“Fernandito, I’m at least ten years older than you,” Alicia had told him at the time, drying his tears. “You shouldn’t think such things, it’s not right.”

“Why don’t you love me, Señorita Alicia? Am I not man enough for you?”

“Fernandito, you’re man enough to sink the Spanish Armada, but what you must do is find yourself a girlfriend who is your age. In a couple of years you’ll realize that I was right. All I can offer you is my friendship.”

Fernandito’s pride was like an earnest young boxer with more willingness than talent: it didn’t matter how many blows it took, it always came back for more. “Nobody will ever love you more than I do, Alicia,” he said. “Nobody.”

The day she was due to take the train to Madrid, Fernandito, who by dint of listening to boleros on the radio carried melodrama in his bloodstream, was waiting for her at the station dressed in his Sunday best, polished shoes, and the implausible air of an aspiring matinee idol, though somewhat on the short side. He carried a bunch of red roses that had probably cost him a month’s salary and insisted on handing her a passionate love letter that would have made Lady Chatterley blush but only made Alicia cry, and not in the way poor Fernandito longed for. Before Alicia could step onto the train and get safely away from the would-be Casanova, Fernandito summoned up all the courage and nerve he’d been bottling up since puberty and gave her an almighty kiss, the sort of kiss only a fifteen-year-old can give, making her feel, if only for a while, that there was still hope for the world.

“You’re breaking my heart and sending me to an early grave, Señorita Alicia,” he sobbed. “I’ll die from weeping. I’ve heard that this is a medical certainty. The tear ducts dry up and end up bursting the aorta. They were talking about it on the radio the other day. You’ll see, they’ll send you the funeral notice, and then you’ll be sorry.”

“Fernandito, there’s more life in one of your tears than I could live if I made it to a hundred.”

“That sounds like something you’ve got out of a book.”

“No book can do you justice, Fernandito, unless it’s a treatise on biology.”

“Leave, go off with your deceit and your heart of stone. One day, when you feel you’re all alone with no one to turn to, you’ll miss me.”

Alicia kissed him on his forehead. She would have kissed him on the lips, but that would have killed him. “I’m missing you already. Take care, Fernandito. And try to forget me.”

* * *

At last they reached the top floor. When Alicia realized she was standing in front of the door to her old home, she emerged from her trance.

Jesusa opened the door and switched on the light. “Don’t worry,” she said, as if she’d read her thoughts. “The boy has a lovely girlfriend now and has wised up no end. Come along in.”