daughters. Then, of course, they asked me who had stolen the daughters and I said I didn’t know, and that the man obviously didn’t know either, which was why he was so angry and in need of someone he could take it out on. That he couldn’t really tell people apart and was suspicious of everyone, which was why he hit Pablo one day, believing that he was the one to blame. It’s odd, they grasped that at once, that he should get angry because someone had stolen his daughters, and even now they sometimes ask me if there’s any news of them or if they’ve been found, as if it were an ongoing story, I suppose they think the daughters were children like them. I said it was simply a case of bad luck. That it was like an accident, like when a car hits a pedestrian or a builder falls off the building he’s working on. That their father wasn’t to blame and that he hadn’t harmed anyone. Nicolás asked me if he was ever coming back. And I said no, that he’d gone very far away, like when he used to go on trips only much further, so far away that he couldn’t return, but from where he was he could still see them and still care for them. It also occurred to me to tell them, so that it wasn’t quite so sudden and definitive, that I could speak to him now and then, and that if they wanted anything from him, anything important, they should tell me and I would pass it on. I don’t think Carolina believed that bit, because she never gives me any message for him, but Nicolás does and sometimes asks me to tell his father something, some silly little thing that’s happened at school but which looms very large for him, and the following day, he asks me if I told his father and what he said, or if he was pleased to know that he’d started playing football. And I tell him that I haven’t had a chance to speak to him just yet, that he’ll have to wait, that it’s not always easy to make contact, then I let a few days pass, and if he remembers and asks again, then I invent an answer. I’ll let more and more time pass until he stops asking and forgets about it, and he will in the end. He’ll mostly think he’s remembering what his sister and I tell him. Carolina is more of a worry. She hardly mentions it at all, she’s more serious and more silent than she used to be, and when, for example, I tell Nicolás that their father laughed when I told him what he’d said or that he told me to tell Nicolás to kick the ball and not the other boys, she looks at me with the same sadness I feel for them, as if my lies saddened her, and so there are moments when we feel sad for each other, I feel sad for them and they for me, well, Carolina does anyway. They see that I’m sad, they see me in a state they’ve never seen me in before, even though, believe me, I try very hard not to cry and to make sure when I’m with them that they don’t notice how sad I am. But I’m sure they do. I’ve only cried once in their presence.’ I remembered the impression the little girl had made on me when I saw the three of them that morning at the café: how attentive she was to her mother, almost watching over her, insofar as that was possible; and the way she had briefly stroked her mother’s cheek when she said goodbye. ‘And they’re afraid for me,’ added Luisa, with a sigh, pouring herself another glass. She hadn’t drunk anything for a while, she had slowed down, perhaps she was one of those people who know when to stop or who are even moderate in their excesses, who skirt round dangers and never fall into them, even when they feel they have nothing to lose and are beyond caring. She was clearly in desperate straits, but I couldn’t imagine her in a state of wild abandon: getting hopelessly drunk or hooked on drugs or neglecting her children or missing work or (later on) going with one man after another in order to forget the person who really mattered to her; it was