By this time my eyelids were beginning to close. A light breeze wafted through the window. It came from the sea, sweeping the mist off the rooftops. I was about to close the book when I realised that something was trapped in my mind’s filter, something connected to the type on those pages. I returned to the beginning and started to go over the text. I found the first example on the fifth line. From then on the same mark appeared every two or three lines. One of the characters, the capital S, was always slightly tilted to the right. I took a blank page from the drawer, slipped it behind the roller of the Underwood typewriter on my desk and wrote a sentence at random:

‘Sometimes I hear the bells of Santa María del Mar.’

I pulled out the paper and examined it under the lamp.

‘Sometimes…of Santa María…’

I sighed. Lux Aeterna had been written on that very same typewriter and probably, I imagined, at that same desk.

4

The following morning I went out to have my breakfast in a café opposite Santa María del Mar. The Borne district was heaving with carts and people going to the market, with shopkeepers and wholesalers opening their stores. I sat at one of the outdoor tables, asked for a café con leche and adopted an orphaned copy of La Vanguardia that was lying on the next table. While my eyes slid over the headlines and leads, I noticed a figure walking up the steps to the church door and sitting down at the top to observe me on the sly. The girl must have been about sixteen or seventeen and was pretending to write things down in a notebook while she stole glances at me surreptitiously. I sipped my coffee calmly. After a while I beckoned to the waiter.

‘Do you see that young lady sitting by the church door? Tell her to order whatever she likes. It’s on me.’

The waiter nodded and went up to her. When she saw him approaching she buried her head in her notebook, assuming an expression of total concentration that made me smile. The waiter stopped in front of her and cleared his throat. She looked up from her notebook and stared at him. He explained what his mission was and then pointed in my direction. The girl looked at me in alarm. I waved at her. She went crimson. She stood up and came over to my table, with short steps, her eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

‘Isabella?’ I asked.

The girl looked up and sighed, annoyed at herself.

‘How did you know?’ she asked.

‘Supernatural intuition,’ I replied.

She held out her hand and I shook it without much enthusiasm.

‘May I sit down?’ she asked.

She sat down without waiting for a reply. In the next half a minute the girl changed her position about six times until she returned to the original one. I observed her with a calculated lack of interest.

‘You don’t remember me, do you, Señor Martín?’

‘Should I?’

‘For years I delivered your weekly order from Can Gispert.’

The image of the girl who for so long had brought my food from the grocer’s came into my mind, then dissolved into the more adult and slightly more angular features of this Isabella, a woman of soft shapes and steely eyes.

‘The little girl I used to tip,’ I said, although there was little or nothing left of the girl in her.

Isabella nodded.

‘I always wondered what you did with all those coins.’

‘I bought books at Sempere & Sons.’

‘If only I’d known…’

‘I’ll go if I’m bothering you.’

‘You’re not bothering me. Would you like something to drink?’

The girl shook her head.

‘Señor Sempere tells me you’re talented.’

Isabella shrugged her shoulders and smiled at me sceptically.

‘Normally, the more talent one has, the more one doubts it,’ I said. ‘And vice versa.’

‘Then I must be quite something,’ Isabella replied.

‘Welcome to the club. Tell me, what can I do for you?’

Isabella took a deep breath.

‘Señor Sempere told me that perhaps you could read some of my work and give me your opinion and some advice.’

I fixed my eyes on hers for a few seconds before replying. She held my gaze without blinking.

‘Is that all?’

‘No.’

‘I could see it coming. What is chapter two?’

Isabella hesitated only for a split second.

‘If you like what you read and you think I have potential, I’d like you to allow me to become your assistant.’

‘What makes you think I need an assistant?’

‘I can tidy up your papers, type them, correct errors and mistakes…’

‘Errors and mistakes?’

‘I didn’t mean to imply that you make mistakes…’

‘Then what did you mean to imply?’

‘Nothing. But four eyes are always better than two. And besides, I can take care of your correspondence, run errands, help with research. What’s more, I know how to cook and I can-’

‘Are you asking for a post as assistant or cook?’

‘I’m asking you to give me a chance.’

Isabella looked down. I couldn’t help but smile. Despite myself, I really liked this curious creature.

‘This is what we’ll do. Bring me the best twenty pages you’ve written, the ones you think will show me what you are capable of. Don’t bring any more because I won’t read them. I’ll have a good look at them and then, depending on what I think, we’ll talk.’

Her face lit up and, for a moment, the veil of tension and toughness that governed her expression disappeared.

‘You won’t regret it,’ she said.

She stood up and looked at me nervously.

‘Is it all right if I bring the pages round to your house?’

‘Leave them in my letter box. Is that all?’

She nodded vigorously and backed away with those short, nervous steps. When she was about to turn and start running, I called her.

‘Isabella?’

She looked at me meekly, her eyes clouded with sudden anxiety.

‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘And don’t tell me it’s because I’m your favourite author or any of that sort of flattery with which Sempere has advised you to soft-soap me, because if you do, this will be the first and last conversation we ever have.’

Isabella hesitated for a moment. Then, looking at me candidly, she replied with disarming bluntness.

‘Because you’re the only writer I know.’

She gave me an embarrassed smile and went off with her notebook, her unsteady walk and her frankness. I watched her turn the corner of Calle Mirallers and vanish behind the cathedral.

5

When I returned home an hour later, I found her sitting on my doorstep, clutching what I imagined must be her story. As soon as she saw me she stood up and forced a smile.

‘I told you to leave it in my letter box,’ I said.

Isabella nodded and shrugged her shoulders.

‘As a token of my gratitude I’ve brought you some coffee from my parents’ shop. It’s Colombian and really good. The coffee didn’t fit through your letter box so I thought I’d better wait for you.’

Such an excuse could only have been invented by a budding novelist. I sighed and opened the door.

‘In.’

I went up the stairs, Isabella following like a lapdog a few steps behind.

‘Do you always take that long to have your breakfast? Not that it’s any of my business, of course, but I’ve been waiting here for three quarters of an hour, so I was beginning to worry. I said to myself, I hope he hasn’t choked on something. It would be just my luck. The one time I meet a writer in the flesh and then he goes and swallows an olive the wrong way and bang goes my literary career,’ she rattled on.

I stopped halfway up the flight of steps and looked at her with the most hostile expression I could muster.

‘Isabella, for things to work out between us we’re going to have to set down a few rules. The first is that I ask the questions and you just answer them. When there are no questions from me, you don’t give me answers or spontaneous speeches. The second rule is that I can take as long as I damn well please to have breakfast, an afternoon snack or to daydream, and that does not constitute a matter for debate.’