Accident

I feel as though a milestone has been reached in terms of belonging to my new home. Sadly it’s not an agreeable one: a local tragedy has touched me deeply.

I have a lovely colleague, Mercedes. She’s been a mentor to me these past two years, doing at primary school the job I do at secondary, only with greater experience and charm. I love her very dearly.

In one of those peculiar circular motions of life, I learned of her family, indirectly, a decade before I moved here and met the matriarch. She sent two of her daughters to the language school in Norwich where I worked in the mid-90s. I met Jimena, for example, before even I met my wife. It’s a small world.

Contact continued, not just with me eventually finding work at the same school as Mercedes, but with Mer’s decision to send two other daughters, her twins, to me as private students. Two lovelier people you could not hope to meet. In fact, if ever a counter argument were needed for the numbskulls who moan about “the youth of today”, a five-minute chat with the twins would more than suffice. I had the pleasure of teaching them in their final year of school. I would have gladly taught them for free.

Mer’s husband, Fernando, is a stout fellow too. Smiling, cheerful, a proud father.

Mercedes, Fernando, the twins and an elder sister, Florencia, were travelling to Buenos Aires to visit family for Christmas. It was raining as they reached a notorious blackspot 100km from the capital. It was a head-on collision. Florencia died. Fernando and one of the twins are gravely hurt and undergoing surgery. I don’t even know which of the twins it is. Mer, too, is being operated on, I am told. The other siblings don’t yet know of the accident.

The town is descending into shock. The family is well loved and well known, and for the first time I am actively and fully sharing in a communal event, albeit one far sadder than anybody could have hoped for.

And it’s my wife’s birthday, so somehow I have to summon the will to make cake.