The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh Page A

villa, that the pounding gives way to the gentle thrill of having got away with it. There’s a deeper excitement, too. Within the hour, she will be serving Nathan – serving all of them – hot, sticky pastries up on the cliff. She passes the traffic warden, scootering back up the hill after nabbing some early birds at the beach. Jenn throws her a big cheery wave.

10
    The landscape has shifted. It’s only a year since they last trekked the pine route to Sóller, but the familiar cliff path has been holed by a savage winter. It’s completely blocked in places by fallen trees, some snapped at the waist, others uprooted entirely. Further along, the cliff face has eroded so far into the headland as to take the path with it. The welcome piles of stones that have, for years, mapped out the way for walkers have been scattered, abandoned to the elements. Newly daubed bright red splodges on boulders and tree trunks direct them along a new route, away from the cliff face and high up into the hills through the darkest reaches of the forest. They push on, the mulch of decaying pine needles springy underfoot.

    When they first started coming here, Jenn was able to convince Emma that the Path Pixies had laid down the stones especially for her and that, if followed diligently, they would lead her to treasure. They would hold hands, chattering all the way, Emma’s excited eyes scoping the forest for a pair of oval eyes or pointed ears peeping out from behind a trunk. Jenn smiles at the recollection of her diminutive, gap-toothed girl, grinning as she reaches into a hollow to retrieve another treat, wrapped in coloured foil; a coin, a sweetie, sometimes a little book. Even when she was nine or ten, old enough to know otherwise, Emma still serviced the make-believe, affecting the same doe-eyed excitement each time they set off along the cliff path. And Jenn continued to set her alarm for the crack of dawn so that she could sneak down to the woods in advance and lay out the trail of goodies. Now they hardly speak; now Emma walks on ahead with her arms folded tightly. The sight of it brings a sting to Jenn’s eyes. Not quite nostalgia, nor even regret in this instance, but sadness at the passing of time. How wonderful those moments were. How quickly they moved on. Just like the weather; the cliff path.
    Whatever the teenagers argued over last night still lingers in the air. Jenn thinks she’s worked it out, and it’s nothing more serious than opposed positions. The boy wants what the girl won’t give; the girl won’t giveuntil the boy threatens to find it elsewhere – that’s what yesterday’s charade with the hippy girl was about. He was letting Emma know: if she won’t, there’s plenty that will. All the other girls do it, he’ll be telling her. Jenn should tell her, too. Tell her how she was once that girl, holding out, holding it all in, hanging on to her virtue. How clever she’d thought herself, back then. While her mates were upstairs chasing cheap thrills and cashing in their assets, she was downstairs, saving for the future. When the time was right, she’d have her pick of the crop – and she’d have that option because she’d boxed clever. What she may have lacked in nubility she could more than make up for in nobility. Her boy would be able to hold his head high. No flies on Jenny O’Brien; she wasn’t one of those girls . If only someone older and wiser had told her. Told her that, after a certain point in a woman’s life, her past becomes open to re-evaluation. Once her flesh grows soft; once she gets married and has kids; once her allure dims; once that woman ceases to be a proposition, nobody cares what you were , anyway. Nobody remembers. You exist to others only in relation to what you became – your husband, your kids, your job. All those missed opportunities. All those electrifying teenage encounters she’d denied herself, when her body was still young and firm. If she could have her time again, she