A Lizard In My Luggage Read Free

getting some provisions on foot and walking back to the finca alone. It was a decision made hastily and under the influence of a sadistic sun. Alan had accused me of being ridiculously impetuous and likely to end up with severe sunstroke striding out uncovered in such heat.
    Â Â Ignoring his entreaties, I scrambled out of my side of the car, observing a brief exchange of stealthy and complicit looks between Ollie and his father. Crossly, I had to accept that no sooner had I left than Alan would be puffing on one of his putrid cigars and brokering a deal with Ollie to keep shtum later. Despite my spirited lectures on the subject of smoking and its dire consequences, Alan defiantly continues his tobacco habit, albeit more sneakily and, where possible, away from my prying eyes. Rather like an accomplished thief, he is good at covering his tracks and removing evidence of the crime, but the odd cellophane wrapper trapped under a car seat or cloying odour of a recently puffed Cuban delight refusing to disperse, even with the most pungent of air fresheners, often betrays him.
    Â Â I certainly needed some fresh air. So, mincing like a poodle at Crufts up the precarious, stony lane which leads to the house in my slingbacks, I had practically thrown myself at the front porch, expecting a heroine's welcome from my husband and a dozen sympathetic and swarthy men carrying boxes. Instead I met with the hostility of nature, a thousand beady eyes and rustling limbs hiding in the grasses, wall crevices and murky pond, glaring at this ill-equipped and fey female from an alien universe daring to invade their world.
    Â Â This surely is the first time I have ever stood this still for so long in years. The last occasion must have been about aged six during the silent spell of a pass the parcel game. I'm not good at being slow. My sister always says I was born with the engine of a Porsche crammed into the body of a Mini. It's true, I don't like hanging around, and I'm beginning to wonder what on earth I've done making this move to Mallorca. If I were in London now my ear would be superglued to an office phone, hands meanwhile tapping away on the computer keys, while I'd be mouthing instructions to someone in the office. There would be noise and manic activity, couriers arriving and taxi drivers barking down the intercom. A paper cup of cold Starbucks coffee would be perched on my desk, a blueberry muffin, hardly touched and stale, peeping out of a paper bag, ready for instant disposal in the bin. I worked it out one day, just for the hell of it. How much did I really spend at Starbucks? Way too much. Let's just leave it at that.

    Five years back when Alan and I first came to Mallorca, it was like a game. We were on holiday in a rented property supposedly to relax, but within two days I was on the mobile to London making umpteen corrections to a client document, while he lay serenely by the pool with a glass of cold cava, immersed in The Garden magazine. Once the Scotsman has this horticultural fix in his grasp, he is immune to everything around him. As I stalked around the garden like a demented stork trilling into my mobile on some exigent business, he calmly turned the pages, seemingly without a care in the world. At one point he looked into the distance and said with a sublime smile,
    Â Â 'Ah, yes! Quercus ilex and Prunus dulcis , the evergreen holm oak and the almond tree.'
    Â Â Then he sighed contentedly as if he had just solved the final mystery of the universe and resumed his reading.
    Â Â When Toni appeared like deus ex machina before us in the garden, I wondered what genie I'd rubbed up the right way. Tall and bronzed with a chiselled cheek you could strike a match on, he stood smiling down at us like a benign God. I shook myself out of a sweet reverie and sized him up as a suave Spanish salesman. Despite the heat, he oozed charm, not sweat, and had the effortless elan of a man with a mission in an impeccable cream