I have settled into a pleasant routine here. I get up, bathe, eat breakfast, usually with my landlady gossiping about who was at Mass and what they were wearing and what the priest said, and then I go to classes. I seem to have made some friends—or at least pleasant acquaintances. I have gone to lunch with Henry, who is like a loveable St Bernard puppy, and with Imelda, who is surprisingly nice to me and not as terrifying as I first imagined. She and her family have suffered through Franco, being driven from their life in Madrid and forced to survive in Biarritz, France. Her father, formerly a professor, is now working as a janitor. But she has grandparents who are fans of Franco and who are paying for her schooling. I have to confess that I have not reached the stage of friendship where I can share in a similar way with her. She remarked on the fact while we were having a before-lunch coffee one day. “You never tell me anything about yourself,” she said.

“There is nothing to tell,” I replied. “I have led the most ordinary of lives since my father died and I had to leave art school. I teach girls. I go home. I live in quiet solitude with my mother.”

“But what about men?” she asked. “There must be men. You do not want a husband?”

“Of course I do,” I replied. “But the only men in my village are the vicar, who is married, the butcher, who is also married, and several elderly farmworkers. And I can’t leave my mother. She had become most dependent on me.”

“So how did you manage to escape and come here?”

“My aunt agreed to live with my mother for the year.”

“That was kind.”

“Not entirely.” I smiled. “She had just lost her Austrian maid, and I don’t think she wanted to do her own housework.”

“We all want something, don’t we?” Imelda said. “But myself, I do not think I could live without men. I enjoy the physical relationship, don’t you?”

I felt myself blushing. “I haven’t had much chance to experience it. But the few times were very nice.”