Free Checkmate in Amber by Matilde Asensi

having endlessly checked my inbox every twenty minutes, I stopped waiting for Prince Philibert to show signs of life, switched off the computer and went to have dinner with Ezequiela. She had a weird and unreadable look on her face, but prattled on as usual all through the meal, bringing me up to date on all the village news and gossip. Once we had finished clearing the table, I cut her off in mid-sentence and went to my bedroom. I really felt like curling up in bed with a book - and Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s
Journey to the End of the Night
was calling to me seductively from my bedside table.
    But Ezequiela, it seemed, hadn’t quite managed to get everything off her chest. She suddenly appeared in my doorway with a huge mug of hot milk, which for her was excuse enough to walk straight in and plant herself on the end of my bed.
    ‘Now listen, my dear. I’m about to say something to you that I’ve never said before,’ she began, which immediately set my alarm bells ringing.
    ‘Fine, so don’t start now. I’m sure I’ll manage to survive in happy ignorance.’
    ‘Don’t be so stubborn!’
    I gave in with a sigh.
    ‘OK, fire away then,’ I said, arranging my bedclothes and putting my book aside reluctantly.
    ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s high time that you got married and settled down.’
    ‘Enough! Not another single word!’ I yelled at her, springing up onto my knees and waving my 450-page book in her face. ‘You can go now! Goodnight!’
    ‘Ana María, hold your tongue!’ she yelled back.
    Predictably, I ignored her instructions completely.
    ‘Do you honestly think it’s normal for us to be going at it hammer and tongs at this time of night? The neighbors’ll think we’ve gone crazy!’
    ‘You’re the only one shouting here,’ she complained, turning down the volume suddenly and putting on her deeply-hurt-little-old-lady voice.
    ‘Yeah, sure. You weren’t shouting at all, were you now?’
    ‘Me? Shouting?’ she said with surprise. ‘Certainly not!’
    ‘Ezequiela, you’re driving me crazy here, I swear to God.’
    ‘If you took the trouble to listen, instead of answering back all the time,’ she replied in a dignified and authoritative tone of voice, while smoothing out a non-existent crease from the pillow with the palm of her hand, ‘we wouldn’t always have to end up like this.’
    That was it. I’d had enough.
    ‘Where the hell do you expect us to get to? You walk in here with a hot milk, and suddenly I’m in the middle of the Trojan War.’
    ‘All I wanted to do was have a little talk with you about your biological clock.’
    ‘You’re watching too much television,’ I growled. ‘Biological clock! Where on earth did you pick that one up from?’
    ‘Let me remind you, my dear - you’re about to reach your thirty-fourth birthday. Before you know it, you will no longer be able to have children.’
    ‘Let
me
remind
you:
Rosario, my gynecologist, had her first child when she was forty.’
    ‘Oh
I
see. You have to copy everything your gynecologist does.
Very
smart.’
    I stopped and took a good look at her for a few moments. There was something going on here that didn’t quite make sense to me. Her chubby receding chin was trembling very slightly and her wetly shining eyes were the give-away. She was on the verge of crying. Without thinking, I reached out to take hold of her hand which was resting on the bedcover.
    ‘What are you really trying to tell me, Ezequiela? What’s up with you? It’s just not like you to come and start yapping about weddings.’
    She gave a deep sigh and slowly met my eyes.
    ‘Next week, it’s my seventieth birthday.’
    ‘I know, sweetheart. On Wednesday.’
    ‘How on earth will you cope when I’m not here anymore?’
    Now we’d got to the heart of the matter.
    ‘Oh come on, Ezequiela, please!’
    She looked at me for a long while with reproachful eyes.
    ‘You have nobody else but me! When I die, you’ll be utterly alone. You