Chapter Four

 Ten minutes after leaving their Uncle and Aunt's bungalow their parents were still arguing, and the more they argued the faster their father drove.  Xavi was not enjoying the velocity now.

"Dad, please slow down!" he pleaded as the tires squealed yet again.

 "If you hadn't opened your big mouth, the kids would be relaxing in the pool by now!"  their father shouted at their mother.

"Oh why is it always me who's to blame eh?  Never your precious brother, if only you-"

 "Dad watch out!"  the two kids screamed as the car sped round another curve.  Their father saw the parked car too late.
 

 The next thing Marta remembered was waking up in a room with a low ceiling, whose walls were painted grey-green.

"Ah, I think the little girl's coming round!" said a voice she did not recognize.

 She tried to sit up and look around but discovered suddenly that she was unable to move and was in a great deal of pain.

 "What happened?  Where am I?" she asked feebly.

 "There, there, don't try to talk.  Everything's going to be alright," someone said in soothing tones to her right; she thought she recognized the person as her Aunt Rosa.  She tried to remember something then an image came to her mind.

 "We were in... the bend... that black car..."

 "Shh don't worry now, your brother's in the bed next to you and your mother's in the next room!" said Aunt Rosa's comforting voice.  Marta was too confused to realize that her Aunty had not mentioned her father.  She slipped back into unconsciousness again.
 

The funeral was delayed for a week to allow the children and their mother to get over the worst of their injuries.  Xavier had been thrown through the windscreen and had suffered a lot of cuts to his face and arms.  Marta had dislocated her collar bone and had a nasty gash across her back.  Their mother had bruised her ribs and had been operated on to remove pieces of metal from her stomach.  Their poor father had taken the brunt of the impact and had not survived.
 

The next few weeks passed in a complete daze.  They returned home and with the help of Uncle Frank and Aunt Rosa tried to return their lives to some sort of normality.

"You two have got to be strong and help your mother as much as you can," their Uncle constantly reminded them, whenever their mother was out of the room.  "It's harder for adults to get over something like this."

Xavier and Marta could not believe that it was less hard for any of them, but they knew their Uncle meant well.
 

The weeks turned into months and the children went back to school to find everything changed.  The other children had been told to be kind to them and their often clumsy efforts to do so made a difficult situation worse.
 Their mother became very withdrawn after the accident and in the few times they did bring the subject up, she heaped the blame on herself and her conversation was full of regretful remarks.
 

 If the children thought they had reached rock bottom in their misery they were soon forced to think again on the day that Senyor Torres their father's solicitor came round to see their mother and the two of them listened in at the door.

"Then you still haven't found where he kept his documents?" the fat man asked.

 "No, there were insurance policies and such but I have no idea where he kept them."

 The man touched his ear irritably and Mother felt the need to explain further:

 "Oh Josep had a childish side to his nature, instead of trusting to safes and filing cabinets he used to hide things everywhere.  I always had to be careful to check everything before throwing it out.  I was forever finding letters, documents and the odd hundred Euro note inside cereal packets or between the pages of old magazines.  It was an annoying habit, but-"

 "The biggest problem is the will Senyora Ponts,"  the lawyer interrupted.  "You and I both know that he made a will in your favour, but he never lodged a copy in my office.  Since you cannot produce that document, an earlier will I still have in my possession remains his last testament; and the sole beneficiary of that is-"

"His brother Raimon!" said their mother in anguish.  "Yes, he made that because Raimon insisted on it as a guarantee for a loan he made him when we bought the flat.  But doesn't the fact that I'm his wife...." their mother's voice trailed off.

The solicitor took a deep breath and said slowly:

"As a friend of the family, I always did advise you to legalise your relationship-"

"But we never believed in all that and-"

 Xavier and Marta exchanged horrified glances.

"I think he just said Mum and Dad were never married!" hissed Marta.

"Oh God I hope not!" said Xavier, thinking that would be one more reason for that horrible Pujol girl to feel sorry for him.
 

Their mother broke the news to them that evening.

"We were idealists back then.   We thought it was all hypocrisy.  We didn't believe in the church and we didn't agree with all that..."

"But you let us take communion!"  Xavi objected.

"Only because you both insisted, we weren't that keen on the idea."

"Then Uncle Raimon gets all Dad's money?" Marta queried, shaking her head.

"Just as well he was poor then, isn't it?" said Xavi with irony.

"It's not just the money," their mother said, looking around the room slowly.

"The flat?" shouted both children at once.

"It was on a private mortgage with your Uncle Raimon and we can't possibly keep up the payments now."
 
 

Six weeks later they loaded the last cardboard box into the removal van.  Mother had checked every single item carefully for hidden treasures and although she had found some four hundred Euro, which was a great help with removal expenses, the whereabouts of the vital documents remained a mystery.

Grandma had not been keen to clutter her house even more, so Mother had sold all the furniture except for Josep's big Victorian armchair which Grandma was happy to see back in her house since it had been bought by Grandpa years before.
 The family took a last look around the place that had been their home for the last ten years.

 "I won't miss it really," said their mother, putting a brave face on.  "Too many memories here for me."

The van outside hooted and the three of them closed the door for the last time.  Mother handed the keys over to Senyor Llop, their Uncle's agent and then climbed up beside the driver in the cab of the van.  The children rode in the back of their Uncle Frank's Ford Fiesta.

"It'll be alright living with Grandma, don't you worry!" said their Aunt Rosa from the front.  "You'll be good company for her and there are such a lot of rooms to get lost in."

The children thought of the vast gloomy house on the edge of town and shuddered.