Ñoño

The storm caught them out in the open. First the sky went yellow, then a gust tore the map out of their hands, and before they knew it enough water to fill a swimming pool was coming down on their heads.

“Run!” shouted Axel.

“You run, you’re the one with the house on your back!”

They ran two hundred metres along a track that was turning into a river, with Kika howling from nerves and Fay stuffed down Eva’s hoodie, which was somewhere Fay had never been and had no wish to be.

They managed to reach the pelota court in Peñalumbre and shelter under the sheet-metal roof covering half of it. They stood dripping in front of a spray-painted goal, listening to a din like the end of the world.

“Good grief,” said Hortensia, wringing out her hair with both hands.

Kika shook herself off right next to her.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

That set all three of them laughing. Eva let go of the cat, who shot into a corner to lick his dignity back into shape, and stood there laughing with her shirt stuck to her and her hair dripping.

When they calmed down it was still pouring. Six in the evening and as dark as nine. Eva leaned against the wall, stretched her legs out and started humming, almost to herself, watching the water run off the edge of the tin.

After a while she shut her eyes, still singing.

Axel looked down and found another little creature sitting beside Eva’s ankle, almost pressed against her. He was soaked, with a red nose and a scarf that went three times round his neck and still trailed on the ground. He was crying silently, his whole body shaking.

“Hey,” said Axel, really quietly, so as not to interrupt Eva. “What’s up, little man?”

The creature lifted his face and sniffed.

“Have you hurt yourself?”

He shook his head.

“Is it the rain?”

Another no. And he raised his eyes, up towards Eva’s face.

“Is it her?”

The creature nodded, really hard, twice. And started crying again.

Axel looked at Eva, still leaning against the wall and humming, her hair stuck to her face and her bare feet on the concrete.

“But she’s fine.”

The creature made a noise that was half hiccup and half word, and covered his face with his scarf.

“What’s your name?”

“Ñoño,” he said, in a voice like a wet dishcloth.

“Well, it suits a big softie like you.”

“I know.”

“Who are you talking to?” said Hortensia from the other side.

“Nobody.”

“Oh. Well, don’t let them get wet, it comes through here.”

Eva finished the song and kept her eyes closed. Ñoño lifted his head. Axel was about to ask if he felt better, but the little creature caught hold of the bottom of his trouser leg.

“Tell her to sing the first one,” he whispered.

“Eva, can you do the one you sang before again?”

“I can’t remember it.”

“Shit,” said Ñoño, and blew his nose again.

Eva watched the falling water for a moment. Then she tried another line, repeated it with one word changed and carried on from there. Ñoño let go of Axel’s trousers and settled by her ankle, his scarf clutched in his hands.

Nearly three hours went by under that roof, and they weren’t bored for a minute.

Hortensia took out her phone when it started vibrating in her pocket. One look at the screen was enough for her to put it face down on her knee and give it a little pat, as though that might persuade it to shut up.

“Someone selling something,” she said. Nobody had asked.

And she started telling them about a cousin of hers who married the same man twice.

“Twice, mind. They got divorced back when getting divorced was a scandal, nine years later they bumped into each other at a funeral and eleven months after that they were back in the same church, with the same priest, who didn’t remember them.” She flicked a drop off her arm. “And at the second wedding she looked far lovelier.”

Kika went out into the rain four times and all four times she came back and shook herself off over everybody. The fourth time Hortensia got up with her cardigan dripping.

“You shake yourself on me one more time and I’ll make a rug out of you! A hall runner, you demon wolf!”

Kika wagged her tail, delighted.

When they fell quiet, Axel looked at Eva and remembered the voice she’d used on the roadside to say “Don’t you lot ring her,” so firm it seemed to belong to someone else. When he dropped his eyes to her ankle there was nobody there. Just a puddle that had crept in under the tin and, next to Eva’s foot, a little wet mark the size of a button.

It would be water, of course. In that downpour even the things under cover had got wet.

It cleared up at nine. They came out with the sky black on one side and clear on the other, and the air smelled of wet earth.

They had dinner in the pelota court, with the stove roaring.

While Hortensia told a story about a market, Axel picked up the checked blanket and put it round Eva’s shoulders.

Hortensia saw and tried to hide her smile behind her hand, which didn’t work in the slightest.

“I’m not cold,” said Eva.

“Right.”

She didn’t take it off all night.

At three in the morning Hortensia’s phone buzzed again inside her cardigan. The screen lit up the tin roof of the court for a second. Then nothing. Face down, and a little pat.

That night Hortensia didn’t snore.