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she said. The sweetness of her tone softened the harshness of the comment. ‘You’ve always thought badly of him. I don’t mean to say he didn’t disappoint me either, but I know him …’
    ‘Better than me, I admit,’ he interrupted.
    ‘And I know he’d never do such a thing. But for your peace of mind, I’ll sign those papers right now. Give them here.’
    As he passed her the printed papers marked with crosses where she should sign, he remembered the conversation they’d had when she’d told him she was going to marry Jaime. He’d warned her that he didn’t like him and didn’t think it was a very good idea. Jaime struck him as immature, silly, volatile, very well suited to that company of his, Vertical Mediterranean, but not calm enough for the stability a marriage requires. He admitted women might find Jaime very seductive when he put on his harness and clipped himself to a safety rope and climbed up to carry out one of those jobs he did: putting up an advertising poster on top of a building or fixing a satellite dish or an aerial. Up there, all lightness and confidence, he might look like a sleepwalking angel, a bird or a feline moving along the parapets, oblivious to vertigo and fear. But back on the ground he suddenly looked smaller, as if he wasn’t the same person that had been silhouetted against the sky, and his comments sounded vain and trivial when he responded to the praise of those who had seen him at work. Time had proved Olmedo right, but he’d never been cruel to his daughter, had never said, ‘I told you so, I did tell you he was only a peacock. I saidhe wouldn’t make you happy, and you didn’t listen, didn’t take my advice. So now take responsibility for your actions and deal with the consequences on your own.’ On the contrary, when she confessed her failure, he opened his arms and gave her his full support.
    ‘Here,’ she said, handing him the signed papers.
    ‘I don’t care whether I was right or wrong. I only want for you to be happy.’ He was pleased to see his daughter smile before she gave him a hug.
    ‘I am, Dad. I’m pretty sure I am.’
    ‘It’s the only thing that matters.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘What time did you tell Gabriela?’ said Olmedo, and cast a glance at the clock ticking on the wall.
    ‘In five minutes. She’ll be here any moment. You know how punctual she is.’
    She cleared the cups and took them to the kitchen.
    Olmedo was about to take the boy out to play in the garden when he discovered his grandson needed a diaper change. He told his daughter, who picked him up and went to take care of it. One minute after ten the doorbell rang.
    ‘Can you get that?’ shouted Marina from the bathroom.
    But he had already lifted the receiver of the intercom, and when he heard, ‘It’s me, Gabriela,’ he buzzed her in. Then he opened the door and waited in the doorway with a strange feeling of novelty. It was the first time Gabriela had visited his daughter’s house; whenever all three had met before, to go shopping or share a meal, it had been in a public place or in his flat. But the fact that Gabriela was now coming to the house where father and daughter – the family – were waiting added to their closeness, as if she were saying she did not only accept him, Camilo Olmedo, but also the circumstances surrounding him.
    But there was a further dimension to her visit. For someone who had lost her son so violently, to the jaws of a dog, any reference to children could only bring to mind her own loss. Theimbalance between his own general well-being and Gabriela’s situation seem terribly unfair to Olmedo; her suffering was such that she spent whole afternoons in her flat, thinking of her son, looking at pictures of him, fighting back an enormous amount of pain. And so he felt he was beholden to her, and wanted to spend time with her not only for the sake of passion, as would have been the case twenty or thirty years before, but also to impart something of