The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman Read Online Free PDF Page B

million pesetas’ worth of stamps, the dirty thief, and the telegraph operator’s daughter, the filthy whore. She remembered the sweet-and-sour mixture of fear and happiness she had felt on her first day at Librarte ’s small office: the sense of expectation before she met her colleagues, those four women with whom she would share both joy and pain, midmorning coffees, the pitfalls of daily work, successes, failures, and—why not?—maybe even true friendship that extended beyond the office. On her way to work, she bought four potted dwarf roses and placed them next to the four computers on the four desks in the main room with little labels that said WELCOME TO YOUR NEW HOME .
    The office, ninety square meters on the top floor of an old building on Calle Mayor in the city’s historic center, had previously beenthe home of a romantic young couple—Berta guessed this as soon as she saw the way the light filtered in through the lace curtains. As well as a tiny office that used to be a bedroom—you could still make out the shadow of a headboard, a gray outline on the white wall—there was a square room with two windows, which now contained four desks facing each other in pairs, a corridor that led to an old-fashioned bathroom with a built-in bath, and an ancient kitchen, no more than a cubbyhole but it was still in good use, with the kind of stove and oven her grandmother used to have.
    Apart from the desks, the only furniture was a pine bookshelf, still empty, and a formidable photocopier, the size of a fridge, which took up most of the wall space next to the door. Maybe a nice colored throw, thought Berta, or a crocheted cloth with tasseled edges, might disguise it as a side table.
    Soleá had been the first to arrive.
    â€œSoledad?” Berta had asked her as she hesitated between a warm kiss on the cheek or a firm handshake.
    â€œIt’s Soleá, like the kind of singing,” she had replied in an accent that conjured up her native Andalusia: Granada, the Albaicín neighborhood, her family’s whitewashed house, a garden of wild oleander, steep streets.
    She was very young, very petite, very tanned. She had recently finished her degree in journalism, and she wanted to conquer the world.
    â€œOne day I’ll write a novel,” she told Berta. “I’ve got the plot, I just need to get my ideas straight and focus a bit, Berta, because this huge city still makes my head spin.”
    Then came María. She arrived with a worry clinging to her chest.
    â€œThis is my daughter,” she said. “Her name’s Lucía and I promise I won’t bring her to work again.”
    But she did bring her again, she certainly did, in a cot, in her stroller, with a fever, with a cough. Lucía became another member of the team, like the office mascot. Berta installed a white rocking chair for her in the corner of her own office. In the little kitchen, they heated up bottles and purées; in winter they knitted her pink scarves. One year later, María announced that she was expecting twins. She was off work for six months because she spent the last two months of her pregnancy in bed, at risk of going into labor prematurely, but Lucía still occupied her space, her rocking chair, her corner. Almost every morning, at nine o’clock sharp, Lucía’s father, Bernabé, would arrive carrying her, knock on the door, swear to Berta that he was going to get someone to help, that it would be the last day he left Lucía with them, that he knew that she ran a serious office, not a nursery, but there he would be again the next day.
    Manolito and Daniel weighed five and a half pounds each when they were born. They wouldn’t feed, they became lactose intolerant, and they caught chicken pox two weeks after Lucía, which meant a whole month of spots and tears, calamine lotion, antihistamines, scabs, and itches. They swapped the rocking chair for a mattress. Berta