Letters to a Stranger Read online

  I remembered how my friends’ mothers had displayed the pictures their daughters had drawn at school on the door of the fridge, along with their favourite poems or crowning achievements in their spelling tests, and I marvelled at this with an envy so strong that it hurt. My mother, Doña Alberta, merely kept a long list on her fridge with all the things Yolanda and I might conceivably do wrong on the left, and the corresponding penalty on the right. Get up late and you had to clean the bathroom; come home late, clean both bathrooms; switch your bedroom light off after midnight, pull weeds in the garden; raise your voice and you were grounded for the weekend; tell a lie and it was a double punishment: clean the bathrooms as well as be grounded. This last punishment was sheer hypocrisy, because I have no memory of the biggest liar in the house, my mother, ever cleaning a bathroom. The endless list only grew larger as Yolanda and I got older, engineered with precision to keep the two of us at home doing chores most weekends. My sister, rather cleverer and bolder than I was, often managed to wriggle out of her duties, so while I was living here the work almost always fell on Teresa and me. In my life story there were two Cinderellas, a vile stepsister and a heartless mother.

  Living under a prisonlike regime turned me into a submissive child, while Yolanda became more and more out for herself and whatever she could get, Machiavellian and sly – pretty much like our mother, in fact, only cheekier and more daring . . . plus she was the more attractive of the two in terms of looks. Her style of beauty was bewitching but perverse.

  The drowsiness that had carried me to bed, the product of whisky and fatigue, vanished entirely as I tossed and turned on the freshly laundered sheets, desperate for sleep to come. Unable to quit my thoughts, finally I stopped trying, seeking instead to banish the nightmares of my past through reliving my fondest memories. Teresa featured in every one of them – my enigmatic, loyal and attentive Teresa. I recalled the years when she lived with us, when my world became brighter and more bearable – and how she would sing to me while giving me a bath, or those nights when unbeknownst to my mother she would read me stories to help me sleep. Doña Alberta would get angry with her, berating Teresa for undermining her in front of her daughters and breaking the rules. Whenever she scolded her, it made me anxious that Teresa might get the sack, or end up punished like Yolanda and me. Teresa would always wait until my mother was out of sight and then whisper soothingly in my ear, ‘Don’t worry, darling, she can’t punish me – I never go out at the weekend in any case and I simply love cleaning bathrooms!’ Then she’d smile and wink at me.

  I remembered the afternoons when my mother would go shopping or went out to see friends, and Teresa could spoil us as much as she liked. She’d make us chocolate cake and we’d be free to laugh out loud, playing ludo and cheating on purpose. Sometimes she even made us forget that our mother might come home at any moment. I remembered also special times in Marbella during the summer holidays. My mother couldn’t stand the sun, so it was Teresa who took us down to the beach. She’d wake before dawn to finish her housework and cook a splendid lunch to leave at home for Mother so she’d allow us to enjoy our day by the sea. What freedom – and all because my mother wasn’t there, and we knew she wouldn’t be showing up any time soon. We’d play openly with other kids at the beach and splash about, laughing in the water with no fear of being told off over and over again. During those wonderful sessions at the beach, we could just be children.

  Comforted by that rosy vision, full of laughter, sun, water and salt, I finally managed to doze off.

  Chapter 2

  Thursday, 12 June 2014

  I awoke many times in the night, although Morpheus lured me back without too much trouble. It was hard to get up in the morning; the alarm went off at seven, but I snoozed on for another fifteen minutes or so.

  Madrid held several surprises in store for me that day. The first came right away in the form of a cat, who looked nearly the size of a tiger, staring defiantly up at me from its cosy nest in my open suitcase, among the very clothes I’d meant to wear that morning.

  My morning grogginess evaporated in an instant at this unexpected vision. I’ll admit that I’ve never been that fond of pets, particularly cats, probably in large part because I don’t remember ever seeing my mother without the company of her treasured Califa, a surly cat who enjoyed all the caresses that Doña Alberta should have been lavishing upon her daughters. When she died, shortly before I left for London, it was the first time I ever saw her mistress cry. She and I, we knew to keep our distance, never getting too close to each other, but this cat now resting on my luggage was apparently not aware of the rules.

  I swatted in its direction and the creature ran out of my room, but I found him again in the kitchen, next to two bowls: one empty and the other holding a measure of dirty water. He stared at me intently, now openly and with more confidence. I tried to ignore him, not having time to make new friends right then, and started rifling through cupboards and drawers after supplies for making coffee. The cat remained motionless, doing his excellent impression of a plump cuddly toy glued to the floor. The only sign of life was in his eyes, which were as expressive as the Madrid sunrise.

  Tiring of blindly throwing open and slamming shut the cupboard doors, I paused for a moment to take a proper look inside and was suddenly overcome by a strange fatigue, along with a slight vertigo that made me slide down to the floor alongside the cat – the same symptoms I’d experienced the day before on first returning to the house. Everything was just so bloody neat and tidy, and it felt like coming face to face with her cold and empty soul. The plates and glasses were neatly lined up, identical, sparkling, as if brand new; cutlery lay in its proper sections, each knife, fork and spoon neatly stacked one on top of the other, exactly twelve of each; the saucepans shone like mirrors, all arranged to perfection; in identical little piles, separated by colour, the tea towels were folded so crisply they could have been done by machine; the cups sat face down on their saucers, perfectly centred, a dozen for café con leche and another dozen for plain coffee. It looked like the work of a psychopath, but it wasn’t: it was all done by Teresa – on the orders of a psychopath, of course.

  Ever since I was old enough to have common sense, I’d tried to understand why my mother never once tucked me into bed, or tied my scarf on cold school mornings. I remembered so many years when, night after night, I would squeeze my eyes tight shut, hoping and believing that tonight my dreams would come true and she would come to kiss me goodnight. Sometimes I thought I felt something brush my forehead, like the soft petal of a flower, and then I’d squeeze my eyes shut even more tightly until they hurt, so I wouldn’t accidentally open them and realise it was nothing more than the phantom sensation of my own wishes, or once again the soft tip of Teresa’s flowery scarf. I so dearly wanted the kiss to be from her, even though I knew she’d handed over all the duties of motherhood to her housekeeper – even the goodnight kiss.

  Now, at thirty-four years old, I’d fallen in love many times. I know these men loved me, but I could never say how much I loved them back. Both of them left me because they were lonely, just as I had always felt with my mother – lost and empty. I feared that I’d inherited her worst traits: her indifference to the pain of others and her inability to feel anything properly as others did . . . Out of everything I’d been through with her, that was the hardest thing to forgive.

  On the other hand, I certainly had not inherited one bit of her orderliness, nor her iron discipline, which had been beaten into me along with a pervasive sense of failure and not being good enough. Nor had I inherited her self-control and elegance, which only life among the English had finally taught me. In all the time I had spent with her in this house, over nineteen long and bitter years, she had given me only one thing: an impenetrable hole in my heart where all the joyous love and affection she had denied me should have lived. And that could never be forgiven. Nor could I forgive her for refusing to tell a soul the truth about my real father. Even I grew up believing
that he was a friend of the family, a distant relative who’d visit to lend a hand with those issues that a widow with two daughters couldn’t handle on her own. Not to mention the obvious preference she had for my sister – only because, as she told me constantly, Yolanda was smarter and more graceful, more beautiful and more . . . more everything, and so like herself in every way. I was always made to feel like the ugly duckling. No child should know loneliness until they’re ready to seek it consciously and through their own will, to then embrace it wholeheartedly when they find it. Although by then, of course, they’re no longer a child.

  Outside the house everyone respected and even admired her. At parents’ evenings, she was always the best: the most beautiful, the best educated, the best dressed . . . the perfect mother indeed. In those moments I was proud to be her daughter and loved it when my friends told me how beautiful she was. But going home, the pride faded and the respect was overtaken once more by fear.

  I still remember the last time Grandmother Rosa came to the house to visit her granddaughters. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old. I don’t know what they talked about, closeted away in the sitting room, but I will never forget what she said to my mother the last time we ever saw her: ‘You’re as unscrupulous and arrogant as your father was all his miserable life.’ Unscrupulous and arrogant . . . I’d immediately run to look those words up in the dictionary, so I could try to understand my mother better and know more about her. I didn’t understand the definitions that the dictionary gave me, so I checked my thesaurus anxiously and found the following words: haughty, brazen, conceited, proud, narcissistic, pretentious . . . Her own mother had described her in that way! I could not forgive her for robbing me of my grandmother, nor for having to find out on my own two years later that she had died. Teresa told me, to be kept as a secret between the two of us. Yes, my mother was certainly hard-hearted.

  When I finally left home, I went without a single word. I left because if I’d stayed on any longer among all the lies I would have gone mad. Now that I thought of it, there were so many things I could not forgive and forget – among other reasons, because she never once sought my forgiveness.

  I recalled our last conversation, which took place on a rainy Tuesday in February, shortly after my sister announced her bizarre marriage. My mother and I were eating lunch in silence. Light filtered in through the dark, dense, gloomy green of the late-winter garden, casting our shadows against the wall, stiff as strangers. The table was set beautifully, of course, with each item of cutlery in its rightful place, the bread to the left, the glasses in front, and napkins on our laps . . . Our spines were glued so straight to the backs of our chairs that in spite of all the years of practice, we could barely lift our spoons to our mouths without spilling our soup. Everything was done according to protocol, as though we were dining in the presence of the King.

  ‘I’m leaving, Mama,’ I announced, breaking the dense silence.

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘I’m moving to London. I’m going to share a flat with Clara and a few other friends. She’s found me a job at a restaurant.’

  My mother, quite unruffled, continued spooning her soup elegantly into her mouth.

  ‘My plane leaves tomorrow at eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Tell Teresa to help you pack or you’ll forget all the essential items, like you usually do,’ was the one thing my mother said – a sentence seared in my memory for all time.

  Like a volcano that has bubbled and seethed over ageless aeons, the vast molten seas of my rage and disappointment could hold back no longer, but burst out as I stood up to my mother for the first and last time in my life. ‘Great – it finally turns out we have something in common! You also have the regrettable habit of forgetting the little essentials, don’t you think? You’ve done it your whole miserable life. You’ve forgotten how to smile, how to answer when your children want to know something, how to hug us, play with us, how to care about a single tiny thing we might be feeling . . . You’ve forgotten how to love us – and that’s the only thing that truly matters! But then how could someone as vile as you ever claim to love another person besides yourself . . . ?’

  She didn’t even flinch. In any other situation she’d have lashed out with some unreasonable and hefty punishment, but right at that moment she knew she’d lost all control over me and, as I’d heard her say on many previous occasions, she did everything she could to rid herself of her enemies. Because anyone who wasn’t under her power immediately became her enemy.

  The next day neither she nor my sister was around to say goodbye. Only Teresa was there. She never failed us, any of us. She was the only one who cared that I was leaving.

  As soon as I set foot in London, I swore always to be honest with myself and with the rest of the world – all the hypocrisy, lying and secrets were things of the past. I knew that if I wanted a fresh start I had to be true to myself. I see now that with my utter lack of trust, it took me a long time and a great deal of solitude to adjust to life in this new city and among its people. Up until then, I’d always believed that every single person in the world lied and had ulterior motives. At work I was polite and efficient, but never truly open with my colleagues. I couldn’t let anyone hurt me again. My clumsiness with the language was a good cover for my habitual silence. By then there were three guys and a girl working at the restaurant. Two of them were waiters and the rest of us did everything else from sweeping the floors to keeping the kitchen clean. Most often I was put in charge of the washing up. They’d invite me to their parties and get-togethers, and tried hard to welcome me into their group, but I’d refuse even to go for a coffee. I simply needed to survive while I tried to get my life together.

  It was a long and painful process, but my soul healed bit by bit and I began to adapt. Within two years my metamorphosis was complete. I was young but responsible so before too long the manager promoted me, partly because I didn’t get distracted like the others did. I was always focused on my work, punctual as clockwork, and forever ready to lend a hand as the situation called for it. I followed the restaurant owner’s orders like a robot, and the hours passed, then the days, and then the months . . . glued to the dishwasher, concentrating on loading and unloading plates, glasses and cutlery, repressing any thought that might lead to my past and to her. I worked until I was so tired I could barely stand. I passed two years like this, earning the maximum possible and spending as little as I could. It was like a long hard trek across the desert of my soul.

  Given all this effort I received one promotion after the other, demonstrating to my workmates and myself that I had incredible reserves of energy and an extraordinarily strong work ethic. I tapped into the anger that had built up over so many years with her. Slowly but surely I turned into a woman in control of her own future, and won the respect and admiration of my colleagues. My progress was relentless, as I became an essential part of the business. Next I decided to go to night school to educate myself so nothing could stand in my way. I gave it my all, and it bore fruit when the owner of the restaurant offered me half of the business so he could pay off his debts – after a few more years in London I ended up owning the whole restaurant. From that moment on I began to have confidence in myself, to connect with the people at work, to travel, to make friends, to have boyfriends . . . If my mother could have seen this new Berta, she would have been green with envy. She must have been the only mother in the world to be jealous enough of her own daughter to smother her in her own shadow, in an effort to make sure I would never surpass her own achievements. All on my own, I had managed to become the last thing my mother would have wanted: infinitely better as a person and as a woman, and more elegant even than she was. Take that, Doña Alberta!

  Within a few months, people told me I had blossomed, and that I was well liked but with an aura of mystery that gave me a certain appeal, so there were often blokes buzzing around, hoping to get together with me. Sometimes I took them up on it, more for the company and the sex than for
any real romantic interest. I was never really head over heels with anyone, and as soon as each relationship got too serious I’d leave without a second thought. I only ever really let my guard down with one man, Harry, and that went terribly wrong, although I know it was thanks to him and his uncontrollable, non-stop verbal diarrhoea that I finally mastered English. I also had a half-hearted flirtation with Brandon, my chef and right-hand man at the restaurant, which didn’t go far because I knew he was genuinely interested in me, but it didn’t seem right to toy with the affections of a family man. As soon as I told him I didn’t want to get heavy, he drew a line with me that he never again tried to cross, although I know he still wanted me. I think his devotion arose from his admiration of my ability to survive all alone in London and grow to be the owner of one of the best restaurants in the city. Yes, against all the odds I’d become loved and respected, and I’d also grown to care about the people around me.

  Flushed with the memories of what I’d achieved, I felt better already and heaved myself to my feet, full of energy and determination to finish up in the kitchen. The echo as the cupboard doors slammed shut rang out in the silence of the early morning, shattering it like glass of the finest crystal. My feline companion stirred in his corner and meowed softly, restoring my sense of calm. I remembered having spotted a glass jar of dry cat food under the sink and felt sorry for him. On the side of one of his dishes I read the name ‘Aristotle’.

  ‘Ah, so you’re Aristotle, are you? I’ll call you Aris. Nice kitty, Aris!’ I said to him, while he waited patiently for me to fill his dish.

  I desperately needed caffeine and a shower, so I left Aris to his breakfast and returned to my mission, this time leaving traces of my progress wherever I hunted in the cupboards – shifting glasses, cutlery and jars, moving awkwardly, letting the ground coffee spill on the worktops and the sugar go everywhere. I dug through the heap of tea towels in my hunt for a napkin until I found one. ‘Ooh, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,’ I mumbled to myself.