The Frozen Heart Read Online Free Page A

. .’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘It just didn’t occur to me.’
    We stopped at a traffic light and Mai smiled and stroked my hair. Then she leaned over and kissed me, and this warm, calm and affectionate gesture rescued me from the cold and the worry of the morning, bringing me back to somewhere familiar, to the little patch of garden that was my life.
    ‘It was strange, though . . .’ she said after a moment, as we turned on to the motorway.
    ‘Yes. I mean no.’ Death is strange, I thought. ‘I don’t know.’
    G randma Anita’s balconies teemed with geraniums, hydrangeas and begonias, blooms of white and yellow, pink and red, violet and orange spilling out of the clay flowerpots, climbing the walls or tumbling over the railings. ‘In Paris, the frost used to get them every year,’ she said to her granddaughter as she stepped outside to water them. It was a difficult task, because the plants were constantly searching for space that did not exist, climbing over one another as they grew towards the light, and only Grandmother knew exactly when and where, how and how much to water each pot.
    ‘Come over here into the sun with me, I’ll comb your hair.’
    For Raquel, this was the prelude to the most glorious part of her Saturdays. She would rush over and sit very still, staring out at the balconies that looked like posters advertising happiness as her grandmother brushed her hair.
    ‘Why do people call you Anita, Grandma?’
    Absorbed, as she watched her nimble fingers divide and subdivide the tresses with almost mechanical precision, Grandma Anita hesitated a moment before answering.
    ‘Because that was the name I was given.’
    ‘But you were named Ana, weren’t you?’
    ‘Of course. My father wanted to call me Placer, pleasure, but my mother didn’t like it. She said Placer was no name for a decent, hard-working woman . . .’
    Although Raquel could not see her face, she knew her grandmother was smiling, although she had never understood why it was funny. ‘And as I was the youngest in the family, and I was never very tall, and I was only fifteen when we left . . . Well, everyone always called me Anita.’
    She finished braiding one side and began on the other: the plaits were perfect, the same length, the same thickness, not a single stray hair, and as symmetrical as ears of corn.
    ‘What about you?’ she asked after a moment. ‘Do you know why you’re called Raquel ?’
    ‘Of course I know.’ Raquel took a deep breath and rattled off the answer. ‘Grandma Rafaela didn’t like her own name, but she wanted Mamá to be able roll her Rs properly, so she wanted to find a different name beginning with R, and Raquel was the one she liked best, so she was called Raquel and Mamá and Papá liked it best too, and that’s why they called me Raquel too, even though people say the thing about rolling her Rs is just silly.’
    ‘Well, they’re wrong.’ Grandma Anita took the girl by the shoulders, turned her round and studied her carefully, looking for some fault she never found, then kissed her cheeks, her forehead and the tip of her nose. ‘Now you look beautiful. Do you want to wake your grandad ?’
    ‘Yes!’
    And Raquel dashed off into the darkness of the long hallway with its high ceiling and parquet floor, so different from her own apartment, until she came to the last door, the door to her grandparents’ room, where light reigned once more. She had always loved this apartment from the first time she saw it, unfurnished and freshly painted with a blue-and-white ‘For Sale’ sign hanging from a forlorn balcony that could not possibly imagine its future splendour. ‘Look, Mamá,’ she said struggling to read the words, partly because, although she had learned to speak in Spanish, she had learned to read in French, and partly because she had something with a strange name that her father and some of her uncles, and cousins, also had, which made it hard for them to read or