Unhappy Christmas Page 2

  The two friends parted ways for the second time with more kisses, hugs and Christmas greetings, surrounded by their mounds of suitcases and parcels.

  Totally forgetting the dismissals, her regrets about not seeing her family and everything that wasn’t Christmas with Miguel, Natalia couldn’t stop pacing the floor of Barajas airport impatiently until she managed to steal a taxi from under the nose of an old lady on crutches. She felt a bit guilty, but had to make the most of every second of her three days of Christmas. She was sure that the old lady wasn’t in such a hurry to get home as she was.

  The taxi took her along the silent streets of Madrid, bright with colourful lights in the dying early hours. Each time they drove under a string of lights, Natalia turned her head to look back at them in awe like a little kid. A Christmas song was playing on the radio. It made her hair stand on end. That newly dawning twenty-fourth of December, she felt full of hope and Christmas spirit. Wrapped up in her coat from one of the best boutiques in New York, she was the very image of success. All she was missing was her Prince Charming by her side.

  Continuing along Avenida de America, she passed her best friend Veronica’s building. She felt a bit of a traitor, not having told her she was coming to Madrid, but justified it to herself: she only had time for Miguel. Veronica would understand if she were in her shoes. So she shrugged her shoulders, pushed all regrets aside and went back to thinking only of the love of her life and her own happiness.

  Chapter 3

  Honey, I’m home!

  Christmas Eve had hardly dawned when Natalia found herself at the front door of her flat, surrounded by suitcases and gifts. Her thoughts ran ahead of her and she imagined herself tiptoeing into the house, carefully drawing back the sheets on her bed and slowly sliding across to nestle against Miguel’s warm back, whispering in his golden ear.

  She opened the door cautiously, silently, without taking off her coat and put the cases and gifts down on the floor in the hall. Putting her keys away in her coat pocket so as not to make any noise, she took off her shoes and slowly walked down the corridor, carrying her luxury heels in one hand and the bottle of whisky that she wanted to surprise her husband with in the other. She turned the corner and reached the half-open door of their bedroom. With masochistic delight, she hesitated, pushing the door open slowly as if she were caressing it. And then she saw him.

  He was lying face down in the bed, sleeping like a Christmas shepherd after herding his flock, more appetising than the sweetest, most irresistible Christmas cake. He was breathing as softly as a new-born puppy, his full lips slightly open and silently calling out to her. His long eyelashes resting naively on his cheeks, his expression was one of totally serene happiness, his reddish-brown hair sticking out adorably in all directions. His golden skin shone, full of life and warmth.

  Natalia shifted her gaze to his strong, powerful, muscly chest, rising and falling peacefully. She sighed contemplating Miguel’s well-toned torso, but the sigh turned sour when she realised that lying across her husband’s chest was something that shouldn’t be there: a woman’s arm.

  The slim forearm of another woman rested possessive and tranquil on the chest of the man that she loved, the man that had become her only reason for living. She couldn’t stop herself from letting out an anguished cry, upset and hurt. The bottle of Scotch whisky slipped out of her hand and fell to the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces.

  Miguel woke up. He opened his cinnamon-coloured eyes and saw her standing there, frozen, about to shatter into a thousand pieces just like the bottle. Natalia turned and ran, barefoot, towards the front door. Miguel jumped out of bed, stark naked, and raced after her, calling her name, pleading with her. When Natalia was about to reach the door, he caught up with her, grabbed her arm and cornered her by the wall.

  ‘Natalia, I’m sorry, listen...’

  Natalia saw herself reflected in the guilty shine of Miguel’s eyes. Full of hate, disgust and astonishment, she released herself from Miguel’s strong grip, opened the door and ran downstairs, still barefoot. In her left hand she was carrying the shoes that she had taken off to surprise her husband. When she realised that, all she could think of was her own stupidity and Miguel’s betrayal hurt all the more.

  Miguel threw on the first thing he could find in the hallway of the house: the trousers that he had quickly pulled off in the heat of the moment last night, shoes and a coat that was hanging on the stand and ran out in pursuit of Natalia.

  When Natalia heard Miguel’s hurried steps coming down the stairs, she pulled on her expensive shoes as best as she could and ran towards the door. She didn’t want to talk to him, didn’t want to see him, wanted him to vanish into thin air if that were possible. She just needed to get away from him.

  Natalia ran out into the street, got a few metres without looking back and jumped in a cab among the many that were headed like busy bees along Calle Goya, just as Miguel got there missing her by the fraction of an inch.

  ‘Take me to Puerta del Sol!’ Natalia stammered, desperate to get away from Miguel.

  The taxi drove off before Miguel could open the door and get in, but Natalia could hear his shouts through the closed car windows.

  ‘Natalia, please!’

  But Natalia didn’t turn around.

  Madrid was waking up, a hive of engines, gossip and hurried steps. Trails of breath left thousands of mouths like the smoke from chimneys in the freezing morning air, whilst people went about their shopping unrestrained, spending money as if it grew on trees, infused with festive spirit. You could almost hear the echo of the phrase that would be repeated all day long: ‘Happy Christmas.’ That’s what the taxi driver said to Natalia just before setting off and leaving Miguel behind:

  ‘Happy Christmas...’

  But Natalia was unable to reply, all she could do was sob like a little girl. A little girl who no longer turned round to look at the Christmas lights, no longer felt any excitement or happiness. The Christmas that she had been so excited about only a short time ago now seemed as hateful as her own miserable life.

  Christmas was supposed to be a time of love and happiness. But those who had neither were much more painfully aware of their suffering now than at any other time of the year. Natalia knew what happiness was like on Christmas Eve, with her loved ones, her gifts and the warmth of a cosy home: immense happiness. Now she was beginning to understand what the suffering was like in this festive period when you have nothing.

  How could he have done such a despicable thing to her? Natalia was shellshocked. The centre of her universe had been shattered and no longer served as a reference. It was all a lie. And Natalia had no messenger to shoot. She had discovered her misfortune all by herself. She didn’t know what she was going to do that Christmas, now that all of her plans had been blown to smithereens, but she did know one thing. She never wanted to see Miguel ever again. Never, well, at least not over the next three days. She couldn’t face it.

  Natalia’s mobile started to ring. Natalia took it out of her bag and saw Miguel’s photo on the screen, smiling at her.

  ‘Bastard!’ she murmured and rejected the call.

  Seeing Miguel’s face smiling up at her from her phone as if nothing had happened made her tears run dry, fuelling her indignation and numerous other feelings.

  What was she going to do now with her three days of Christmas holiday? And what was worse, what was she going to do about her life? Get divorced and start over in the United States? Forgive him and come back to Spain? No, definitely not that. She was hurt, confused, totally beside herself, but one thing she knew for sure was that the love that she had felt for Miguel had suddenly transformed into a hate as solid as a rock.

  The taxi driver interrupted her thoughts. They had arrived at Puerta del Sol. Without thinking about what she was doing, on autopilot, Natalia paid the taxi fare and got out in the centre of Madrid among the flood of people that had invaded the square, laden with shopping bags and Christmas spirit, almost charging
like a herd of cattle, indifferent to poor, fragile Natalia. Repressing her tears and anger, Natalia looked around and saw hundreds of frowning faces, stressed by the run-up to Christmas, mingled in with festive faces, relaxed, almost tipsy in ridiculous hats and wigs, and felt as if she were drowning in a hostile, stormy Christmas sea.

  Reality soon brought her back down to earth. A visibly shaken Miguel came running from another taxi that had arrived five seconds after hers, his expression begging with her, looking worried and more attractive than ever. Natalia looked away, avoiding that look that had driven her insane in the past and now too, except that now she couldn’t stand it, and she set off running towards Calle Preciados.

  She hurried through the surge of people, bumping into everyone, driven to distraction, knowing that Miguel was following just a few steps behind her. Nobody seemed to recognise her, nobody saw in her now distorted face the stony face that read the news from Washington. Right now, she was just an anonymous woman running desperately among the crowd.

  The happy Christmas hordes suffocated her, overwhelmed her. That fateful place was where the most blinding lights of Christmas were concentrated. The spotless shop windows, hypnotic and enchanting with their bright cellophane, gold, glass and glitter stars, and the people, swarming, handing out money left, right and centre like cash machines, shopping, spending and stressed under the weight of a happy Christmas.

  Although she was fleeing in terror and desperation, nobody looked at her, reacted or even wondered why she was running away from that man. At most they stepped aside to let her through. It was none of their business. Each to his own. Being alone in the heart of a big city is like being alone in the middle of a huge desert, she thought.

  After making her way through the floods of shoppers for what seemed like forever and zigzagging down the streets that surrounded Calle Preciados like a beehive, she reached a quiet spot, not as crowded and dared to look back. She’d done it. Miguel had gone.

  Chapter 4

  A face among the crowd

  She stopped on a grimy corner next to a skip to catch her breath. She had to behave like a grown-up, calm down and think. But she was scared to death of thinking about a situation that was suspiciously unpromising for her.

  She had spent months and months dreaming about Miguel, she had begun to love him like crazy again, in the same way that you love someone when you don’t know them enough or you’re far away from them. She’d become obsessed with him, had found a way to come back to Spain for three days, three measly miserable days at Christmas to celebrate it with him and, no sooner had she arrived, had she found him in bed with another woman whose face she didn't even catch a glimpse of.

  Who was that bitch? Who? Where had he met that husband snatcher, that interfering bitch? Was she prettier than her, more womanly? What did she have that Natalia didn’t? But no, no, she shouldn’t blame the lover, just her husband. It was he who had promised to stay loyal to her, he who had told her they would never part, he who had betrayed her.

  That pig was going to pay. To start, she wasn’t going to go back home for the next three days. She would go back to the United States without speaking to him. The cases she’d left at home didn’t contain anything that couldn't be replaced, just clothes. As far as the presents were concerned, he could keep them all. At the end of the day, Natalia had bought them for him, the idiot that she was.

  How could he?! She couldn't stop asking herself. She had to make him suffer; he had to suffer as much as she was suffering right now. She thought of a thousand and one ways to torture Miguel, but couldn’t find any that satisfied her urge for revenge as cruelly as she wanted. Only a couple of hours ago she had it all and now she’d lost the one thing she cared about most. She felt like the unhappiest person in the world and it was all her husband’s fault.

  Just then, Natalia looked up from her designer shoes and saw what was in front of her. She hadn’t realised with all the rush of the chase, the thoughts going round in her head and the hustle and bustle in the side street that connected with the ant hill that was the area surrounding Preciados. Across the road someone was watching her. She had just passed hundreds of pairs of eyes that had ignored her, but these two black eyes were examining her with interest and concern and when they noticed that Natalia was looking back at them, they came to life with a spark of curiosity.

  ‘Are you feeling OK?’

  Natalia couldn’t believe her eyes. Of all of the people crossing the heart of Madrid, absorbed in their Christmas errands, the only person who was concerned for her wellbeing was a beggar, a tramp with a cardboard sign that read: ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’

  He was just a couple of metres away, tall, well-built, tanned, around forty. A thick, wiry beard, no more than four days old, hung from his woolly hat, which was pulled down to his bushy eyebrows. Two black eyes challenged her from underneath them, shiny, courageous and puzzling. His noble facial features were stiff with the dignity of a fairy-tale king.

  His huge brownish-grey coat drooped at the sides like an ermine cloak worn the wrong way round. The coat bulged and spread out in the cold Madrid air like a magic cape, which was really only the result of several coats on top of each other, all ragged and dirty. He looked like the negative image of a fantasy Nordic king. He was like a fake, tainted apostle that had fled from the blackened portico of an old cathedral.

  She could guess that under all of those layers of misery, there was an attractive, strong man, but above all a man full of dignity and elegance, as strange as that may seem. The beggar, wrapped in the ragged layers of coats that made him seem unreal, magical, was standing in front of Natalia in her mundane but expensive designer coat.

  ‘Hey!’ The tramp insisted when he saw that Natalia was looking at him but hadn’t reacted. ‘Are you OK? Can I help you with anything?’

  ‘Yeah, yes, I’m OK....’ Natalia replied hastily, apprehensive.

  Without thinking, she automatically reached into her bag, opened her purse and pressed a twenty euro note in his hand. The tramp looked at her in surprise, and before he could say anything, Natalia ran off and disappeared from view. The beggar shrugged and put the note away in one of his coat pockets.

  A couple of mean-looking, grim-faced crooks, dressed in designer sports clothes followed the path of the note as he put it away, but the tramp noticed and glared at them openly, challenging them. Their greedy eyes darted away from him and they blended in among the crowd.

  The tramp had got a reaction out of Natalia, who was once again running through the stream of people, ready to get another taxi to take her away from there. She couldn’t care less about Miguel, but she suddenly felt a powerful urge to seek human companionship. She didn’t want to spend this Christmas alone; she couldn’t answer for her mental state if she did. She didn’t dare call her family and tell them that she was in Spain and, what’s more, she didn’t have the strength to travel to Teruel and attend the Christmas Eve dinner with her parents and siblings.

  When Natalia and Miguel lived together in Madrid, they spent Christmas Eve at Miguel’s parents’ house and New Year with Natalia’s family in Teruel. It was a relief, all things considered, not to have to show her face at dinner with Miguel’s parents, those unbearable, condescending snobs. A relief and revenge because Miguel was sure to have told them that she was coming and now he’d have to explain everything to his family... But she had to stop thinking about Miguel. Miguel was dead as far as she was concerned!

  Who could she turn to? Her friends of course! It was true that she'd neglected them since she’d moved to the States but she was sure that she could count on them in a situation like this. Naturally, the first person she thought of was Veronica, her best friend. She stopped a taxi in Callao and gave the driver her address while looking for her mobile in her handbag.

  Thirty missed calls from Miguel, messages ... She didn’t want to read them. Miguel was dead and buried. She had to get him out of her mind! She angrily deleted all traces of M
iguel’s calls from her mobile and dialled Veronica’s number. Out of range. Well, that was strange. She’d have to find somewhere else to go...

  Isabel! For the first time in ages she thought about Isabel, her friend from the editorial department. For seven years they’d worked together as novice journalists and had stayed friends even after Natalia was promoted. Natalia dialled Isabel’s number and waited for her to pick up.

  ‘Natalia?’ Isabel sounded surprised.

  ‘Isabel! Surprise!’

  ‘Where are you? Are you in Madrid?’

  ‘Yes, I’m in Madrid. How are you? What are you up to? Are you at work?’

  ‘No, no, I’m at home... This is a surprise, Natalia.’

  ‘I know. I’ve got a few days off and didn't have time to let anyone know. Do you fancy meeting for a coffee and a catch up?’

  ‘Erm... OK, why don’t you drop by? Can you remember the address?’

  ‘Of course I can, sweetie. I’ll be right there.’

  Natalia hung up, looked up Isabel’s address on her phone and gave it to the driver. It was a pleasure to have friends like Isabel. Natalia had to admit that they’d gradually lost touch over the last few years. To tell the truth, since she’d been living in the States, she’d lost touch with everyone, but the occasion only went to show that true friends are always there when you need them.

  Natalia felt some comfort when she rejected the umpteenth call from Miguel and stowed her mobile away in her bag. Her friend Isabel was waiting for her in the neighbourhood of Legazpi.

  Chapter 5

  A true friend

  Isabel opened the door and the first thing that Natalia noticed was that she looked really run down. Either Isabel had shrunk or Natalia had forgotten how short she was. Over the last few years she’d piled on the pounds, her hair had thinned and, at least that morning, she had huge bags under her eyes and a deathly pale face. To top it all, she was wearing a grey tracksuit that didn’t do anything for her at all. A hint of a smile was trying to take the edge off Isabel’s nervous, worried expression.