‘The police ID card you showed … What was it?’
‘The parish priest’s Barcelona football club card. Expired.’
‘You were right, Fermín. I’ve been a fool to suspect Bea.’
‘I’m always right. I was born like that.’
I had to bow to the evidence and keep my mouth shut. I’d already said enough stupid things for one day. Fermín had gone very quiet and seemed preoccupied. It troubled me to think I’d caused him such disappointment that he didn’t know what to say to me.
‘What’s on your mind, Fermín?’
He turned, looking concerned.
‘I was thinking about that man.’
‘Cascos?’
‘N
o. Valls. About what that idiot said earlier. About its significance.’
‘What do you mean?’
Fermín’s face was grim.
‘I mean that what worried me before was that you wanted to find Valls.’
‘And now it doesn’t?’
‘There’s something that worries me more, Daniel.’
‘What?’
‘That he may be the one looking for you.’
We stared at each other.
‘Have you any idea why?’ I asked.
Fermín, who always had a reply for everything, slowly shook his head and looked away.
We spent the rest of the journey in silence. When I got home I went straight up to the flat, took a long hot shower and swallowed four aspirins. Then I lowered the blinds and, hugging a pillow that smelled of Bea, fell asleep like the idiot I was, wondering where she was – that woman for whom I didn’t mind having made such a huge fool of myself.
13
‘I look like a hedgehog,’ declared Bernarda, staring at her hundredfold image reflected in the mirrored room of Modas Santa Eulalia.
Kneeling down at her feet, two seamstresses went on marking the bridal dress with dozens of pins, watched closely by Bea, who walked in circles round Bernarda inspecting every pleat and every seam as if her life depended on it. Bernarda, standing with arms outstretched in the hexagonal fitting room, hardly dared breathe, but her eyes were riveted on the different angles of her figure, as she searched for signs of swelling around her belly.
‘Are you sure it’s not noticeable, Señora Bea?’
‘Not a bit. Flat as a pancake. Where you should be, of course.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know …’
Bernarda’s ordeal and the seamstresses’ efforts to adjust and tailor continued for another half-hour. When there didn’t seem to be any pins left in the world with which to skewer poor Bernarda, the firm’s star couturier and creator of the dress drew the curtain aside and made an appearance. After a quick survey and a few corrections on the lining of the skirt, he gave his approval and snapped his fingers at his assistants, ordering them to make themselves scarce.
‘Not even Balenciaga could have made you look so beautiful,’ he concluded happily.