘It really is too hot for the kids.’
‘It’s too hot for me, let alone the kids,’ I said. ‘If we stay here any longer, I think I might faint.’
It was while we were walking back to the car that we came across the pig, scampering along the main street, clinging to the shadows.
An elderly man appeared in a doorway and crouched to give it some stale bread, and seeing us arriving, he began talking to Ben in Spanish.
‘He says he’s tame,’ Amy translated. ‘He says you can stroke him if you want to.’
Although he looked like a perfectly nice piglet, you could write everything I know about pigs on the back of a stamp, and from my position of total ignorance, I did not want my kids anywhere near it. Even from a distance, I’d caught a glimpse of his teeth as he’d gobbled up the bread, and they looked surprisingly pointy.
‘Ant, keep them away,’ I said, as I caught up.
‘Don’t worry, Mummy’s just a bit scared, but it’s fine,’ Ant told Lucy, crouching down beside her. ‘You’re a lovely little fella, aren’t you?’ he added, addressing the pig as he scratched behind his ear.
Lucy started to stroke the pig’s back at that point, and then Sarah pushed past Ant and the piglet started to
