The answer had been so sharp that, even sitting down, Leire leaned backward.
Leire stood up as quickly as her enormous belly allowed. Señora Martorell’s telling-off was by far the worst she’d had in years. Perhaps it was due to wounded pride, or maybe it was about finding a dignified exit to this visit, but when she was already on her feet, she asked: “You said before that no mother is too surprised by what a child does, and I assume by that you meant you knew Ruth well. Was there any other girl in her life? I’m talking about years ago, when Ruth was very young and still lived here.” She asked thinking of the little girl in the photo, the figure on the cliff, though with little hope of getting an answer.
Señora Martorell fixed her eyes on her, as if all of a sudden that pregnant young woman had finally said something sensible.
“Of course there was. Her name was Patricia, Patricia Alzina. She was in Ruth’s rhythmic gymnastics class. And her best friend.”
“And what happened?”
Montserrat Martorell looked away, half-closed her eyes and answered in a neutral voice, less indifferent than she would have liked.
“Patricia died aged eighteen in a car accident. She was returning from Sitges after spending a few days at home. She was an inexperienced driver and lost control of the car. She came off the highway in the Garraf mountains.”
GASPAR
15
With a brusque swipe, César turned off the car radio. On this part of the highway, dotted with bends, there was constant interference and the half sentences put him on edge. Moreover, neither was he in the mood to be interested in a sports panel in which the commentators dissected the lineups and analyzed the shots with the same caustic tone the panelists on a gossip program would use.
He needed silence. An absolute silence that would allow him to think about everything that was happening. About Sara, about Gaspar, the strangled dogs and, in another area, about Emma and the risk that spoiled brat posed to his relationship with Sílvia. Too many problems, he said to himself, as he moved into second to approach the next bend on the secondary road that led to the small town of Torrelles de Llobregat, where Octavi Pujades lived. All for him, thought César. He’d never understood people who complicated their lives by going to live far away from the city just to have a house with no neighbors, to enjoy this absurd peace which would end up destroying their nerves. He hadn’t even arrived and already felt daunted by the return journey on this highway through the forest. A forest hidden then by darkness, but which he guessed to be dense, threatening.
The headlights of another vehicle moving in the opposite direction warned him with a couple of flashes that he had his lights on full beam. He hadn’t even noticed and changed them immediately. From then on he moved more slowly: he could see only a few meters ahead and this made him uneasy. He was a careful, cautious man and he’d learned the best way to go through life without unpleasant surprises was to take things calmly and prevent problems. See them coming. For this reason he was going to speak to Octavi behind Sílvia’s back. There were few people César could trust, but the finance director was one of them. Because of his age, his knowledge, even his life experience, he considered his opinion worth taking into account. He trusted him much more than show-off Arjona, for example, among other reasons because deep down he’d never trusted those who deviate from the norm and also make a big deal about it. He wasn’t a bad guy-each to their own in the bedroom-yet this fact traced an invisible line that, along with Brais Arjona’s arrogant self-sufficiency, made him insecure. As if he were a vulgar individual, an anodyne, limited fortysomething. And best not to speak of the others: Amanda was a child and the guy from the lab couldn’t be any weirder. There was Sílvia, of course, and he’d spoken in full and at length about it all with her, to the point of exhaustion, but César had the impression that to clarify his ideas he needed to chat with an older, responsible man. Someone solid.
Suddenly a small animal crossed the highway and César swerved out of pure instinct. Damned forest, he thought. Damned shadows. Damned dead dogs.
He is too tired for the road. He has reached the steepest stretch and just at that moment the sky suddenly darkens. It’s a cloud so sudden, so dense, that the day is extinguished before his eyes, as if in the presence of an eclipse or the effects of a biblical curse. Then, little by little, the sun recoups its strength to assert itself in the struggle and once again show its power. It is then, alone in the middle of the field extending as far as his eyes can see, that he realizes the wooden shed, the same one drawn on the stupid map they gave them in the house before leaving, is five hundred meters away. Beside a solitary tree, with a sturdy trunk and branches. César is puffing, tired, and notices his mouth filling with a bitter saliva, more like a Sunday hangover than a Saturday morning in the country. Fucking nature, he grumbles almost out loud. Fucking team-building. As if he hadn’t spent years organizing human resources for the warehouse. As if these instructors would teach him anything he didn’t already know.
He looks behind: his colleagues will take at least ten minutes to arrive, so he can stop there, as a mark of respect for the group and to take a rest. He’s run too much, he thinks as he waits, satisfied by being the first to arrive. For once this weekend he’s beaten Brais Arjona. It seems competitiveness is one of the few attributes that don’t weaken after the age of forty.
Four and four, those were the directions the instructor gave them this morning. A quick draw. Eight numbered scraps of paper put into a bag: he, Gaspar, Manel and Sara had taken out even numbers; Brais, Amanda, Sílvia and Octavi the odds. Each member of the team had been given various envelopes with clues marking two different routes with the same final objective. A real wonder of imagination on the part of the organizers, a cabinet of recruitment and development personnel earning money on every one of those envelopes as if the secret formula of Coca-Cola were hidden inside them. Well, here he is: a plain extends before his eyes and straight ahead, silhouetted against some dry, earthy mountains, is the damned cabin. Or the shed, or whatever the hell those four badly assembled logs are, where according to clue number seven, which Sara read aloud, the “loot” is to be found.
A loot his team will reach, if all goes well, before Brais’s. He doesn’t understand why it pisses him off so much that the brand manager is shining on these away days, which really aren’t important. But it does piss him off, a lot, that the previous day Brais Arjona turned out to be the fastest, most mentally agile … in short, the cleverest. Even beating Octavi and Sílvia in solving problems of logic-a diabolical form of entertainment dreamed up by those repugnant instructors. Then, what he’d been led to believe was a canoe trip, a purely fun, calm activity, had become a race when Brais, rowing with Amanda, had insisted on challenging him and Sílvia. She’d accepted, not thinking anything of it and, as expected, they’d lost spectacularly. In fact, halfway through their canoe had started to move in circles instead of in a straight line, and when they finally righted it and got to the opposite bank they’d had to endure Arjona’s wolfish smile and Sílvia’s own comment: “I know who I need to go with in the next test.” Well fine, luck has decided she’s on Brais’s team, but that doesn’t mean victory.
He hears footsteps and turns to the top of the trail. It’s Gaspar, the finance-department guy, who, like him earlier, is climbing laboriously up the slope. César doesn’t know him very well-that’s one of the criteria the company considers when choosing people for these away days-but in the day and a half they’ve spent together he’s been getting on well with him. The worst that could be said of him is that he’s a little dull. Bland. He extends his hand to him to help him cover the last bit of the track.