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drink in one hand, leaning against a wall poster depicting some important moment in the club’s history, and then redirected his gaze to Camps O’Shea.
    ‘Is that him?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit risky having him here?’
    ‘Nobody seems bothered by him. He’s our psychologist.’
    ‘Well, let’s hope we never need a psychiatrist!’
    Camps watched as the chairman left, accompanied by the two remaining directors; then he took Mortimer by the arm.
    ‘I know a place where they do an excellent paella. I’ve reserved a table.’
    ‘Can we go in the Porsche?’
    ‘Of course. And a friend of mine will be coming too.’
    Carvalho abandoned his stance of drooping weariness and fell in behind the footballer and the PR man. He mentally cursed himself for having accepted the job. The prospect of having to share a paella with a spoilt kid and a naive freckled Englishman filled him with foreboding.
    No. She hadn’t left a forwarding address.
    A fleeting narrowing of the eyes betrayed the man’s irritation, and disarmed the porter’s reluctance to continue a conversation which he had accepted unwillingly in the first place. At first he had decided that he was a sales rep, but when he registered that he wasn’t carrying anything with him he had listened more or less inattentively to his questions regarding Inma Sánchez, the tenant on the second floor, and her son. The man had to drag the negatives out of him one by one. She wasn’t living there any more. No, she hadn’t left on her own. She could hardly have gone off on her own, seeing that she didn’t live alone. The boy had gone with them too.
    ‘No. She didn’t leave a forwarding address.’
    The conversation was at an end, but since he sensed a great sadness weighing on the shoulders of the man before him, he lowered his guard and momentarily abandoned his role as porter in a semi-de-luxe house in a semi-high-class part of town, halfway between Ensanche and the slopes of Tibidabo, with a service lift for flats that had no servants, and parking places for tenants who couldn’t necessarily afford cars.
    ‘Was the kid OK?’
    ‘He seemed to be, seeing the way he was going down the stairs four at a time.’
    ‘Four at a time?’
    Something told the porter that he needed to give a better impression of the boy.
    ‘He’s a good lad. Well brought-up, too.’
    ‘Well brought-up …’
    The moistness which seemed to appear in the man’s eyes was countered immediately by a straightening of his back in an attempt to recover a vertebral condition which sentiment had eroded. He adopted a pose that was almost athletic. He took his wallet out of his back trouser pocket, and from it produced a photograph which he showed to the porter.
    ‘Has he changed much?’
    The porter took his glasses out of the top pocket of his uniform jacket and examined the photograph carefully. It showed the good-looking woman from the second floor, her son, and the man with whom he was now talking. As he looked at the photograph, a flash of a half-remembered image passed before his eyes.
    ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before. On TV, maybe …?’
    ‘Not these days.’
    ‘But you used to be. I’m sure I’ve seen you on television.’
    ‘I used to be, years ago, once in a while. Has the lad changed much?’
    ‘A lot. He’s a teenager now. In this photo he must be seven or eight years old, but he must be thirteen or fourteen by now. Is he your son?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And why would I have seen you on TV?’
    ‘I used to play football.’
    ‘Ballarín!’ the porter shouted, as if he’d suddenly hit the jackpot. ‘You’re Ballarín!’
    ‘Palacín.’
    ‘That’s it. Palacín. Well, I was close. Amazing — who’d have thought that I’d run into Palacín today! Now, I tell you what … I remember your surname, but not your first name.’
    ‘Alberto. Alberto Palacín.’
    ‘Jesus! Palacín! They don’t make centre forwards like you nowadays! Centre forwards