All Yours (5 page)

And you never know what may happen next.

11

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“The ID card could be a problem…”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t they tell you that they can’t do it if you’re legally a minor?”

“Pau, it’s not as if they’re selling us beer or getting us into a nightclub…”

“Come on Lali, that’s a bit different…”

“What? A thousand bucks is a lot of cash. It’s like five hundred beers.”

“Five hundred?”

“If I turn up with the cash, they’ll do it. They’re on the take, like everyone else.”

“…”

“They’ve booked me in for the 20th.”

“What a downer.”

“Yes…”

“…”

“…”

“So you’re not going to say anything to your folks?”

“No way. Not in a million years.”

“…”

“My dad’s being a bit weird; I think he might suspect something.”

“Really?”

“Last night he came into my room. I pretended to be asleep.”

“And?”

“He was crying.”

“Crying?”

“I think so.”

“I don’t think he knows…”

“Perhaps he heard us talking.”

“But he would have said something…”

“I don’t know.”

“…”

“…”

“No, I’m sure he doesn’t know. Listen, Lali, your old man wouldn’t keep spouting all that crap in the meetings about the school trip if he knew what’s happening to you.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“…”

“But I’m worried about my dad. He seems in a bad way and, I don’t know, I feel it might be my fault.”

“Stop stressing. I don’t think your dad has a clue about it.”

“…”

“…”

“I bought that jacket, by the way.”

“Oh, which one?”

“The puffer, because the other one was too thin – I’d die of cold.”

“Yes, I’m taking a puffer, too. Do you think one jacket will be enough?”

“I’m taking the leather one, too, for the evening.”

“Yes, you’re right. We don’t want to be wearing the same thing all the time.”

“…”

“And did you buy the biker boots?”

“My dad gave me the money. But I’m going to save it. For that thousand I need.”

“Oh…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“I think I can probably lend you one or two hundred bucks.”

“OK.”

“Are you going to ask Iván?”

“No.”

“What a bastard he turned out to be!”

“…”

“How much money do you still need?”

“Just over five hundred.”

“So, what are you going to do?

“I’m going to steal it.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m going to steal it from my mother.”

“But she’ll find out.”

“Yes, but she won’t be able to say anything about it.”

“Why?…”

“Because she nicks it off dad.”

“…”

“She hides money in the garage, behind a brick.”

12

I went back home. Before doing anything else, I went to the garage to hide the evidence in the hollow brick. With my rubber gloves on. The revolver didn’t fit in there, so I ended up hiding that in the trunk of my car, under the spare wheel. There wasn’t much else left to do. Tidy the house a bit, wash up the breakfast things.

Before that, I took off my little suit and put on something more comfortable. By three o’clock everything was ready. I said to myself, “First a quick rest: I’ll sit in the armchair in the living room, have a coffee, relax a bit.” And so I did. But by 3.15 I was tearing my hair out. There was no way I could sit calmly waiting for Ernesto to come home and fess up. So I started cleaning. As a matter of fact the house was already clean, but I busied myself with some of those chores one doesn’t do every day. I polished the furniture, made the metalwork shine, waxed the floor. I even made a sponge cake. I had a recipe for an artichoke tart, but opted for the sponge in the end. By five o’clock I was exhausted. And anxious. Ernesto never usually arrived before nine o’clock; if I kept up this level of activity for another four hours I would be in bed by then. And if anyone needed to be awake, alert and ready for action, it was me.

I decided to take the bull by the horns and go to Ernesto’s office. Just as I was about to enter the building, I saw that dark-haired girl coming out, the one who had been at Truelove’s flat in the morning. The temptation to follow her was strong, but I decided against it. I announced my presence to the receptionist, who was making some notes and hadn’t seen me come in. Before carrying on upstairs, I thought I’d make a subtle enquiry.

“That girl, the tall, dark one who has just gone out – I feel as if I know her from somewhere. Does she work for the company?”

“No, that’s Charo, Alicia Soria’s niece.”

“Oh, so Alicia turned up in the end?”

“No, and that’s strange. She hasn’t come in or rung.”

“And her niece is concerned about her?”

“I suppose so. She didn’t say a word to me, just took the lift straight up.”

“Well, her aunt’s not a child. Presumably she knows how to look after herself,” I said, and I also went to take the lift.

I got out on Ernesto’s floor. The door to his office was open and I could see him from the corridor, staring into space with a worried expression, his desk empty of papers. He was absorbed in the destruction of a paperclip, unwinding its snail-like structure and snapping it into little bits. I made a purposeful entrance. “Hello, Ernesto, did they tell you that I was here this morning? I’d forgotten to let them know that you weren’t coming until lunch, so as I was coming to the centre anyway…”

I sat down opposite him. I don’t know if he heard me say that I had been there that morning, if he already knew as much or what – but the fact evidently mattered little to him because he said nothing about it. Instead, to my surprise, he said: “What a coincidence, I was just thinking about you.” I glanced at the broken paperclip pieces lying on his desk. “Oh, and what were you thinking?”

“About that chat you said we should have.”

“That’s why I’m here. I’ve got the afternoon free and it seemed silly to leave it until tonight. You looked so worried this morning.”

“I am worried, Inés,” he said, and he took hold of my hands on the desktop. I don’t think Ernesto had held my hands that way for at least fifteen years. My mother would have said: “Where men are concerned, a bouquet of flowers is more dangerous than a slap in the face.” But it felt so good to have him hold my hands.

He looked into my eyes and said, “What I have to say to you is very hard. I know that it may hurt you.” I put on a startled expression – it seemed appropriate. “But you’re my wife and I have to tell you. We’ve been together for twenty-two years…”

“Only twenty, Ernesto darling, even if it feels like more,” I thought, but it wasn’t the moment to correct him.

“You and Lali are worth more than the world to me,” he said, with tears in his eyes. I squeezed his hand and said, “I know, Ernesto.”

“If I could keep you out of this, I swear that I would.”

“Ernesto, please feel you can trust me.”

“This isn’t about trust, but about hurting you, and I don’t want to do that.”

“For God’s sake, hurt me a bit and let’s get this over with!” I thought, and I said: “Ernesto, I may seem like a fragile woman, but I’m strong at heart. Besides, I’m on your side, Ernesto.”

“Thank you, my love.”

He said “My love”! Ernesto had never called me his love, even the first time he tried to talk me into bed. The most romantic he ever got was to reply “So do I” when I said “I love you”. “Go on Ernesto, will you say ‘So do I’?” I used to ask plaintively, during the first years we were together. Then I grew accustomed to his silence. Ernesto was laconic by nature. That was why he was making such a meal of telling me about Truelove. “I don’t want what I’m about to tell you to cast a stain on so many years of happiness.”

“Don’t worry; it was stained, but I ran a cloth over it,” I thought, without saying anything.

“I… you remember Alicia, my secretary, right?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Don’t get upset Inés, but Alicia and I…”

“Alicia and you – what?”

“We were involved in something… complicated.”

“Ernesto, get to the point. Tell me what you have to say – I can take it.”

Ernesto took a deep breath, looked me in the eye and said: “Alicia was harassing me, sexually.”

I nearly burst out laughing. “I can’t believe it!” I said.

“Yes, it’s very sad, and I never wanted to tell you about it because I’ve been through some really ugly times.”

“I can imagine…”

“It’s something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

“No, me neither.”

At first I felt outraged by the lie – then quickly I began to believe that it could be true. After all, those letters that I had found had all been addressed to Ernesto, and I didn’t know how he had answered them. And I had already come to the conclusion that the trip to Rio might have been her idea. I was so nearly persuaded – then I remembered that small matter of the photographs that I had found with the revolver. The nude photos. It was hard to believe that Truelove had forced him to pose for them. I mean, he was grinning into the lens, like he’d just said “cheese”. When you start thinking about these things too hard you get tied up in your own thought processes and lose your bearings. I was well and truly lost. The fact that Ernesto was lying to me was obvious, but that didn’t matter as much as the reason
why
he was lying. Ernesto was lying because
he loved me
– it was as basic and straightforward as that. Why tell me about an extramarital affair that was already over? “Ernesto’s a wonderful man,” I thought. He’s not like one of those skirt-chasers who play the field, then come home to off-load their guilt. “Darling, I can’t lie to you, I’m afraid I went to bed with your best friend,” they say, to which the only fitting reply is “Lie to me, you bastard – it’s the least I deserve!” No, Ernesto wasn’t your typical sleazebag. He was an exemplar: he lied to me, he carried all the guilt on his own shoulders, he dealt with it in the correct way.

“I never would have told you about this, but something terrible has happened.”

“Ernesto, you’re scaring me…” I was pleased with this choice of words – it sounded just right for the occasion.

“Do you remember that last night I took a phone call and had to go out?”

“Yes.”

“It was her. She said that if I didn’t meet her half an hour later, by the lake at Palermo, she would do something crazy. Listen, I couldn’t let that woman go and kill herself.”

“Of course not, Ernesto. How could I not understand that?”

“So I went there. I lied to you – forgive me – I didn’t have a meeting. But I had to stop her.”

I nodded.

“We met and she thought that I was there for something else – to let her have her way… can you believe it, Inés?”

“That woman was completely mad, Ernesto!” I said, immediately correcting myself. “That woman is completely mad!”

“Then she threw herself onto me. She was trying to kiss me, I suppose, and – it shames me to have to tell you this.”

“Ernesto, I’m your wife, keep calm.”

Ernesto kissed my hands. “That was when the accident happened. I was trying to get her off me – I didn’t want her touching me, kissing me. She wouldn’t see reason and so I decided to leave. But she was still hanging on to my shoulders and, to get her off, I pushed her. And then…”

My nerves got the better of me and I banged the desktop with the back of my hand: “Bang!” Ernesto carried on without noticing. “She fell over, but by some terrible stroke of luck she hit her head against a tree trunk, and she broke her neck.”

“My God, how awful!” I said, covering my mouth.

“A terrible misfortune,” Ernesto said.

“A tragic accident, no one’s fault,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Ernesto.

I stroked his face. We looked at each other and smiled. He kissed my hands again. “If I involve you in all this, it’s because I don’t want to compromise our privacy by talking about it to an outsider. It would be a disservice to Alicia. You, as a woman, must understand that.”

“Absolutely Ernesto, of course I do.”

“That was why I decided not to report her death but to let everything go on as normal, so that by the time people start asking where Alicia is, nobody will be able to draw the wrong conclusions.”

“I completely agree with you, Ernesto.”

“This is going to be very hard for me – just imagine, pretending I don’t know anything about Alicia when the poor girl…” He welled up.

“Speaking of the poor girl, Ernesto, where is she now?”

Ernesto drew a deep breath. “I threw her into the lake.”

He squeezed my hand. I kissed his.

“What a horrible thing to have to do, Ernesto, to drag her…”

“No, no, I didn’t drag her. I took one of those hire boats, put her onto it, rowed out to the middle of the lake and, well…” Ernesto was on the brink of tears now. I stood up and gave him a hug.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Whatever you want, Ernesto.”

“I would like to be able to say that we spent that night together, at home, that I didn’t go out at all. I need that as an alibi – there’s no alternative. If I say that I went out then came straight back home, it complicates everything; they’ll make my head spin with questions. I don’t know if you think…”

“Of course, I agree. Why confuse ourselves with explanations?”

“Because it was definitely an accident.”

“Ernesto, that night, after dinner, we stayed in, we watched a film – I’ll decide which one – we made love and then we went to sleep.”

“Thank you, Inés.”

“I love you, Ernesto.”

“So do I.”

Then he kissed me on the mouth in a way he hadn’t kissed me for years.

I left his office feeling much calmer. I had seen that Ernesto was able to take charge of the situation much better than I had thought he could.

I walked back home with the certainty that, that night, we would make love like animals.

13

Photocopies found in the Pereyra family home; it has not yet been possible to ascertain their source. The aforementioned photocopies were discovered in the boot of the car habitually used by Señora Inés Pereyra, underneath the spare wheel. Annotations made in the margin and at the foot of the page, and which may be considered of relevance, have been incorporated into the following text, in brackets. The crosses refer to marks in the text which cannot be transcribed but which are clearly intended to highlight the paragraph or phrase in question.