Her Salvation - Provocative romance

Chapter 17

The night was getting darker in Madrid as Lupe walked down the street she knew so well by now. She had made sure to spend every single evening carefully watching the street for the past two weeks, not wandering around of course, but just to wait and watch the people who lived around the area forming patterns of their daily lives.

She stopped under a metallic balcony of a red tile building and jumped lightly to catch and pull down the metallic stair case connected to the balcony just like in American TV. The staircase gave out a long loud complaint as the rusty parts rubbed against each other as a result of pulling. Lupe pulled harder to get the ladder at the climbing height and quickly stepped on it and climbed to the first level and agilely swung herself on top of the balcony. She looked around as she pulled the staircase back up to make sure she had not caught any unnecessary attention.

The street remained silent.

She sat down and pulled down the visor of her black Homer Simpson cap and covered deeper in her black bomber jacket. She loved the Simpson characters especially Homer. His innocence and carefree attitude towards life was catching especially after all the hardship he went through on each episode, there was always happy ending to follow. Unfortunately in real life, there was no luxury as such.

Lupe yawned and leaned on the building wall closing her eyes for a second. She hadn't been sleeping well for days. The red tile dust would probably colour her backside red but that would be easily brushed away as long as she did it before leaving the balcony. There was no chance to attract any attention like that, she knew it. She turned to face the building and run her fingers on its rough surface. It was a majestic building that had once glowed gloriously in the sun but was now covered in brownish friable shades. Like many other buildings in the area, they had remained unmaintained for years now even though, the surroundings of the building had been clean and tidy this morning, she thought. Lately, the government had been busy upgrading the reputation of the area to attract housing for the rich and wealthy couples and families, but from the windows one could see that the building was still occupied by hundreds of people living off government benefit schemes.

The window shields were covered in black dust and wherever possible, there were one after another more creative ways of hanging wet clothes to dry in the sun to save on electricity bill. Lupe looked the colourful spectrum of clothespins that protected the laundry from falling in the wind. She smiled, it reminded her home in Peru and her grandmother.

She looked down on the street and saw the green rubbish bins attached to the metal benches. The bins were tidy and freshly cleaned early in the morning before 5 o'clock. Lupe knew it as she had many friends working in the maintenance department for the city of Madrid. They were all hard-working people and the pay was also good. No wonder Madrid was still considered as one of the cleanest capitals in the world, she thought.

The government upgrading initiative of the area had been welcomed by decision-makers of the city and they had eagerly started approaching people living in the flats offering them one after another more attractive re-housing plans without any remarkable success. The people living in the building had simply refused to move out from their homes of many years.

The government still failed to realise it was not all about money, Lupe thought sceptically. Yes, money would ease their lives but adjusting to a totally new living environment especially if you had children, like many of them did, wasn't easy, she signed and focused her attention again on the street.

They had migrated to Spain shortly after Lupe had turned 16 years. They had been forced to move after their mother had been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer. The treatment would have caused a fortune in Peru, something they didn't have, so Encarni, as Lupe referred her by now, had made a choice to move back to Spain. After all, she was Spanish and had a choice to be treated for free with excellent medical team and excellent odds for full recovery.

Encarni hadn't worried about leaving her husband, father of her five children, behind. After all, he had had an affair with her sister and they hadn't had any intimate relationship for some time. In fact, Lupe still remembered how she used to tell them she had seen it coming ever since her sister had visited the house for the first time. She had been disgusted of it all and medicated herself in local bars with alcohol that had only fueled her rage of betrayal boiling underneath the surface and resulted in violent encounters with her husband in such intensity that she had  nearly ended up in mental institution where her dear traitor husband and sister had planned for her.

It would have been the end of her life, Lupe thought, as mental institution referral was considered one of the worst kind of sentences in South America. The institutions were old, and the treatments provided were controversial and normally very far away from following any real medical science. The patients would usually get referred involuntarily for life and consisted of people with socially unacceptable sexual orientation, disabilities or elderly people who didn't have family to look after them. Very few of the patients would survive the hard treatment programme the institution had in place and if they did, they would be so badly damaged physically and mentally, they would never be able to live normal life again.

"I am not up for those kinds of games." Encarni had said and left with her children. She had instruct them all to pack their bags and borrowed money from one acquaintance from a local bar. The man had been hopelessly in love with her and considered them practically a family, which had made it so easy to convince him to loan the money for her.

She was planning to repay the man.

One day.

They had left one night. Their father had not even come home for the night which had made it almost too easy for them to leave at the airport. Lupe could still remember the fear of unknown and how they had grabbed each other's hand and prayed for God to lead them somewhere better. Especially Reina who had been almost nine months pregnant. Encarni had talked to the local doctor and had him to fake the due date for her to ensure she could fly with them. Reina had been heartbroken to leave her boyfriend behind who knew nothing about her plan to leave the country with his baby in her belly. That night, she shed hot tears when she climbed up on the truck full of people that took them to the Shumba Airport in Jaen to their new life.

They had arrived to Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport in Madrid and had had one of her mother's cousin to drive them to Coruna, coast of Spain. The trip had taken nearly six hours drive and they had been overly exhausted when they had arrived eventually. The first stop had been a convent run by nuns where their mother had explained she needed to establish her life first in the country before she could even start taking care of anyone else and for that reason she had left Loredana, Jose Luis and Lupe behind.

She had taken Reina, who was the most useful for her, pregnant or not and their baby brother Jorge who had always been her favourite.

She had left them standing on one side of the road in front of the grey stone building that looked more like a prison to them. They had watched her go but none of them had cried.