The girls were cooing over me when I went back to work, particularly over my tan, or rather the remnants of pink skin where my nose had peeled.

“How far down does the tan go, Caroline?”

“As far as my swimming cossie”

“Ooh! No topless beach, then?”

That actually made me snort with laughter.

“Lauren, that’s no joke. I got there really late, no sleep, pushed myself to get up in the morning and, well…”

I gave them as acidly contemptuous a description of the Essex Gammon as I could manage, and by the time I finished, there was a small crowd of sales assistants round me, throwing comments about orange women wearing six pairs of false eyelashes and unable to pronounce the name of the perfume they had apparently been bathing in. Lauren herself was particularly scathing.

“Well, it’s not just cause they’re thick, is it? Those trout-pouts they all get, I’m surprised they can move their bloody mouths to say anything”

Haley’s response was just as sharp.

“Yeah, but they still manage, and we do NOT get paid anywhere near enough to listen to that shit all day. Caroline, we need a proper catch-up, and piccies!”

So it went on, and I found myself agreeing to an evening out when rosters were kind, as well as a lunchtime session in our training room using the overhead projector. I had, of course, brought the cards with me, and once I had delegated two of the girls to do a coffee and cake run, those of us who had the chance settled down for a break with extras.

Yes, I made them pay for the coffee and extras—I had brought the entertainment.

They oohed and aahed over the shots of the hotel, gasped at the pristine white sands, and cooed at the pictures of the buffet spread for dinner, Lauren commenting that she could take or leave the beach as long as she could be left sitting in the cake section of the dining room. The fish videos brought smiles, and the bird shots, particularly of the tody, produced more loud comments, mostly along the lines of “It’s so CUTE!”

The one that brought the longest conversation, however, was the crown of wings picture. Lauren, as always, was straight to the point.

“Who is that, Caroline?”

“Oh, a local bird guide. He takes people out to some of the best local birdwatching sites”

“He’s got an arse you could crack walnuts with. How tall is he?”

“Dunno”

“Dunno how tall he is, or whether his arse can play the Nutcracker?”

“Both. I think he’s about six three, six four”

“Well, sod the cake selection, then. Or better still, get him to meet me there. I can take one for the team!”

I laughed dutifully, then moved to some snaps of Laurent and his family, explaining how I had met them, and without warning cut to a sneaky picture of two French Canadians in full-flight tango raunch. It was Haley’s turn to comment.

“Bloody hell! She looks like she’s about to drag him to the ground and screw his brains out!”

I nodded.

“I didn’t know where to look, and their two kids were absolutely pink. They told me Laurent and Nicole do that all the time when they’re on holiday, especially if there’s a live band”

We ran out of break time far too quickly, and I agreed to bring a laptop for our proposed night out. As the girls dispersed, Lauren hung back for a moment.

“What’s his name, love?”

“Who?”

“Don’t play the innocent with me, Caroline. Who was it you first told? Who was it that went with you to talk to the bosses? I know you, girl, and that was no ‘just a local bird guide’ random bloke. Spill the beans”

I stared at her, then found myself sagging.

“Yeah. He’s called Pablo, and he has a daughter, Rita. Yes, I… Lauren, it wasn’t easy. It’s sort of… I know who I am, I always have, and I can be her now---”

“You ARE her, woman”

“Yes, but that’s all fine and dandy until, you know, someone else”

She took the two steps necessary to take me in a hug, her head resting on my breasts, before squeezing me almost breathless.

“You are bloody lonely, aren’t you?”

I pushed the tears back down into that void in my soul, and nodded.

“Not surprising, is it? People like me, et cetera et cetera”

“Bollocks. What about that Customs Officer, and her friend the copper? Do that music thing in Horley? Both of them married, and I have seen their men round them, way they act and stuff. No doubts there, so why not you?”

A pause for breath, and then almost a whisper.

“Is it because you are just realising, just now, that you are straight?”

I found just enough strength to nod.

“He danced with me”

“There’s more, isn’t there?”

“Suppose… He said he would be at the airport, to say farewell, but no sign of him”

I found myself gushing, telling her far too much, and she took my shoulders in her hands.

“Right, love, I have a sort of plan, okay? Can’t trust your judgement, dishy waiter syndrome and all that shit, so here is what we do”

“We?”

“Yes, ‘we’. You think I abandoned you when you got all that shit sorted? Who bloody well drove you to and from that hospital? Now, what you do is offer him a contact, something you said you’d do that doesn’t involve asking for a shag, and preferably something that includes his daughter. Makes it less of a one-to-one thing, and from what you say, she sounds like a good kid. Ideas?”

“We talked about music. I said I could suggest some”

Lauren laughed happily.

“Fuck me, doesn’t that take me back? Bloody mix tapes by post! Me and my fella, we were always doing that, till we got together proper, yeah? Send him some discs, burn some of your music onto them. Leave the ball in his court. Caroline?”

“Yes?”

“Not saying I’m right here, just making a suggestion. If he’s got a kid, something might have come up, something unexpected. If it had just been him, on his own, then I’d say fuck him and his Cuban scooter, but a kid complicates stuff. Drop a line. If he comes back, let him make explanations. If he doesn’t, then what do we say?”

“Fuck him?”

“Absolutely! Now, there’s someone lurking by the watch stand. Fetch, woman!”

I took her suggestion, and after we had survived our Big Girly Video Night in the Moonraker, I sat down and spent a couple of hours burning tracks from my CD collection onto a blank disc and slipping it into a padded envelope with a list of the contents, along with a quick summary of each track, and a letter.

Dear Pablo and Rita
Thank you both so much for making my holiday a fantastic experience. As promised, here is some of my music, with titles and explanations.

I am now back at work and getting used to British weather again. I missed you both at the airport, but perhaps, if I come to Cuba again, we can say hello

With thanks
Caroline Nelson

I didn’t see anything in return for four weeks, and then found a letter on my doorstep with a Cuban postage stamp. Shit. I picked it up from the mat, placed it in the middle of my dining table, and left it strictly alone while I prepared and ate my evening meal, the envelope staring at me throughout.

Finally, I could resist no more, and slit the envelope to find a bundle of notepaper and a small cardboard folder, which I opened first. It held a photograph of a smiling man and girl, standing in front of some ornate building lit by brilliant sunshine.

Dear Caroline
I have done the best to write this using a dictionary to try and make the spellings right, but my English is better as I speak than as I write. I have put into the package a photograph of Rita and me in Habana. We think it is a nice picture.

We have listened to the music that you sent. It is very nice and I have copied it onto my computer so that she can have the disc for herself. It is nicer than the rap, she says, and better still because it came from a nice lady.

I am sorry for the airport, but it was a difficulty. Rita had become sick, and we were with doctors. I have researched the English word, and I think it is nephritis, from the kidneys. Rita has been a long time in the hospital, and there has been a surgery to remove the organ. She is to come back home in three days, and that is why she had your music for herself, to make her happier in the hospital. Thank you again.

Rita has asked me if she may have a photograph of the ‘nice lady’ who sent the music. She has been working hard at learning the English so that she can write thank you herself.

I also have a request. My work that made the German website, it has been seen by the government, the office for tourists. The reports on TripAdvisor and other pages, they say are a tourist boost. They wish, the tourist ministry and the regional council that is my own employment, to help me with the Schengen visa to see some sites in Europe, and I have asked that they can also help with an England visa. It would be of help if I could have a sponsor for the England one. It is not a money cost business, simply a name for someone who can speak for me in England, write a letter to the Visa office when asked.

It is a big request from a stranger, I know.

With kind wishes
Pablo and Rita.

I spent a long time considering his request, my suspicious mind noting how often he mentioned his daughter, and trying to work out where the scam lay, before I simply sent an e-mail to him confirming my support.

When I say ‘a long time’, it was actually the length of time it took to switch on my laptop, and I may also have attached a selfie I had snapped a few months earlier. I was clearly an absolute cretin. Three weeks later, astonishingly fast, UK Visas and Immigration were grilling me by post from an office in Croydon. They had their own set of questions, so I just went with the flow rather than write a eulogy. They knew what details they wanted, and I gave them what I could.

Lauren, as ever, picked up on my mood, as did Haley, and even Cindy the ground girl, who had cornered me one afternoon for a report on how the trip with her firm had gone. I gave as neutral an account as I could, but she clearly scented blood, and I had to invent a stocktake to break free from the interrogation. Lauren was much more direct, of course, in a chat over some posh coffees.

“He’s replied, hasn’t he? What’s he said?”

“His daughter was ill, so he couldn’t make the airport”

“How ill?”

“He says she had to have a kidney removed”

“Shit! That is one hell of an excuse, woman. It’s either the fuck-off Big Lie, or he’s being straight with you. There’s more, though? I can tell”

“He’s asked… he is being asked to come over here, and he wants me to act as a sponsor for the visa”

“Oh fuck! How much money have you sent him?”

“I haven’t. It’s all between me and the Home Office. Character reference stuff. No money. His government will pay the visa costs”

“Do. Not. Send. Money. Got me?”

“He hasn’t asked for any”

“Yet”

“I don’t think it’s like that, Lauren”

“Said a thousand women pen-pals of American army officers in Afghanistan!”

“Seriously? This is business, his bosses and his government. He’ll be spending his time in the embassy, nothing else, and the way he describes it he’s getting it all as a pat on the back holiday while they wave him around as an example of eco-friendly Cuban green politics”

She sat back in the coffee shop chair, shaking her head.

“Do you know how pushy you sounded just then? Caroline, love, dream all you want, okay? Just realise that they don’t always come true, dreams. Not saying yours can’t, just that if you keep an open mind it would be safer. When’s he due to arrive?”

“I, well, sorting the visas and that takes time”

“Fuck off, Caroline! You don’t lie well. You never have, not even when you did all that play-acting pretending to be a man. When?”

“They’re due in three weeks”

“Oh, fucking hell on a stick! Hang on--- ‘they’?”

“Yes. He’s bringing Rita with him”

“Well, at least that will put the mockers on any knee-trembler-style promises. Where are they staying?”

“No idea. Some hotel, or up at their embassy, I assume”

That last was an absolute, flat-out lie. We had been exchanging more and more e-mails as the calendar ran down, and I had done a determined spring clean of my little two-bedroom ‘starter home’. I could manage in the single bed for a while, and they could share my double, and if Rita wanted her own space, the sofa opened out into a bed. I had even bought new plates and bowls. I did not tell Pablo any of that, nor Lauren, although I think she suspected something of the kind. She was too good a friend to push things, though, simply waiting as calmly as she could to pick up any pieces that might be worth salvaging when the inevitable shipwreck arrived.

There I was, then, sitting in Costa’s in the North Terminal as the big screen went through its changes for the Cubana flight from Havana. Landed; on stand; in Customs hall.

It was forty minutes after that ‘Landed’ message that a tall man and a smaller teenager appeared through the flicking chrome-and-glass doors of the arrivals, and I only stayed in my seat because Lauren had my arm pinned.

“Let him make any moves, girl. Don’t look eager to please”

I caught his gaze turning our way, and despite my friend’s advice, my free arm was up and waving, and while Pablo saw me first, it was Rita he turned to, and as she followed his pointing finger, her face lit up as my heart melted.

She was so much thinner than I remembered, her eyes a little sunken, but that smile shone, and she homed in on me like a guided missile. I rose just before she reached Lauren and myself, as that woman made a comment about taking one for the team if I got bored with him.

Rita’s hug wasn’t a weak one in any sense, and it was followed by an all-encompassing one from her father as she gabbled her greetings in much more fluent English than I had heard from the girl in Cuba.

“Pablo, Rita, this is my friend Lauren. She works with me”

“Lauren, I am pleased to meet you. May I ask a favour?”

To me, she looked surprised, but covered it well enough for a stranger to miss.

“Go on?”

“Is there perhaps a ladies’ restroom nearby you could show my daughter to?”

Lauren flicked a quick look my way, but after I gave the slightest of nods, she led Rita away. Pablo sighed, folding himself down into a spare seat before taking my hand. A quick squeeze, and release.

“Thank you, Caroline. You have done so much for a stranger and a foreigner”

“You are no stranger, Pablo. I consider you a friend. What are your plans now?”

“Oh, my people have given me a list of hotels I can consider, in a town called Horley”

My heart was in my mouth just then.

“I, um, I have an offer Pablo. I live not far from the airport, and, well, I have room”

He stared at me, then shook his head, as if dislodging a fly.

“You have how many bedrooms?”

“Two, and I also have a folding bed in the living room. One bed each”

Another flat stare, and then a soft smile.

“Will I have the right thinking that you have not told the friend this, the one who is just now returning my daughter from the restroom?”

I shook my head, and he gave me another smile.

“So be it, then. What plans have you made?”

I took a deep breath as Lauren and Rita sat down, and in response to Lauren’s raised eyebrow, I asked for another latte.

“Oh, and Rita likes cake, if I remember correctly. And chocolate”

Lauren’s other eyebrow joined her first.

“And so? She’s a girl! Pablo?”

“Yes?”

“Caroline has told me of Rita’s illness. Before we feed her cake, is there anything about her condition that means she needs to be careful?”

Shit. That was something I really should have thought of myself, but Pablo was shaking his head, and smiling again.

“Thank you. I see Caroline has a sensible friend, but no. The problem was in the one organ, and if she is sensible, the other will work”

“Okay. Drinks?”

“Espresso and coca, please”

“In the same glass?”

“Eh? No!”

Lauren was off with a snort, tugging the girl along for the important task of cake selection, and Pablo turned back to me.

“What plans have you made for us, Caroline?”

I found my cheeks burning, as I understood almost too late that by ‘us’, he meant himself and Rita.

“I have taken some time off from work. The Autumn isn’t the busiest time, not like Summer or Winter. I have a car, so I thought we could go to some of the reserves, return the bird-spotting favour. And I have a surprise for tomorrow evening, if you want”

“A surprise of which sort?”

“Music. There is a group I have always loved, and they are in concert not far from my house. I have reserved tickets. I hope that is okay”

He perked up at that.

“Would this music be any of the tunes you sent us?”

“Yes, actually. Do you remember the song ‘The Gardener’?”

His smile broadened immensely.

“Oh yes! That is one Rita likes to dance to. She would dance in bed, in the hospital, just with her hands. She asks me how the violinist makes the sounds he does”

“The violinist is a woman, Pablo, and I believe she uses two different instruments in the piece”

“This is tomorrow?”

“Yes. I think you will be recovered by then. My other plans are flexible, but can change if your bosses want you to do other things. I have a couple of tents”

“No!”

“Yes! Optional, on your agreement, but there is an area on the south coast with lots of good birdwatching, and history. There is a campsite very close to the sea and the birds. Just a thought that I haven’t made any firm plans for”

He shook his head, still smiling.

“And Rita?”

“Oh, obviously! What does she want to do?”

“She is young, and, well, she wants to eat at a MacDonald’s place”

“Oh dear!”

“Sorry, but that is the way of a teenaged child”

“Then… Okay. We get you settled, and we do not allow you to fall asleep too soon, jetlag and stuff. Once everything is in place, we take the bus into Crawley centre”

“Caroline?”

“What? I mean, pardon?”

“Thank you. This is all too much, just for return of a few trips on the scooter”

“Oh do shut up! You made my holiday so much better than it could have been, and this gives me an excuse to get out of the house”

“Well, I do have some duties. One of them is to visit our embassy in Germany, where my website is based. The other is to report on evil capitalist colonialism in an oppressive bourgeois enclave”

“You have lost me!”

“That is the words I use to justify another visit, to Gibraltar. What I mean is really ‘Go there to watch the birds migrate to Africa’, but in words that my government understands”

That set me grinning.

“You are devious indeed, Pablo!”

“I do what best I can. And, later, we talk, yes? Here are the others, and they have the cake”

Yes, they had cake, and it vanished quickly enough, Rita looking wistful until Pablo whispered something in her ear, which produced a grin. Lauren rose just then, hugging me farewell and in her own turn whispering into my ear.

“You are putting them both up, aren’t you? Don’t answer; I know you, soppy cow. Just remember my number if you need me”

She was off, and after a last wipe of her plate with a fingertip, Rita followed me and her father with the luggage trolley all the way to the furthest bloody stop in the airport bus station, where we caught the 100. A much shorter walk, now without the trolley, of course, and I was opening my front door.

“Bedrooms are upstairs. Pablo. You have the big bed, and Rita has a choice of sleeping there with you, or the smaller bed in the other room. If she wants her own room, I have a bed here. There is an electric shower in the bathroom, and I have put clean towels on the beds. Once you have dumped your luggage, and done any freshening, we are back on the bus”

I left them to it, trembling a little with nerves after they had disappeared upstairs, and selected some music from my CD collection.

No, not the Purcell right then. Think, woman… Beethoven’s seventh symphony, the dance one. Just as the first movement found its way to the start of the big tune, I heard rapid feet on the stairs, and a panting Rita was there.

“This, you send me! I LOVE!”

She stood transfixed as the music took flight, head back and arms out like someone gazing into a bright dawn, and a few minutes later, Pablo entered, smiling fondly at his daughter swaying in the middle of the room. Not a word from him until the movement was over in a crescendo of horns, and then he settled beside me on the sofa-bed.

“She has chosen the little bed, if that is not inconvenient. She thinks sleeping with a parent is what children do. When do we leave again?”

“As soon as you can get her away from the music collection, my friend”

“If I say the name of that business to her?”

“Indeed!”

Coats back on, out of the house for the bus once more, some American fast food and a walk around the shops (Rita wide-eyed at the range of goods), and to my surprise, a stop at the big outdoor activity shop for a sleeping bag for Rita.

Pablo simply smiled at my confusion.

“I will take up your offer of the camping. I saw two sleeping bags in your closet, so this makes the three we require”

He looked away from me just then, to where Rita was working her way down the collection of woolly or fleece hats, then laid an arm over my shoulders, hugging me with a single sharp squeeze.

“She is alive, and she is happy, and you are letting me see her smile again. Thank you”