‘What?’ said Gregorio.
Jorge looked at his colleague. ‘Don’t tell me you never knew. Her mother drowned herself. Probably didn’t want to hang around to bring up that piece of shit,’ he added, directing his voice down the dank corridor, loud enough for Teresa to hear.
The next morning, Teresa had barely slept. She had not been wearing many clothes in the first place, and no one had offered her a blanket – but what hurt more, what made her skin palpably shiver, was that no one had come to the station to speak for her, to rescue her. In the deep of the night, staring up through the bars, thinking of the cruel words Jorge had uttered, Teresa had convinced herself that any minute Olive would come, Olive would call her name, demanding that these brutish boys let her out. Teresa had to believe it, because if she didn’t believe it, then the firing squad would come instead.
But Olive never came – and neither did Harold, even though he would have had more authority than his daughter. And as dawn broke, Teresa started to think, Of course, of course – why would they come? – and she was glad that no one could witness the pitiful embarrassment of hope.
Jorge and Gregorio came into her cell at eight o’clock in the morning, where she was sitting upright on the bed, every one of her vertebrae pressed up against the cold stone of the wall. ‘Up,’ said Jorge.
She stood, and he approached. ‘For the last time, Teresa. Where is your brother?’
‘I don’t kn—-’
He whacked her round the mouth and her head flew back, cracking against the wall.
‘I said, where is he?’
Teresa began to scream, until Jorge punched her again and she heard Gregorio cry out before she fell unconscious. The next thing she knew, she was blindfolded, bumping up and down in the back of their truck again, the iron tang of blood and a loose tooth in her mouth.
She tried to turn her head to the open air to see if she could sense where they were taking her, but she was still disorientated; her neck hurt, her skull throbbed. The blindfold had been tied so tight, and it cut across her eye sockets. It smelled like sweat and someone else’s blood. Was this it? Deep in her heart, she had feared this moment would come. She was going to be shot in the head, round the back of some hut, fifty kilometres away from her home. And who would miss her? Who would mourn her passing?
The truck stopped. Teresa heard the men jump out of the wagon and swing down the back flap of the truck.
‘Don’t shoot me. Don’t shoot me,’ she pleaded, hearing the crack of her own voice, surprised at this overwhelming passion to live, and how prepared she was to abase herself in order to do it. Anything, to live. ‘Gregorio,’ she said. ‘Please. Please. Save me.’
But Gregorio did not speak. A hand took her arm and walked her a few steps, pushing her down onto a chair. Teresa heard footsteps moving away, crunching against what sounded like gravel. She had been placed in the direction of the sun, and she could feel it warming her face, orange and gold through the blindfold and the tender skin of her eyelids. This is it, she thought.
‘Olive,’ she whispered, ‘Olive.’ She kept saying the name, and then, to her surprise, the blindfold was lifted. There was silence, save the sounds of a few birds twittering as they flapped across the sky. Teresa squinted, blinking to adjust her vision to the blinding light. To her surprise, she saw Olive standing to her right, her head haloed in gold, the buildings behind her squares of white light.
‘Am I dead?’ Teresa said.
‘No,’ replied a man’s voice.
Teresa could see that she was in the main square, on a chair placed directly in front of the charred frame of the church. The villagers had started to gather – shrinking away like a shoal of fish, as Teresa turned her head. She tried to rise from the chair towards Olive. Olive took a step towards her, her arm outstretched, but Gregorio pushed Teresa back down.
Jorge waved his pistol at the gathered villagers. ‘Keep back!’ he shouted, but Olive stayed forward.
‘What are you going to do to her?’ she shouted in Spanish. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Shut up!’ Jorge said before going over to the truck and pulling something out from the passenger seat. He walked back to Teresa, hands on his hips, assessing her, pacing round her slowly before taking her plait in his hand, weighing it like he was an old widow at market, turning his nose up at the produce. With his other hand, he lifted up a large pair of shears, the kind gardeners used to prune their plants and flowers.
‘I’ll be fair,’ he said, his fist wrapped round the plait. ‘Let’s unravel it, bit by bit. I’m going to ask you one more time about your brother, and if you cooperate, you can keep your hair.’
IT LOOKED AS IF TERESA had turned to stone, the only living thing her plait, coiled and twitching in Jorge’s fist. Her gaze was distant; her body was there, but she was not. As Jorge undid her hair with an air of industry, she didn’t flinch, she didn’t cry out – she just sat, staring into nothingness. So still, so meditative, she looked almost complicit in the spectacle, until you noticed her bunched fists, the knuckles whitening through the skin.
‘Don’t do this,’ Olive said to the men. ‘She doesn’t know where he is.’
Jorge swung round to face the other girl. ‘That’s what she says.’
Snip went the shears, a long tendril of black hair falling to the ground, where it lay in the dust like a snake. No one whispered, no one even seemed to breathe. ‘Se?orita,’ Gregorio said to Olive. ‘This is not your affair. Best to keep out.’
‘Don’t hurt her,’ said Olive. ‘You’ll regret it. Does her father know you’re doing this—-’