You told me so many things, Mum, and none of them are in my head now, but perhaps they’ve taken root in my soul.

Afterward, when you were tired of talking, I asked you, “Mum, where are we going today?”

You shrugged, giving me a trusting smile, and said, “Who cares? Let’s just get in the car and see where it takes us!”

That yellow 127 was enchanted, it always took us to different places, and to me those places were enchanted, too. Anonymous places, deserted, gray squares, the houses of chattering and theatrical relations, the beauty parlor run by your best friend, the one you exchanged important confidences with, thoughts about marriage and husbands. Sitting on a stool, I studied your body, covered with creams and oils. I can still smell their perfume—I only have to think about it.

Your words and your friend’s words have remained fundamental for me: I think it was in that room in the beauty parlor that my sexual journey began. I think it was there that I first heard talk about men and first began to form any sort of an idea about them. I was all ears, I was always discovering something new, some new curiosity was always being satisfied. Every day, when I asked, “Mum, where are we going?” I hoped you would say, “To the beauty parlor!”

The 127 was our nest, our refuge. From what? Time, perhaps. You were twenty-five or maybe even younger, and I was nearly five, but we both sensed that time would steal something very precious from us: our levity.

When you swapped the yellow 127 for a red car, our relationship changed, and I was forced to go alone to the enchanted places, the places of illusions.

* * *

“Tomorrow your daughter will be able to walk the roads of life alone, the roads woven of tears and dreams, and perhaps her wound will be in her heart.”

Do you remember those words?

I remember them. Every day.

TWENTY-THREE

“I’m going to buy some cigarettes,” Thomas said as he left, slamming the door behind him.

I was smoking the last one, lying on the sofa, transfixed by the pictures and the voices on the television. I nodded, looking straight ahead.

When I heard the elevator door opening and closing again, it was as though a flash of lightning had suddenly passed through me and filled me with superhuman energy. I ran to the window and grabbed his mobile phone from the sill.

Frantically fingering the keypad, I dash through the messages in his in-box. There’s nothing there to give me any concern, although for a moment I have a sense of foreboding that he might have put another girl’s number under my name or his mother’s. Then I run through all the texts of the messages and that hint of foreboding fades away.

Suddenly a loud cough right behind me makes me start, and I feel the air stirring my hair.