“Where are you off to?”

It’s not a threat, just a question.

She shrugs without answering and lights her cigarette. The lawn in the garden, already yellow from the summer, is rustling with insects. The bottle in her hand is still cool, but that won’t last.

“I’ll be back.”

She runs to the scrubland to look for a shady spot, get away from the questions and drink her beer in solitude.

Taking Stock

In the silence of the kitchen, head pulled into his shoulders, the father is drinking his beer. Others will follow, since the night is young and he has things he wants to make hazy. Right now, everything is all too crystal clear in his head, clear and revolting, like that pretty daughter of his, legs open under the weight of a son of a bitch. And yet he knows that these days you’re no virgin at sixteen. Or rarely. He knew it when he was the same age as his kid, and her mother wasn’t much older. There were always some precious little madams who protected their virtue as if they were better than anybody else, or the ugly ones, or the dykes. But with Céline he should have known. Except that, shit, no, she was his kid. His first-born, his treasure, his pride. He took her to the jeweller himself – she must have been two – to get her little earlobes pierced. Tiny gold pendants to make her even prettier. Of course it wasn’t always easy, and there’d often be slaps echoing in the house, but evidently he hadn’t given her enough of them.

It had been tense on the building site that morning. He’d had a row with two guys in the team over nothing, some bloody nonsense because of a cement mixer. They’ll hear about it, sooner or later. Not possible to make the baby go away any more, the stupid bitch has left it too late. And now she’s a stupid bitch, like the mother said, and the mother’s right. Yes, he should have been stricter, slaps are not enough, it’s never enough with women. He can call her a woman now she is one, and she’ll have a hard time of it. Patrick’s worked it out, naturally. And he noticed the face he had on him, jaw clenched, mouth shut, chin tight like a snarl. When things got complicated with the other two builders, it was Patrick who calmed things down, he who generally flies off the handle.

Manuel has taken another beer. He’s sweating. He should have a shower, wash off the sweat and the bits of concrete, but he can’t, he can’t be bothered to be new and clean. He’d rather stew in his own juice, his grime, keep turning it over and over, getting angrier. It’s the time when even he doesn’t know which way it’ll swing: violence or snivelling, it depends.

His daughters, fifteen and sixteen. His daughters. Shit. Only yesterday he was the same age as they are now. All of a sudden, he starts thinking about his father, and that’s not a good omen. And about his grandfather, of course. About the child he used to be, about old grudges. It’s always the same with booze: you think you get away, but you end up slap in the middle of things even harder every time. Spain takes centre stage in the kitchen even though he’s never set foot there. He gets up, stands still in front of the open fridge a few seconds for its coolness, and grabs another beer.