He’s carrying a six pack of beer in his hands, and behind him, by the looks of it, classmate holding a bag of crisps. Paula feels she’s in the way, yet at the same time she believes she has a certain right to enter the flat that used to call her home. After all, the boy lives there rent free as thanks for the help he gave during the year before Maite was admitted to the care home.
‘How’s your mother?’
‘Same as yesterday, I suppose.’ ‘director called to tell me they’ve changed the doctor’s visiting time and that I shouldn’t go.’
Marc seems satisfied with the explanation, but she feels foolish having to justify why she’s stopping by the place that was her home for so many years. ‘Did you want something?’ he asks, impertinent, as if he wanted her to leave as quickly as possible.
Paula wonders what she could answer because she doesn’t feel like giving any explanation. Maybe Bernd is right? After all, it was her home until she left at eighteen, yet Marc behaves as if he had more right to it than she does. Her mother had warned her that the boy had grown cocky…
‘Since I couldn’t see Mum, I just wanted to spend a little time here, at least, to feel closer to her. ‘
It’s been exactly one month and three days since Maite stopped knowing that Paula is her daughter. She must think she’s someone from the staff, because now she always speaks to her in Spanish.
It had been a grey September afternoon when the sky filled with dark clouds and the five o’clock light suddenly turned into evening gloom. A darkness that strongly resembles that of Berlin, but out of place. A cold wind had picked up, and the thin jacket she wore was no barrier against the gusts that sought her skin and messed up her hair. She walked with a discouragement that was not at all like her, but she needed to delay arriving home, even if the price was getting soaked by the rain that seemed about to fall.
She glanced at Plaça Rovira i Tries and at the café where every afternoon she had had a cortado after walking with her mother. But that day she couldn’t go in and let anyone see the way she felt. She took one of Gràcia’s side streets to reach Diagonal, and suddenly became aware that this moment would etch itself into her still vivid memory and scar her forever. Her mother had left her alone. The most precious and intimate memory, the last thread tying her to the real world and to her lived past, had vanished. Maite no longer recognised her, and to soothe the pain, Paula told herself that perhaps that pale body, with its long, thin hands and eyes that had long lost their colour and spark, would no longer have to endure the recurring pains of the past two years. She had lost her mother, and with her, a part of her life and identity.
The faces of the people crossing her path went unnoticed, and unlike previous afternoons, not even the prettiest fasades moved her. She longed to reach Diagonal, grab her bike, and go see the sea. The sea would still be the constant that calmed her when she had nothing else left. She didn’t reach it dry, because an autumn downpour fell over the city, forcing the unprepared walkers without umbrellas, like her, to shelter under balconies or duck into shops to wait it out. She was already near Plaça de la Vila and stood under a balcony, watching how that usually lively square had lost its typical sound. Where had all the people gone, the ones who, like her, had been caught off guard by the rain?
A tall, thin figure with short hair crossed the square with energetic strides, and her heart jumped. That boy, whom she couldn’t quite make out from afar, reminded her of a ghost from the past she didn’t want to awaken. What had become of him? She made an effort to push away that inappropriate thought. Maybe it was her brain’s trick, reaching for a vivid memory that tied her to Barcelona? She focused on recalling the times she had walked with her mother through Plaça de la Vila, approaching the kids who played football with their friends, carefree and happy. Maite had loved children so much!
She lost track of time contemplating the half empty square until the rain had eased. Her mind jumps. The flat is the price to pay. Paula likes the idea of having an apartment on the coast because she needs to escape the big metropolis now and then, but it crushes her to think she has to lose that little nest of hers where she felt safe as a child. The images of that afternoon blend with those of her present. The feeling of painful loss and the untimely vision of the boy from the Barcelona of her last years. A ghost she had wanted to see but couldn’t have been real.
‘I’m leaving. I need to go shopping and I’ve got exams to mark,’ she says, mentally returning to the present.
‘Fine,’ he replies dryly.
Paula grabs the bag she left by the door and leaves. On the stairs she checks her phone. There’s a WhatsApp from Bernd asking whether she’s already spoken to Marc. She doesn’t want to answer. She takes the metro back, and when she reaches Llacuna she remembers those fleeting moments she had spent with Luke at the Chinese restaurant on Ciutat de Granada with Llull. Like Paula, he had left his country to seek the luck he didn’t have at home, and things had turned out wonderfully for him. But again she pushes away her thoughts to focus on the present and savor it. She has everything now: a husband who loves her, a quite clear professional future, a plan to buy a flat in L’Escala, and a clear mission — to accompany her mother in her final stretch.
The smell of Poblenou wraps the streets on this cool, damp evening. The sewers stink as usual. It’s one of the few things she doesn’t like about her adopted neighbourhood. That, and the fact that it’s not the safest area in Barcelona, with robberies every other day and drunk or antisocial people setting cars on fire to vomit their rage at a society they don’t fit into.
She enters the flat and switches on the lights. Her phone rings again: Bernd asking whether she’s spoken to Marc. She replies that she hasn’t been able to, and immediately he calls. Her husband insists she must kick the boy out of her parents’ flat as soon as possible, and it irritates her. Her mother is still alive, and it doesn’t feel right to leave a flat empty in a city where so many people can’t afford decent housing. She doesn’t want to start an argument, but inevitably the conversation doesn’t go where he wants, and he notices. She tries to calm him as best she can.
‘Today wasn’t the moment, Bernd.’
‘It never is! You’ve told me this since your mother was admitted. Marc lived in your home because he took care of her; now there’s no reason for him to keep living in your flat.’
‘In her flat!’ she protests, annoyed.
‘Your mother isn’t fully there anymore!’
Those words stab her like a burning knife. She knows Maite’s condition, but she doesn’t want to see her as if she were already gone.
‘We’ll talk when you get here, if you don’t mind. I have homework to correct now.’
The conversation ends abruptly, and she feels the sharp silence before the goodbye. It’s Bernd’s usual reaction when Paula doesn’t do what he wants.
Luckily, the exams help her stop overthinking, and in no time it’s almost eleven and she has to make dinner quickly, so she doesn’t go to bed hungry and sleep badly.
When she gets into bed, a sense of unease washes over her. Tomorrow she must talk to Marc, no excuses, so that when Bernd arrives in Barcelona she can say she’s done what he asked. She tries to read a few pages of The Girl on the Train, which she started just three days ago and which has hooked her so much she turned off the light at one in the morning. Tonight she can’t allow that. She sets a timer and an alarm on her phone, but her eyes close before it rings, and when she hears the melody, for a second she thinks it’s already Wednesday. She lifts her heavy eyelids, sees the book resting on her chest, and breathes with relief. She has six and a half hours of rest ahead of her, and she needs the sleep to put her feelings in order.