Costa Del Sol

Lately, Deborah had such beautiful dreams that she would often wake up crying. The dreams were always about her grandson. In her dreams he lived a life of ease and sunlight, and he was always dependable and kind to people despite his good fortune. In her dreams he had grown up to be a wonderful man and Deborah would wake up with the sense that she had lived a good life and done things right.

In this dream, Jack was wearing a light-coloured suit and holding a champagne flute while guests made their way to a garden party. A lawn and neatly pruned hedges stretched out behind him. People were gathered on the grass around tables with white tablecloths, chatting and moving their weight from side to side. A pool lay turquoise and still nearby and beyond it the lawn sloped off into nothing. In the distance there was a suggestion of blue, perhaps the ocean. Everything looked expensive, Deborah thought, and she wondered who had paid for it. She was at the back of a small group of guests who had arrived all at once. Jack walked towards them. He was so tall and handsome in the dream, with a clean military-like haircut and skin that tanned without a hint of pink or red, like it had always done since he was a baby. The guests ahead all greeted Jack, while he moved among them making jokes, touching elbows, a sense of ease spreading through the group. Even his English was beautiful, Deborah noticed. She watched him and she thought her heart might burst with pride. And then she noticed the house. It was the apartment complex from Torre Del Mar! There on the third floor was their apartment, the geraniums she’d planted last autumn. They were doing very well, Deborah thought, much better than she’d expected. “Nan!” Jack had spotted her and was walking up the lawn towards her, a big crooked smile spreading across his face. “Hello love.”

Today was Deborah’s last day of work before the summer holidays. Tomorrow Terry and herself were leaving for Torre Del Mar with Jack. Anne, her daughter, would drop him off later. Deborah was looking forward to it, but also worried. She was always nervous before a trip. She had written out a list of outfits for the both of them so she wouldn’t forget anything. They went out a lot when they were in Torre Del Mar and if Nancy was around they’d get dragged to bingo, dinners, dancing even. Nancy was mad. Things had gone well this past year, Deborah had bought herself nice outfits, expensive bits, so she was looking forward to Torre Del Mar for that too. They’d be gone for a month.

Deborah turned on her side. 7.30 am. The dream had left a nice feeling with her and she wiped her eyes. She would get online early although her first client wasn’t until 1 pm, Derek, a regular. It was a beautiful day. She always made less money when it was sunny outside. It didn’t matter. She would work all day even if it was quiet, because tomorrow she would be on the little beach in Torre del Mar. “In her happy place,” Terry would say. He was up already and making breakfast downstairs, she could hear him. He was as good as gold Terry. She slipped out from under the floral duvet, made a mental note to swap it to the summer one, and went downstairs.

“Turn around,”

She did as he said, placing herself at an angle so he could still see her face when she turned to look at the camera.

“You like that you pig?”

“Spread. I want to see. Oh fuck. Fuck. Ok, now make yourself come.”

Afterwards they spoke about her holidays and Derek asked if she liked driving on the motorways and roads around Malaga? He did. The motorways skirted the coastline for miles, they were wonderfully-made motorways, three to five lanes smooth as jutting out of sheer rock face, a dramatic drop to the sea around each bend. She didn’t drive, Deborah reminded him, she wasn’t sure she knew those motorways, but Terry would know. Of course, Derek said, I forgot. He was one of her regulars, in his mid-40s. Most of them were in their 40s or late 30s, young, that’s how it worked. Derek had been seeing her for eight years, ever since she’d started. He always remembered her birthday and bought her gifts from her Wishlist. He didn’t deserve to be so lonely.

Her next appointment wasn’t for two hours so she switched her profile to online-camera-off so that she could do her chores, but also chat if someone came online. She often did this. Told men she was choking on their cocks while she ironed shirts. She would bring the ironing into her room. There were specific delineations around what could happen where and at what time in the house.

Her room was set up to a specific standard. The bed was dressed in mauve, fake satin sheets with Deborah’s toys backlit on a glass-topped bedside table. There were two ring lights on tripods on either side of the laptop that sat on a carefully positioned standing desk on wheels facing the bed. Two Christmases ago Terry had bought her a Logitech Brio Webcam and a wireless keyboard. The company had complimented Deborah on the improvement in the quality of her videos. “Fit for a queen,” Terry had said when the room was finished.

She sat at the edge of the bed and reached for the wipes. She was tired today. 74. Torre Del Mar was coming just at the right time. Deborah was always overdoing it. “Biting off more than you can chew,” Terry often said. She watched herself in the mirror as she wiped away the cold feel of the lube between her legs. She felt awake and her body didn’t look tired but it was there somewhere. The tiredness. She started to take off the white lace set she’d worn at Derek’s request. It wasn’t one of her favourites, and made her look grotesquely girly. One of the managers in the company, a man called Ed, had suggested that she needed to “update her outfits”. Ed had never been a very nice man, Deborah thought.

She put the lace set away carefully in her meticulously ordered drawers and looked at herself naked in the mirror. She would tan and come back and everyone would ask her where she’d been. It was one of the chief pleasures of holidays. “Brown as a berry,” Terry would say over and over. She ran her hand over the bulge of her stomach, the paper thin skin of her breasts. She had become so delicate, blue veins and bones. She could do this now in a way that hadn’t always been possible. Ten-hour shifts, four daughters, a cancer scare. And now at the age when she was expected to forget about it, her body had suddenly come into focus. It was desired, desirable, maybe not for the first time, but the transactions made it more real somehow. And all for being what they had all feared most. It was strange perhaps, but people had a lot of problems and they could do a lot worse. That was one of Terry’s too. When she looked at herself naked now Deborah felt like she was stealing her body back for herself, her own private treasure. She put on more comfortable underwear, her new jumper, her jeans, slipped into her flip flops and went downstairs.

She watched Terry, arms folded, smiling, talking to their neighbor Kari through the window as she filled the kettle. They were probably talking about the recent local elections, the disappointment. She never got involved in these chats.

She imagined what the first full day in Torre Del Mar would be like. They would wake up at 7.15 am the way they always did and she and Terry would shower and dress. She’d wear the long yellow dress with side splits she’d bought with Anne, and Terry would wear his cream linen trousers and the new polo shirt she’d bought him. She would water the geraniums before they went out for breakfast. The trick was to water them when the soil was still cool from the night before.

Their third floor apartment had a terrace and down the street there was the sea. It was so close you could hear it at night. It had put the apartment outside their budget, but it had been the right decision, as Deborah always reminded herself.

Would they wake up Jack now or after they’d gone for breakfast? She didn’t know anymore. When they used to bring him and Anne to Torre Del Mar when he was a child, he’d be the first one up, unable to sleep with excitement over the first swim of the summer, the beach! Everything was a first time or a last time: everything was engineered to keep one person entertained and it worked on all of them! They hadn’t been for two years now, what with the way the world had been, and in that time Jack had suddenly turned into a teenager. She mourned the pudgy little boy he’d been, but was fascinated by the contours of manhood she could see in him already. Now they were taking him to Torre Del Mar for the first time on their own. If he wasn’t up already on their first day she would let him sleep-in, Deborah decided.

They would get breakfast in Momentos where Javi the owner would come around the counter and kiss the two of them on both cheeks and tell them how much they’d been missed during these last strange years. Terry always went pink at being kissed by men, particularly Javi, who was rather dashing. They would have the same thing they always had, pan con tomate and cafe con leche. None of the other English people in Momentos did this.

They’d been coming to Torre Del Mar for eight years, not long. Neither of them spoke Spanish, but a combination of things had meant that she was often an intermediary for English families visiting for the first time, a sort of ambassador to the place. It was hers in many ways, she’d bought the apartment on her own without help from anyone, as Terry liked to tell people. She’d written a will at the beginning of that period when everyone her age had written or rewritten a will, and she’d left Torre Del Mar to Jack, and to Jack only.

After breakfast they would walk along the beach in the direction of the house, and Deborah would lift her dress out of the reach of the surf and paddle, the first taste of the Atlantic numbing her feet, a whiplash of cold in the mounting broil of the day.

Her phone started to buzz as she put down her tea and moved the ironing board to a better place in her room. It was only Amina.

“If clients are having trouble with Private Chat just explain that we’re testing today, it’s in beta. Tell them to use Firefox if they keep having problems,” she was messaging the way only she could on Private Chat.

“Ok love thank you.”

“You happy with your new tags?

“Yes fine.”

“Lol. The enthusiasm! You can change them. These get the most hits so everyone puts them in. Anal, foot fetish, gilf, those.”

“Ok.

“When are you off?”

“Tomorrow!’

“Where to?”

“Costa del Sol”

“Oooo lucky u. Ur coming back right?”

Deborah didn’t know how to answer the question. Amina’s messages were the reason she’d stayed with the old company. Other companies had approached her, offered her six months, even a year on their platforms without taking a cut. She was known in their small community. But she’d rejected them all. Amina messaged her regularly explaining things on the platform patiently, things Deborah realised she was expected to understand, but that she couldn’t quite get her head around. Amina was as good as gold, so young too, considering.

Was she not coming back? Deborah had to admit she had been thinking about it. They were comfortable with her and Terry, savings, his pension, paid off both mortgages. And then there was Jack. He was getting older. She didn’t want to make life uncomfortable for him. “Sticks and stones,” Terry had said, stroking her hand when they’d discussed it. But she

didn’t want to allow for that possibility. It was outside her control of course, but she could mitigate the risk. It was inevitable, boys these days were watching things they shouldn’t from as young as ten, she was always seeing articles about that. It would be strange though if today were her last day of work not for the summer, but forever. What would she do? She would have to contact her regulars, write a post about retiring? She would have to, anything else would seem unkind, unprofessional.

“Of course pet I’m coming back x”.

Half an hour before her next client. Deborah went back to the ironing, none of Terry’s shirts were ready yet and they needed to pack.

She thought about the beach in Torre Del Mar and wondered if there would be time for a swim tomorrow. One of the last dreams had particularly stayed with her. In it she was sitting on a beach. It was supposed to be their beach in Torre Del Mar, except that this one went on and on and she couldn’t see any of the buildings, or the road, or the chiringuitos, nothing. Across the endless beach, rows and rows of sun loungers stretched out empty and unclaimed. Deborah sat on the edge of a sun lounger facing out to sea. Around her humongous spheres of sand and seaweed rolled between the loungers. They were like primordial dust cows, moving slowly, emanating a gentle cud-chewing atmosphere. She could tell they were harmless, but in the dream Deborah had felt very frightened by their presence and by her isolation. She had started to panic and then she looked out to sea. The waves were doing something unusual. Tremendous swells were rolling in as tall as houses, but never crashing, always getting sucked back under the next swell with uncanny speed, an occasional explosion of foam escaping the self-swallowing watery mass. And in the middle of these bottle green hills, bobbing up and down and laughing, was Jack! This Jack was more the dream Jack from this morning than her real teenage Jack. Jack swam there and laughed and laughed, and he looked so ridiculous suspended in those bulbous mounds of water that Deborah had to laugh too. She sat there laughing, tears rolling down her face, as her grandson called for her to come for a swim.

It was time. She folded up the ironing board and pushed it out of shot, then began to get changed. She had done things right.

*

Roisin Agnew is an Italian Irish writer and filmmaker.