as if she possessed a last resort of common sense, or a sense of duty or serenity or self-preservation or pragmatism, I wasn’t quite sure which. And then I saw it very clearly: ‘She’ll get over this,’ I thought, ‘she’ll recover sooner than she thinks, everything she’s been through during these months will seem quite unreal, and she’ll get married again, perhaps to someone as perfect as Desvern, or someone with whom she will, at least, make a similarly perfect or almost perfect couple.’ – ‘They’ve discovered that people die, that even the people who seemed most indestructible, their parents, die. It’s not just a bad dream, because Carolina has reached the age of having nightmares, you see: she dreamed once that I was dying or that her father was dying, and that was before all this happened. She called to us from her bedroom in the middle of the night, she was really frightened, and we had to convince her that we wouldn’t die, that such a thing was impossible. She’s seen now that we were wrong or were perhaps lying to her; that she was right to be afraid, that what she saw in her dreams has come to pass. She hasn’t ever reproached me with this directly, but the day after Miguel was buried and there was clearly no going back and the only thing to do was to continue living without him, she said to me twice, as if what she was saying were unimpeachable: “You see? You see?” And I asked her uncomprehendingly: “What is it I should see, sweetheart?” I was still too dazed to understand. Then she retreated and has continued to do so ever since: “Oh, nothing,” she said, “just that Papa won’t be at home with us any more, don’t you see?” All my strength went from me, and I sat down on the edge of the bed, we were in my bedroom. “Of course I see that, my love,” I said and burst into tears. She hadn’t seen me cry before and she felt sorry for me, and she still does now. She came over to me and started drying my tears with her dress. As for Nicolás, he’s discovered death too soon, without even being able to dream about it or fear it, when he still had no awareness of death, I’m not sure he even knows quite what it is, although he’s starting to realize that it means people cease to exist, that you won’t ever see them again. And given that their father has died and disappeared from one day to the next, or, worse, that their father has been killed and ceased to exist suddenly and without warning, that he proved fragile enough to be felled by some wretch’s first blow, they’re bound to think that the same thing could happen to me some day, because they see me as being the weaker of the two. Yes, they’re afraid for me, afraid that something bad might happen to me and that I’ll leave them all alone, they look at me apprehensively, as if I were more vulnerable and at risk than they are. It’s an instinctive reaction in Nicolás, but in Carolina it’s more conscious. I notice that she’s always looking around when we’re out in the street and immediately goes on the alert whenever she spots a stranger or, rather, a strange man. She’s happier when I’m accompanied by some of my female friends. She’s all right now, because I’m at home and with you, she’s stopped finding pretexts to keep coming in here and checking on me or bothering me. She’s only just met you, but she trusts you, you’re a woman, and she doesn’t see you as a danger. On the contrary, she sees you as a shield, a defence. That worries me a little, that she should become afraid of men, be on her guard and feel nervous in their company, the ones she doesn’t know, of course. I hope it will pass, she can’t go through life in fear of half the human race.’
‘Do they know how exactly their father died?’ I hesitated, unsure whether to bring it up again. ‘About the knife, I mean.’
‘No, I’ve never gone into detail, I just told them that he’d been attacked by that man, but never explained how. But Carolina must know, I’m sure she’s read about it in some newspaper and that her friends will have talked about it, well, they’re bound to