the heavy scent of roses waft through the open window and he knew she was there and his heart inflated in his chest.
When Estella opened the door and saw Ramon towering over her like a wolf, blocking out the light, her face went white before the blood was pumped urgently around her arteries in an effort to revive her. She would have cried out but she had no voice, it was lost along with her reasoning. She blinked and then blinked again. When she was sure that it was indeed Ramon who stood in front of her and not some apparition inspired by the herbs her mother gave her for her pregnancy, she threw her arms about his neck and allowed him to sweep her off her feet and carry her into the cool interior of the house.
He laid her gently on her small bed and gazed down at her adoring face that glowed with happiness. ‘I knew you’d come back,’ she sighed, running a soft hand over the rough bristle on his face. Falling into her beautiful features he was suddenly filled with confusion and wondered what had possessed him to leave her. What had possessed him to fear her? As he kissed her grateful lips he believed he would never leave her again. He breathed in her unique smell and tasted the salt on her skin. Then he placed a hand under her white cotton nightdress and over the swell of her naked belly.
This is my child,’ he said and was certain he felt a life stir within. Estella smiled the smile unique to expectant mothers, tender yet proud and fiercely protective.
‘If he is a boy we shall call him Ramon,’ she said.
‘And if it’s a girl, Estellita,’ he replied and buried his face in her neck.
‘So you are not angry?’ she asked, looking up at him timidly.
‘No, I’m very happy,’ he said truthfully, surprised by his own reaction. ‘I’m sorry I—’
‘Don’t be sorry, my love,’ she said, placing her finger across his lips to silence him. ‘You’ve returned as I knew you would and I’m contented.’
He kissed her finger and then the palm of her hand, up her arm and finally on her heavy swollen breasts. ‘I want to see you naked,’ he said suddenly, overwhelmed by the sensuality of her fulsome body. He unbuttoned her nightdress with trembling hands and pulled it over her head, then he sat back to admire her.
Estella lay proudly before him watching his eyes as they traced the voluptuous curves of her new body. She was like a shiny, plump seal. Her skin was glossy and smooth and glowed with an internal ripeness that lit her up from
within. He wanted to lose himself in her and yet didn’t dare for fear of hurting her or his child. So he kissed her shoulders and her breasts, her belly down to her feet. ‘I want to take you away from here, Estella,’ he said, kissing her lips again.
‘I don’t want to leave Zapallar, Ramon. Not until after the baby is born.’
Then at least come and live with me in Cachagua, then we can think about what to do.’
‘What about your parents?’ she asked with a shudder.
They won’t be coming up until October. It’ll be just you and me.’
Estella didn’t need to be persuaded, she had already envisaged every possibility over the last six months. It was what she wanted. ‘Just you and me,’ she said, smiling with pleasure.
Chapter 16
Estella had grown strong over the last six months, ever since she had been fired by Don Ignacio. She had returned to her parents in Zapallar and told them about the dark bear of a man who had stolen her heart and left a part of him growing inside her womb. Her mother had wept copious tears. Her father had thumped his fist against the wall leaving a large hole in the plaster that still remained months later as they didn’t have the time or money for repairs. He had vowed that if he ever laid eyes on the scoundrel he would personally cut off his penis with a carving knife. ‘If he can’t trust himself to use it properly, he shouldn’t have it at all,’ he bellowed, nursing his swollen hand. Estella had tried to convince them that he would come back to her. She told them he had promised and she believed him. But they gazed at her with wise eyes that had seen almost everything during the rough course of their long lives and shook their heads in despair.
Pablo and Maria Rega were almost too old to have a daughter of twenty-two. They had married young and tried for many years to have a child. But after her fragile womb rejected seven babies they had given up hope of ever having a
family. More tears, more fist-bashing until finally they had resigned themselves, too weary to fight any more. Pablo had thrown himself into his work caring for the cemetery that overlooked the sea, talking to the unknown unfortunates who lay in the earth beneath his feet about his longing and his regret. They can’t help me,’ he told his wife, ‘but they’re good listeners.’ Maria continued to work in the grand house of Don Carlos Olivos and his wife Señora Pilar, cleaning and cooking from dawn till dusk. She had always helped herself to food from his fridge, but when she had finally resigned herself to the fact that she simply wasn’t made for producing children she had eaten to dull the pain and to fill the hours she would have spent thinking about her brood. When she was young they had called her ‘Spaghetti’ because she had been as thin and as fragile as a strand of pasta. But when she started eating she couldn’t stop. Her misery clung to her body in the form of thick rolls of fat until she was so large she could barely climb the big staircase in Don Carlos’s house without wheezing and holding onto the banisters for support. Pablo liked her better that way. He would mount her and lose himself in the rolling plains of her body. There was more of her to love.