Hot Milk

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Authors: Deborah Levy
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like a tribal marking.
    ‘Hey, Sophie, isn’t the weather insane?’
    Ingrid pushed his arm away and pointed to the Europcar. ‘Do you like it, Zoffie? It’s a Citroën Berlingo.’
    ‘Yes, but I’m not sure about the colour.’
    Ingrid knew I did not drive, so I wasn’t sure why she had made such an effort to get the car on my behalf.
    ‘Do you want to come over to our house and taste my lemonade?’
    ‘I do, but I can’t. I’m in the middle of lunch with my mother’s doctor in the plaza.’
    ‘All right. See you on the beach maybe?’
    Matthew suddenly became energetic and amiable. ‘I’ll lock up the Berlingo when I’ve finished my insane electro foam shave and bring the keys and paperwork over to your table. By the way, why didn’t they hire your mother an automatic? I mean, she can’t walk, right?’
    Ingrid looked annoyed but I couldn’t work out why. When she playfully kicked his knee with the sole of her silver sandal, he grabbed her leg and then knelt down in the dust and kissed her tanned shins in the gaps between the criss-crossed straps.
    When I got back to the plaza, my mother and Gómez seemed to be getting along. They were having an intense conversation and didn’t take any notice when I returned to the table. I had to admit that Rose looked excited. She was flushed and flirtatious. She had even slipped off her shoes and was sitting barefoot in the sun. The shoes with the laces I had unknotted for an hour had been abandoned. It occurred to me that she had slept alone for decades. When I was five six seven I had sometimes crept into bed with her when my father left, but I remember feeling uneasy. As if she were folding her growing child back into her womb in the way an aeroplane folds its wheels back intoits body after take-off. Now she was saying something about needing the three pills she has been asked to abandon and how coming to Spain to heal her lame legs was like crying for the moon. By which I think she meant we were searching for a cure that was beyond our reach.
    If I were to look at my mother just once in a certain way, I would turn her to stone. Not her, literally. I would turn the language of allergies, dizziness, heart palpitations and waiting for side effects to stone. I would kill this language stone dead.
    The thin boy with the Mohican was still inflating his boat. His brother was showing him the oars and they were having a heated discussion while their sister prodded the blue plastic dinghy with her bare foot. They were all excited about an adventure in the sea with a new boat. That was the right sort of thing to be excited by. It made a change from waiting for withdrawal symptoms.
    Gómez’s lips were black from the octopus he had eaten with such relish. ‘So you see, Rose, I have brought the sea to you with my polpo, and you have survived.’
    When Rose smiled, she looked pretty and lively. ‘I have been robbed, Mr Gometh. I could have gone to Devon for less than one hundred pounds and sat by the sea with a packet of biscuits on my lap, patting one of many English dogs. You are more expensive than Devon. I am, frankly, disappointed.’
    ‘Disappointment is unpleasant,’ he agreed. ‘You have my sympathy.’
    Rose waved her hand to the waiter and ordered a large glass of Rioja.
    Gómez glanced at me and I could see he was annoyed about the wine. The table was unsteady and had been wobbling all through lunch. He took a prescription pad out of his pocket, ripped off five of the scripts and folded them into a square. ‘Sofia, kindly help me lift the table so I can wedge this under the leg.’
    I stood up and gripped the edge nearest to me. It was surprisinglyheavy for a table made from plastic. It was an effort to raise it half an inch off the ground while Gómez edged the paper into place.
    Rose suddenly jumped. ‘The cat scratched me!’
    I looked under the newly steady table. A cat was sitting on her left foot.
    Gómez tugged at the lobe of his left ear. I began to

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