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Manolo. He recalled how that memorable bum had led to lots of tears when her ballet teacher inevitably advised her to revisit her artistic ambitions: those earth-shaking hips, fleshy buttocks and rounded thighs weren’t a sylph’s or a swan’s, but rather an egglaying goose’s, and she’d suggested an immediate transfer to a sweaty, liquor-laden rumba beat.
    â€œA sad fate, right?” he commented, and Manolo shrugged his shoulders and prepared to investigate that inexplicable sadness when she came back and forced him to look at her.
    â€œMima’s just made it, it’s still hot,” she assured them, offering a cup first to Manolo and then to himself. “Incredible, the Count in person. By now you must be a major or captain? Right, Mario?”
    â€œLieutenant, and sometimes I wonder how,” he replied, tasting the coffee but not daring to add: It’s good coffee, bloody hell, especially for friends; it really was the best coffee he’d tasted in years.
    â€œWho would have thought you’d ever join the police?”

    â€œNobody, I reckon.”
    â€œThis guy was a right character,” she told Manolo and looked back at him. “You were never named as an exemplary pupil because you wouldn’t join in the right activities and always bunked off the last classes to go and listen to episodes of Guaytabó . I still remember that.”
    â€œBut I got good marks.”
    She couldn’t repress a smile. The flow of memories between them jumped over the bad moments, erased by time, and only touched down on happy days, memorable events or incidents that had improved with hindsight. She even looked more beautiful: that can’t be true.
    â€œYou don’t write these days, Mario?”
    â€œNo, not anymore. But one day,” he responded uneasily. “And what’s become of your sister?”
    â€œAymara’s in Milan. She went for five years with her husband, who’s a representative for Cuban Export. Her new husband, you know?”
    â€œNo, I didn’t know, but good for her.”
    â€œTell me, Mario, whatever happened to Rabbit? I’ve never seen him since.”
    â€œNothing much, you know he finished teacher-training but managed to get out of education. He’s at the Institute for History still thinking about what would have happened if they hadn’t killed Maceo or the English had stayed in Havana and other historical tragedies he likes to invent.”
    â€œAnd how’s Carlos these days?”
    She said Carlos, and he wanted to disappear down her cleavage. Skinny Carlos used to reckon Tamara and Aymara had big dark nipples, look at their lips, he’d say, they’re like a black’s and, according to his theory, nipples and lips were directly related in colour and size. They’d often tried to test out his theory in the
case of Tamara by waiting for her to bend down to pick up a pencil and by watching her in PE classes, although she was always one to wear bras. But not today?
    â€œHe’s fine,” he lied. “And what about yourself?”
    She took the cup from his hands and put it on the glass table, next to an artistic wedding shot in which the smiling Tamara and Rafael, in their wedding outfits, happily embraced and looked at each other in an oval mirror. He was thinking she ought to say fine, but she didn’t dare: her husband had disappeared, might be dead and she was distressed but the fact was she looked great, when she finally declared: “I’m very worried, Mario. I’ve got this feeling, I’m not sure . . .”
    â€œWhat feeling?”
    She shook her head, and that lock of hair danced irreverently over her forehead. She was nervous, rubbed her hand, and her usually tranquil eyes seemed stressed.
    â€œSomething’s amiss,” she said, looking into the silent house. “This is all too strange; something must be going on, right? Hey, Mario, you can smoke if