The Andalucian Friend Read Online Free PDF

a hurry to get what I want. That can make me a bit pushy. But let’s not talk about that. Instead I’d like us to carry on where we left off.”
    She wasn’t quite with him. “Where did we leave off?”
    The food arrived, and plates were put in front of them. Hector set about the shellfish with his fingers, peeling them with a practiced hand.
    “Your dad had passed away, and you spent a few years being lonely and sad. … Then your mom met Tom and you moved into his house. Wasn’t that it?”
    At first she didn’t get it, then it struck her that his questions to her while he was in hospital had been about her life, from childhood onward. She had told him everything chronologically, or rather he had asked his questions chronologically. She was surprised she hadn’t realized before.
    He met her eyes as if to say go on. Sophie thought, searching her memory, then picked up the story where she had left off. How she and her sister had felt brighter as time passed after their father’s death. How they had moved into Tom’s villa with their mother, just a few minutes away from their childhood home. How she started smoking Marlboro Lights in year nine, how life seemed brighter.
    They ate oysters, saltwater crayfish, lobster. Sophie kept on talking. Told him about her exchange trip to the US, her first job, her travels through Asia, how hard she found it to understand love when she was young, and the lingering anxiety of growing up — a feeling that had clung to her long into her thirties. She picked at the food, absorbed in her own story. The time passed and she realized that she had been talking nonstop without giving him any chance to interrupt. She asked if she was talking too much, boring him? He shook his head.
    “Go on,” he said.
    “I met David. We got married, had Albert, and suddenly the years ran away with us. I don’t really remember that well.”
    With that she didn’t want to go on, it felt uncomfortable.
    “What don’t you remember?”
    Sophie picked at her plate.
    “Some periods in your life seem to blend, merge together.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Yes, you do.” He smiled.
    She poked at her plate with her fork.
    “Passiveness,” she said quietly.
    The word seemed to make him even more curious.
    “In what way?”
    She looked up. “What?”
    “Passive, how?”
    She emptied her glass, thinking about his question, then shrugged.
    “The way most moms are, I guess. Children, loneliness. David worked, traveled a lot. I stayed at home. … Nothing happened.”
    She could tell what her face looked like, she could feel the furrow in her brow and straightened herself out and tried to smile. Before he had time to ask another question she went on.
    “The years passed and David got ill, and you know the rest.”
    “Tell me.”
    “He died,” she said.
    “I know. But what happened?”
    This time he didn’t seem to pick up on her boundary.
    “There’s not much to say, he was diagnosed with cancer. Two years later he passed away.”
    The way she said this last sentence stopped him from milking the subject further. They ate in silence. After a while things picked up again in the same way. He asked more questions, she replied, but resisted saying too much. When she found a suitable opportunity she glanced at her wristwatch. He picked up the hint. To hide it, Hector looked at his own watch.
    “Time’s flying,” he said neutrally.
    Maybe he realized there and then that he had been too inquisitive, too pushy. He seemed to be in a hurry, folding his napkin and becoming impersonal.
    “Would you like Aron to drive you back?”
    “No, thanks.”
    Hector stood up first.
    She leaned her head against the window of the underground carriage, staring out into the darkness at the vague shapes flying past before her unseeing eyes.
    He wasn’t pushy. He just seemed to be trying to understand who she was in relation to him. And she recognized it; she was the same, she mirrored herself in