Secrets of the Hotel Moralez

By Alexander Lothian Wilson

1937

The Spanish Civil War is drawing to a tragic climax. Olaf Hofmann, a Condor Legion pilot involved in the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica deserts during the Battle of Teruel, ditching his aircraft in the sea near the city of Alicante. Making it ashore, he is discovered hiding in the Hotel Moralez by Eldora, the daughter of the owner.

2018

On the day architect Sebastian Martell is made redundant his restauranteur friends decide to buy a hotel in Spain. It needs renovating, and they need an architect. Scarcely believing his good fortune he and his artist wife Roza are soon on a flight to Alicante.

Their elation is cut short when Sebastian, discovering a body in the cellars, uncovers the secrets of the Hotel Moralez, tendrils of which lead back to the Spanish Civil War and the tragedy of Guernica.

With the renovation project, their marriage, and even their lives in jeopardy, Sebastian and Roza must confront mysteries within their own families.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Lothian Wilson
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223829409

Book preview

Contents

Prologue

PART I  

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

PART II  

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

PART III  

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Books by the Author

SECRETS

of the

HOTEL

MORALEZ

Alexander Lothian Wilson

Copyright © Alexander Lothian Wilson

The right to be identified as author has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

To my grandchildren

May they always know peace.

Anyone who can make you believe absurdities

can make you commit atrocities.

Voltaire

Prologue

Alicante 1961.

The tall man limped across the sunlit room to sit on a stool at the drawing board in the window. Releasing a deep sigh, he gazed across the canopy of leaves to the to the horizon where the sea met the azure sky. He slid open a drawer and laid a sheaf of paper on the worktop. Smoothing the top sheet, he removed the cap of his fountain pen and began to write.

19 März 1961

The letter from Picasso arrived this morning, but I did not read it until the evening when the bar closed. It is a very odd request to visit him at his villa in Cannes. My hand shook as I held the letter; it brought back such painful memories of Guernica. Perhaps I will feel better if I commit to paper my recollections of that shameful day, and the part I played.

Our flight path had taken us out over the Bay of Biscay, where we turned into the Urdaibai estuary. Günther our navigator gave me the headings, but there was no need to do so; the silver line of the Ria de Mandrake directed us towards the columns of smoke rising above Guernica, into the blue sky. The cockpit filled with the acrid fumes as the bomb bay doors swung open, then relieved of the weight of the bombs, the plane lifted a little. With a growing sense of shame, I looked down.

He stopped writing to finger away tears which stung his eyes and ran down his face. The pen he had placed to one side rolled down the drawing board, falling to the floor where the ink leaked, pooling on the parquet wood like blood.

PART I  

Serendipity

Chapter 1

London 2018.

Sebastian Martell walked through the office to his desk. Switching on his computer, he shrugged off his coat and hung it on the back of his chair. Suzi, the interior designer, smiled across the aisle from her cubicle.

‘Hi Seb! You’ve been to Madrid, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah. Five years ago, with Roza. Our honeymoon.’

‘Matt’s taking me on a weekend break. I just wondered what it’s like,’

‘It’s cool, Suzi. Well, it was then. Lots to see with great bars and restaurants. You must visit the Reina Sofia Museum.’

‘Reina Sofia Museum?’

‘It’s a modern art museum.’

Seb scrolled through his iPad to a photograph and held it up. Suzi leaned over to look. Behind Roza’s smiling face, she saw the tall glass towers attached to the older, traditional façade.

‘Cool!’

‘Roza wanted to see Picasso’s painting Guernica. It’s displayed there.’

‘Guernica?’

Seb blinked. He was back in the gallery listening to an old man’s papery voice. On the last day, they had visited the museum to see Picasso’s painting. It was a monochrome amalgamation of shapes: women, children, and animals, depicting the cruelty of war. Standing in front of the vast painting, Roza said she had felt a frisson of elation tempered with an awareness of the artist's statement: Look! He seemed to say, this bleakness is the result of the worst of human behaviour. Seb, knowing the painting had been the subject of her art college thesis, leaned in to listen to her whisper of the atrocity.

‘One market day in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, the Condor Legion bombed Guernica for the Nationalists. That’s Franco’s side. The Germans were happy to do so; they were practicing terror bombing civilians in the run up to the Second World War. You cannot imagine the horror. You are buying fruit and vegetables when bombs drop out of the sky.’

‘I don’t get Picasso,’ murmured Seb, ‘but he’s captured the awfulness.’

A groan drowned out his words. Seb turned to see an old man stumble backwards and slide down the wall, his walking stick clattering on the pale marble floor. The woman with him released a wail and sagged to the floor to hold his hand. Seb rushed to kneel beside the crumpled body.

‘MeinGott! What is wrong with him?’ Roza asked, her hand over her mouth.

‘I think he’s having a heart attack,’ Seb said over his shoulder before shouting to the curator standing further down the gallery. ‘¡Llama a una ambulancia!’

As Seb watched the curator speak into her mobile, the old man reached to grip the neck of his shirt in his fist, pulling him close to his fluttering lips.

‘Verzeih mir, verzeih mir,’ he whispered, their foreheads touching, the old man’s cold and clammy. ‘Verzeih mir, verzeih mir…’

‘I don’t know what he’s saying.’ Seb frowned up at Roza. ‘Sounds like September or sat-something.’

As Roza listened, there was a rush of footsteps as the curator appeared with a man carrying a bag.

‘¡Den un lado, por favor, Señor!’

Seb gently released the fingers coiled around his collar and stepped away to stand with Roza at the front of the gathering crowd, the gallery echoing with the dull whump of the defibrillator, then the keening of an ambulance siren. The curator comforted the old woman, who mutely watched the frantic efforts to revive her companion.

Seb leaned to whisper to Roza. ‘I think we should leave.’

They found a table outside a café on the museum plaza. From there, as a waiter took their order, they watched the paramedics wheel a gurney down the ramp, carrying the shrouded body. Roza, her eyes fixed on the sad procession, wiped away a tear with the back of her hand.

‘It was German,’ she said without looking away.

‘What was?’

‘What the old man said to you: Verzeih mir. It means forgive me.’

‘Verzeih mir, verzeih mir.’ Forgive me, forgive me. Forgive what?

‘Seb?’ Suzi’s voice broke into his reverie.

‘Sorry, Suzi’

‘Guernica. What is it?’

‘It’s a town the Germans flattened during the Spanish Civil War. First example of terror bombing.’

‘Really?’ Suzi gave Seb an inscrutable look. ‘Listen, what do you think? This or this?’ she said, holding a carpet sample in each hand.

‘For the Pearson Hotel corridors?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’d go for the one in your left hand,’ Seb said. ‘But it’s your call.’

Swivelling around in his chair, Seb left Suzi gripped with indecision. He took a long sip of lukewarm coffee from a Starbucks paper cup before sifting through the paperwork and notes littering the desktop. The monitor screen lit up, allowing Seb to scroll through the emails. Deleting the spam and culling the rest, he read the relevant messages: a site meeting in Reading at one o’clock, a client approving a wall cladding, a planning department response to his queries, a date for a visit from Building Control. Seb smiled at a message from his friend Finley, wanting to bounce what he described as a life-changing idea off him and Roza. He tapped out a reply: Life changing. Wow! We’ll eat out at the restaurant tonight and hear all about it. He copied Roza.

‘Seb, could you pop into the conference room, please?’ Still smiling, Seb looked up. It was Jeff, the senior partner. ‘Now, if you're free?’

Seb picked up his notebook. ‘Sure, Jeff.’

The three partners sat at the end of the table. On a normal day, plans and samples of materials covered the glass tabletop: marble or glass cladding, pieces of carpet, cuttings of upholstery fabric. This morning, the expanse of glass only reflected the cloudy sky outside the large windows and the gloomy faces of the partners.

Jeff waved his hand to show Seb should sit. He pulled out a chair, then opened his notebook. Julie, Jeff’s partner in the practice, and in marriage, stared at the clouds drifting across the rectangle of the window like fish in an aquarium. Next to her, Barry turned a biro over and over in his fingers, a magician about to perform a trick. In the street below, a horn blared.

Jeff swung his designer glasses from his fingers. ‘We lost the Mitchell contract. I’m sorry, Seb, but we have to downsize.’

Seb forced a smile. ‘I’m the casualty?’

‘I’m afraid so. You, Georgia, and Alec… Sorry.’

Seb looked through the window. The clouds had moved, exposing a slash of cold blue sky. Georgia would be okay; her husband was a lawyer or something, but Alec had three kids. Seb himself was a silver lining, a glass half full sort of guy, but this had shocked him. Chewing his bottom lip, he sighed.

‘Barry will sort out your redundancy package. You can work your notice or not. Whatever you want to do,’ said Jeff. Barry placed the biro on the table and gave a sympathetic nod. ‘Once you’ve seen Barry, go home and think things through. Come and see me in the morning. We appreciate everything you’ve done.’

Julie had stopped cloud watching and faced Seb, her eyes misty.

‘Yes, Seb. We all do. We’ve always run the practice like a family, and you’ve been part of the family.’

‘I know Julie. Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.’

‘But I do, Seb. It’s… it’s… well, you know, Brexit. All this fucking indecision.’

‘Yeah. Well, I’ll get off. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Jeff.’

‘Sure, Seb.’

Closing his file, Barry nodded at Seb. ‘I’ll be in my office in five.’

Seb walked back to his desk, shut down his computer. As he pulled his coat on, his mobile rang, his father summoning him to lunch. Ending the call, Seb looked up. Georgia was leaning on the partition with her chin resting on her hands.

‘You just got the news then?’

‘Yeah, Georgia. Shit happens, eh!’

‘You could say that. Want a lift?’

‘No. Thanks anyway. I’ve got Barry the Bean Counter to see, followed by lunch with my father.’

Georgia pulled a face. ‘Not good timing. Will you tell him?’

‘He’ll know. He’ll have heard we lost the Mitchell contract.’ Seb didn’t voice his thoughts; his father would be gloating.

*

Seb watched his father’s meandering progress across the restaurant. After the fawning welcome by the maître d’, his father weaved between the tables working the diners: a handshake here, a slap on the shoulder there, and, if out of reach, a wide smile. Seb frowned. He knew his father’s success owed more to his social contacts than his architectural talent.

His father narrowed his eyes and peered over his wineglass. ‘I understand redundancies are in the offing.’

Seb, chewing a mouthful of food, stalled. Tell him now or let him find out later? He swallowed the masticated pork, washing it down with a mouthful of wine.

‘Got my P45 this morning.’

His father drained his glass. ‘Mmm. What will you do?’

‘Look for another job, failing that I might set up on my own.’

‘It didn’t work out before. Chandra, wasn’t it? That friend you formed a partnership with: Martell Chandra and Partners.’ His father enunciated the words as if the name was the reason for the failure of the partnership. ‘Face facts, son. You don’t have the business brain.’

He dabbed his lips with his napkin, then gave his son a condescending smile. Ever since Seb could remember, his father undermined him, sapped his confidence. Had one of his business friends been at the table, he would make a comment about the paltry return on his son’s expensive schooling.

‘No, I don’t. Sorry.’

Annoyed at his reflex apology, Seb gripped his cutlery and looked at the cityscape of steel and reflecting glass through the restaurant window.

‘I could take you in, make a position for you.’

He turned back to look at his father. ‘I don’t think that would work, dad.’

‘Probably not.’

Seb didn’t miss the insipid tone.

‘What about your finances?’

‘I’ll get redundancy and Roza is working on a few commissions.’

Seb noticed his father’s mouth draw tight at hearing Roza’s name.

‘Rozamonda has painting work? Good.’

His father always referred to Roza by her full name, talked as if she were a house painter. He had disapproved of the relationship from the beginning. The offspring of a German jazz singer and a Jewish pianist was not thedaughter-in-law he had envisaged.

Over coffee, they talked stiffly about the economy and their polar take on the political scene. His father made a tepid enquiry about Seb’s mother and grandfather Ramón. Seb politely asked how his stepmother was. The conversation withered, and they parted with brittle civility. Diners glancing at the two men leaving the restaurant would not imagine they were father and son.

*

There was a gust of musty air as the tube train emerged from the tunnel. The doors wheezed open, and Seb boarded with a small group of passengers and slumped into a window seat. As the train rumbled through shadowy tunnels and paused at brightly lit stations, he watched the reflections of his face alter on the glass. These fleeting images of himself seemed symbolic of his short but haphazard career as an architect, lived in the shadow of his father’s success. A sudden burst of daylight filled the carriage as it arrive at his home station.

Reluctant to deliver the bad news to Roza, he wandered aimlessly to the local park to sit on a bench with a view of the river. A cool breeze rippled the surface of the grey water, then the sun slid from behind a cloud to warm his face. Thrusting his hands into his coat pockets, he watched two serene swans paddle over the sparkling water, scattering the ducks. Thoughts tumbled through his mind; his father, car payments, rent and other bills, then back to his father. He rummaged around in his shoulder bag for his notebook. Faced with a crisis, he liked to make lists: the problems and the solutions, pros and cons. As he wrote, he felt the bench flex.

‘Okay, pal?’

Seb looked along the bench. A florid face peered through unkempt hair. The man produced a bottle from a pocket of his tattered coat, raising it in salute.

‘Yeah, I’m good.’

‘Y’don’t look it, pal.’

‘Been made redundant.’

The rambling response sounded like an expression of solidarity. Seb pushed the unopened packet of sandwiches he had bought that morning towards his companion before walking home. If his scribbled list didn’t fill him with hope, the vagrant with a bottle in a brown bag gave him a sense of perspective.

Seb opened the conservatory door, and for a moment, observed his wife. The natural light of the conservatory had been a deciding factor in renting the semidetached house. It lacked kerb appeal and, in every other respect, failed to match the letting agents’ promise. When Roza set it up as a studio, she had thrown sheets over a web of clotheslines to soften the bright sunlight. Under this cloud of bed linen, Roza, a brush in her hand, bopped in front of the canvas, hips oscillating inside her paint spattered dungaree overalls to an inaudible rhythm. Then she became still, leant forward with her brush, focusing on some detail. The painting was a dramatic Yorkshire Dales landscape. Her pictures were popular with city dwellers. They hung them on their concrete and brick walls, satisfying a primal longing for views of soft green hills, or foamy waves rolling up beaches.

Stepping over the threshold, Seb inhaled the smells of her art: oil paint; turpentine; linseed oil. He pulled the bright red Beats headphones away, then coiling his arms around her waist, perched his chin on her shoulder.

‘I thought I felt a cold draught.’ Roza said, her brush continuing its downward stroke. ‘Are you on your way to a site visit?’

‘No, Roza. They’ve made me redundant.’

The brush ceased its movement down the canvas.

‘Why?’

‘We lost the Mitchell job. They’ve had to make cuts.’

Wiping her brush on a rag, Roza turned to stand on her toes to kiss him. ‘I’m so sorry, Seb.’ She brushed her fingers over his face, leaving a small blue smudge on his cheek. ‘Go through to the lounge. I’ll get a drink. We’ll talk it through. Nothing’s as bad as you think. Have you eaten?’

‘Had a sandwich,’ he lied, wandering into the lounge to slump onto the sofa.

Looking around the room, his roaming eyes stopped at the painting hung above the fireplace; the seascape Roza painted on Landscape Artist of the Year two years ago at Newquay in Cornwall. She hadn’t made the final, but the publicity brought commissions. He frowned at the patch of damp, black with mould under the window and the foggy double-glazing panel: problems the landlord promised to fix. He blew out a long breath. They had been treading water during the few years they had lived there.

Sitting close to Seb on the lounge sofa, Roza listened to Seb tell of being blindsided by the partners, and the encounter with the sad, homeless guy.

‘Makes you think. There’s always someone worse off than yourself,’ Seb said, taking a long sip of the red wine. ‘I wonder if anyone has tried to find the person who’s the worst off in the entire world?’

‘Impossible task, I imagine. Let’s be positive. You’re fucking good. You’ll get another job.’

‘Yeah. I hope so?’

‘They’ve kept Daniel on?’

‘They have.’

‘He’s an arsch! You have more talent in your little finger.’

‘He may be an arse, but he’s the senior partner’s son.’

‘Stupid decision.’

A van clattered down the street, casting a shadow over the ceiling.

‘I had lunch with my dad,’ Seb said, without turning away from the window.

Roza glanced at him.

‘What, he shared your sandwich?’

The air in the room shimmered with her sarcasm.

‘I’m sorry, Roza… you know, my father…’

‘You lied.’

‘I didn’t mean to Roza. I didn’t want to talk about him… us to talk about him.’

‘Seb, I wish you would. When you do not, I feel… I think I have created a problem between you.’

‘Look, Roza. I’m sorry I lied. The problem between my father and me existed long before you appeared on the scene. He makes me feel a fucking failure.’

‘You are not a failure. Do you imagine I would have invested my time in a relationship with a failure? Your father is everything you are not. He is the failure. Don’t forget he divorced your mother to marry money, to acquire status. He is a narcissistic bigot.’

‘I just struggle… I have this need to impress him.’ He stared down into his wineglass. ‘I should despise him.’

Seb felt her warm hand on his thigh.

‘Forget him. Impress me. Impress yourself,’ she said, resting her head on his shoulder.

In the healing silence, they watched the dust motes dance in the late afternoon sunlight, forcing its way through the gauzy double glazing.

‘So, at this clandestine lunch, did you tell him?’

‘He guessed. He’d heard we’d lost the Mitchell contract. He offered to take me on.’

‘You refused, ja?’

‘Of course!’

‘Mein Gott, Sebastian the Assertive!’

Seb smiled. ‘It would never work.’

‘No. Imagine taking me to the office Christmas party! Your father would choke on his canapé!’

They laughed at the idea. Seb, with relief.

‘I told him I would set up my own practice.’

‘Good. What did he say?’

‘Said I didn’t have the business acumen. Dragged up Martell and Chandra.’

‘You were not to know Aadesh was a thief, an embezzler.’

‘Maybe if I’d had some business sense, I’d have noticed the money going missing.’

‘He was your friend. You trusted him.’

‘Look where it got me,’ he said looking around the tired room, ‘and you.’

‘That is all in the past. Now you must prove your father wrong. This is Karma, you know, meant to happen. You will work from home. You have everything you need: the computer and the programmes.’

Seb smiled at the way her accent slipped when aroused: v for w, everything pronounced "everysing".

‘And you have talent!’

‘Sounds a plan.’

‘Well, why not? Martell, Rubin, and Partners has a certain ring about it.’

‘Use your family name? Rubin? You going to train to be an architect?’

‘Nobody checks on that sort of thing. I will be the mystery partner no one ever meets!’

‘You don’t need to be an architect.’ His voice surfed the wave of enthusiasm. ‘You’d be the practice manager, finding the clients.’

‘Exactly. Me, a cool letterhead, and a dynamic website are all you need. I’ll design a logo.’

‘What’s your design fee, Miss Rubin?’

Her lips curved into a smile. ‘It’s on a proposal in my office upstairs.’

‘I’d like to look at your proposals.’

The shadows had lengthened in the bedroom, and they could hear the hum of the rush hour traffic. Roza, tangled in the crumpled sheets, lay in Seb’s arms. They had spent the afternoon making plans for the new partnership.

‘You’ll need photos of your design work for a website.’

‘I could ask Jeff.’

‘You think he will give you photographs?’

‘He won’t want to help me. He’ll think I’m setting up in competition.’

‘His practice does not own the buildings you have designed. We’ll take our own photos.’

‘I could ask Jason. Photography is his hobby, but his stuff looks professional.’

‘We’ll need a profile picture of you too.’

‘Then there’s insurance cover: Professional Indemnity, Public Liability.’ Seb dragged his fingers through his hair. ‘Setting up could be costly, then it might be a while before money comes in.’

‘We will be okay,’ Roza smiled in reassurance. ‘Listen, you’d be working from home. Jason won’t charge for the photography. You don’t need insurance until you have an actual contract to insure.’

His hands slid over her body, exploring. ‘I could get used to working from home.’

‘Ha! You have not read Martell, Rubin, and Partners employment contract. Apart from essential comfort breaks, upstairs is out of bounds.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Seb said in mock protest. ‘When I signed my contract, it stated in the terms and conditions sexual congress was an essential comfort break.’ Laughing, Roza rolled over to straddle him.

‘Shit! I forgot.’

‘Forgot what?’ Her pale face looked down at him through a curtain of black hair.

‘I said we’d meet Finley at the restaurant. He wanted our opinion on a life-changing idea he and Robbie have.’

‘Can’t you tell him we’re busy? Which we are,’ Roza said with a provocative wriggle.

‘Well, if you put it that way...’

‘No! Let us see them.’ Roza swung her legs to the floor. ‘I’m intrigued, and hungry,’ she said over her bare shoulder. As the bathroom door closed, Seb huffed at the sudden change of plan.

Chapter 2

Seb unfurled his umbrella to cover Roza, fumbling to lock the door in the orange glow of the streetlights. While they had been dressing, the heavens opened, turning the road into a glistening river. Clinging to each other, they splashed their way to the restaurant, serenaded by the rain drumming on the taut fabric. Emerging from a side street onto the main road, they saw the amber light from the restaurant windows spill across the wet street. Shadowy figures of sated diners leaving the shelter of the doorway to dash through the deluge towards a taxi, shrieked with laughter. Seb and Roza stood back from the edge of the pavement as the packed cab hissed past them, the wave of water threatening to fill their shoes.

Robbie, watching them approach, held the door open.

‘Dreich, as Finley would say!’

Breathing in the aromas of Finley’s cooking hanging in the warm air, Roza pulled Robbie to her and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Hi Robbie! Isn’t this rain terrible?’

Seb turned back from flapping water off the umbrella. ‘Shit weather!’ he concurred, propping the rolled-up brolly against the lobby wall. Robbie hung their wet coats in a cupboard, then led them to a table by the window.

He distributed the menus with a flourish. ‘On the house tonight, my loves, in exchange for your advice.’

‘Advice about what?’ Seb asked.

‘I’m not at liberty to say. Yet,’ Robbie said with a coquettish smile. ‘You must wait. Finley’s still in the kitchen. I’ll be back in a jiffy to take your order.’

Roza watched Robbie move between the tables with feline finesse, stopping to lean over to discuss some culinary query with a blond woman.

‘What do you think it’s about?’

‘How would I know?’ Seb looked at Roza over the menu card. He masked his mild irritation with a smile. ‘Be patient: all will be revealed!’

‘Going to mention being made redundant?’

‘No, let’s keep that to ourselves.’

Robbie returned to their table. ‘Well, have you decided which of Finley's creations you would like? Mains only. He doesn’t want to be messing about this late.’

‘That’s not a very customer friendly attitude!’ Roza said in a mocking cut glass accent.

Seb mimicked Roza. ‘What do you recommend, my man?’

‘Well, the shepherd’s pie is excellent, and the leek risotto is to die….’ Robbie spluttered with laughter.

‘What’s so funny?’ said Roza.

‘This afternoon we had a funeral party booking. I said to one mourner the leek risotto was to die for. The poor woman burst into tears. I was mortified!’

‘Shit! Was she all right?’ Seb said, snorting.

‘Yeah, one of the other mourners said the deceased would have laughed! A free round of drinks helped.’

They ordered. Roza, the tagliarini carbonara, Seb, the shepherd’s pie.

The last diners were at the door collecting their coats. Seb and Roza had finished eating, and a waitress had cleared their table.

The seascape commissioned by Finley hung on the wall opposite their table.

Seb smiled. ‘I still think that’s a terrific painting, Roza.’

‘It’s one of my best. Something created for genuine friends has extra depth, a special piece of yourself.’ Roza sniggered, swearing in her native language. ‘Scheisse! That sounds so pretentious!’

‘I thought so, too,’ Seb said, laughing.

‘How dare you, thy philistine!’ Roza prodded Seb with a fork, the tines leaving small red indentations on the back of his hand.

They had met Finley and Robbie at the filming of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year. Seb had been standing next to the two men on a windswept shoreline watching Roza, with her signature broad sweeping strokes, capture the stormy scene: blustery clouds, the spindrift of the surging blue sea, the white spume of the water striking the dark rocks dispersing in the fierce gale. Finley, leaning his stocky frame against the blustering wind, said to Seb he thought Roza was a wonderful artist. Robbie, tall and slender, using his partner as a partial windbreak, nodded agreement. The weather had dampened their wedding, held the previous afternoon at a Newquay hotel and while they sheltered in the bar, the film crew lodging at the hotel had told them about the painting competition.

Seb discovered the two men owned a restaurant less than a mile from where he and Roza lived, and an invitation to dine arrived from Robbie the following week. At the end of their meal, the restauranteurs had joined them. Roza complemented Finley on the food, and Robbie on the service and the wine. Seb, the architect, praised the interior design. It was then that Finley pointed at the expanse of bare wall. He wanted to commission Roza to paint a landscape, a picture of his childhood home in Scotland.

They watched their hosts walk across the room towards them. Robbie, with a file under an arm, set balloon glasses on the table. Finley, holding an iPad in one hand and a bottle in the other, poured a measure of cognac into each glass. They sat, Finley slouching in his chair, rolling his head to ease the day’s tension, Robbie perched upright on the edge of his.

Roza broke the silence. ‘Well, come on, do not keep us in suspense!’

Robbie glanced at Finley, who muttered, ‘Go on, tell them.’

‘We’re selling up,’ Robbie smiled.

‘We’re thinking about moving to Spain,’ Finley said, dragging his fingers through his beard.

‘What! Retiring?’

‘You’re joking. Can’t afford to do that, Seb. No, we’re tired of this weather.’ Finley stared through the rain-spattered window. ‘In southern Spain, it was eighteen degrees and sunny today.’

‘We’ve been looking at hotels,’ said Robbie. ‘Nothing big. Affordable. You know, existing boutique hotels, or hotels we can adapt. To put our stamp on, as they say. That’s why we want your opinion, you being an architect.’

Seb nodded at the file. ‘I take it you’ve got information?’

‘We have.’ Robbie slid a couple of brochures from the file. Seb picked up the nearest one, flicking it open. Roza leaned over to look.

‘For me, that does nothing,’ Roza said, her mouth turned down. ‘I don’t think it’s you.’

‘We thought so too, darling.’

‘I agree with Roza. The architecture is bland. No kerb appeal.’ Seb closed the brochure, his hand flat on the glossy cover. He looked at the two men. ‘What exactly are you looking for?’

‘A bar, restaurant. Maybe between twenty or thirty bedrooms with living space for us.’

‘A terrace or wide pavement would be good to set tables out,’ added Finley. ‘We’re thinking of Costa Blanca or del Sol. What do you think of these?’ He handed the iPad to Seb, who swiped through the pictures. They talked through the options. Few of the hotels met the criteria: wrong location, insufficient accommodation, the restaurant not large enough. Only two remained, but Roza sensed that even those aroused no enthusiasm.

Roza sipped her brandy. ‘Seems you should keep looking.’

‘There is this.’ Finley pulled a buff envelope from the folder. ‘A friend in a town called Torrevieja emailed a scan of an advert. From the Costa Blanca News, a local expat paper. A hotel for sale in Alicante.’

‘Isn’t that near Benidorm?’

‘Yes. Just along the coast, Roza. Anyway, I phoned the contact number. Turned out to be a lawyer, a lady. Almudena Fernandez. She sent this.’ Finley offered the envelope to Seb. ‘She sounded old school. Wouldn’t email the stuff.’

Finley and Robbie watched Seb shake the contents of the envelope, decorated with colourful stamps, onto the table: a letter, photographs, a small location plan, and layouts of the building. He shuffled through the photographs: