“How are you feeling this morning, Ariadna?”

“All right.”

“I thought that today we could talk about those months in which you disappeared, if you don’t mind.”

“We already spoke about that the other day. And the day before that.”

“Yes, but I think that bit by bit new details are emerging. Memory is like that. It likes to play tricks on us.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I’d like to return to the day you ran away from home. Do you remember it?”

“I’m tired.”

“Hold out a bit longer. The doctor will be here very soon, and he’ll give you a tonic to make you feel better.”

“Can it be now?”

“First we’ll talk, and then you can take your medicine.”

Ariadna nodded. Every day the same game was repeated. She no longer remembered what she’d told him and what she hadn’t. What did it matter? It no longer made sense to keep anything from him. They’d all died. And she was never going to get out of there.

“It was the day before my birthday,” she began. “The Ubachs had organized a party for me. All my girlfriends from school had been invited.”

“Your girlfriends?”

“They were not my real friends. It was bought friendship, like everything else in that house.”

“Was that the night you decided to run away?”

“Yes.”

“But someone helped you, right?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about that man. David Martín, wasn’t it?”

“David.”

“How did you meet him?”

“David was a friend of my father’s. They’d worked together.”

“Had they written books together?”

“Radio serials. They’d written one called The Ice Orchid. It was a mystery story set in nineteenth-century Barcelona. My father didn’t allow me to listen to it because he said it wasn’t suitable for little girls, but I used to sneak away and listen to it on the radio in our house in Vallvidrera. Very low.”

“According to my reports, David Martín was sent to prison in 1939, when he was trying to cross the frontier and return to Barcelona at the end of the war. He spent some time imprisoned in Montjuïc Castle, at the same time that your father was there, and was pronounced dead toward the end of 1941. You’re talking about 1948, seven years after this. Are you sure the man who helped you escape was Martín?”

“It was him.”

“Couldn’t it have been someone who pretended to be him? After all you hadn’t seen him for a number of years.”

“It was him.”

“OK. How did you meet up again?”

“Doña Manuela, my tutor, used to take me on Saturdays to Retiro Park. To the Crystal Palace, my favorite place.”

“Mine too. Is that where you met Martín?”

“Yes. I’d seen him a few times. From a distance.”

“Do you think it was just a coincidence?”

“No.”

“When did you first speak to him?”

“Doña Manuela always carried a bottle of anise liqueur in her bag, and sometimes she would fall asleep.”

“And then David Martín would come over?”