All Yours (2 page)

So I went home. It seemed the most sensible thing to do.

2

“Hello… Paula?”

“Yes, who’s that?”

“Lali…”

“Oh, I didn’t recognize your voice. I’m still half asleep.”

“…”

“You’re crying.”

“No, I was, but not now.”

“Have you spoken to your dad?”

“No, I don’t know if I am going to speak to him. Did you see what a prick he was today?”

“Well, if I’m honest…”

“Nothing was right for him.”

“Is he always like that?”

“No, not always. But this trip’s made him really jumpy.”

“He’s worried, poor thing.”

“Yes. If we go by plane, he’s worried about the plane; if we go by coach, he’s worried about the coach.”

“It’s not that, babe. Your old man’s worried you’re going to get laid. Poor guy!”

“Piss off!”

“It’s a joke! But you’ve got to admit it’s quite funny…”

“It’s not funny to me.”

“Go on, you may as well laugh. You’ve spent all day crying.”

“I’ve got my reasons.”

“Yes, I know.”

“…”

“What about talking to your mum?”

“No way. She’s irrelevant to me.”

“OK, but you’ve got to speak to someone.”

“…”

“…”

“I thought of calling Iván.”

“No, not that again, please. You tried that already and it was a disaster.”

“…”

“Oh, don’t cry…”

“…”

“Right, so don’t tell anyone. Leave it until after the trip, OK?”

“It’s going to kill my father.”

“Well it’s better for him to die after the trip.”

“Don’t, you’re making me laugh…”

“Promise me that you won’t call Iván.”

“…”

“Go on, promise.”

“OK. Bye.”

“Bye.”

3

On the way home it began to rain. A downpour, in fact. The windscreen wipers went back and forth, but they couldn’t shift such a quantity of water. To make matters worse, the left-hand one wasn’t working properly. I had to struggle to see anything at all. I cursed the rain – then almost immediately saw an advantage to it (I’m someone who likes seeing the good side of things). If it rained, all trace of the accident would be washed away and that would be a great help to Ernesto. To everyone.

I glanced into the rear-view mirror. The road was empty. I asked myself what Ernesto could be doing. It never even crossed my mind that he might have gone to the police to tell them what had happened. I mean, why wash your dirty linen in public? An accident’s an accident. If Ernesto went to the police, they would ask him too many awkward questions. Why had he arranged to meet a girl in the Palermo Woods? Why had they argued? What was the nature of their relationship? Awkward and, at the end of the day, unhelpful. Truelove was dead, after all. There are no guilty parties in an accident, just victims. And in this accident there had been two victims. One of them the dead woman, for whom, at this stage, it was pointless to concern oneself. The other, Ernesto, who now found himself embroiled in a sorry tale. No, he certainly would not have gone to the police. The fact is that the only living witnesses to the events of that night were Ernesto and myself. We both knew that this was an episode in which nobody was to blame for anything. This kind of guilt is fatherless, as my father used to say, it’s like a bastard child. And my mother used to counter: “The only bastard round here is you.”

What Ernesto and I had to do now was try to put this episode behind us and move on. I was going to say as much to Ernesto, as soon as he told me what had happened. I was all prepared – I had even rehearsed the words. And he must be desperate to tell me everything. I knew him so well! We always told each other everything. We had been together since we were nineteen years old. Well, perhaps not absolutely everything. Some things are too trivial to share, or are better left unsaid, in order to spare the other person’s feelings. Because a relationship needs constant attention, otherwise cohabitation would kill you. Anyway, up until then he had never spoken to me about Truelove, understandably, and I’m grateful for that. As I said before, he obviously wanted to spare my feelings. And his silence was also an indication that this affair was nothing important. If it had been, Ernesto would have told me upfront, he would have spelled it out and then he would have left me. Ernesto’s not good at hiding things. Neither am I.

I got home, parked the car in the garage and dried it off. It would have been difficult to justify its being wet and I didn’t want to have to make something up – some midnight dash to the chemists and so on. It would have been tasteless to invent excuses on such a night. Anyway, I hate making things up. It always shows on my face.

I went upstairs. Lali was asleep. That was a relief: the less she knew about movements in the house that night, the better.

4

“Hello…”

“…”

“Hello!”

“Is Iván there?”

“Who’s speaking?”

“A friend of his.”

“My son’s friends have names.”

“Laura…”

“Laura – or Lali?”

“Yes…”

“Iván’s here but he can’t speak to you now. He’s asleep.”

“Oh, I see…”

“Wait – don’t hang up! Iván’s told me everything. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“I’m really very sorry for you, for what you’re going through.”

“…”

“I’m a woman and I understand, do you see?”

“…”

“And of course it can’t be easy.”

“…”

“But it’s as a woman that I’m going to tell you this: stop calling Iván. This problem is yours alone…”

“…”

“And look, as I said to Ivi, I have no doubt that you’re a well-intentioned girl and that this has been an accident – do you understand?”

“…”

“Because other people might have cause to doubt that.”

“…”

“But, basically, you’re going to have to take responsibility for your mistake.”

“…”

“Because it was
your
mistake – we agree on that, don’t we?”

“…”

“My son didn’t know there was any chance of that happening. If you don’t tell him, how could he know?”

“I…”

“It’s always up to the woman to say.”

“…”

“You and I both know that what you did was underhand, don’t we?”

“But I…”

“I don’t know what your parents will have to say about this; I don’t know them. I don’t want to know them either, don’t get me wrong. But, as Iván’s mother, I’m very clear about what’s happened, and I want you to leave my son alone. Do you understand, dear?”

“…”

“And if your parents have anything to say about it, they can call me or my husband directly. Because if you, or anyone from your family, persist in bothering my son, I’m going to have to involve the police.”

“…”

“Are you still there?”

“Yes, but I have to go now.” “It’s lucky you rang and we were able to clear the air, isn’t it?”

“I have to hang up.”

“Look after yourself and don’t ring again.”

“…”

“Bye, dear.”

“…”

5

I went to my room. I was dying to know what Ernesto was doing at that moment. Having dismissed the likelihood of his going to the police, I wondered if perhaps he had decided to drag the body down to the lake. So that he could throw it in. That would complicate the job of anyone charged with investigating the – at this stage – possible disappearance of Truelove. That really was a good idea! If I could, I would have rung Ernesto to suggest it. But of course I couldn’t. He had no idea that I was also caught up in this business. It crossed my mind to use the same strategy I employed for birthdays: a kind of induced free association. “Ernesto, last night you were in my dream. I dreamed that you gave me a burgundy-coloured leather jacket like the one they’re selling in unit three on the ground floor of Galerías Pacífico. It was a lovely dream, believe me. Size forty-two.” Only that in this case, I would have had to ring him and say: “Darling, sorry to bother you but I had a terrible nightmare – I saw you dragging a body into the Palermo lake.” Too far-fetched; he would know that I was onto him.

I had to stay calm, and that wasn’t easy. I realized that I was agitated. I didn’t know what to do with myself and I’m someone who always knows what to do, I’m very clear about everything. But that night confusion reigned. It’s not every day that you witness a woman being killed, especially not by your own husband. Put that way, “kill” does sound rather stark, with overtones of finger-wagging and school-marms. “Causing an accident” might be a more appropriate way to put it. Or even “pushing someone and accidentally breaking her neck”. Then again, neckbreaking isn’t a very happy image, either. “Manslaughter” has a better ring. I had already looked that one up in a dictionary, the previous week, just in case. For her to die as a result of manslaughter was something quite different. Because Ernesto had not placed the tree trunk there for Truelove to crash her head against. It was Fate that decreed the woman should die that way. Or God. Actually I do believe in these things. And I respect them. And I look for the message. Because why did that woman end up breaking her neck in the woods of Palermo and not strolling with my husband through Recoleta? There’s a reason for these things.

But to come back to the question of my confusion – because I was pretty clear about the accident and who was to blame – what I found difficult was deciding whether to wait for Ernesto in bed and pretend to be asleep or to wait downstairs in the living room. Because if Ernesto came home, as I imagined he would, desperate to tell me what had happened only to find me asleep, perhaps he would not dare wake me up. If he found me awake, on the other hand, how would I explain the fact that I was up? It would be at least one o’clock in the morning and I’m usually sleeping like a log by ten (funny that “log” should be the first word to come to mind).

I put on my pyjamas and got into bed. I couldn’t get comfortable, tossing and turning from one side to the other. I tried to relax. Deep breaths and all that. No use. I got up and went down to the living room. I sat in the armchair. The rain was coming down even harder. I imagined how muddy it would be in Palermo by now. I thought of Ernesto driving around in his car trying to get things straight in his mind. I imagined him on the road to our house, driving through that downpour. Then I remembered the windscreen wipers, the ones on my car. That one that didn’t work and which I should have changed months ago. The left-hand-side one. And I said to myself, “I may as well do something useful while I’m waiting.” So I went to the garage to change the wipers. Ernesto always keeps a supply of spare parts. Spark plugs, fuses, that kind of thing. I know a bit about mechanics, but he doesn’t know that I do because cars are a man’s thing and – as my mother used to say – the minute you change so much as a washer you’ve had it, because they start thinking you’re a qualified plumber and won’t go near a screwdriver even if the house is under two feet of water. I opened the box where Ernesto kept the spare parts and rummaged around in it. The wipers were at the bottom. OK, not right at the bottom, but when I took them out I spotted an envelope which, obviously, I felt compelled to take out and open. Because I’m very intuitive and I knew that I should open it. And what was inside? More letters from Truelove! With Truelove’s lipstick. “What kind of soul-baring requires so much bloody correspondence?!” I thought. I read the letters. They were stomach-churning. “This man is one prize idiot,” I thought. “He’s left the evidence of his affair all over the house.”

I threw the wipers to one side and decided to go back and conduct a thorough search of the house. I’d been going through his pockets, briefcase and desk drawers for a while, but the spare parts box had never even entered into my thinking. This time I shook out books, pulled apart balled-up socks, removed the bottoms of suitcases and bags. All I found was a wallet photograph of Ernesto, impressed with Truelove’s lipstick marks. Inside a box of condoms. The photo was inscribed “These are for us to enjoy together”. That was the moment when I knew why God had placed that tree trunk where He had. I put the photo and the condoms away with the material I had found during the first search, carried out a few weeks earlier. It crossed my mind to burn everything before Ernesto returned. Given the circumstances, it was too dangerous to risk someone finding them. But – I don’t know why – I decided to keep them. You never know. Ages ago, in the days before I had opened my little bank account, I had created a secret cache in the garage. It was a really tidy job: I’d loosened a brick, split it down the middle and returned it to the same spot. But this time only half the brick. With some lovely dollar bills hidden behind it, of course. Those lovely bills are in a safer place now. “God knows how this sordid story will end!” I thought, as I folded up the photographs and the love notes so that they would fit.

At that very moment Ernesto arrived. I ducked down behind my car so that he wouldn’t see me. I thought it would be a bit much for him to step out of his car and find me there in the garage. He would feel spied upon. Better give him some breathing space before I said my piece. Perhaps he needed a whisky, a little TLC. I don’t know – something to put him at his ease. Then would come the talk, the disburdening, the relief. Ernesto got out of the car and I gave him enough time to go upstairs. I knew very well what I needed to do: go to the kitchen and warm up some milk. Then go upstairs and say: “Hello, darling, I couldn’t sleep. Is everything all right?”

Before leaving the garage I stopped to examine Ernesto’s car. There was mud on it up to the handle. It was obvious that, for a while at least, I was going to have to think for both of us.

6

Material photocopied from a Spanish book on forensic practice, found on the bedside table of Inés Pereyra. Notes that were written in the margin and at the foot of the page have been placed in brackets and incorporated into a transcript of the original, which follows.

Forensic scientists begin an investigation by collecting soil from the crime scene and adjoining areas. While it may not constitute evidence in itself, a sample of this soil is always taken by scientists when conducting an inspection to gather evidence. Modern forensic science makes use of very precise techniques to find traces of soil on a suspect’s clothes or vehicle.
(NB, wash clothes ASAP!)