Chapter Fifteen: A Different Woman.

It was nearly two in the afternoon, and with the late July heat, Enric assumed Patricia must not be very comfortable. He stopped to buy a couple of sandwiches after leaving the metro station and entered the park.

He didn't take long to reach his destination, and his intuition didn't fail him—she was sitting at the foot of the scaffolding surrounding the statue of Alfonso XII. At that hour, it was unusual to see people under the Madrid sun in the middle of the esplanade, and for that reason, Patricia also saw him approaching.

"What are you doing here?" she shouted at the boy.

"I came to talk to you!" Enric raised his hands, from which hung bags from the sandwich shop. "And I brought food!"

"I don't care, leave me alone!" She looked at him furiously as he approached her. "Stop, halt!"

"Listen to me, I beg you."

"Stop..." The girl's eyes were practically bulging with helplessness at Enric's disobedience. "Stop or I'll climb up!"

The boy looked at her pitifully as he approached. He averted his gaze to set the bags on the ground, and Patricia took the opportunity to begin the madness she had announced.

"Damn it, don't climb up, they're doing construction!"

"You think I'm not capable?" She ended up opening the panel that protected the scaffolding. "Watch me!"

"What does it matter? I just want you to listen to me!"

"Go back where you came from, I don't want to hear you!"

"Patricia, don't be stubborn, that's not like you."

"It's not?" she shouted from behind the panel, her voice growing louder. "Oh, right, that's Soraya's thing, isn't it? If you love her so much, go be with her."

"You don't mean what you're saying, Patricia, please, come out of there."

People, who seemed to appear out of nowhere, were gathering around Enric as if it were a spectacle worth watching. Some teenage girls looked at Patricia and Enric excitedly, imagining it was part of a Greek tragedy.

"I don't care!" Already atop the statue, Patricia accused him with her gaze. "What else are you hiding from me?"

"Nothing, please, come down!" Enric was desperate. He knew that if he made any wrong move, the girl would fall from the five-meter-high statue. Her position would cause her to turn and her neck would hit any protrusion from the scaffolding, the panel, or anything else. And this time, he knew he couldn't lose her.

"I don't believe you!"

"Patricia, for your family's sake, come down the same way you climbed up! What will I tell your parents if you leave too?"

"Don't say nonsense. If I weren't good at climbing, I wouldn't have dared. I'm not that stupid. I just want you to leave! Go away!"

Enric had an idea—if he tried to climb up like her, Patricia would come down. But he had to hurry; the park guards wouldn't take long to arrive.

"I never thought I'd literally carry out a proverb, but here I go!"

"What are you talking about?" Patricia turned toward where she saw him climbing. "What are you doing circling around me?"

"You know what they say, if Muhammad won't go to the mountain, the mountain will go to Muhammad!"

"What do you mean, you're going to climb up?" Patricia leaned toward him. "You don't know how to climb scaffolding!"

"I'm going to talk to you, wherever you are. And you're going to listen to me, whether you want to or not."

"You're going to crack your skull if you make a wrong move."

"It doesn't matter, no one's waiting for me anymore." Enric had already grabbed a platform and had his feet on the base to push himself toward the next handhold.

"You don't know how, give up!" Patricia shouted.

"The only person I care about is even more reckless than me and has already climbed up."

Patricia squinted, unsure whether to believe him. She had read the diary and concluded that he was with her as a substitute for his deceased girlfriend. She hadn't known of her existence, and by reading the book, she would already have the answer. But on the other hand, something inside her told her that if that were the reason, he wouldn't have given the diary to her parents and would have kept it as a memento. Instead, he had handed over everything that belonged to Soraya.

"You're making a fool of yourself, you know that, right?"

"Since when do you care about that, 'Miss Coplas'?"

Patricia pretended to be offended by that accusation.

"Should I sing again to make it rain?" she joked.

"Sing all you want, but then you have to hear my side of the story."

The magic that had been created disappeared. Patricia turned her back to Enric again.

"Ah, well fine!" Enric was determined. "Then I'll keep climbing!"

"Idiot!" someone shouted from the gathered crowd. "Don't you realize that with her five meters away, you don't need to climb for her to hear you?"

"Thanks!" they both shouted in unison.

Enric looked at Patricia, surprised by her contradiction and grateful that she still cared about him. She, however, was very surprised to have blurted out something she hadn't intended and her cheeks turned a noticeable shade of red.

"Hey, I'm really sorry if you're hurt because I hid the damn diary, but it's because I didn't think it was important."

"Then you should have thrown it in the trash!" she replied, immediately regretting it.

"I threw away her posters, donated her books, scrapped what was left of her car. I only kept what I knew was from her past in Madrid and what would never be hers again."

"She only had the bear and the diary?"

"Yes. Besides her clothes and shoes, she brought the bear, a vase, and her car."

"You're lying!" she accused.

"Patricia, didn't you say you read that damn little book? Then you know from it that Soraya wanted to start her life over from scratch in Barcelona."

People, tired of standing, began to disperse, and thanks to the sun, they moved away until they stood behind the columns of the amphitheater surrounding the monument desecrated by Patricia. Unexpectedly, a little growl was heard from the top, and she instinctively put her hand on her belly. Enric stepped back to the outside of the scaffolding and grabbed the bags to lift them up to Patricia.