I am shivering. That's what my mind can do to me. I'm cracking up. I've been sleepwalking. Lucia told me when I was in the shower. She said I went down to my study at three in the morning. Later that day I found a blank pad on the desk. I saw the indent of some handwriting. I couldn't find the original. I took it to the window and saw that it was something I had written: 'the thin air…'?
Chapter 1
Wednesday, 24th July 2002
'I want my mummy. I want my mummy.'
Consuelo Jiménez opened her eyes to a child's face only centimetres from her own, which lay half buried in the pillow. Her eyelashes scratched the cotton slip. The child's fingers grabbed at the flesh of her upper arm.
'I want my mummy.'
'All right, Mario. Let's go and find Mummy,' she said, thinking this is too early for anybody. 'You know she's only just across the street, don't you? You can stay here with Matías, have some breakfast, play a little…'
'I want my mummy.'
The child's fingers dug into her arm with some urgency and she stroked his hair and kissed him on the forehead.
She didn't want to cross the street in her night- clothes, like some working-class woman needing something from the shops, but the child was tugging at her, wheedling. She slipped on a white silk dressing gown over her cotton pyjamas and fitted her feet into some gold sandals. She ran her hands through her hair while
Mario sheafed her dressing gown and started hauling her away like some stevedore down at the docks.
Taking his hand she led him down the stairs one at a time. They left the chill of the air-conditioned house and the heat, even this early in the morning, was solid and unwavering with not even a lick of freshness from the dawn after another oppressive night.