Maribel
My mother’s sister’s family picture was similar to ours, with the important difference that the head of the family did not die.
My aunt, who we already mentioned loved to paint in oils and go to the movies and was an acclaimed cook despite not liking cooking at all, had a son and a daughter, and later would have another daughter with my uncle, the retired Galician paratrooper and Atlético de Madrid club member, who always greeted me with a smile — ’¡Hombre, Don Francisco!’ — on that magical thirteenth floor of ‘The Hive’ overlooking the M-30 highway and, across the road, the park, the sports fields, the building on top of which a Mercedes Benz logo revolved sedately and eternally.
My cousins looked like dolls, like cute guiris: very much as my dear Rachel Anne, the Texan youtuber in love with Spain.
We once made a surprise visit, and paradoxically, no one was home except for my cousin Maribel, the eldest daughter, who no longer lived there because she’d moved to London and, like my mother and I, had found the flat empty during her impromptu visit. It happened in the early nineties. She talked with my mother for a long while and said that she loved England, that she was delighted to live there and that Sting was so handsome.