I HAD AN abortion. Silently, alone, although a baby is what I most long for in the world. The day I told Jaime I was pregnant and he stormed out, I found a psychiatric report among his papers, with questions he had answered. One of the replies said that what would make him happiest of all would be to spend the entire week with Carolina, but that she could not stand him any longer, and that he had fallen foul of his cocaine habit again. There were other replies that I prefer to forget because they were so cruel. Yet what he wrote about women caught my attention: he said he hated them all apart from his mother. The psychiatrist’s conclusion was that Jaime was in a schizophrenic state: a bipolar disorder brought on by the destruction of his brain cells caused by the cocaine habit. He recommended a stay in a specialized clinic for treatment.
I could not bear to bring a baby into a world so full of madness, with a crazy drug addict for a father. I was afraid all this might affect the child, and I was horrified at the thought I might have to go on having links with this raving madman, who was capable of harming both the baby and me.
The day before yesterday, Jaime rang. He threatened that if I did not have the abortion, he would ‘fuck up’ my life. I believe him. He would do anything so long as he came out of it all right.
Today I took the shuttle plane to Madrid to meet Carolina. I told her about the baby on the phone, and she was very upset, as Jaime had done the same to her. A few years ago. He isn’t sterile. He invented that nonsense in order to put off any woman who tried emotional blackmail on him in that way – not that I was doing that of course. All I want now is to get rid of this albatross around my neck, to get rid of my love for him, to start a new life. In order to do that, I need to exorcize him by talking to the person who knew him best, the woman with whom he shared his life.
Carolina suggested the two of us meet up in a bar. I was very nervous about seeing her for the first time. We recognized each other at once, instinctively: unhappiness in a face is unmistakable. For the first few minutes I felt very uncomfortable. Carolina is much older than I am, and is incredibly beautiful and gentle. In a way, I was flattered that Jaime should want to deceive her with me, but I soon dismissed such nonsense from my mind and focused again on the sad reality that he had been constantly manipulating me, and had never loved me.
Carolina and I needed a stiff drink in order to be able to tell each other all we know about Jaime. I began to describe how we had met, the problem that arose when his house was about to be seized, his father’s death, his nocturnal drinking and his sudden disappearing acts.
Carolina was listening very carefully to all this, her black eyes opening wide every time she could identify with something I was saying.
‘The only time I ever heard anything about you was when Jaime told me he had taken on a French girl at the office,’ she said when she realized I had finished.
‘I’ve never worked in his office. I didn’t want to.’
‘His father’s funeral never happened. He’s not dead, but lives in a shack with no electricity. Jaime is from a very poor family, and hasn’t spoken to his father in years. When I met Jaime, he tried that funeral trick on me too, until I discovered the truth. I’m sure he needed an excuse to go off for a few days with some girl or other, so he made up the whole dreadful lie. Jaime is a compulsive liar. Before Christmas, he and I were travelling in the Canary Islands. That’s why he invented the story about his father dying. I’m so sorry!’
Her words reverberated round the inside of my head.
‘And as for the chalet, it doesn’t belong to him. My husband bought it when we married. On his death, I inherited it. Jaime came to live with me there. But it belongs to me, and there was never any risk of a legal seizure. He was lying to you about that too.’
I could not believe anyone would stoop so low.
‘What about his children? He told me he spent every weekend here with his two children.’
‘His children don’t even want to see him. For months now they have only spoken to him when it’s absolutely necessary.’
‘So what were the five million pesetas I gave him for?’
Carolina’s expression told me she did not have the faintest idea.
‘I gave him five million to prevent his house being seized!’ I shouted.
‘It seems to me he just wanted to get money out of you.’
So as well as being a liar, Jaime is a cheat.
‘Jaime has always had money problems. He spends it like water. He lives the life of a lord. For years it was me who kept him, until I had enough of it. It’s been two years since I last helped him out. Since then he’s been getting lots of demands, from his associates, from all kinds of people. I don’t want to know. I imagine he was looking for someone else to wheedle money from. The same thing happened with his wife. In the end she grew tired of it, and threw him out. Now she wants to live in peace and quiet and have nothing to do with the scoundrel. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it’s all I can say.’
‘His ex-wife is very ill, isn’t she?’
‘Not at all. Carmen is in perfect health. So he told you too she had cancer, did he? Not a bit of it. She’s fine; the only thing she wants is to wipe out all the years she spent with that gentleman. I’m trying to do the same, but I’m still very much in love with him and can’t.’
I wanted to die on the spot. I’m a woman who has been betrayed, deceived, ruined, and destroyed both physically and mentally. And I was with a woman who had suffered the same, but seemed to have forgiven her lover almost all her humiliation. Carolina told me she had agreed to meet Jaime in the bar opposite, and that she had to go because he might turn up at any moment. Just then, my mobile rang. It was Jaime.
‘Even though I’m not with you, I was ringing to wish you a happy Valentine’s Day,’ he said.
How could anyone be so cynical? I had to force myself not to reveal where I was.
‘Where are you?’ I asked in a strangled voice.
‘I’m spending the weekend with my mother, in Barcelona.’
I didn’t say where I was. He had no idea I might be in Madrid with Carolina. When we had said goodbye, Carolina commented, ‘You see what a liar he is? He’s on his way to the bar.’
This time it was her mobile that rang. Surprised, she glanced at me; then we both realized it must be Jaime.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you in ten minutes.’
She switched off. Jaime had just told her he was coming out of the metro, on his way to meeting her. We exchanged looks again, unable to believe anyone could be so two-faced.
I don’t know how I found the strength to turn up at the bar twenty minutes later. I was split between the wish either to run away, or to stay and explain to him I had discovered what kind of a person he really was. I am still in love with him, but I wanted to teach him a lesson for all that he has done not only to me, but to Carolina as well.
I walked into the bar like a zombie. Jaime was so astonished it took him several minutes to react. I felt terrible, with the strange sensation that I was an unwelcome intruder into the privacy of a couple who had nothing to do with me. Carolina pushed a chair towards me, and asked Jaime if he knew who I was. He did not know what to say. He turned green when he realized that for the first time in his life he had been caught out, that someone had stripped off his mask. He tried to get up several times, as if to escape from our little triangle, but each time I pulled him back down. The other people in the bar didn’t know whether to be amused or shocked at the soap opera they were witnessing, but none of them intervened. Jaime finally managed to run off, and Carolina suggested I went with her to her house, situated in a famous residential development about twenty kilometres outside Madrid. She wanted to show me where they lived. She said I could even spend the night there, as Jaime was unlikely to put in another appearance.
Despite still feeling like an intruder, I accepted, partly because I thought she probably didn’t want to be on her own. It was as though there was a kind of involuntary complicity between us. I owed it to her, I felt, as a way of thanking her for her attitude towards me.
When we got to the chalet, we proceeded to get drunk on gin. Then Carolina wanted to show me the bedroom.
Perhaps I accepted her offer to stay over because I wanted to see how Jaime lived, in order to try to understand him a bit better. But what exactly was there to understand? I had no idea. The house was full of photographs of Carolina and him.
‘Memories of happy moments we spent together,’ she said nostalgically. ‘Of course, it’s been years now since I felt good with him, but I can’t get rid of him. I can tell him on the phone I have had enough, but as soon as he reappears I fall into the trap again. This isn’t a life. At least, it’s not the life I wanted for me or for my children.’
At some point, while we were still drinking to help us bear the pain of so much love for such a perverse creature, Jaime called Carolina’s mobile again. He wanted to beg her forgiveness. He did not know of course that we were both in his house. All she said was that she wanted him to move out once and for all, but Jaime kept begging her not to throw him out, not to abandon him, saying he had never loved me. That I was nothing more than a mistake. Ten minutes later, he phoned me. He tried exactly the same story with me: he said he’d never loved Carolina, she was a poor widow left alone in this world with her children, he felt sorry for her, but he wanted to get back together with me. He asked me to forgive him for all the hurt he had caused me. I couldn’t even listen to half his excuses, and cut off the call. Carolina and I were drunk by now, but that did not make us any less indignant. How low could anyone go?
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Carolina said, a malicious gleam in her eyes, just as I was about to fall into a drunken sleep. ‘The worst thing anyone can do to Jaime is to touch his things. Come and look . . .’
She led me to their room, where Jaime had left all his things. In his wardrobe I was surprised to find the same wooden boxes he had in our Barcelona flat for storing all his watches. So he had recreated his Madrid house in our apartment. We were so angry we took out his clothes and Carolina started cutting them up with a pair of scissors. I did the same with his silk ties, which he had carefully hung on several hangers. We put all the pieces into plastic bags, then Carolina got out a suitcase to put them all in. She wrote Jaime’s name on a label. Despite ourselves, we had just become accomplices in an act of vandalism.
Carolina called a hotel and reserved a room in the name of Rijas. She told the receptionist that a suitcase would arrive for him, and that it should be given to him as soon as he arrived. We got out the car and drove straight to the hotel to drop off the case. Then she sent him a text message telling him the address of the hotel where she had left all his things. Jaime did not have the nerve to reply. I’ll never forget that moment in all my life. Because of the tension we had felt for more than twenty-four hours, Carolina and I started to laugh hysterically at the thought of Jaime’s face when he saw what we had done to his clothes.