The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman (35 page)

The team would have to be made up of Spaniards, of course, given the fact that the Heredia family's skills in English left a lot to be desired. They would have to be completely trustworthy, capable
of keeping a secret of this size completely under their hats, competent, with knowledge of literature, discreet, and personally committed to the Craftsman publishing house to the point of feeling that its successes and failures were their own.

People like Berta Quiñones, Asunción Contreras, Gabriela Fernández, and Soleá Abad Heredia. The
Librarte
girls.

And, of course, a solid man from Craftsman & Co. to lead the project. A young man with a promising future and the desire to prove his worth. Someone who couldn't sit around waiting for Bestman to retire before he carved out a future for himself in the publishing world: his son Atticus, of course, whom Marlow mentally designated that very moment as head of Craftsman & Co.'s new secret and special operations team.

Who knew the soul of the Heredia family better than him? Who else knew how to caress it more tenderly? Who was capable of touching Remedios's heart? Who, as it happened, was going to be the father of Hemingway's great-great-grandchildren?

“Well, this is my Soleá's dowry,” said Remedios. “You can do what you want with it all. Take it to England if you like.”

Marlow wished he could have told the old woman that the value of this literary find exceeded all his expectations. All the money in the world couldn't repay her, but he would ensure she received regular royalty checks for the intellectual rights. She would be rich and famous, the memory of her mother would be extolled, and the name Heredia would go down in history, forever linked to Hemingway.

But instead of words that would've been totally incomprehensible to the old woman, he decided to use the universal language of shared tears.

Marlow Craftsman and Remedios Heredia drew each other close, in a hug capable of going beyond borders, formalities, cultures, distances, explanations, and conventions. That's how Atticus and Soleá found them after searching for them all over the house: inexplicably clinging to each other on the attic floor.

CHAPTER 54

W
hen Moira Craftsman managed to compose herself after the excesses of lovemaking and restore some dignity to her immaculate appearance, she remembered that she had dreamed about Atticus again that night. This time, instead of a cauldron of boiling water, it was a stretcher made of sticks bound together with twine that the natives were using to drag her son out of the jungle while he, sickly, feverish, wide-eyed, and dripping with sweat, was shouting, “Love, love!”

Her powers of analysis and her compulsive reading of Freud's
Interpretation of Dreams
led her to the only possible conclusion: that instead of spending this Christmas at home in Kent, Atticus would stay in the heart of Spanish darkness, adopted by the exotic tribe of the Heredia cousins, their rustic drums, unfamiliar Christmas songs, processions, and vigils. He wouldn't eat roast beef and Christmas pudding, he would eat stew and marzipan. He wouldn't spend the morning listening to the Berlin Philharmonic's concert, he would spend it sleeping off the excesses of the night before, and he wouldn't get a new Burberry coat as a present, he would get all the albums Camarón de la Isla ever recorded.

She switched on her phone and dialed a number. She waited.

“Holden, darling?”

“Mum?”

“I'm calling because I've finally found out what your brother will be doing for Christmas. I'm so sorry it's taken this long,” she said. “We can put your parents-in-law in Atticus's room after all.”

“You've found him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he all right?”

“Absolutely,” she managed to say with a shaky voice.

And she hung up quickly, so Holden couldn't ask her any more awkward questions.

•  •  •

In the end, they did all have very different Christmases that year: Marlow and Moira Craftsman returned to England on an Iberia flight, and for the first time in their lives they tried Galician octopus with peppers, a dish that the rest of the (Spanish) passengers devoured enthusiastically but that they chewed cautiously before spitting back into their napkins.

Manchego invited Berta to Nieva de Cameros and introduced her to his parents as his official girlfriend, which they couldn't believe. Either Berta had some hidden charms or their son's sudden love for a rather plain fifty-something woman was the result of witchcraft. It was best not to think what those hidden charms might be. It was best not to think about what kind of witch might be responsible.

Asunción took charge of returning the office to its former glory. At least the computers were still there, the photocopier still worked, and they still had time to pay the rent. The only thing
that needed to change was the sign on the door. It wouldn't be the
Librarte
office anymore, it was now the headquarters of H&H, the name uniting the surnames Hemingway and Heredia, and under Atticus Craftsman's leadership, the new organization would study the literary find of the century. Atticus and Soleá would do the fieldwork in Granada, and then Berta, Asunción, and Gaby would document and edit everything in Madrid.

After a jury in Granada found Barbosa guilty of kidnapping, evading arrest, intent to kill, and a whole load of other crimes, he was condemned to ten years' imprisonment and sent to El Puerto penal colony, the farthest possible from María, on Inspector Manchego's recommendation, since she was a key witness in the case and implicated therein, as demonstrated by the knife wound on her right shoulder.

María returned to Madrid in quite a state; her nerves were shot and her soul destroyed. She stood in front of Bernabé with her head hanging, feeling sorry and ashamed. She told him that for about a year she had been stealing money from
Librarte.
That at first it had just been small amounts, but that those amounts got steadily larger, which explained the expensive bags and the fur coats, and the gifts for the kids, the trendy sneakers and the plasma TV. That she hadn't sold the land in Valencia like she had told him—not that it mattered now, because in all likelihood the judge would order all her assets to be seized, so the little bit of land practically belonged to the bank already, as well as the money she would have to save over the next few years to repay
Librarte.
She also told him that she would probably be sentenced to between three and six months in Yeserías prison, and that she would rather the kids didn't see her in there. She asked him to tell them she was off traveling, a kind of half lie because she did
have to travel to get from her house to Yeserías, and that she loved them and missed them a lot.

She also told Bernabé about Barbosa, but presented him as a partner in crime rather than a lover. She explained that it had been the Pirate's idea, after she mistakenly paid him twice for the same invoice, and everything started from there, they split everything down the middle, like Bonnie and Clyde, but without the sex. Definitely no sex. She explained as well that at one point she had got scared because she wanted to stop stealing, but he made her carry on, threatening to harm the kids if she told on him, so she had no choice but to continue doing wrong without benefiting from the thefts. By the end he was keeping everything. All she had left was her fear.

And that was true. It was almost entirely true.

Strangely, the flame of María and Bernabé's lost love was rekindled in prison. For some mysterious reason, on the three or four times they were allowed to be alone in the small cell in Yeserías, their passion was so devastating that it smashed through concrete walls, and behind them lay a white sandy beach, a perfectly tranquil sea, a full moon, and a starry sky.

So when, at the beginning of May, her four-and-a-half-month sentence complete, María breathed her first lungful of freedom and found Berta, Asunción, Soleá, and Gaby waiting for her outside with their arms full of flowers, hugs, and forgiveness, the first thing she did was tell them about her unexpected pregnancy, a child conceived behind bars, oh well, we'll tell everyone it was on a beach down south.

“We'll have to go together to buy maternity dresses for Berta's wedding,” said Gaby suddenly and to everyone's surprise.

“You too, honey?”

“Yes! Me too, María, just like you! Due in December.”

They hugged long and hard, jumping and laughing hysterically. There was no pretty garden to sit in and tell each other the details, so the five members of the
Librarte
team sat in the shade of a maple tree in the first green space they came across, at the junction of two roads.

“It was a few months ago, right, Asunción? Franklin told me that he wanted to go back to Argentina. He said he thought it would be best for both of us,” said Gaby. “He even bought a ticket.”

“But, sweetie,” said Berta in shock, “there's no couple in the world more in love than you two. What had got into him?”

“I had,” said Gaby. “I wouldn't stop going on about having children, I didn't talk about anything else. I made him read books about pregnancy, take vitamins, make love in the weirdest positions, have heaps of tests. I was so obsessed with having a baby that I couldn't see what was in front of my eyes. Poor Franklin started thinking that we could never have kids.”

“So he thought that you could get on with it if he left,” said María.

“That's when I spoke to Asunción,” said Gaby, nodding toward her friend, “and she gave me the key to everything. I went home, found him crying, I threw him onto the bed—”

“Okay, okay,” interrupted Berta somewhat violently, “we don't need all the details, we can imagine the rest.”

“I'm not imagining anything!” said Soleá. “Come on, I want details!”

“Well,” Gaby went on, “I kissed, bit, and scratched him all over, and I convinced him that there's nothing in all the world that can make me happier than being with him. And at that
moment I realized I was telling the truth. Our marriage is already the loveliest family in the world, with or without kids. So I stopped obsessing about pregnancy. I completely forgot about the whole thing, and when I went to see the gynecologist last week, she said I was two months pregnant.”

“There's nothing like a bit of distraction for getting pregnant,” said María. “As soon as I get distracted, pow!”

CHAPTER 55