The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman (20 page)

So they started seeing each other in secret, in a quiet little hotel, at lunchtime. Two or three times a week, if not more. And stupidly, stupidly, somehow nine months had gone by since that first cautious kiss.

•  •  •

Gaby was the first one to notice María's swollen lip because she sat directly opposite her, their desks up against each other, and because since her conversation with Berta she hadn't been able to take her eyes off her. She wasn't watching her, she was scrutinizing her. Gaby would
never
cheat on Franklin Livingstone. Not for all the tea in China.

“Asunción, have you seen María's lip?”

Asunción had apologized to Gaby so many times for putting her foot in it with the bib and the pacifier that if she went any further it would be public self-flagellation. She had given Gaby flowers, sweets, presents, apologies, hugs, tears . . . Of course,
Gaby had accepted Asunción's apology immediately. “You poor thing,” she had consoled her, “how were you to know what was going on? We should have told you from the start, it's our fault, don't cry.” Then Gaby and Berta had told Asunción everything as tactfully as they could: María is cheating on Bernabé, has been for nine months, look how calm she is, and to cap it all she says it's for his own good.

“Her lip?” said Asunción as she appeared at the kitchen door, after Gaby had sent a discreet email and arranged to meet her by the coffee machine.

“Look at her, she looks like Angelina Jolie.”

Asunción had to admit that Gaby was right. Berta hadn't spotted anything. Her head had been in the clouds for the last few days. She was flustered and distracted. The girls put it down to her worrying about the situation with
Librarte
, although they'd noticed that now and again she would suddenly lift her eyes from the computer screen to the window, sigh, and smile.

“Well, it is swollen,” replied Asunción. “Shall we ask what happened?”

“Don't you dare,” said Gaby. “It must be a bite.”

“From who? Her lover?”

“Who do you think? Bernabé won't have bitten her, will he? You don't start biting someone just like that, after fifteen years of unhappy marriage.”

“Unless it's one of those domestic violence bites.” It was Berta, however, who was first to spot María's black eye, when she opened the office door to find María in a flood of tears. There was no way Berta could fail to notice that.

They gave María an ice pack and a glass of water, sat her down in the rocking chair in Berta's office, and waited in silence
for María to tell them that César Barbosa was, in fact, the most hateful son of a bitch ever to walk the earth.

“And what am I supposed to say to Bernabé now?” María sobbed into her hands.

“Tell him I hit you!” Asunción volunteered. “By accident, of course,” she added, immediately regretting her outburst.

•  •  •

The affair had started to turn nasty when María decided to tell the Pirate that Mr. Craftsman had come to Spain to close the magazine and sack them all. This news, which after all didn't really have anything to do with Barbosa, had made him so furious that that same night, on the terrace of the taco place on Calle del Alamillo, he'd slapped María in the face. He had cruelly berated her for not being able to keep that job, or any other. She was stupid, he said, and worthless.

She had agreed with him.

The slap had hurt. But what hurt more was realizing that she had become a burden for Barbosa and fearing she might lose him. What could she offer him? She wasn't a young woman with an irresistible body anymore, nor was she a rich, interesting, mature woman who could indulge his fantasies. She was nothing more than a desperate housewife, a shoddy Francesca who hadn't been able to put a stop to the intense relationship and had let it grow until it became an addiction. If César Barbosa left her, María would lose her center of gravity. If she lost her job as well, that might be the end of her.

Since that first slap, there had been quite a few more times when the Pirate had turned on her like a snake after making love and bitten her. Other times he only threatened her, saying that
one day he was going to kill her, and sometimes he starting killing her little by little, hitting her, scratching her, so she felt her soul slipping out through her wounds like air from a punctured balloon.

She said he was right to hit her. She told Barbosa she deserved it and told Bernabé she had signed up for self-defense classes.

But the beating he gave her that afternoon was the worst. They met in their usual hotel, she undressed, and he sprang at her, knocking her back against the mattress of that anonymous bed. Then he struggled with his own urgency until he left her defeated between the sheets. Finally, he got dressed, jeans first, belt, pointy boots, and started hitting her with clenched fists. Her back was covered in bruises, her face was a mess, her skin was torn.

“You have to report him immediately,” said Berta. “I'm going to call Inspector Manchego so he can come and see you before your wounds heal.”

“No, please, no, God, no!” María begged. “Anything so long as Bernabé doesn't find out.”

“Bernabé doesn't need to know,” Berta replied. “But that animal has to be locked up.”

“No, Berta, please,” said María, in a flood of tears. “I don't want to turn him in. It's my fault.”

María begged her three colleagues so hard to keep the secret that in the end they had no choice but to bend to her will. If she didn't want to report him, there was nothing they could do about César Barbosa.

“But,” said Berta, “if that scumbag dares to show his filthy face around here, I'll throw a paperweight right at his head.”

“And I'll throw the scissors,” added Asunción.

María called Bernabé and told him that because Soleá was away, she urgently had to go and cover Barcelona's week of culture and wouldn't be back for four days. Bernabé asked if he could drop the kids off at the office after school. She said yes and left with Berta, who had invited her to stay at her place while she recovered.

CHAPTER 32

A
nd what's eating you?” Asunción asked Gaby as soon as María and Berta had left.

Asunción's ability to pay attention to several bleeding hearts at once was truly remarkable. In the midst of everything that had just happened, as well as concentrating on the mess María was in, she had been watching Gaby out of the corner of her eye and noticing how downcast and unusually silent she was. Although Gaby was naturally curious, she hadn't said a word during the whole conversation. She had stayed to one side, like a UN observer, not asking questions or making any comments, head down and somewhat distracted, letting herself be pulled along and feigning an interest that she didn't really feel.

“What do you mean, what's eating me?” Gaby said with a start.

“Something's up. Don't try to brush me off, I know you.”

Then Gaby crumbled.

Asunción bit her tongue and regretted having stuck her nose in where she wasn't wanted. Each person's life is her own, Asunción, how naïve can you be? You only just finished clearing up the
fallout from the pregnancy thing and now you've put your big fat foot in it again.

After an age of tears and apologies, Gaby managed to tell her between sobs that Franklin wanted to go back to Argentina.

“Then go with him, silly,” Asunción replied. “The timing couldn't be better, love. You're about to lose your job, you're free, you don't have kids to tie you to Madrid. What's stopping you?”

“Franklin's stopping me. He says he wants to go alone.”

“Without you?”

“Yes, without me. In our case, ‘alone' means without me.”

The bombshell had dropped that very morning before she left for the office. Like every other day of their shared life, Franklin had gotten up first, turned on the grill to make toast, made coffee, heated milk, and gone back to the bedroom to wake Gaby up with a good-morning kiss.

And he had found her crying.

She told him she had dreamed about her baby. They were tears of happiness because she was sure it was a premonition and her body clearly knew that soon, really soon, she was going to get pregnant. After hugging him, still crying, she told him how much she loved him.

“And then, Franklin, just like that, goes and says, ‘Look, princess, I think the best thing for both of us is if I go back to Argentina.' ”

“But how can that be the best for both of you!”

“That's what I said, Asunción. What the fuck was he going on about?”

Franklin Livingstone knew that his future in Argentina, far away from Gaby, would consist of a cold, lonely street, two or three cardboard boxes, a bottle of cheap booze, and a kind of
slow, painful living death plagued with memories that would end up merging with his drunken dreams. But he also knew that the time had come to leave Gaby so that she could become a mother.

He cried as well.

“Are you two crazy?” Asunción burst out, emboldened after María's dressing-down. “I've never met a couple so in love as you and Franklin. You could be peacefully enjoying your love, but instead you spend all your time looking for problems where there aren't any. You want children? Then adopt them, sweetie, the world's full of babies in need of parents who'll love them. Do you think that there's only one way to have a child? No, for goodness' sake, there are all sorts of ways. My aunt Paca, for example, who's happily single, looked after me and my brothers when our parents died. That was the end of her peace and quiet. And she's been a wonderful second mother to us, even though she never planned to start a family.”

“But I don't want to have just any old babies,” replied Gaby. “I want to have Franklin's babies.”

“They will be Franklin's, Gaby, as well as yours. They'll have his mannerisms and habits. Even an Argentinean accent, silly.”

Gaby's tears dried up. She got up from the chair, gave Asunción a big kiss, and went out in search of Franklin Livingstone, the love of her life.

Asunción turned off all the lights in the office, unplugged the printer, and poured the coffee down the sink. Without a shadow of a doubt, the working day was over. It was ten 10:30 a.m. and there was nothing to do. How quickly children grow up. She sighed and then remembered that in a couple of days it was her sons' little half sister's birthday. She should go to El Corte Inglés and buy her a doll like the ones she used to love when she was a girl.
“Tell her it's from her Aunty Asunción, who sends lots of love,” she would say to them as usual, secretly longing for the day when her ex-husband and his new wife would split up, as she was sure would happen sooner or later, so she could take care of the little one on alternate weekends. She knew how incapable her ex-husband would be of looking after a girl.

CHAPTER 33