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Today is my birthday.

I’m forty-three.

The age you were.

Thinking that is the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced.

When I blew out the candles on the cake it was as if I’d gone deaf, my ears clogged. If they’d used forty-three individual candles maybe I would have taken away a different impression, Mauro, but Lídia bought a red four and three, big as day, impossible to downplay, and my legs turned to mush. You will always be forty-three and I get a cold shiver when I think that.

There was a lot of background noise, you know how they are. Imagine a surprise party hosted by Lídia. Even Vanesa and Marta came. In just two weeks their rotation will be over and I’m already missing them. They’ve become the life of the department, splattering me with their folly and their contagious laughter, pushing me through this harsh year. I’ll always appreciate that.

I still have a headache. The flat is a mess. The floor is covered in confetti and sticky trails. I’m sorry to tell you that, you would have got very nervous seeing all those glasses of wine and cava spilling on the sofa. Luckily it’s not your sofa anymore. Besides, you don’t know it but, since you’ve been 240gone, the gang has been popping out babies like rabbits and they bring them everywhere, which I can’t understand. All I’ll say is that kids like chocolate. But that’s how it should be, Mauro. It’s time to get this house dirty, fill it with noise, find the bathroom occupied and later the toilet clogged with a roll of paper. To steal affection from wherever it can be found. From friends, neighbours, the smile of the car park attendant. To blow out candles and be able to wish for something that isn’t the impossible: bringing you back.

This time no one gave me presents of books or plants, but a ton of clothes that tasted of springtime and a straw hat too. I put it on, so embarrassed, and Nacho said I was radiant, that lately I’d been glowing. I knew he was exaggerating but I let him do it and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Which is a little like giving one to you. There’s a lot of you in him and a lot of me in you.

I was waiting for the doorbell to ring and for you to appear behind the green leaves of something potted. Wave you in and say to everyone, look who’s here! Later I stopped waiting for you and gave in to the effort they were all making to celebrate my birthday. I found Martina, Lídia’s youngest, standing stock still in our bedroom. She looked at me with that suspicious, wise face of hers, with her hair in bunches and a parting down the middle.

“Where’s Mauro?”

We observed each other carefully, the way people who share grave knowledge tend to do. In the background, laughter and the hum of life. With a nod I pointed to the photo 241of Midsummer Eve on top of the table beside what is now my bed. She looked back over at me with an amused expression and left skipping down the hall. We’ve explained to her, several times, that you’ve died, but every once in a while she asks for you. The years will pass and I’ll grow old, shrink a centimetre or two, my hair will turn white, I’ll have wrinkles all over, and you and I will always be there in that photo, me in the past and you in the present. I’m with Martina on this one, there is something uncertain that leaves room for doubt, that confers the right to only half-believe the truth, that prefers to keep asking where you are every day, like a secret only some of us can comprehend.

Today I turned forty-three. I caught up with you and I still don’t understand how that could have happened.

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