It’s Sunday afternoon. I’ve spoken to Tania, Julia and Carolina. My friends know each other, they say hello if they cross paths, they speak every now and then, but they don’t hang out together. I see them separately. This morning I saw Carolina. She gave up coffee when she got pregnant, so she had a juice in the café instead. I had lunch with Julia, and Tania called just now. I’ve been friends with the three of them since we were teenagers. We didn’t go to the same school, I met them in different contexts. Tania is an artist. Julia runs a film festival and plays the guitar pretty well, though she’s a bit shy about it. Carolina studied literature, and now she writes and has a small press. I don’t go to a psychologist, but if I have any kind of case history, you could say it’s in their hands.

The first story I wrote in primary school was about a giant, and now I’m writing about a dwarf. As a girl I had big handwriting. The two lines in my exercise books were like the floor and the ceiling, and my handwriting was like Alice, squashed uncomfortably between them. Over the years, my handwriting has shrunk. As if every so often it took a little of the blue potion. Maybe that’s why I feel closer to the dwarf than to the giant.

My first story was about a giant because the first thing I read and fell in love with was about a giant. I was seven when I read that Oscar Wilde story. Some children play in the giant’s garden. Time passes, and eventually the giant gets old and frail and can’t play with the children any more. He sits in a giant armchair, watching them play, admiring his garden, looking around him. I was a big fan of Oscar Wilde’s giant, so I put the giant in my version on the patio behind my house. My parents and the neighbours got on well with him too, so he grew old out there on the patio. Sometimes the giant went with me to the market.

A giant armchair. The dwarf’s made-to-measure furniture. The medium-sized wooden chair I’m sitting on. The giant who plays games, the dwarf with his elegant cane. What’s the median? Is the average a point in between the two ends? Is there an exact centre? Is the present a kind of average? Am I all the sizes of handwriting I’ve ever had? Do my handwriting and its diminutive size contain my big writing from when I was a child?

Does this story contain all the stories I am?

It’s Sunday. I’m going to the cinema with Guillermo. But before I leave I’m going to tell you something, Jonás. I love you, I miss you so much.