'Yes,' she said, thinking about it. 'But it's only become…obsessive in the last five years, since my husband was murdered.'
'Did you look at them any differently, compared to now?'
'Before, I would look at them and think: these are my beautiful creations. Only after Raul's death did I begin to sit amongst them-I put them all in the same room for a while-and, yes, it was then that the pain started. But it's not a bad pain.'
'What does that mean?'
'I don't know. Not all pain is bad. In the same way that not all sadness is terrible and not all happiness that great.'
'Talk me through that,' said Aguado. 'When is sadness not so terrible?'
'Melancholy can be a desirable state. I've had affairs with men which have satisfied me while they lasted and when they finished I was sad, but with the knowledge that it was for the best.'
'When can happiness not be so great?'
'I don't know,' said Consuelo, twirling her free hand. 'Maybe when a woman comes out of a courtroom saying that she's 'happy' her son's killer was sentenced to life imprisonment. I wouldn't call that…'
'I'd like you to personalize that for me.'
'My sister thinks I'm happy. She sees me as a healthy, wealthy and successful woman with three children. When I told her about our sessions she was stunned. She said: 'If you're nuts, what hope is there for the rest of us?''
'But when do you see your happiness as not being so great?'
'That's what I mean,' said Consuelo. 'I should be happy now, but I'm not. I have everything anybody could wish for.'
'What about love?'
'My children give me all the love I need.'
'Do they?' asked Aguado. 'Don't you think that children take a lot of loving? You are their guiding light in the nurturing process, you teach them and give them confidence to face the world. They reward you with unconditional love because they are conditioned to do that, but they don't know what love is. Don't you think that children are essentially selfish?'
'You don't have children, Alicia.'
'We're not here to talk about me. And not every point of view that comes from me is my own,' said Aguado. 'Do you think life can be complete without adult love?'
'A lot of women have come to the conclusion that it can be,' said Consuelo. 'Ask all those battered wives we have in Spain. They'll tell you that love can be the death of you.'
'You don't look like the battered type.'
'Not physically.'
'Have you suffered mental torment from a man?'
A tremor shuddered through Consuelo and Aguado's fingers jumped off her wrist. Consuelo thought that she'd kept the content of this session at a remove. What she'd been saying was in her head, of course, but it was confined there, fenced in. But now somehow it had broken out. It was as if the mad cows had realized the flimsiness of the barriers and crashed through to stampede around her body. She felt the wild terror of yesterday. The sense of coming apart-or was it the fear of something that had been contained getting loose?
'Keep calm, Consuelo,' said Aguado.
'I don't know where this fear comes from. I'm not even sure whether it's associated with what I've been saying, or if it's from some other source that's suddenly leaked into the mainstream.'
'Try to put it into words. That's all you can do.'
'I've become suspicious of myself. I'm beginning to think that a large chunk of my existence has been kept satisfied, or perhaps tied down, by some illusion that I've devised to keep myself going.'
'Most people prefer the illusory state. It's less complicated to live a life feeding off TV and magazines,' said Aguado. 'But it's not for you, Consuelo.'
'How do you know? Maybe it's too late to start breaking things down and rebuilding them.'
'I'm afraid it's too late for you to stop,' said Aguado. 'That's why you've ended up here. You're like someone who's walked down an alleyway and seen a naked foot sticking out of a rubbish bin. You want to forget about it. You don't want to get involved. But unfortunately you've seen the foot too clearly and you'll get no peace until the matter is resolved.'
'The reason I came here was because of the man in the Plaza del Pumarejo-my bizarre…attraction to him and its danger to me. Now we've talked about other things, unrelated to that, and I have the feeling that I've got nowhere to go. Nowhere in my head is safe. Only my work takes my mind elsewhere, and that's only temporary. Even my children have become potentially dangerous.'
'None of it is unrelated,' said Aguado. 'I'm teasing out the threads from the tangled knot. Eventually we'll find the source and, once you've seen it and understood it, you'll be able to move on to a happier life. This terror has its rewards.' Ines woke up in a convulsion of fear. She blinked, taking in the room a piece at a time. Esteban wasn't there. His pillow was undented. She creaked up on an elbow and threw off the sheet. The pain made her whimper. She panted like a runner, summoning energy for the next lap, the next level of pain.
There didn't seem to be a pain-free position. She had to think her way around her body, trying to find new pathways to limbs and organs that didn't hurt. She got up on to all fours and gasped, hanging her head, staring down the tunnel of her falling hair. Tears blurred her vision. There was a circle of diluted red on her pillow. She got a foot down on to the floor and slid off the bed. She shuffled to the mirror and pushed her hair back. She could not believe it was her head on top of that body.
The contusions were gross. An abstract of purple, blue, black and yellow had spread out over her entire chest area and now joined the bruise on her torso, which reached down as far as her pubic hair. It was true, she did bruise easily. It wasn't as bad as it looked. The pain was more from stiffness than actual damage. A warm shower would help.
In the bathroom she caught sight of her back and buttocks. The welts looked angrier and uglier. She would have to disinfect the punctures left by the buckle. How easily this new regime came to her. She ran the water, held her hand-still puffy from where her finger had been bent back-underneath the flow. She stepped in and held on to the mixer tap, gasping at the pain of the water falling on her. She wouldn't be able to wear a bra this morning.
Tears came. She sank to the floor of the shower. The water seethed through her hair. What had happened to her? She couldn't even think of herself in the first person singular any more, she was so distant from the woman she used to be. She slapped the shower off and crawled out like a beaten dog.
She found reserves she didn't know she had. She took painkillers. She was going to work. It was impossible to stay in the hell of this apartment. She dried herself off, got dressed and made up. Nothing showed. She went out and caught a cab.
The driver talked about the bomb. He was angry. He hit his steering wheel. He called them bastards, without knowing who 'they' were. He said that the time had come to stop fucking about and teach these people a lesson. Ines didn't engage. She sat in the back, gnawing at the inside of her cheek, thinking how much she needed somebody to talk to. She went through all her friends. They were hopeless. Not one could she describe as intimate. Her colleagues? All good people, but not right for this. Family? She couldn't bear to reveal her failure. And it came to her out of the blue, a thought she'd never allowed herself before: her mother was a stupid person and her father a pompous ass who thought he was an intellectual.
The office was empty. She was relieved. Her schedule told her she had two meetings and then nothing. She'd made sure there was nothing because she had to prepare for a court appearance the next day. She headed for the door and one of her male colleagues blundered in with an armful of files. The pain of their collision detonated in her head. Fainting seemed like the only option to wipe clean the pain circuit. She dropped and held on to her foot as a distraction. Her colleague was all over her, saying he was sorry. She left without a word.
Meetings passed. Only at the end of the second one did the judge ask her if she was all right. She went to the lavatory and tried to ignore the trickle of blood she saw slowly dissipating in the water. Her period? She hadn't had one. It wasn't due. She didn't care. She took more painkillers.
She went across the avenue to the Murillo Gardens. She knew what she was after: she wanted to see the whore again. She wasn't sure why. One part of her wanted to show the whore what he'd done to her, the other
