A girl who ached inside, hiding her misery and her loneliness from the world — even from her parents.
Her father was loving in his own way, but hardly ever there. A travelling salesman, he spent days on end, sometimes weeks, away from their home in a small apartment in Marviña old town, leaving Ana in the sole care of her mother. Although her mother came from a poor working-class family in a village in Catalonia, she had a certain conceit of herself, and always stood on her dignity. She adored Ana’s elder sister, Isabella, who was everything Ana was not. Pretty, clever, socially adept. And the ten-year age difference between the girls meant that they had virtually nothing in common, sharing very little of the childhoods that were always at very different stages of development. By the time Ana was nearing the end of secondary school, Isabella was already married with two young girls of her own.
Ana was viewed almost with embarrassment by her mother, as if her deafness were somehow her own fault, contrived to reflect shame on her family. When her husband was away she frequently chastised her daughter for failing to listen or understand, shouting at her quite unnecessarily when Ana was perfectly able to hear. Then, overcome with regret, she would smother the girl with love and tears, only to revert to type when Ana next frustrated her.
It was with some trepidation that Ana received the news her father brought home with him one night that he had obtained a place for her at a voluntary centre for the deaf in Estepona. Her mother was none too pleased either. It would be like announcing to the world, she said, that their daughter was disabled. Ana herself was less than happy. She was hard of hearing, she said, not deaf. But her dad had been insistent. The centre was run by a charity, but received government money in the form of a grant from the Junta de Andalucía. They provided facilities for the visually impaired, as well as the — and he chose his words carefully — hard of hearing. But it meant that Ana would get the opportunity to learn sign language, and that could only be a good thing. Ana was not so sure.
The centre was tucked away in a back street off the Plaza de las Flores in the old town of Estepona. Ana’s father drove her there on the first evening. After parking his car he took her by the hand and led her through the square up into a gloomy side street. ‘I’ll come and get you at nine, cielo,’ he said. ‘If you like it, you can get the bus next time.’ The centre was open three evenings a week, but Ana didn’t think there would be a next time.
An unprepossessing entrance led to a dark hallway that in turn opened into a large room set with tables and chairs, a couple of settees and several old armchairs. A hatch leading to a small kitchen released the smell of freshly brewed coffee into the crowded room. A young woman with short dark hair shook her father’s hand, and then Ana’s. ‘Welcome, young lady,’ she said. ‘Your father tells me you have hearing difficulties, but that you’re not deaf.’ Ana saw her eyes wander to the hearing aids in each of her ears. She nodded. ‘Good. Then that’ll make things much easier when it comes to learning sign language. We have an instructor who comes twice a week.’ Again Ana nodded. She didn’t want to let on that she had no intention of learning sign language. It would be like admitting that she was deaf. Perhaps, she thought, there was more of her mother in her than she might have wanted.
When her father had gone the young woman led her to a table and told her that someone would come shortly to speak to her and take down all her details. Ana sat and looked around with dismay. This was a gloomy room, with scarred and damp-stained yellow-painted plaster, and there was almost nobody here, she decided, under sixty.
‘Hola, how are you doing?’
She looked up to find herself gazing into the eyes of a young man in his early twenties. A shock of unruly brown hair tumbled across a strong brow with thick, dark eyebrows. He possessed a long aquiline nose, and full lips that seemed pale set against the deep tan of his face. He was tall and quite skinny and smiled at her, and for the first time in her life Ana felt her stomach flip over.
‘I’m alright,’ she said uncertainly.
‘Good,’ he said. Then made a series of signs with his hands that left her mystified.
She shrugged helplessly.
‘You lip-read?’
She nodded. Reading lips had never been a conscious process, simply something she had learned to do over the years out of pure necessity. She said, ‘But I’m not completely deaf.’ She saw him watching her lips intently.
He said, ‘I am stone deaf. I could hear perfectly well until I was seven years old, then a virus damaged my auditory nerves and I’ve been unable to hear anything since. I don’t like to speak now, because I’m always afraid I sound like a deaf person.’ He laughed. ‘Which I am, of course. But it’s safer to sign.’ He paused. ‘Have you come to learn?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m here because my father brought me. I doubt very much if I’ll be back.’
His smile faded, replaced by a look of disappointment. ‘Oh, you must. You can’t leave me here on my own with all these old people.’
She glanced around self-consciously and he laughed again. ‘Don’t worry, they can’t hear me. They’re deaf.’ Which made her laugh, too. Of course they were. ‘Blind people come on Thursdays to learn to use the white stick. The lucky ones get guide dogs.’ He paused. ‘I sometimes wonder which is worse — being deaf or blind. But I think losing your sight would be the worst of all. I can’t imagine not being able to see the world around me.’ He glanced towards the kitchen hatch. ‘Someone will likely come and take your registration details shortly. Can I get you a coffee?’
She nodded. ‘Please.’ And she watched him cross to the hatch. He had an easy gait, and she could see from his T-shirt that he had well-developed arms and pectorals, in a wiry sort of way. He wore tight-fitting jeans, and she found her eyes drawn to the lean but well-rounded buttocks that filled the seat of them.
He returned with two mugs of black coffee. ‘I forgot to ask if you wanted black, or...’
‘I prefer it with milk.’
‘No problem.’ He set the mugs down on the table and hurried away to the kitchen, returning a few moments later with an open carton of milk. He poured milk into her coffee until a wave of her hand indicated that it was enough. But as he put the carton down he was too busy looking at her, and caught it on the edge of the table. It slipped from his grasp, and milk went cascading down the front of her blouse and over the legs of her jeans. He leapt back as if he had been burned, and her chair toppled backwards as she jumped to her feet. Both mugs of coffee went flying.
‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. Wait, I’ll get a cloth.’ He hurried off again to the kitchen.
Ana stood with milk dripping on to the floor and running in white threads through dark pools of coffee. She looked around with embarrassment, expecting all eyes to be on her. But apart from an old lady at the far side of the room, no one seemed to have noticed. The young man returned with a tea towel and began feverishly wiping it up and down the front of her blouse. Before suddenly realizing that his fingers were brushing her breasts.
‘Oh my God!’ he said again, and once more jumped back. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...’ He held out the tea towel for Ana to use for herself. ‘Honestly, it was an accident.’
Ana fought hard to keep a straight face. In truth she was furious at him for ruining her blouse and her jeans. But she had also quite enjoyed the sensation of his fingers touching her breasts. Only once before had a boy put his hands on them. It was after a school dance and he had offered to walk her home. There had been a kiss, and then his hand sliding slyly beneath her blouse. She had slapped his face.