“I want you to wait for me asleep. For you to be my sleeping beauty. This will be your punishment: only I will enjoy your body tonight.”
And Amanda obeys, knowing what he expects of her. She has changed the sheets, as she always does, and put on some new white ones. Also white is the nightgown he demands for this game. White are the pills she must take so that when he arrives he will find her deep in sleep and enjoy her unconscious body as he pleases.
She takes them sitting on her bed, with a glass of water. From previous occasions she knows the necessary quantity. He will be annoyed if she wakes midway through the game. It happened the first time and he was so upset Amanda decided not to fail him again. She lies down and lets herself be caressed by sleep; she imagines what he will do while she’s asleep … She sees him naked, handcuffing her still arms, treating her body as the beautiful piece of flesh it is. She is about to lose consciousness when she hears the door of her bedroom opening. It’s not her fault if the pills haven’t fully taken effect yet; her eyes are closed, her body is heavy and, although she feels as if she is sleeping, she feels hands grabbing her shoulders and sitting her up.
Amanda knows she should be asleep. So she doesn’t resist when she notices the hands opening her mouth and starting to give her pills, and then water, and more pills. With the little strength left to her she manages to swallow, and the last thing she thinks is that Saúl will be happy and will stay the night. So she can see him when the game is over, when she regains consciousness. When she awakens …
LEIRE
25
“You were asleep and I didn’t want to wake you. I have to go. See you soon. Kisses. T. And look after the Gremlin.”
The note was on the nightstand when Leire returned to the world after an unusually long Sunday siesta. She’d gone to lie down around half past three, convinced that she wouldn’t sleep more than thirty minutes, but having read the note and looked at her watch she realized it was almost six; taking into account that it was the time the AVE departed, Tomás had left some time ago. Too dazed to react quickly, she remained seated on the bed, feet on the floor, debating whether to go back to sleep or restart the day halfway through the evening. In the end she opted for the latter, above all because, although it seemed strange, she was hungry again. The Gremlin, as Tomás called him, provoked a voracious appetite in her at unexpected moments. Or, more accurately, at almost every moment. A little later, after wolfing down a couple of cheese sandwiches and eating a bit of fruit, she felt more alert, as if instead of an afternoon snack she’d breakfasted and had the whole day ahead of her. That only five hours remained of the day didn’t worry her too much; she was beginning to get used to the anarchy of not having schedules and doing what she liked. “Take advantage of it now. When the little one is born he’ll be the one calling the shots,” her mother had said to her. It seemed curious to Leire that no one referred to him as Abel, a name decided months before: to her mother he was “the little one”; “the Gremlin” to Tomás; and “the baby” to her friend María. On the other hand, she thought of him with his name, maybe to get used to the idea that very soon someone so named would occupy a space outside her body; someone who would be a sleepyhead or a crybaby, or both, someone with their own body and personality.
That weekend Leire and Tomás had again discussed the subject of how things would be once Abel abandoned his shelter and launched himself into the world. In fact, it was Tomás who had brought the subject up, suddenly and in a casual voice, as if it were all overwhelmingly obvious.
“I’ll have to start looking for an apartment here,” he’d said just before bed the night before. “I can’t be a squatting father forever.”
“You’re going to move to Barcelona?” she asked him, not sure she’d heard right.
“It’s the most practical thing, don’t you think? I’ll have to keep on traveling a lot-you know what my work is like-but as I have to rent a place, it’s only logical for it to be in the same city as my son.”
It was the first time he had expressed himself in those words and Leire felt overcome with an absurd feeling of gratitude, which she struggled against, similar to one she’d experienced on Friday night when he arrived. Although she wasn’t completely sure of her feelings toward Tomás, Leire had looked at herself in the hall mirror just before he appeared and saw herself as huge, like a Botero model. The idea that all pregnant women are beautiful had never sat well with her, so she almost burst into tears when, just in the door, he dropped his suitcase, practically leapt on her and, resting his hands on her breasts, murmured something like, “You’ll let me, won’t you? I spent the whole journey wanting to do it. They’re glorious.”
Then he focused on caressing and licking them, as if she were a porn queen and he her most devoted and aroused admirer.
“Well, what do you think? Will you be able to stand living less than ten kilometers from me?” he asked, eyes smiling. “I promise not to raid your fridge.”
Leire nodded, vaguely conscious that logically it made more sense for Tomás to move in with her and Abel instead of looking for his own apartment. But if he was expecting her to suggest that, he had the sense not to mention it. And of course she didn’t. The offer, or rather the absence of one, hovered over them both all Sunday morning like a UFO, and after lunch acquired such solidity in the air that Leire went to bed for a while to ignore it.
She dressed as if she were going out, though leaning out on the balcony she was struck by doubt. The weather had been terrible all weekend and, although it wasn’t raining just then, the cold air stung her cheeks. Bad-tempered because of this indecision that seemed to cover even the most trivial aspects of her life, an insecurity new to her, it suddenly occurred to her that Ruth Valldaura would have known what to do. It was an absurd, inappropriate thought, but one of which she was absolutely convinced. Ruth, who had decided to go and live with Héctor Salgado when she was little more than twenty, who had had a child at twenty-five, who at thirty-eight had separated to begin a different emotional life, taking that child with her, didn’t give the impression of being an indecisive person. Maybe therein lay her charm, looking at the photos again: the apparent tranquility was hiding an iron will, the capacity to exchange a well-trodden road for another less certain, without rejecting those left behind. As far as she knew, Ruth had managed to maintain good relationships with her parents, her ex-husband, her son. People little given to praise, like Martina Andreu and Superintendent Savall himself, had been affected when the news of her disappearance broke six months ago. And not only because of the esteem they felt for Héctor, but because of her. Because of Ruth. And even when Carol had mentioned she thought she’d end up leaving her, she’d done so sadly, not with hatred. “Love creates eternal debts.”
You were brave, Ruth Valldaura, she said to the photo. What else did you do of your own accord? Why had you written down the doctor’s address? That, at least, she might soon know. The good thing about her position, an officer on leave, was that she still had friends in various places, and simultaneously had a lot of free time. So, after finding the scrap of paper with Omar’s address, she’d pulled some strings. It hadn’t taken too much to get an acquaintance at the Brians 2 prison to allow her special permission to interrogate Damián Fernández-the lawyer who had killed Omar and had already spent a few months inside waiting for the case to come to court-in private. The following day, Monday afternoon at four, she could speak to him.