Where I was born was not the place where I grew up. A mere sixty-one kilometres separated the two towns but, during the time we lived in Guinobatan, I can count on one hand how often we visited Baao, the home of my father and birthplace of all his children. And we, by a stroke of destiny, two older boys and three girls, all flourished in the shadow of the living mountain.

There’s no denying that the roots of my youth lie deep in the volcanic soil of this verdant, serene land called Guinobatan, and those jagged pieces of memory were shaped in the thick layers of lava that rolls, flattens, and makes barren the circumference of sloping land skirting the magnificent Mayon Volcano. The living mountain, when she breathes, unleashes apocalyptic fear and commands submission. Her gigantic presence brings humility    to the surface and keeps superciliousness in check. I grew up accompanied by fear, forever watchful of this giant shadow hovering over me, at once breathtaking in her colossal beauty and terrifying in her unpredictable fury. One known to bring destruction and death to the obstinate people who persist in living in her overpowering grandeur, one generation after another, their fate dictated by the living mountain’s capricious temperament. It is thus a wonder that, away from that shadow, my fading memory remembers mostly her beauty and grace, and the remaining pride in my diasporic existence is that I once lived next to the living mountain.

This wasn’t so in my earliest years. Towards my adolescence, the living mountain, the rivers infested with leeches, the green, prickly grass and fruit bearing trees that enveloped our yard were nothing but sorry landmarks of a destitute, godforsaken countryside. My dream was to live in the land of breathing steel and growing buildings where citizens wear shoes all the time, homes climb on top of each other, and people are transported up and down by a moving box. The adolescence that defined me included silent wishes, furtive dreams and quiet rebellion. I conquered my fear of the stirring volcano and hissing snakes; I turned shame into disgust for the thunderbox and piggery that was our backyard; I despised the poverty that brought mostly tragedy and loss, unfulfilled dreams, and baseless hopes.

Childhood, when one has breathed for six decades, is a hard place to recall. In this telling I discovered by chance that the memories of my upbringing were always attached to someone and something. Perhaps because those thoughts are spent dreaming that I am someone other than myself and somewhere, anywhere other than where I am. And in these imaginings, I sketch how I look, outline what I do and direct where I go.

These dreams, towering and mighty, so distant when seen from below, would lend themselves to exaggeration. They moulded my emotions, and my sensitivity gave life to the stories born from them. So, while I could choose to be glad, sad, or mad, my dreams would take me away from pain and grief, feelings which I would assign to someone else, the terror stemming from the uncertainty and doom of unreachable dreams. Through these, my own pain became bearable and the phantoms and tragedies are of someone, not mine. I remain unanchored to a place and uncommitted, always searching for the unknown but able to look the other way when truth reveals anguish and takes the form of throbbing reality.

So, I begin my story with Raquel, the object of my young dreams, the apparition of my growing pains, the ally of my natural selfishness and much later, the pale ghost of my conscience. Only three years apart, we would grow up together sharing the poverty and the place that we then both learned to detest and escape in different ways. In 1979, I witnessed her dream fulfilled. Walking beside her American husband, her steps were brisk and certain. An upright, self-assured gait, the hallmark of her being. Her hand clasped Robert’s arm firmly, fortifying the certainty of her destiny. The arid summer wind caressed her hauntingly long hair, pulling her impatiently away from us. On the step of the aeroplane, she turned around and, although too distant to see us, waved in our direction one last time.

As her silhouette vanished, swallowed by the steel bird, the shadow of the living mountain clinched me, filling the vacuum left by her absence. It would be another ten years before I took a similar walk towards a different steel bird, on the arm of a British husband. But, unlike her, my every step would be full of uncertainty and nervous anticipation of a life beyond the seas.

To this day, only one student in Guinobatan Agricultural High School has been elected president and muse of the Student Council at the same time: Raquel. She was both in her junior and senior years. In the shadow of the living mountain, the land, the source of wealth and power belonged to the few who have beauty and superior intelligence at their disposal. Claiming Spanish and Chinese ancestries, the daughters of the landlords and local bourgeoisie are also beauty queens paraded during fiestas, and sons on whose chests the gold, silver and bronze medals are clipped at almost every graduation ceremony. Undeniably, wealth shapes beauty and feeds the brain because both can be nurtured, and awards can be bought. If one were to come from the other side of the land of the living mountain, from those whose daily struggle keeps their heads bowed, barely able to scrape together three meals a day, possessing both beauty and brains would be a miracle.

I believed in miracles then. How else could someone retain her smooth, unblemished, and shapely, long legs while exposed and often sunk in muddy rice fields? Maintain elegant fingernails attached to nimble fingers of a baby-soft pair of hands while holding a hoe or bolo to till the garden patch? Sustain a flawless, porcelain-smooth face while the rest of us suffered from acne and speckles caused and exacerbated by exposure to the sun in the middle of the corn fields?

As a young woman in the land of the living mountain, Raquel’s presence was a raw diamond half-hidden by the grey mud of dearth. Head turning and whistles from the opposite sex were common. I would often watch a group of male students in their private school jerseys, being driven by their uniformed drivers, rolling down the car windows as they approached our cottage. Heads pushing each other out to take a peek at her comely appearance.

Lucky though they might have been to catch a glimpse of her hanging newly washed clothes or sweeping the front yard with a coconut broom, or tending our front garden, they would be ignored. Raquel had become used to the prattling of “spoilt rich boys”. She had mastered the art of insouciance. She may have looked their way on occasion but remained detached, devoid of any emotion, an aloofness that only made her doubly attractive and “chase-able”. As Ama put it: ‘You look cheap if you react to this behaviour, lacking in gentle manners and respect.’

Behind the partly opened window, I would peer and imagine myself inside those flashing cars. What would it be like to be driven all the way to Legazpi City instead of riding in a jeepney full of passengers reeking of sweat and underarm odour, wearing thongs and tattered clothes? In this car, I imagined rolling the windows down to feel the wind slapping my face and blowing through my hair. How exciting would that be? And how romantic would it be to be pursued by one of them, a son of a landlord living in a massive house on the hill as tall as the living mountain, surrounded by dutiful servants attending your every need?

Growing up in the shadow of a sister like Raquel, miracles were the anchor of my hopes. I clung to miracles like a hungry leech. My fantasies were built around the dream that one day a handsome, rich boy from a nearby private school would take notice of my average beauty and mediocre achievements. He would sweep me away from the one-bedroom teacher’s cottage where my two brothers slept in one corner of the kitchen and my two sisters and  I lay their reed mats every night in the living room.

So when Raquel fell in love with a classmate, Apa and Ama, especially Apa, did not hide their disapproval. In his direct, patriarchal monotones and at every opportunity, Apa reminded Raquel that she was not given the gift of beauty and brains to waste them in the fields of Muladbucad, where Leonardo’s tenant- farmer parents and five siblings farmed and who, as sure as the sun rises every morning and retreats every evening, were destined to carry their hoe and sickles for the rest of their lives. There was no way that Leonardo, while handsome and intelligent, would achieve anything higher than finishing in the nearby agricultural university and if lucky, become an agriculture teacher. End of story.

‘That’s good enough for me,’ Raquel would mutter under her breath because to answer back would invite a flat hand across her face from a purple-heart medallist military veteran father.

When Leonardo mustered the courage to knock on our unpainted, dishevelled door, Raquel, hiding in the only bedroom of the house, clasped her hands, looked up the cracked ceiling and with trembling lips, recited one prayer after another. I sat on the edge of our parents’ bed, my eyes following hers, which she found annoying enough to accost me in a deep, contained growl.

‘Don’t look at me like that! Get out of the bedroom. You make me nervous.’ Then, realising that the bedroom door faced the lounge where Leonardo and Apa were talking, she grabbed my arm as I stood to walk out. ‘Stay, but don’t stare at me.’

The conversation between Apa and Leonardo lasted less than  ten minutes. Their exchanges were inaudible behind the closed door of the bedroom to which our ears were firmly glued.

A knock on the door sent us both scampering to the edge of the bed.

As Apa came in, closing the door behind him, Raquel stood up. I remained seated.

‘He wants to see Rita,’ Apa said, his eyes fixed on Raquel.

Raquel looked at me in disbelief. Then to Apa she raised her voice. ‘You’re lying!’ and rushed out of the room to confront Leonardo.

‘Where is he?’ she demanded.

‘I sent him home. Your sister is too young to receive a suitor.’

 ‘I don’t believe you. He came for me. I know.’ Tears streamed down her red cheeks. She slumped to her knees and repeatedly said, ‘It’s me he wanted. I know it.’

‘Don’t humiliate yourself. He came to see Rita,’ Apa said.

Raquel stopped crying and wiped her tears and snot with the back of her sleeves. She glared at Apa, showing her stifled resistance with a defiant stare and clenched fists.

Thundering silence engulfed the household. Raquel refused to speak to anyone but Ama who became the only too willing mediator between Apa and us, especially me.

For months, she made it clear by her silence and avoidance that she did not want to have anything to do with Apa or myself. She avoided me with the same eagerness that I avoided her. She avoided me in anger; I avoided her out of pity.

When this uneasy truce was broken upon Ama’s gentle words of endearment, our relationship had been redefined forever. This single experience, painful for her and liberating for me, forced an early self-consciousness for both of us. It shattered the myth we had built about each other. Before, I was fed from her giant shadow that had always relegated me to second place. Now, I stepped out of the shadow with the belief that my youthful beauty, however average, had attracted someone as desirable as my sister’s first love.

Meanwhile, just how devastating Raquel’s failure to attract the first man she adored would turn out to be, I couldn’t have fathomed. Raquel would have come to realise the possibility that she may not be as irresistibly attractive as she had thought she was, shuddering the ground of her self-confidence. More aware now of failure as cruel and hurtful, my sister cocooned her vulnerability in detachment and aloofness, strengthening her advantages, grabbing at every opportunity to enhance her beauty and academic achievements. My two brothers were at different universities away from home, leaving my other sister Renata and myself to face and deal with the monstrosity of a sister scorned.

Leonardo came back the next year, but I refused to face him and, each time our paths crossed on the campus, I avoided his stare with the same resolve as when he followed my every move, hoping to catch my eyes and convey his longing. Chance permitting, I would watch him from the corner of my eye, validating how easy indeed it was to fall in love with this man, just as my sister and half of the junior and senior female students had. But my attraction was not directed to him, not even a tiny speck of it. Even now, when I think of Raquel, I find myself searching for answers and, as I become more removed, more distant from that day, I still reel at how one man could have such a contrasting effect on my sister and myself.

Graduating at the top of her class, Raquel could not be persuaded to stay for a week or two more before proceeding to Manila to study at the University of Santo Tomas, securing an entry scholarship for her excellent high school grades. I watched her from the kitchen as she packed her belongings with Ama and Renata helping. My sister had grown taller, and her long dark mane, thick and luscious, hung freely over her shoulders. Her body was toned and slim, glittering brown skin allowing the sun to paint hues of her form as breathtaking as the living mountain. Her beauty, the object of my envy, had gained more prominence; her dark brown eyes surrounded by luscious long lashes, sparkled full of detached intensity.

She had not spoken to me much since that day two years ago and, as I watched her neatly folding her clothes, wrapping her three pairs of shoes with such care and putting together all her pieces of jewellery – hairpins, bracelets and necklaces made from local material – inside an empty biscuit tin, I wanted to hug her and tell her I was sorry. For what? She would have probably asked. And I wouldn’t have known how to answer. So, I remained standing behind the giant shadow of a sister I did not know how to love.

After zipping her travel bag, she stood up and handed me the biscuit tin full of her adolescent treasures.

‘Here. They will be useful when you go to barn dances. Reserve the pearl necklace for your big night. You will have the best gown at your senior prom, I will buy one in Baclaran.’

I took the biscuit tin and nodded.

I would not see her for two years. But one week before my senior prom, I collected a parcel from the Municipal Hall. Ravelo, my prom partner from a nearby private school, held my hand beaming beside his girlfriend with the stunning lace blue gown.

On the day of my high school graduation, Raquel arrived with a hefty but neatly attired, young white man sporting a crew cut. Apa guessed rightly that he was in the navy. Robert shook Apa and Ama’s hands with exaggerated vigour. While Apa remained momentarily speechless, brothers Joel and John made an extra effort at conversation to deflect the uncomfortable silence.

‘So how did you two meet?’ Joel asked.

‘At Ate Minda’s bakery in Pampanga,’ Raquel explained. ‘I spent one weekend there and cousin Gerry brought him.’

‘Gerry is in the navy as well?’ John asked.

‘Yes, indeed. We’re best mates,’ Robert answered, locked in his pleasant grin. ‘He’s a good man, Gerry.’

‘We do not have space for you to stay here,’ Apa finally said with tactless authority.

Everyone froze except Raquel.

‘We’re not staying, Apa. After Rita’s graduation, we will fly back to Manila.’

‘It is school holiday. Why are you going back to Manila?’ Apa demanded.

‘We are flying to Guam next week. Robert is being stationed there for a few months.’ Raquel explained, maintaining aloofness.

 ‘Just like that.’ Apa’s voice was now very loud. ‘What about your studies?’

‘Don’t worry, sir. Raquel will continue her schooling in America.’ Robert’s grin remained.

‘The hell she will.’ Apa trembled in anger. ‘You would leave us just like that? All my efforts, the money that I send for your studies? All gone for nothing?’

‘I will pay you back, Apa. Once I’m settled and working, I will pay back all the money you spent.’

‘Salbacuta. What a disrespectful daughter.’ Apa stormed out. I pretended to arrange the pleats of my white graduation toga.

Ama gave an impish sob.

‘Are you two married?’ Joel uttered the question everybody wanted to ask.

‘Yes, sir. We were married six months ago.’

Ama’s sobbing became scream of tears.

‘Why were we not told?’ Joel did not hide his displeasure, ‘I could have attended the wedding. You know my work is close to your boarding house.’

‘Unbelievable.’ John was not happy either.

‘Why, Raquel? What have we done wrong?’ Ama asked.

Raquel bit her lip and looked around, her gaze stopping where I was standing. She tried to reach for Ama’s hands. Ama stood back.

‘Ama, I will help my sisters go to college. I will work and send money.’

‘We have a little savings and we would have borrowed more just to give you a decent wedding.’ Ama’s voice cracked.

‘Don’t worry, ma’am. I will take care of your daughter, I promise.’ Robert hugged Ama who was too shy to avoid the embrace.

Instead of glee, sorrow; instead of laughter, tears on my graduation day. Apa and Ama were too upset to attend. Brothers Joel and John joined their respective male groups for a drinking binge and Renata attended to food preparation as the stream of visitors, mostly relatives, began to arrive. There was no one to pin my Salutatorian and Leadership Award medals but Raquel. All eyes were on her as she walked up the stage, her regal presence clothed in the glamour of unabashed wealth, the daunting presence of my beautiful sister once again hovered over me, completely covering my white toga and obliterating the shine of my two medals. The clapping of hands, the open adoration and subdued whispers of praise were accorded to the most popular alumni.

As the mayhem of excitement continued, it had not dawned upon anyone but me that the whole graduation ceremony of Class 1979 had been derailed. Not even the winning oratorical rendition of our valedictorian’s speech was persuasive enough to turn the attention of the distracted audience away from the handsome couple.

I caught sight of Leonardo behind the group of spectators. His eyes were glued on Raquel and the white man beside her.

Everyone believes that all students at the University of the Philippines are clever. I wish this were true in my case. I nearly flunked maths and most of my grades were pretty average. But graduate I did and on my graduation, along with hundreds of other relieved and rejoicing students and parents, I remembered Raquel. I did not write to her about my graduation. In fact, I never wrote to her. She sent my regular allowance through Apa who, with Ama and sometimes Renata, now an elementary school teacher in one of two public schools in Guinobatan, would come  up to Manila every month to pay my board and hand me my allowance.

I made my apathy towards returning to the land of the living mountain crystal clear at every opportunity and it was only with great anxiety that I did so every year. Student life in the city was tenfold more seductive. I loved it so much that, when school break neared, I would be hit by a fretful trepidation of not being able to return if I left Manila. My stomach churned at the thought of the twisting Bitukang Manok road and it would be empty before the end of that long and winding stretch connecting Manila to Baao.  Fear of death did not compare to a failure to return to Manila, being confined instead to the one-bedroom house smelling of pigs and thunderbox. I would wake up from a nightmare reliving my childhood, devising my escape from the land of the living mountain. Only my sense of duty to my ageing parents had me, with a heavy heart, boarding a dangerously rickety bus and traveling 457 kilometres to face the land of the living mountain. I could not be persuaded to stay longer than a week, concocting any reason to go back to my boarding house.

I did not find it necessary to write to Raquel, now firmly established in San Francisco. As Robert had promised, she finished her nursing degree at the local community college and now worked as a full-time nurse.

‘Life in America is a rat-race,’ Apa never failed to remind me every time he handed me my allowance.

‘Your sister has two sons now and there is another one on the way. Times are tough in America. So spend wisely. She may stop sending us money at any time.’

That Raquel would never stop supporting me was just a gut feeling. I do not know where this sense of trust originated and how it developed. Only that growing up together had cultivated an unspoken bond between us. At each moment of physical closeness – eating side by side at the dinner table, washing clothes in the river or going to the market together and cleaning the house every Saturday – I felt the strength of her presence. She was my rock, formidable in her calm. She would have sensed this and so did her best to be one.

Each time that Apa delivered this warning, my memory would rewind to an incident in high school. In my second year, three huge senior girls had taken a dislike to me. The harassment came in the form of snide remarks and by following me when I was alone, making comments on my looks and mimicking my every move. I prayed that it would stop and did not tell anyone. I dawdled at home and tried to be around other classmates at every chance, which wasn’t easy as, being a loner, I did not have a group of friends, nor had I, until then, felt the need for one. Then, one morning on my way to my classroom, I noticed the three girls walking towards me. I slowed down and stumbled a few times over pebbles on the rugged unpaved path. From nowhere, Raquel appeared, walked past me and stopped a few inches directly facing the leader of the group. Her voice was low and every word was clear. Increasing my pace, I walked past them and her with my eyes on the ground, barely hearing her warning.

‘You will stop harassing my sister right now.’

Several students milled around the group as arguments turned into shouts and a near-physical altercation. The principal sent them all to his office.

My sister’s heroism was never mentioned to anyone, not even to my parents and siblings. Raquel remained her usual, detached self as if nothing happened. For a few days, the three girls turned their unpleasantness towards her. They would conspicuously come close to her, whispering to one another and laughing while casting side glances in her direction. They were met with a cold stare and steel presence, and in a few days their annoying tactics were rendered ineffective.

I do not remember any further incidents attesting to my sister’s protectiveness. There would be no need as no one dared attempt to trouble me again. I continued quietly through my high school days, always eclipsed by her popularity as, year after year, she was paraded as beauty queen and presented with certificates and medals at academic and athletic competitions.

There was one incident at university, I now recall, when I felt the urge to write to her. In my third year, I entered a class already full of chattering students. As I tried to find a vacant seat, someone called my name and signalled to a seat beside her.

‘It’s me, Edna, remember? Leonardo’s sister. I was a junior when you were senior at Guinobatan.’

‘Ooh,’ I said, half embarrassed as I searched my clouded memory, ‘Glad to see you. Are you a sophomore?’

‘Yes. My boarding house is opposite yours. I moved in there a few weeks ago.’

Edna was the emerging beauty and brain as I exited from high school. She reminded me of Raquel. An elfin face and supple, pale skin were reminiscent of her Chinese genealogy, which as she explained to me later in our friendship, were two generations past. Leonardo and Edna were undefeated champions of mathematics, a talent likewise attributed to this pedigree.

‘Valedictorian?’ I asked.

‘No, third. I fell ill for half a year in my fourth year. Polio. My left leg lost some movement.’ She lifted her skirt to show the skinny leg.

‘I’m so sorry,’ was all I could say after the shock of seeing this beautiful woman ravaged by a disability.

‘It’s okay. Really. They considered my disability so I was able to get in here even though my grades fell short of the cut-off.’

Edna saved me from flunking maths and chemistry. For nights on end, we would study together before the exams. I would go to her boarding house or she would stay in mine. I helped her in her social science subjects and the mutual admiration grew. We were inseparable.

After watching a Nora Aunor movie, Edna and I headed to the Filipino shop at the Mega Mall. Mixing the crushed ice, purple yam, beans and ice-cream, Edna complained about the absence of her favourite shredded jackfruit in the halu-halo. She was not her usual spritely self.

‘Graduating this year, aren’t you?’ her pensive mood exuded genuine sadness.

‘Yes, but I will stay in the boarding house till I get a job. So you can’t get rid of me yet.’ I messed her short hair and she whisked my hand away.

‘You’re not going back to Guinobatan?’

‘What possible work would I get there?’ I frowned.

‘Kuya Leonardo is in Guinobatan. He is now second boss of the Department of Agriculture at Binogsacan.’

‘Ow?’ Edna sensed my guarded interest.

‘He is not married,’ she placed a scoop of halu-halo in her mouth and stared at me directly.

‘Why not?’ I stared back while mixing my ice-crunch desert slowly.

‘He cannot find anyone as perfect as your sister,’ she said, winking and pouting her lips.

‘What?’ I stopped mashing the now fully melted milky mess.

‘Sorry. Just being frank and honest. He thought your sister was unattainable. Even Ama and Apa discouraged him from chasing her. They thought that Raquel was a snob, matapobre, overly ambitious and would only break his heart.’

‘He came to the house, you know?’ I struggled to maintain composure.

‘Oh, yes, we knew. Your Apa told him to come back the following year. Then he came back as he was told … the following year.’

Edna took my silence as a prodding. ‘Apparently, Raquel refused to even talk to him.’

‘Did he tell you that?’ My irritation was now showing.

‘Not exactly, but afterwards he was a different person. Hardly spoke to us, irritable. Kuya Leonardo, is very much like you, you know. A loner. You both looked depressed all the time,’ she laughed. ‘Joke only.’ Sensing that I was not amused, she assumed a serious face. ‘Ama and Apa were afraid that he would quit school. We were very relieved when he didn’t.’

‘Your brother is a liar.’ I stood up and began to leave, barely suppressing my rage. Edna followed, limping behind me, surprised and confused at my reaction.

‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘You tell your fucking brother to come and talk to me.’

‘What for? Your sister is married now and overseas. What for?’

‘Tell him to see me and I would like you to be there and clarify what the fuck happened then.’

‘I do not appreciate your swearing, Rita.’

‘I’m not swearing at you, Edna. Your brother owes me an  explanation.’

I left Edna muttering to myself. ‘The bastard.’

The meeting with Leonardo did not happen until the following year on the day of Edna’s graduation. I was staying in the same boarding house and took a student counsellor job at the nearby Fatima College. He rang and invited me for a coffee at the Alfredo Cafe the Mega Mall. He refused my demand to bring Edna.

‘She does not know anything.’

‘She knows a lie.’

‘It’s my life primarily.’ He was firm.

The nightmare is painful to recall. The image of a young woman kneeling in misery, devoid of poise, tears welling and snot joining, smearing her swollen face. My fear of and pity for an adored sister and unconscious guilt for being Leonardo’s chosen one. Will the truth or the lie that Leonardo reveals, give way to a journey that could bridge the unspoken gap between my sister and I? Although I could now clearly connect the pieces of the puzzle, I wanted to hear it from Leonardo himself.

He had not aged much. The then handsome face now had added lines of dignity and character with the increased confidence only present in one with power from a distinguished position. At the young age of twenty-eight, Leonardo had had an entirely predictable, albeit fast, rise to the rank of assistant director after finishing with honours from the same university I had struggled to graduate from.

‘I wanted to marry into the family.’ Leonardo looked straight in my eyes, proud and unapologetic.

‘And you think you would have had a better chance with me than with Raquel?’ I spoke his thoughts.

His eyes blinked, unaccustomed to such a direct statement from a woman.

‘Well, that was the biggest mistake of your life.’ I did not hide my contempt.

‘But did you ever have feelings for me? Why did you refuse to see me?’ Pride gave way to uncertainty. Leonardo’s eyes filled with questions, his harboured, pleasant presumption disappearing. In that instant I saw him standing at our door in Guinobatan, asking my father for permission to see me. Were the glances of adoration accorded to me? The expression of longing, perhaps love in the pair of soulful eyes that my classmates, particularly my sister, would have died for? Were they pretence or a fruit of my vain imagination? I took a long sip of my latte, gripping my cup with both hands and feeling the heat dissipate. I braced for what I was to tell him. Our eyes locked.

‘No, Leonardo, I did not have feelings for you and neither did you for me. I get it now. For years, I took pride in the fact that someone like you could be attracted to me.’

‘And the source of conceit,’ Leonardo added whispering to himself.

‘Look who’s talking. So I am conceited because I rejected you? You think that every woman will fall for you and those that do not, are conceited? You chose your pride over the risk of being rejected by Raquel!’

He fell silent for a while, then softly and slowly, he said, ‘The whole school thought that you were the snob, not your sister, didn’t you know? But maybe I was the only one who saw through your insecurity, struggling, suffocating as second best,’ he paused briefly and shook his head, ‘Sorry … I’m sorry …’

‘So you chose me out of pity?’

‘I’m sorry …’ he struggled with the words.

‘I’m sorry too. But I’m more sorry for you. You don’t deserve my sister because you are a coward, an egotistic coward. You deserve every bit of loneliness that your solitary life brings you.’

I wanted very much to write to Raquel, to tell her that the most sought-after student in the school, her first love, was still single, unable to find her replacement. For weeks I thought of nothing but Leonardo and Raquel and the lost chance of a young love, the unrealised potential of boundless bliss; how they could have lived happily ever after, bearing love unsullied by ambition and lust for wealth and status; the perfect couple to challenge the beauty of the living mountain.

But Leonardo and I were alike. We shaped our flawed dreams to fit Raquel’s outline, which we both assumed was the epitome of ambition and pride. I wanted so much to tell her. Then perhaps her hatred hidden surreptitiously by her excessive attention to my needs and aspirations would be supplanted by genuine sisterly love, and her self-confidence could reclaim its rightful ground. I wanted to tell her that rejecting Leonardo was not in deference to her. He did not fit into my notion of success.

But I did not have the courage then and even now, in our sunset days, I don’t think I could.

It doesn’t matter anymore.