Spider in the Corner of the Room (The Project Trilogy) (12 page)

I am sitting outside one of the cafés that shore up the square. A plate of tapas rests on my table: soft, succulent croquettes filled with Iberian ham, cubes of fluffy, fried potatoes smothered in spicy tomato sauce. I alternate between
eating and sipping Rioja. My breathing is slow, measured. I want to be normal, seem normal.

In between bites, I glance at the notebook that sits on my lap, its ink-soaked pages flapping in the soft afternoon breeze, my bare legs still so as not to spill wine droplets on my new white linen shirt. I take a moment to stop and listen. The birds are sleeping their siesta in the heat, their song replaced with human melodies, with the lullaby, the dance of busking guitars. It all rings loud in my ears like the tremor of a trombone, but, for some reason, it does not bother me.

Every minute, I observe it all, drink it in. I have missed it, missed this place. I never knew someone could want their homeland so much to the point that they would do anything to return. Anything. To anyone that gets in their way. I lean my head backwards, allow the sun to warm my skin and think:
I am lucky; the luckiest woman alive.

‘Doc?’

Someone’s voice, I hear it. It pierces my mind; the illusion begins to judder. I try to hang on to it, claw it back, but it does no good. The image of the Plaza Mayor flickers once, twice, then disappears—pop—like a television being switched off.

‘Doc, wake up. Quick!’

‘Hmmm?’

I open my eyes, but cannot hear. I wriggle a finger in my ear. Patricia’s mouth moves and her hand is thrusting something at me. The dream. My mind cannot lose the dream. I don’t want it to go, don’t want it to disappear forever. I wrestle with it as it fades from view in a shroud of static,
try to pin it to the end of my bedstead, but it’s no use; it floats from my grasp in a final bubble of doubt.

‘What time is it?’ I sit up and smooth down my hair. I have not yet brushed my teeth or splashed my face with water, and the guards will be here soon.

Patricia looms in front of me again. ‘You awake now? Because you’re going to want to look at these…’

There are newspapers in her hand. And something else. Her socks. All of six pairs of them. ‘Why are they tied together?’ I croak.

‘Huh? Oh, just bored.’ She loops the sock rope over the chair and places a newspaper in my lap. ‘You’re not going to like it.’

She drops the bundle of newspapers on my lap. ‘You need to read these.’

Taking a paper, I scan the page. At first, it makes no sense, and then it registers. On it, there is a face. A face I know too well. And beside it: a name.

Patricia sits down. ‘Speak to me.’

My mind fusses and flurries, hands begin to jitter. I read the words on the page. ‘My mother,’ I say after a while. ‘My mother is in your newspapers. How?’

‘She’s visiting today with your brother, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’ I grip the periodical, the print transferring to my palms, to the pillowed tips of my fingers. I smear them together, rubbing them, the ink staining my skin, my brain not knowing how I feel about seeing my family again after what has been almost a year.

I spread my fingers over the image of my mother’s face.

‘You don’t think she told them, do you?’ Patricia says. ‘About the visit?’

The morning buzzer sounds. Time to exit our cells. The meeting with my mother and brother is in two hours. I don’t want to disappoint her, don’t want to feel angry at her.

Not again.

I arrive in the visitors’ room and stop. I feel slightly sick, nerves nudging my stomach, its contents threatening to erupt. My face is blank, but my mind is alive with doubt.

Inmates’ feet shuffle on the tiles while voices saturate the air, air that reeks of perspiration, of a waterfall of bodily secretions. It swamps my head. The glare of the strip lights, combined with the ice-cold judgement of the white walls all momentarily freeze me. I lick my lips for moisture. Only when a guard digs my elbow and tells me to
shift it
do I move on.

I locate the table with my family, walk to it and stall. A lump swells in my throat. My mother. Her hands, hands that were once fleshy and strong, hands that lectured law at university, instructed housemaids, placed Band-Aids on my knees, are now bony and frail. I bite down hard on my lip to restrain the cry that wants to break out from within me. My family is changing before my eyes and I worry that soon they will all alter so much that I won’t recognise them any more. That I won’t have them, won’t know if they are on my side or not. Won’t feel that I fit in, not that I am ever sure I did.

‘Oh, Maria!’ my mother cries to me, her grainy Castellan voice guttural, instinctive. She stretches out her arms, pulls me into her. I go rigid. ‘Oh, my daughter! What has happened to you?’

Tears threaten to spring up, invade my face. Being close
to my mother is one step away from my papa, dead or not. I touch my cheeks, surprised at the dampness staining my skin. My mother holds me out at arm’s length.

‘Oh my darling, it’s okay. Sssh. Sssh.’ She reaches forward to wipe my face. I hold my breath; a guard tells her there’s no touching. She apologises in English, sits back, omits a sigh, dabs her forehead. ‘Oh, dear. This is all too much.’

‘Mama, are you okay?’ Ramon, my brother. His crisp green eyes scan our mother, her own eyes, the same apple-fresh hue, blink back, her head tilting slightly, neck smooth, slender. She pats his hands.

‘I am fine, son. I am fine.’

Ramon’s gaze stays on her for two seconds more, his forearm strong like a tree trunk rooted to the table, his body baptised in a shroud of nut brown, stomach muscles taut from years of sport—running, swimming, skiing. Finally, he looks away, directing his attention at me for the briefest of moments before he dusts down his suit and opens up a legal file on his desk.

‘Hello, Maria,’ he says, a small flicker of a smile. My brother, a man of few words, to me at least. To everyone else? An eloquent, accomplished tax lawyer. But he has always been there, by my side—whether I wanted him to or not. When we were young he was like dog dirt on my shoe: impossible to shake off.

‘Now,’ Mother says, after clearing her throat. ‘Let’s have a look at you, my dear.’

She scans my face and her smile wobbles. ‘Oh, you look so tired. Are you eating? Sleeping?’

‘Yes. I have a friend.’

She goes still, her eyes wide. ‘Really?’ She throws a glance to Ramon. ‘Really? My darling, that is wonderful news! Wonderful.’ She takes a sip of water. ‘Who is it?’

‘Pardon?’

She set down her glass. ‘Your friend.’ A small cough. ‘Who is it?’

‘Why?’

‘I…I am just interested. Making conversation.’

I open my mouth to speak, but suddenly check myself. My voice is raised, my fingers still pressed into the table. I soften, lean back, try to stay calm, try to stop searching for inferences that are not there. ‘Her name is Patricia,’ I say finally. ‘My friend’s name is Patricia.’

Ramon jots the name down. ‘Do you know her surname?’ he asks.

‘Do you need to know that?’

‘Ramon,’ my mother says, ‘it’s okay.’ She turns to me. ‘Do you trust her, this friend? Talk to her?’

I inhale. Calm. ‘Yes.’ I glance at Ramon’s file. ‘Her surname is O’Hanlon.’ Ramon writes it down. ‘Why are you noting her name?’

‘Maria,’ my mother says, Ramon’s pen hovering in mid-air. ‘Maria, look at me.’

I glare at my brother, then slowly peel my eyes off him. I don’t like that he is recording every detail, every utterance. Why? Why would he need to do that?

‘Maria.’ Mother again. ‘It’s for your journal, remember? The one you began after Papa died.’

‘Why are you writing in my journal?’

‘No, I didn’t mean…We are not writing in—’

I look to the two of them, eyes frantic. ‘It is mine. I don’t want you to touch it. They are my notes. My journal. Mine.’

‘Maria,’ Mama says, voice almost a whisper, ‘your journal contents—they are just dreams, random thoughts.’

‘No. They are facts, information I know. Real names, real numbers.’

But she shakes her head. ‘My dearest, you know what the doctors said. The notes in it, well, they are just flights of fancy, manic thought patterns.’

‘They are not!’ I yell. We all stop. My chest heaves, guards stand straight, dart their eyes to me.

Mother lets out a weak sigh and looks to Ramon. He tilts his head. No words. Mother draws in a long breath and clasps her hands. ‘My dear, this place is taking its toll on you already. Of course, if you wish, Ramon will not write in your journal.’ She coughs. ‘Have you been to confession?’

‘No,’ I reply after a moment, my ribcage easing yet my hands still clenched.

‘Well, maybe that’s something you should consider. It may help a little. May help with everything that…that you’ve done. Visit the prison chaplain.’

I laugh out loud. It takes me by surprise. ‘How can I do that?’

‘What?’ Mother looks to Ramon.

‘Maria,’ he hisses, as inmates and guards look to our table, ‘not here. Not now.’

‘I cannot see a priest. Not with my conviction.’ I slap my hands to the table. ‘Mama, I told you something on the phone and you denied it.’

‘What?’ Ramon says.

Mother presses her lips together. ‘She says she saw me kissing Father Reznik.’

‘Maria, you’ve gone too far this time.’

‘Maria,’ my mother says, ‘your memory is not correct, my dear.’

‘It is!’ I scratch my head, nervous at the cloud of confusion forming in my mind. Then something else: Papa. ‘Medical records!’ I say. ‘Papa found some medical records, about me, in the loft one day. From a…’ I tap my head. ‘From a hospital! I remember. It wasn’t long before the accident. He told me about it…’ I stop. Look down at the table. ‘At least, I think he did.’

Mother reaches forward to me. ‘Darling, what do you think Papa told you, hmmm? You know you have blocked all that out. Remember what your therapist said, the one the Church put us in touch with? He said your grief was affecting your memory. Why, at one point you could hardly recall what Papa looked like, let alone recollect specific conversations—it was too painful for you. Oh, you were so close to him. Papa’s little girl.’ She reaches for me.

But I ignore her advance, and close my eyes, will the memory—any memory—to work its way into my head, knocking aside the ingrained grief with all my might. Papa, whispering to me in the loft, I am so sure it happened. I scrunch my eyes tight, slap my hands to my ears to block out the sounds from the room. Think. He found paperwork, a trail of it via a computer link. What did it say? What? My mother’s voice is calling out at me now, opposite me, but I have to ignore it, have to relive what I saw so I can tell them, tell them that Papa was…

‘He was scared,’ I say aloud, my hands still cupped on
my ears. ‘He was scared. I remember! He was scared when he told me about a document he had found, and I know this, I know he was frightened, because he said so and his were hands shaking when he spoke to me, when he showed me the file. It was crammed with names, dates, codes, contacts, countries. It was! With my medical details from a hospital in…’

I avoid their stares, instead scanning my memory banks, urging my brain to help me, to not betray me this once. It works.

‘Scotland,’ I declare, a wide smile spreading across my face, elated. The conversation with Papa, the one I could never recall, the one I was always too upset to evoke, so sad was I at his loss, my brain jumbling my thoughts to a point where I made my papa into something else in my head, sometimes into a bear or a lion. And when he spoke to me in my fevered dreams it was, instead, with a roar or a growl. Not words. But now—now it is coming back to me. It must be here, in prison—the fresh trauma, the noise, the overloading of my senses. It has shaken my brain, unlogged something I thought I would never hear again: my papa’s voice.

‘I saw it,’ I say now, fast. ‘Something about a hospital in Scotland and…’ I stall. Nothing else comes. Think. What was it? Who did he warn me against? Mama speaks, but my brain is on autopilot. Louder, faster, uploading data initiated from something from…from…

‘Mother!’

Ramon and Mama blink at me.

‘Jesus Christ, Maria,’ Ramon hisses, ‘what are you playing at? Everyone is staring.’

‘I remember now,’ I say, fast, fitful, giddy with possibilities, with what it all could mean. ‘Papa warned me. He said something was being done to me.’ And then it occurs to me. ‘Mama! My journal! Perhaps there is something in there, some clue I wrote down years ago.’

My mother sobs heavily, her hand flying to her mouth.

‘Why on earth are you saying all this?’ Ramon asks me angrily.

‘Because it is true. Don’t you see? I blocked it out because I was grieving, and now, in here, after the trial, the trauma, I remember it, not all of it, but—’

‘No. Maria, stop.’

‘Why?’ I say, confused.

Ramon forms a fist on the table. ‘Because you are lying again.’

‘I am not.’

Mama lets out another sob. Ramon glares at me, places his arm on her shoulder, but she shakes her head, draws a tissue from her pocket and dabs her eyes. She takes one sip of water then draws in a breath.

‘Maria,’ she says, her voice tiny, like a bird’s, ‘you can’t say things like that about me, about your papa. The therapist predicted this might happen. He said the conversations you believe you recalled having with Papa may never have even occurred. It was grief back then, Maria, that made you confused.’ She sniffs. ‘It is grief now.’

‘But it is true.’

A small head shake. ‘No, darling, no.’ She clasps the tissue between her fingertips. ‘My dear, you don’t see what we do. So much has happened to you that I worry. I worry what it is doing to you, how much it has scarred you. You
are confused, scared. This much I understand. What I cannot comprehend is why you did what you did to that poor priest. Why you are spouting the lies you do now.’ She exhales, her shoulder dropping, her poise gone. ‘You need to stop now, my dearest. Just stop.’

My heart flutters. I wipe my eyes, not sure what to think. I know what I saw, what I heard. My mother’s hands tremble, tiny movements, but I see it. Have I gone too far? If she is worried about me, about what they say I did to the priest, maybe if I tell her, she will feel better.