Clarissa's Warning E-Book

Isobel Blackthorn

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Bank teller Claire Bennett's life changes when she wins the lottery, and buys an ancient fixer-upper on the idyllic island of Fuerteventura.

After moving to the island's sleepy inland village, Claire is confronted with a dark mystery. Her new home, known to the locals as the Casa Baraso, is shrouded in otherworldly superstition.

Her mystic aunt Clarissa has warned her of danger, but Claire pays no heed. Can she uncover the secret of Casa Baraso?

Leseprobe

Clarissa's Warning

Canary Islands Mysteries Book 2

Isobel Blackthorn

Copyright (C) 2018 Isobel Blackthorn

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Cover Mint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For J.F. Olivares

Buying a Dream

Everyone has their price. It is my father's favourite saying. He is a used-car salesman turned property developer. I am neither of those things. But when I read in a local newspaper that the owner of the house of my dreams was intent on demolition I took swift action. I tossed sanity into the Jetstream and, in a single if complicated move, threw my all into saving that house.

In truth, not a house, it was nothing that could be called a home, the building – not much more than sections of stone wall and roof – holding on through its own tenacity, little left to brace against a relentless wind. For the ruin was located not among the folds of green in my home county of Essex, nor in any other quarter of bucolic pasture, but on a flat and dusty plain in desert dry Fuerteventura, an island I had been visiting each year for my annual holiday.

I wasn't entirely devoid of common sense. My ruin was situated in the inland town of Tiscamanita, a safe distance from beach-crazed revellers yet not so far off the beaten track as to be isolated and remote. The island was desolate enough without secreting myself away in one of its many barren and empty valleys. In a well-established village, I would have everything I required for a comfortable life, secure in the knowledge that there were others nearby if I needed them. As a single woman used to living in a bustling English town, one had to think of these things.

The troubles began the moment I decided to act. The former owner of my beloved ruin, the gentleman poised with his wrecking ball, had not been difficult to identify. His name was mentioned in the same newspaper article, the Fuerteventura journalist at pains to detail some of the recent ownership history. The various genealogical details meant nothing to me. I could read Spanish well enough—I've been learning for years—but I had no understanding of Spanish nobility, and I lacked a deep knowledge of Fuerteventura's colonial history. In the age of information technology, when business deals could be conducted remotely with a few mouse clicks and the odd signature here and there, nothing might have been simpler than purchasing a property overseas. There were websites talking prospective buyers through all the legal requirements, pitfalls and traps. Were it not for the fact that the possessor of my coveted dream home resided somewhere in mainland Spain and had he not been bent on using the property for whatever development aspirations he may have held dear, the purchase would have sailed through to completion in a few months.

The first complication was locating the owner's address. Entering the name in a few online searches revealed his business interests. With those scrawled in my notebook, I hired a lawyer to make the initial contact and establish my credentials: I, Claire Bennett of Colchester, a humble bank teller by profession until my fortunes turned on the numbers of a lottery ticket and I found myself astonishingly well-off.

Possessing all that wealth had taken possession of me, given me the will to leap, to take a chance. The greater part of me remained shocked I had the courage to go through with it.

Much to my chagrin, the owner, Señor Mateo Cejas, responded to my inquiry with a cool and firm refusal. The ruin was not for sale. Well, I knew that. The local government, in a fit of guilt over letting so many old buildings fall into ruin, had deemed the dwelling of special interest and already made an offer and it was declined. A full account of the frustrations of various officials and the local community were felt by the writer of the newspaper article who shared their view.

I suspected Señor Cejas opposed the building's transformation into yet another island museum, the restoration of a traditional windmill in Tiscamanita already serving the purpose. Or perhaps he had in mind the construction of holiday lets on the substantial parcel of land. It was the sort of plan my father, Herb Bennett of Bennett and Vine, would have had in mind. Demolish and rebuild. Sell at a premium to investors keen to rent out to holidaymakers; developers couldn't lose. They were an inexorable breed, prepared to play a long game. No doubt Cejas would have waited until the walls collapsed to rubble then the government would have given in and granted a demolition permit. That Cejas may have had a deeper, more complex reason for wanting to erase the structure didn't enter my mind.

My father tried to talk me out of my plans. He took to phoning me in the evenings when he knew I was watching Kevin McCloud, and he would go on and on about how there were a million better uses for my winnings. I would hold the phone away from my ear and let him rant until he ran out of advice.

I was immutable. I had passed by that ruin numerous times on my drives down the island's backroads and grown fascinated by it. I stopped one time and took a photo. Over the years, I had taken an abundance of photos of the ruins littering the island, but I had that one blown up and framed and it hung above the fireplace in my living room. I would stare at it every day, the image becoming for me a focus of wishful thinking, fervent at times, a potent symbol of longing for a different sort of life to the one I was stuck with. Until I won the lottery, that was the nature of my desire.

One very large deposit into my bank account and I was no longer stuck where I was. I had freedom and that freedom entered my life like a lightning bolt, destabilising me to my core. Suddenly, I couldn't imagine doing anything else with my life. Out of all the old dwellings falling to ruins on the island—a combination of lack of interest, strict restoration regulations, apathy and the ease of building with concrete blocks—I had chosen to save that one, like a child with her nose pressed to a sweet-shop cabinet, her pointy finger tapping the glass.

The stubborn Señor Cejas had not come across the likes of Claire Bennett, a woman fixated on a dream, a woman prepared to offer far in excess of the already overly inflated amount offered by the government. Initially, I offered the four hundred thousand Euros they had. It was declined. Four-fifty. Declined. I upped the offer in increments of fifty thousand, the tone of my lawyer's letters to Cejas increasing in indignation, his letters to me in exasperation, until at last we agreed on a sum. Six hundred thousand Euros and I had my grand design.

By the time I received word my offer had been accepted, I had already relinquished my position as clerk at the bank. I resigned the moment I knew I was rich and would never have to work again if I was sensible with my money. It was with considerable relief that I walked out of my branch for the last time, saying goodbye to the only career I had ever known.

For twenty years I had endured that cloistered environment, dealing on a daily basis with deposits and withdrawals, mortgages and loans, and with those incapable of managing their finances, one way or another. I preferred the pre-Internet days when we had to write in passbooks. Even in 2018, there was always one for whom internet banking was unfathomable. Often, they were old, but not always. Or there were those who used telephone banking but couldn't recall their customer reference number or pin, or the answers to any of the security questions they themselves had created, or even the balance in any of their accounts. They would come into the branch to get their account reinstated after it had been suspended. They would rant about that little injustice as though the bank had forced their hands beneath the teller screen and guillotined their fingertips, then they would go on to take an age making a number of simple transactions and I would imagine a steel plate descending with force to cut them off from breathing their disgusting germs through the Perspex.

When that type of customer surveyed the bank staff, they inevitably chose me, kindly Claire, to dump a potent mix of outrage and desperation on, and I would look at them coolly and explain that internet banking was really very easy and it would put them in control of their own banking and they wouldn't need to come out in all weathers and wait in a long queue to do what would take all of two minutes seated comfortably in the warm and the dry with a nice mug of cocoa. Many a time a disgruntled customer argued they were keeping me in a job and I responded inwardly with, I wish you wouldn't, because I didn't want the job. In fact, I loathed it. I had applied twenty years before only because back then it was the late 1990s and Blair was in power after years of economic recession and jobs were hard to come by and finance seemed to be the new god and I, like many others, believed things would only get better. I was fresh out of school and banking was the place to be. But not in Colchester.

Banking was never my dream. The world of finance was all about numbers, whereas I had achieved a good grade in A level English, which I found fascinating, History, which I adored, and General Studies, the latter due to my quiz loving father insisting I went with him every Wednesday to the local pub's trivia night. He would sink a couple of pints of Directors and I would sit on a lemonade and a packet of pork scratchings and I acquired a sizeable array of seemingly irrelevant facts. Highly relevant, they turned out to be, when it came to sitting the General Studies A level, a course cleverly designed to weed out the riff raff from achieving enough high scoring A levels for entry into the most prestigious universities.

When it came time for me to choose a career, my dad shunned all notions of university, especially in the humanities and the arts, describing those courses as dead ends.

There was no mother to argue my case. She passed away in the summer of 1985, when I was seven. I did what any obedient daughter would do in the absence of alternatives, I secured a job at the local bank. On my last day, I handed in my uniforms and went home via the Indian takeaway and the off licence to celebrate.

My house, a humble abode set halfway down a row of drab and poky terraced houses on Lucas Road, sold in a fortnight. As the settlement of the sale and the purchase went through I felt as though I had rubbed Aladdin's lamp and was about to be transported to paradise on a magic carpet.

The only other person with a vested interest in my life is Aunt Clarissa. She is my mother, Ingrid's older sister, a retired psychologist with a predilection for all things occult. She played a vital role in my upbringing after Ingrid died. A robust, no-nonsense woman with an affection for deep colours and aromatic smells, Aunt Clarissa exposed me over the years to Ouija, tarot, palmistry, enneagrams and her mainstay, astrology. I took little interest in any of it, for the occult seemed to me to be built up on spurious associations and make believe. Yet I could not deny that through it, my aunt was uncannily accurate when it came to seeing beneath the surface of people to their deeper, darker motives. I ascribed this talent to her training as a psychologist, but she insisted her perceptions were entirely the result of the occult. Not being one to argue, I took a passive, accepting role in her company, humouring her for the sake of our relationship. When I let her know I had bought a property on Fuerteventura and was about to move to the island, she invited herself over for morning coffee.

I was getting a tray of white chocolate and raspberry muffins out of the oven when the doorbell rang.

'Smells marvellous,' she said as we dodged by packing boxes on our way through to the kitchen, where she perched on a stool.

She was a stout and big-boned woman with thick and wiry hair framing a keen yet welcoming face. Those perspicacious eyes of hers followed me about the room as I attended to the muffins. Then she rummaged in her bag and extracted a sheet of paper protected by a plastic sleeve.

Without wasting much time on pleasantries, she said she had punched my birth details into an online astrology site that calculated relocation charts. The idea being, she said, that the angles of a birth chart can be adjusted to the new location. Indeed, the whole of a person's natal chart can be superimposed on the globe in a series of straight and wavy lines, providing an enormous source of fun and intrigue for astrologers and holidaymakers alike. Clarissa had explained it to me once before. She was a big fan. I was sceptical.

As I poured the coffee and put muffins on plates, Clarissa said, 'I am not sure how to tell you this, but I thought I'd better warn you. In fact, seeing this,' she pointed at my relocated chart, 'I wish you'd told me before you went ahead and bought the place. Has it all gone through?'

'It has.'

'You wouldn't consider selling? No, I suppose not. Silly question.'

Repressing my irritation, I stared at her inquiringly.

'Well, you see, the thing is,' and she pointed at the lines and glyphs, 'relocating to Fuerteventura puts Neptune on your Nadir.'

'And?'

'Well, Neptune also squares your relocated Ascendant. As if that were not caution enough, you have Moon and Saturn both in the twelfth house, the house of sorrows.'

'I meant, what does it all mean?'

She lifted her gaze to the ceiling. 'Typical Leo Moon.'

'I'm sorry I have a Leo Moon. Please, tell me.'

'The Neptune placement will leave you open to deception on the home front, at the very least. It really is one of the most difficult placements when it comes to buying a home. Unless you are opening a spiritual retreat, I suppose.'

'Do you really see me doing that?'

'Hardly, but anything is possible.' A glazed look appeared in her face as she went on. 'You'll be open to psychic impressions. With your Moon in the twelfth, this tendency is strengthened. And with Saturn there as well, you'll endure much isolation, aloneness, and you will be exposed to much fear. Beware of hidden enemies.'

I didn't reply. I maintained a bland face as I held back a burst of cynical laughter. Seeing my ears were closed, she didn't pursue it.

As we ate and drank she brought me up to date on her own adventures and little bits of gossip about her friends.

When the muffins were reduced to a few crumbs on our plates, she returned to the topic of my chart. 'I'm sorry to be the harbinger of doom. It might not turn out that bad. Especially if you're careful. On the positive side, you'll learn a lot.'

'Well, that's a comfort.'

'Just be aware that people are not always as they seem.'

'I wasn't born yesterday.'

'Oh, now you're offended.'

I fiddled with my cup. 'I know you mean well, but it's just that everyone is against me. Even the owner, Cejas.'

'What did he say?'

'First he wouldn't sell until I upped the price.' I left out by how much. 'Then he wrote to me personally advising me to do what he had planned and demolish.'

'I wonder why,' she said slowly.

'To build holiday lets, I expect.'

I went and put my empty plate on the draining board and stood with my back to the room to finish my coffee. I felt defensive, ganged up on, my grand design scorned. It was isolating; when I really needed support, none was forthcoming. Seeing my face when I turned, Clarissa slid off her stool and gave me a hug.

'Astrology is not the be all and end all. There really is no telling how it will all unfold. There are always other factors. Be positive. You are following your dream. Not many get a chance to do that.'

Buoyed by her sympathy, I described my renovation plans. I soon became animated and enthusiastic, and she said she could see I was acting on a noble impulse.

'I'll visit when it's done.'

'Not before?'

'I cannot abide building sites. Too unsettling.'

After she left, I continued with the packing and reflected back over her words. Even if she had warned me in time, I would never have put off a major life decision on the basis of an astrological coincidence. Besides, I was acting on my deep appreciation of the island and my desire to save one of its grand houses from complete ruin. And I wouldn't be upping and moving were it not for the lottery win. I didn't dare ask Clarissa the astrological significance of that stroke of luck. I didn't want to know what the stars had to say. My bank balance said enough.

Arrival

One early morning in March, I was seated in the departure lounge at Gatwick airport, all smug and pleased to be leaving the murk that was British weather. Dressed as though for an appointment in plain trousers and a loose-fitting blouse, I was squashed beside a rotund man garbed in shorts and a large white T-shirt, and a fake-tanned and wiry woman smelling strongly of coconut oil. She was decked out in a tight skirt barely reaching her mid-thigh and a matching, bosom-revealing top. Both characters were stark reminders of the holiday destination I was heading for. They seemed to know each other, too, and held a conversation across me. I leaned back further in my seat to let them have it, each informing the other of their preferred island locale, the man heading for Gran Tarajal, the woman Morro Jable – both seaside towns in the south. They were the sorts of holidaymakers I had never minded being amongst on previous flights. This time, I felt set apart. With my newly acquired wealth, I had no need to travel economy, but the only upmarket flights to Fuerteventura involved changing planes in Madrid. Still, considering the conditions the budget airlines forced passengers to endure, that hassle might be worth it.

The departure lounge, an enclosure with a deceptively large feel upon first entry, had become claustrophobic as passengers filled all the available seating and crowded around the perimeter of the space. The door to the walkway was closed and there was a marked absence of staff. People were getting restless. The woman next to me on my right was fidgety and the armpits of the man on my left, if my olfactory system was serving me well, had started to hum.

The room breathed a sigh when a woman in a neat suit appeared, and behind her a clean-cut man. They each took their position behind a computer screen and stared blankly into the crowd. People stood up and a queue formed. The woman received a phone call, made eye contact with the person at the front of the queue and boarding began. I sat back. I was assured of my spot on the plane and I decided the least amount of time spent squashed into a narrow, vinyl-covered affair with no leg room the better.

The flow stalled when a woman in ludicrously high heels tried to carry through a shoulder bag the size of a large suitcase. An argument broke out, the woman insisting she take it aboard, the young man insisting it go in the hold. Then others piped up, irritated, and the whole fiasco had the makings of a pub brawl. I felt sorry for the staff. Any job that meant dealing with the public came with its down side.

When the departure area—it could hardly be called a lounge—had all but emptied, I stood and took my place at the end of the queue.

I was travelling with a lightweight canvas tote containing my purse, keys, iPod and wireless headphones along with various official documents permitting me to reside in Fuerteventura, safely ensconced in a thick plastic wallet: my future.

It was hard to know whether the aisle or the window seat was the preferable option. It was certainly not the middle seat, as the airline was determined to cram in as many passengers on the aircraft as was humanly possible, basing the calculation on the general proportions of a slender child of ten. I had plumped for the aisle, despite having to lean aside whenever anyone went by.

How the carrier could justify packing holidaymakers into their aircraft in such a fashion was a matter for considerable speculation but most were happy with the cheap fares and were prepared to put up with it.

I buckled up and extracted my headphones. A four-and a half hour flight meant I could listen to a fair slap of my Cocteau Twins' playlist.

I hadn't always enjoyed the Cocteau Twins. I had never heard of them when my mother had died. Aunt Clarissa told me in my early teens that Ingrid used to listen to the band on her Walkman. She let slip in a wistful moment that a refrain of their single, 'Pearly Dewdrops' Drops', was the last thing my mother heard before she slipped from her mortal coil. Her Walkman had stopped as Elizabeth Fraser was halfway through the first verse.

My mother, Ingrid Wilkinson, was a lot like Aunt Clarissa. Although she had been much more than a dabbler when it came to the mystical side of life. The sisters came from a long line of psychics, scryers and occultists. One of their great grandfathers was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. One of their grandmothers a Theosophist. The Wilkinson's were of good social stock, among them could be found bankers and wealthy businessmen. How did a woman of Ingrid's background come to marry a used-car salesman from Clapton-on-Sea? The answer lay in my father's exceptional looks and natural magnetism coupled with a compatibility chart indicating they were soul mates. Besides, they met in the flower power years when idealism formed an illusory mist in the minds of the susceptible and my mother believed him when he told her he was an actor. Which, in a fashion, he was.

Clarissa never took to my dad. In a candid moment, she expressed her view that men like Herb Bennett belonged behind bars for all the conning they did. She had never been one to mince her words and had always held the conviction that he had railroaded me into a mediocre career in banking when I was capable of much, much more.

Ingrid had been the dreamy one in the family. Born in 1950, her musical tastes moved from The Beatles' White Album and trippy Grace Slick to the vocal acrobatics of the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser via the likes of Tangerine Dream, favouring the electronic side of the 1980s' post-punk era. After her death, my dad was quick to clear out her things, but Aunt Clarissa stepped in to salvage mum's record collection, photos and a scrap book of musical memorabilia.

After discovering the close association between the band and my mother's passing, I wouldn't listen to the Cocteau Twins, even when my dream-pop loving friends at school were raving about the band's latest release. By then I had heard the track my mother had been enjoying at that fated moment and I rejected all the band's output on a point of principle, as though their music in its entirety had caused her demise. I went through my twenties and much of my thirties deaf as a post to the sounds emanating from the band. It took the thirtieth anniversary of my mother's passing to trigger an interest, thanks to a record store assistant who had chosen my entry to put on the offending track, 'Pearly Dewdrops' Drops'.

I stopped, and for the first time in my life actually listened, opening myself up and letting in the sound, and in seconds I was mesmerized. It was a kind of awakening. I used the birthday gift voucher given to me by my aunt and made up the rest to buy everything they had by the Cocteau Twins. Thirty years, and I was cured of my stubborn resistance and I felt closer to my mother than I had in all that time, as though she were with me, bobbing her head beside me, enthralled.

From that moment, the only band my mother and I both appreciated was the Cocteau Twins, and their music was the only way I felt connected to my mother.

The plane taxied then took off, and there I sat, content in my little world of sound, filled with anticipation. I had no idea what sort of life I was flying into.

Liz Fraser accompanied me all the way to Fuerteventura, the mellifluous tones of her voice on 'Aikea Guinea' soaring as the plane descended. We were coasting along the runway as the song ended and I turned off the iPod and returned the headphones to my tote.

I sat up straight with my bag on my lap, keen to disembark before the throng. The moment the plane came to a stop and others shifted and stood, I bolted to the nearest exit, fighting by men pulling cabin luggage from overhead compartments and women pointing their butts into the aisle as they attended to their bits and pieces on their seats.

The runway runs parallel to the ocean and the airport building runs with it. Designed to resemble a hanger, the building is elongated with an elegantly curved roof, walls of glass and lots of skylights. It is an open, light and airy space that gives an impression to the first-time visitor of a climate accustomed to endless sunshine.

Back among the throng, I collected my luggage—two suitcases of modest proportions—and checked in at the car hire booth.

Freedom greeted me as I crossed to the car park. I located my car sheltered under its own corrugated iron awning and I was away on that bright and sunny day in March, heading north on the highway to the capital, Puerto del Rosario, where I had booked an apartment for a month.

Everything appeared as it always had, but I felt markedly different, as though behind me the airport were folding itself up like a deck chair and carrying itself off into storage.

The drive was pleasant enough, the ocean coming into view, and then the capital, a distant sprawl of white cutting into the dry and rugged plain. To my left, on the high side of the highway, I passed a sprawl of unimaginative, cheek-by-jowl dwellings—developers, residents and holidaymakers alike enamoured with the ocean view and the beach, a short distance away. Although the trek with thongs and a towel was made ludicrously difficult by the obstructive presence of the highway. It seemed to me development on the island was in dire need of strict regulation and town planning. Otherwise every square inch of land would be given over to greed and the result would assault the senses.

I was familiar with Puerto del Rosario, enough to know the best areas to stay in. I chose to rent in the capital as the shops, banks, industrial areas, car yards and trades were all close to hand.

My apartment was in a side street off Avenida Juan de Bethencort, named after the Norman knight who had first conquered the islands. A supermarket was a few blocks away and the port itself was about a fifteen-minute stroll; downhill there meant uphill back so I would choose my moment. Calle Barcelona was one of the more established streets, but development in the city had been sporadic, and even here vacant blocks still waited to be filled.

The streets are narrow, the traffic one way, the pavements lacking room for street planting. Buildings are mostly two-storey. The combination hems in the citizenry, somewhat like the streets of Colchester. In all, there are too few trees, a paucity of green, although the council has taken the trouble to squeeze in some foliage here and there, demonstrating an awareness of the need for shade in such a hot and dry climate.

Taking in the city streets, I made a mental note to set to work establishing a proper garden on my property, a garden filled with natives and palm trees, whatever was hardy and drought and wind tolerant.

On impulse, I stocked up at a supermarket I passed, and arrived at my apartment in the middle of the afternoon, pulling up in the designated car space out front. The woman next door was expecting me.

Dolores must have seen me pull up for she came out and greeted me in the street, proffering my keys. Her Spanish was rapid and her accent thick but over the years of visiting the island I had come to anticipate the hurried flow, the nasal tone, the lack of fully enunciated consonants. A brief exchange and Dolores left me to ferry inside my suitcases and groceries.

The apartment was on the ground floor and comprised an open plan living room with a small kitchen tucked in a corner, a double bedroom and bathroom. The furnishings were basic and clean. Once the perishables were in the fridge, I sat back on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table. I was about to take possession of my stately old ruin. The sense of triumph made me swell to twice my size.

I had no idea what lay ahead of me, other than what I had learned from Kevin McCloud. I had no idea what I would do with my life on the island either, now I was a lady of leisure, but I felt confident some activity would present itself. All that mattered to me was I had arrived and I was brimming with anticipation.

Gazing at the bare white walls of the apartment soon invoked a listless feeling and I was eager to drive to Tiscamanita. I downed a glass of orange juice and made a sandwich of the local cheese and ham and headed out the door.

Tiscamanita

There are five routes to Tiscamanita and I have taken all of them. The fastest involves heading due west from Puerto del Rosario and cutting a path through Casillas del Ángel before veering southward and on through Antigua. The road cuts a straight path across the flat and denuded coastal plain, making a crow's flight to the mountains that rise in the near distance. Away from the arterial road that connects the northern fishing village turned resort town of Corralejo, down to Puerto del Rosario and then on south to Morre Jable, Fuerteventura takes on its true nature, a vast empty expanse of treeless land, farmed in places, decorated with low mountain ranges that define the landscape and give it its beauty. Pleased to leave the city behind me, I was drawn by those barren ranges, their moulded shapes and delicate hues.

Most holidaymakers come for the beaches. Fuerteventura is an island of beaches. To appreciate the interior the beholder needs the artist's palette, an eye able to detect the soft tones of ochre and gold and sienna and pale umber, the hints of pink and copper and bronze. If the beholder thinks of all that as brown, they have no place being on the island. Unless the eye catches the nuances, the heart the fragility of the desert environment, then the observer will only see lifeless plains flanked by lifeless mountains, the sort of land many would conjure in parts of North Africa and the Middle East and deem fit for nothing. The ever-changing subtle colours was one of the features of the island that first captivated me. The traditional architecture a close second. After three holidays, my friends started to ask why I chose not to go somewhere else, after all there was the whole world to see, and I defended my decision by saying I was guaranteed heat and sunshine and, to satisfy their prejudices, gorgeous beaches.

Tiscamanita is a small farming village situated a little south of the island's epicentre, on a sloping plain surrounded by an array of interestingly shaped peaks. The views are three-sixty and splendid. The village itself is not much to speak of. Some effort has been taken with the main square and a few shops struggle on, the hinterland consisting of farmhouses dotted here and there, interspersed with patches of land and half-built houses sitting beside crumbling dry-stone walls or the remains of the walls of some ancient dwelling, evidence that folk still try to make a go of things while many have failed. It's always been a harsh place to be. The odd field is cultivated where once all were. For the most part Tiscamanita has abandoned the traditional way of life and who could blame the farmer for wanting things easier? How does anyone farm land that receives eight inches of rain a year at best? It is brutal.

Yet Tiscamanita was once wealthy by island standards, made rich on the belly juice of a beetle. The little sap sucker drank from the prickly pear and its insides turned a rich red hue, and when crushed, the beetle juice seeped into flesh and fabric making bright red stains that no doubt proved hard to remove. Those discoveries resulted in the late eighteenth century cochineal industry, and the poor farmers were faced with the uncomfortable task of cultivating fields of cactus, which they then had to fight their way through to pick off the beetles. The only positive on the farming side of things was the harvesters remained upright. On the other hand, I was about to discover that the bane of any farmer's life can be found in the bending. There was a lot of money in cochineal, and the bourgeoisie land owners had known it. Lucky devils. They were not the ones who got their hands pricked. Looking around as I drove through the town, evidence of the prickly pear was everywhere, but it didn't look like anyone was farming it, even for jam.

My heart swelled in my chest as I pulled up outside my property. I could scarcely believe I owned the whole half acre. The ruin had been built at the northern end of the block, leaving a sizeable patch of land stretching from the street to the dry-stone wall at the rear. Beyond, dominating the landscape to the northeast and rising up behind some low hills, a volcano sat with its gaping maw and russet flanks. Towards the south-east were the other volcanoes in the chain and due south, a range of serrated-edged peaks in the distance. The Betancuria massif rose to the east, with mountains dotted before it. After four decades cooped in Colchester, the effect on me was one of exhilaration. The wide expanse of arid land elevated my spirits and I dismissed as hocus pocus Aunt Clarissa's worrisome predictions. I took comfort, too, knowing I had a neighbour to either side and one across the street, although there was no sign that anyone was at home in any of those houses.

I walked over to the ruin. The structure was set back from the street and built with much uniformity. The main façade comprised eight boarded-up cavities where once were windows. The cavities were evenly spaced, four above and four below. On the lower level, one of the central cavities was wider than the others and would have contained the front door. In places, the render was crumbling. Some areas were exposed stone. The side walls were uninteresting, containing two bricked-up window cavities on the upper level. At the rear were three small outbuildings, one in good repair although minus its roof.

By rights I needed permission in the form of a key to get into the main building, not that there was a door to open, but I knew a way inside at the rear where there was a gap in a poorly boarded up doorway. I came across the gap on my last visit to the island, on the day I took my prized photo that I had blown up and framed, the photo that had hung in my living room like a lure.

I squeezed through the gap and entered a short passage that led to an internal patio, taking in the interior of the building that I had only seen in online images emailed to me by my lawyer when Señor Cejas was bent on putting me off the purchase. Dilapidation scarcely described the state of disrepair. Some of the interior walls were freestanding. Much of the roof was missing. Stairs to the upper level did not exist, and the balcony that would have run along three of the walls of the internal patio was missing save for a section cantilevered in the western wall and supported by two skinny posts. I didn't dare walk beneath it. I could hear Kevin McCloud's voiceover telling his viewers that, yet again, the owner had bitten off far more than she was able to chew and the cost and time blow outs would be enormous.

Not if I could help it.

I picked my way around. There was evidence of paintwork in some of the rooms, harkening back to more glorious times. Many of the walls had been painted a yellow ochre. A simple frieze decorated the top of some of the walls, straight lines of cobalt blue and black and stencilled flowers in the corners. Different, more earthy colours had been employed in a similar design of straight line borders and simple stencil work in other parts of the house.

There appeared to be four large living areas, a dining room and kitchen, and what was probably a laundry or bathroom. There was no way of accessing the upper level but I imagined a similar arrangement of grand rooms and estimated at least six bedrooms. In one of the downstairs rooms the floorboards had been pulled up, revealing the subfloor of bearers and joists.

The whole arrangement of rooms faced the internal patio, which had been divided into two by a partition wall. The wall had a large hole in its centre as though someone hadn't wanted the wall there and bashed through it, and evidence that it was a later addition could be seen in the way it cut off a portion of architrave, and dissected the existing balcony in the west wall.

I stood beside the hole in the partition in what would have been the centre of the patio and absorbed the atmosphere. The wind blew through every crevice of the ruin, moaning and whistling. Other than the wind there was no sound. I couldn't hear a dog bark or a vehicle engine or any other evidence of life beyond the walls. Despite the wind, there were pockets of stillness and the ruin exuded a timeless quality. Embedded in its dilapidated state remained faint echoes of its history, overlaid with sorrow, as though the very stones and ancient timbers mourned their former selves, when they were united as one, strong and proud and true.

The house was rumoured to be two hundred and fifty years old, built by a wealthy family from Tenerife enjoying the riches of their wine exports and later sold to a family of lawyers. I pictured what it may have been, the grandeur of the carved wood and the vaulted ceilings, the balconies, the patio filled with plants and elegant outdoor seating.

I imagined men and women in period dress, all straight backed and God-abiding, going about their daily business in hushed voices. They would have had servants too, to cook and clean. The lady of the house would tend her plants and go to mass. The gentleman would read a book or a newspaper and take trips away on camel-back or donkey to attend to business. They would discuss their concerns over the weather, public health, the harvest, matters of politics and trade. Perhaps they received visitors, the priest, overnight guests. And there would have been children and extended family members. Aunts and uncles and cousins. A surviving grandparent or two.

Outside the walls, the wind would have blown and picked up the dust. The interior of Fuerteventura endures many a sweltering day in summer, and with no trees to shade the rocky land, ambient temperatures rise to infernal heights. I couldn't imagine any of my dainty well-bred family venturing out unless they had to. Not in summer. Instead, they would have taken full advantage of their cloistered life within, enjoying the cool of the internal patio.

A faint odour of animal urine wafting on a breeze brought me back to the present. A dog? Or a cat? The light was fading and I thought it wise to make my way back to my apartment before nightfall. On impulse, I thought to take with me a small piece of my new country estate to mark the occasion. I picked a craggy stone out of the partition wall. It was the size of my hand and the colour of orange ochre and rough to the touch. As I walked away a sudden gust of wind blew through the hole in the wall. It was a preternaturally cold wind for the climate. Goose pimples broke out on my skin. I thought nothing of it.

The Builder

Back in my apartment, I gave my rocky memento pride of place on the living room's single shelf, between the television and a white, urn-shaped vase, arranging the rock in various positions until I was satisfied it displayed its best face.

Around dinner time, I threw together a cheese omelette and salad. After eating, I soaked in the ambience of the modern, rectangular space, with its clean, streamlined feel.

I felt somewhat stunned. There I sat, having left the only career I had ever known, sold the only house I had ever owned and moved to an island where I had no family or friends, to embark on a major restoration project. Had I taken on too much? It was not a thought I was prepared to give shrift. I was tired from the travelling, that was all, and fatigue was colouring my thoughts. I needed an early night.

I was asleep by nine despite the unfamiliar noises in my new neighbourhood.