Letters to a Stranger Read online

  The heavy stench of foetid mothballs hit me like a slap in the face, and a mass of yellowed tulle poked out from the aged wood. Trapped in the murky darkness for so many years, the fabric seemed to shimmer as though with little gold lights hidden in its folds. At first glance, it looked like a bridal veil. Carefully, I reached out my hand to touch the filmy amber material, afraid it might disintegrate like the dry wings of a butterfly, melting away with the softest of breaths. I wasn’t too far off. The garment was a little rough to the touch and I noticed a faint rustling between my fingers as I handled it. I sat Neca on the chest of drawers and picked up the fabric. I could see now that it clearly was a bridal veil. The dress lay underneath, along with a picture frame and a beautiful mother-of-pearl box containing a gold chain with a clear raindrop pendant and earrings to match. Whoever had cut those stones was a master of his art. I couldn’t help thinking that such wonderful things didn’t deserve to languish there and that, if this trunk remained unlocked, what treasure must still remain hidden in that drawer in my mother’s bedroom? I left everything just as I’d found it – if it had survived so many decades, then surely it could stay there another day. There was also a pearl bracelet, a diamond solitaire ring and a pair of cufflinks engraved with the initials F and C. In a larger cardboard box I found a pair of shoes lined with the softest silk.

  For a long time I’d wondered whether my mother was in fact ever really married to Fabián, because at home I’d never seen a single photo or memento of what is supposed to be the happiest day of a woman’s life. It was as if she wanted to bury all the years she had shared with him, which was complete nonsense. If her image as a respectable widow was so important to her, why had she hidden away anything that reminded her of her wedding? As was so often the case with her, there were more questions than answers. But here was the final proof. The photos confirmed their marriage: a terribly beautiful young woman posing with a serious expression on her face next to her new husband, a little older than her, a little less attractive, but with a huge smile on his face. I didn’t need to know much about photography to know what had taken place on the day of that wedding. It was a simple financial arrangement: a rather plain man, older and from a good family, proud of his young sweetheart – a girl as beautiful as she was ambitious. I put it all back inside and closed the trunk, then moved on to inspect the contents of the box next to it, which was smaller and in better condition.

  It was filled to the brim with letters, postcards and notes of congratulation. I was surprised to see that Alberta had saved sentimental stuff like this. I had always thought she’d systematically got rid of everything connecting her with her past. Could Teresa be responsible for this too – saving everything so I would find it one day? It seemed very likely.

  Perhaps there was a part of my mother that nobody knew. With a handful of yellowing letters, I sat back down on the trunk holding all her memories from her wedding to Fabián. Aris, who had been watching me alertly and cautiously from across the room, came closer. He circled me twice and then sprawled out at my feet, as if he knew I wouldn’t be moving for a while. He didn’t need to talk or even communicate; he could simply read my thoughts.

  My mind felt strewn with debris as though a hurricane had blown through, littered with all the little pieces of my life. I felt drained and empty, scarcely in touch with reality, somehow quite separate from this person shut up in the attic.

  My shaking hands started to drop the cards and letters on to the dusty floor and on Aris’s back, until there was only one left between my fingers. I stared at the return address on the envelope: ‘Loreto Medina Ávila, Number 48, Cánovas del Castillo Street, Valladolid’. It had been sliced open carefully, as though with a very fine letter opener. Hastily I drew out the sheet of paper inside. The name Loreto didn’t even ring a bell with me for a moment, because I’d forgotten that Teresa had mentioned her to me earlier that same day, but when I saw that the letter was addressed to Alberta, my curiosity was deeply aroused. It was written in pen, in a very neat, exquisite hand.

  Valladolid

  15 January 1980

  Dear Alberta,

  I can imagine how surprised you’ll be to get this letter. I would have called you, but I haven’t been able to get your phone number. I know we haven’t spoken in a long time, and I’m guessing you won’t be happy to hear from me. I never wanted you for my son (it’s absurd to deny it after all this time). I saw how much of a stranger my only son became to the whole family after a while, and I couldn’t stand that. He, who had always been so kind, loving and generous with everyone, suddenly cut us all out of his life, particularly me. You’re a mother, so you must understand how that felt.

  I don’t want your forgiveness – I don’t think you’d give it to me anyway. What I need is your compassion: for you to take pity on a mother whose heart is broken because she doesn’t know where her son is. I have read and reread the medical and police reports, and I cannot believe that Fabián just left, or that he lost his memory. Honestly, I don’t think he was ever actually mentally ill in the first place. Before he married you, he was vigorously healthy in every way, and every other member of the family has always led a long and healthy life. He only became so ill-tempered once he started seeing you. His coldness and hostility to everyone who loved him were quite strange, and I can’t help believing that you’re responsible for them. But for him to disappear off the face of the earth without trace – well, he never would have done that. I know he would never have abandoned his daughter. He adores her, and wherever he is, if he’s still alive, he would do anything to get in touch with Yolanda.

  Alberta, take pity on me – you more than anyone must be able to put yourself in my place, with your second child about to be born. If you know anything about Fabián or what happened to him, please tell me, I beg you. I don’t want anything he might have left to you – I swear on all that’s dearest to me, you can have it all. I just need to know where and how my son is.

  Give Yolanda a kiss from her loving grandmother. She is always in my heart.

  Loreto Medina Ávila

  I was shocked. My mother had always told us that Fabián, the man I’d thought for nine years was my father, was a selfish person, sharp and distant with his family, and that he had made it hard for his wife to live with him. She made us believe that if it weren’t for her, he would have squandered all his inheritance in ridiculous investments and yet was miserly towards her and their daughter. I grew up convinced that Alberta’s bad temper was partly due to the miserable years she had lived with Fabián, who with each passing day had stripped away the illusions of her youth. But this letter from Loreto held information I’d never heard before: what medical report was she talking about? Did he really adore Yolanda? Alberta had always told us he’d treated her like a nuisance. How much of the de Castro inheritance had he left to my mother? No, this wasn’t the Fabián she had described to my sister and me over all those years.

  This was the letter of a broken-hearted mother, desperate, unashamedly honest, a woman convinced that her cruel daughter-in-law was hiding the truth. I wondered how much Alberta had taken with her to the grave, and if I was really ready to find out the answers. Teresa must know something – she’d been in the house the whole time and must have suspected that my mother had something to do with Fabián’s disappearance. I would have to talk to her about this tomorrow.

  I opened the trunk again and was about to take out another letter, keep uncovering secrets, then realised that my mental strength was fading, and knew I’d done more than enough for today. I put away all the letters that were on the floor and slammed the trunk shut, feeling angry and sick. It would have been so different if I’d found adoring letters, people who were affectionate with each other, a past brimming over with love and delight . . .

  I picked up Aris and quickly left that chamber of horrors, in desperate need of fresh air. But before closing the door, I turned back and retraced my footsteps: this was no place for Neca, and, besides, I needed
her. The sight of my childhood friend, propped up in a halo of dust glowing with the light from the window, made me shudder.

  My sorrow started to fade as the murky water flowed into the drain of the shower, washing the dust from my body. There was a huge gulf of fifteen years between me and the stuff in the attic; it was all in the past now. I poured myself a whisky and went out into the garden to enjoy the evening with Aris and Neca, the only two friends I could be sure of in Spain. It’s all so sad, I thought.

  I regretted having opened Pandora’s box since my return. I hadn’t needed to – I could just have dealt with the necessary legal matters and nothing else. In the past few days, my mother’s evil spirit had once again trapped me in her clutches. I’d felt so strong when the aeroplane took off, so sure that the past was now behind me and that once she was dead, she couldn’t hurt me any more. What absolute nonsense! We are the sum of our experiences: every day, every moment shapes and conditions us, for better or for worse. When memories are painful, we bury them like dead leaves in the darkest corners of our souls. Sometimes if we’re lucky, they stay there, dormant, for the rest of our lives, even though they’ve already changed us and become part of who we are. At other times they awaken when you least expect it, to leave their hiding places and shake everything up. They make us relive the past, suffer it all over again . . . But the fact remains that their sudden reappearance is also an opportunity to process and to forgive, and that maybe, once we do that, we can really start over without looking back.

  I couldn’t enjoy that evening. As soon as I lay down in the hammock, I realised that not everything had gone down the drain along with the dust from the attic. A black hole seemed to loom in my chest, ready to swallow me alive. Trying to rid myself of the feeling, I breathed in slowly and deeply in an effort to relax. I had then the idea of studying my pain from another perspective, stepping outside my own head to analyse myself as a psychologist might have done. True, I’d been an innocent victim of unparalleled tyranny throughout my childhood and teenage years, but things had changed – I’d grown and matured and was proud of myself for that. Deep down I must have the strength I needed to overcome the cruellest monster any person can face: their past. I think the pain I was going through was caused more by the thought of the deceptions than by the memories themselves. I wasn’t as strong as I thought. I’d fallen right back into playing the role of a victim – a weakness I despised in other people and wouldn’t tolerate in my employees at the restaurant – and had only myself to blame for that. My mother wasn’t here any more, so I was battling ghosts. In that moment I knew that victory would only come with understanding and reconciliation. I had to reach into the depths of it and bear the pain until the end, even if it killed me. I would come out of it free or I would be lost forever.

  A few doors down, children were playing in their garden. Their laughter was delightful and sincere . . . How I envied them and wished that my own childhood had been like that! I didn’t recall ever having played or laughed in our own garden. We weren’t allowed to disturb the neighbours: it was rude to interrupt other people’s silence with laughter and shouting. As a neighbour to these kids now, I didn’t feel remotely bothered. Actually I was grateful to be reminded that beyond my own heartache, happiness and innocence went on. These kids had no ghosts to struggle with, and the possibility of growing into adults with happy and fulfilling lives lay well within their grasp.

  I poured myself another tumblerful of whisky. I needed to forget. Slowly I drifted into another dimension where there was little room for thought. All I could do was float like a cloud among the stars that enveloped me. A couple of hours later and feeling much calmer, I decided it was time to eat something.

  A couple of good-sized tomatoes sat on a plate on the kitchen counter, and they smelled divine. I sliced them up for dinner, seasoning them with oil and salt. Teresa’s culinary genius extended even to her trips to the market – where had she found such delicious tomatoes? After wolfing them down, I mopped up the juices with a hunk of bread. I guess the whisky had made me hungry.

  I should have gone to bed then, but instead went back out into the garden, afraid that even passing the door to the sitting room would rob me of the peace I’d struggled to find all evening.

  I woke at dawn, shivering in the humid darkness of the night, my shirt soaked with dew, and cursed myself for my stupidity and for having allowed myself a third tumbler of the good stuff. Through my confusion and my aching head, I thought how funny it was that I’d happened to catch the first cold night of the year in the middle of June in Spain. Clumsily I stripped off my clothes and fell into bed. Aris lay curled up at the foot of the bed; with more sense than me, he must have been there for hours.

  Chapter 6

  Monday, 16 June 2014

  Sometime after eleven o’clock, the ringing of my mobile roused me from a deep sleep. It was Brandon, calling to bring me up to date on the restaurant’s bills and orders. Like the good English lad that he was, he didn’t ask me anything personal, even though he must have heard from the tone of my voice that I’d just woken up. He greeted me politely and then filled me in on what was happening at the restaurant. It’s a good thing he couldn’t see me – with a cat on one side and a doll on the other – or else he’d have properly worried and would definitely have been asking questions. It was a relief that everything was going well at the restaurant without me, but I admit it did bother me a little that I was so expendable: after so many years of working myself to the bone, day in, day out, never taking a day off, bringing work home on my nights off, sleeping just enough so I’d be able to stay on my feet, only now to discover that everything worked just fine without me. I consoled myself with the thought that it was only because of all the groundwork I’d put in place.

  The kitchen door was open on to the garden, and a moment later Teresa came in with the bottle of whisky in one hand and my glass in the other.

  ‘Morning, Teresa – why didn’t you wake me? I wanted to go into town to do some shopping . . .’

  ‘Morning, darling. Well, what’s the rush? You have plenty of time – the stores don’t close until ten at night. You slept in because you needed it.’

  ‘I guess so. It’s hard to remember how much free time I have here. Will you have a coffee with me?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll put on a pot.’

  Sitting in the kitchen with our coffee cups in our hands, I told her what I’d found the day before. ‘Yesterday I came across an old trunk full of letters and cards up there.’

  ‘Well, there could be just about anything in that old attic,’ she answered, sounding a little nervous.

  ‘I can well believe it. I had no idea there’d be so much or that it would be so interesting. I only read one letter at random, and it gave me quite a turn.’

  ‘Oh my dear, I knew it – I should never have left you . . .’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that – I just meant that the letter really surprised me,’ I said to reassure her, although I don’t think it worked. She still seemed just as worried about what I might have read.

  ‘Sweetheart, why don’t you forget about all this – it’s not worth all the dust. It’s filthy up there, and—’

  ‘Yes, I couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s all filth up there.’

  ‘Well then, forget about it. I’m sure you have better things to think about.’

  ‘I’d like to forget it, Teresa, but I can’t. I came back here ready to put my past with my mother behind me and get back to my life as soon as possible, but you see there’s no way to escape her clutches, alive or dead. There is one thing . . .’

  ‘Oh come on now, that’s all just nonsense. Listen, you’ve become a beautiful, independent woman and you’ve done it all on your own. Of course you escaped – I can tell just by looking at you.’

  Teresa was trying to convince me to leave the past behind, minimising everything I’d suffered within these walls, but her insistence, which she was unable to hide, made me think she kn
ew much more than she was letting on.

  ‘What was Fabián like? You knew him well – you practically saw him grow up,’ I asked her without preamble.

  ‘No, don’t be silly – when I knew him I was just a child and he was already finishing his law degree. Later on, when I worked for him and your mother . . . Well, he wasn’t a very good man and . . . He was always a smart boy, that’s what they said about him at home. In fact, his mother never stopped saying it. What else can I say?’

  ‘OK, but what was he like?’ I pressed.

  ‘He was just a normal man, Berta.’ She’d done the same thing she always did when I was little and she was annoyed with me: she stopped using her endearments when talking to me. Clearly she was unhappy, and I could tell she didn’t like talking about the subject. ‘He split his days between the university and his studies, and . . .’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And I think he was seeing the daughter of some friends of the family.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s it, love. He finished his degree with good grades, started working in his father’s firm, and shortly after that he got married. That’s how things were back then.’