I smiled. ‘Something like that. It can, in fact, be a bit creepy. But that’s part of the fascination. Once, when I merged the photos, I looked exactly like my sister. It was uncanny. It was like. . I felt like I was seeing her ghost.’
I sensed she was curious enough to be my next subject, but I thought it shrewd to wait a while, let her come around in her own time.
Alicia kept seeing Halid, though still no more than once a week. The sex was exciting, yet she never felt any danger that it would lead to more than that, that they would fall for each other. She became friendlier with a short, dark-haired girl from the restaurant called Monica, who was working there for a while before moving to London, where her boyfriend had gone some months previously. ‘I haven’t been entirely faithful to him,’ Monica told Alicia one night when they were having a beer in the restaurant after closing up.
‘Has he been faithful to you?’ asked Alicia.
Monica shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t want to know. It’s something we talked about, that it might happen, and if it did, it’s better not to know. Anyway, I think about this question, and you know, I reached the conclusion that there is a higher law than monogamy. A higher law than monogamy and fidelity. Sometimes it seems to me that the sin is not to be unfaithful, but to not be unfaithful. I mean, in certain situations.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ said Alicia.
‘I don’t know,’ said Monica, laughing. ‘Sometimes.’
Monica took Alicia out clubbing. They would meet beforehand at Monica’s apartment to drink a couple of beers and smoke some grass with her friends, who gamely encouraged Alicia’s middling Spanish and fledgling Catalan. One night they took Ecstasy before they headed out to the club. Alicia had only ever tried the drug once, years earlier, but it had been an ugly night that ended in an awful fight with her ex-boyfriend, who had grown jealous. This time, with Monica, the drug carried Alicia on to a plateau of bliss that, at twenty-nine, she was astonished to have never before attained or even suspected was pos-sible. The club was a cavern of white lights, where beautiful bodies twisted to music that sounded richer and deeper than any Alicia had ever heard. She smiled at everyone, radiating goodwill. She forgave her ex all his lies and lack of self-control. She remembered Monica’s talk of a higher law and saw how it might be true. Dancing, she closed her eyes and felt herself into her ex-boyfriend’s body, into his mind, when he had made love to another woman. She felt very near to him. Monica appeared out of the crowd and put her arms on Alicia’s shoulders. Alicia turned to her, grinning, and they kissed one another on the lips. Monica laughed and merged back into the crowd. Later, the two of them were dancing with a tall, slim young man who had his shirt buttoned low and dark hair on his chest, a grey-black trilby on his head. The girls took more Ecstasy and gave one to the guy. Then the three of them were in a taxi, laughing, kissing, pointing out the window. Whenever the man had nothing to say, he laughed and slapped his thigh, and put his arm around either Monica or Alicia’s waist. He took a selfie of the three of them in the back of the cab. At Monica’s place, she put on some music and they all got into bed together. The curtains were open and blue light from the street illumined their bodies. As they caressed one another, Alicia found she mostly wanted to kiss Monica, but Monica kept kissing the young guy. Alicia either couldn’t remember his name or had never learned it in the first place. Grinning, the man asked the girls to kiss one another while he jerked off. Then he licked Alicia out while Monica sucked and kneaded Alicia’s breasts. He wanted to take another selfie of the three of them in the bed, but Monica chucked his phone on to a pile of clothes by the window and started to suck him off. At several points the situation became precarious as one of the girls began to laugh; the man then had to coax them into continuing through caresses and whispers. As the night trailed on in a pornographic blur, Alicia found that Monica and the young man were becoming exclusively concerned with one another. The man was now on his knees and licking Monica out while she clasped her tits in her palms, moaning softly. His dick had gone limp but he jerked it off till it hardened again. Alicia was about to get up to leave, but the guy reached out, not raising his face from Monica’s cunt, and drew her in. He guided her hand behind him, gesturing for Alicia to penetrate him with her finger. She did, and as he kept licking Monica out, the young man whimpered and growled, still pulling himself off with one hand. Monica came loudly. Then the young man came — Alicia could feel his sphincter throbbing against her knuckle. He folded down on to Monica’s belly with a shudder, sliding off Alicia’s finger. He and Monica lay coiled together like that, their fingers entwined. A few moments later, quietly rising from the bed to leave the room, Alicia saw that dark brown spots of shit were flecked over a portion of the sheets. They looked like blood.
She sat out on the sitting-room balcony with the lights off, thinking about what had happened. Now and then she could hear noises coming through the wall from the bedroom. Across the city, a plane was flying low and she watched till it vanished beneath the skyline. She made herself a cup of camomile tea. Soon it was dawn. Alicia showered and got back into her clothes, which were pungent with chemical sweat. Then she quietly opened the bedroom door and looked at the couple — they were naked and sleeping like infants, hand in hand on the strewn and spotted bedding. Alicia closed the door and left the apartment. She hailed a taxi on the awakening street and went home.
In October, Alicia received an email from her ex-boyfriend — the first time he had contacted her since the separation. He said he was sorry, profoundly sorry; he said he had been looking deeply into himself and at the pain he had caused, not only to her but throughout his life to those who loved him, and was ready to change. He said he wanted her back. He said he fully understood why she had left, and would never hold it against her, but now things would be different. He said he was ready to be a father, if that was what she wanted.
For days after reading the email, Alicia’s emotions were in turmoil. Suddenly it seemed so appealing: to get out of Barcelona, this city she had landed in with no purpose other than to be away from Dublin; to go back to the life she’d had before, but altered now, with greater power on her side. Then the weekend came, and she met Halid for a drink. They drank more than usual, laughed easily, and talked more intimately than ever — lacking any sense of consequence, Alicia felt she could be as honest as she liked with Halid. She told him about her ex, his affairs and one-night stands, how she no longer believed there was one person with whom you ought to share your life, but perhaps many, or no one in particular.
‘Were you ever unfaithful to your boyfriend?’ Halid asked.
Alicia trailed a painted fingernail down the side of her cocktail glass. ‘Once,’ she said.
‘And did he know about it?’
‘No. I never told him, even after I found out all he had done on me. Of course I considered telling him out of revenge, but I realised I just didn’t want to. It was with one of his best friends, years ago now. It was just one night.’
‘And do you regret it?’ Halid asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not then, really, and definitely not now.’
They took a taxi to Halid’s place. At a certain point in the night, her brow mussed with sweat, Alicia leaned her face in close to Halid’s. She said to him, ‘There’s a thing I’ve always fantasised about doing, about a man doing to me, but I’ve always been too embarrassed to tell anyone.’
Halid grinned. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
The following morning, for the first time, Alicia felt tempted to stay for breakfast, maybe to go for a coffee and read the papers with Halid, then walk with him in the park or to the weekend market. She resisted the temptation. When she got back to her apartment, she deleted the email from her ex: she would stay in Barcelona for another year, maybe longer, maybe a lifetime. In the middle of the following week, she called Halid and explained that they would not be seeing one another again. Halid sounded deflated, but said he understood.