The Girl Next Door

After I had been in Marbella for a while, I began to get acquainted with some of the other occupants of our funny little apartment building.

And as apartment buildings went, it was certainly one of a kind in Marbella: a squat little edifice boasting only four stories – the constructor having run out of money whilst it was being built back in the sixties – rather than one of the characterless high rises we were surrounded by.

It didn’t have a pool and it didn’t have a garden; but it did have a very useful car park, all the residents knew each other – and some of them had even lived there since the building was first inaugurated, nearly forty years previously.

The apartments all had large open fireplaces (which we were all forbidden to use), unusually spacious balconies and most also had wonderful fixtures: sinks and baths of heavily ornate porcelain with beautiful bronze-plated taps.

It was a rather special place.

Next door to me lived a woman in her early forties from the Basque country. Short and skinny with wildly curly red hair, Cheli (Araceli) possessed a surfeit of nervous energy; most of which she expended on her beloved King Charles-cross, Selma and a large, grey Persian cat called Naia with whom Strauss was absolutely obsessed: trapping the poor creature in corners every time we visited to lovingly lick her fur until she was a sad, soggy mess, damped down to half her normal size.

(We were able to use this unhealthy obsession to our advantage when the dopey mog fell off their third-floor balcony railing and disappeared. Faced with Cheli’s distress, I was struck with the brainwave of taking Strauss out on an emergency search and rescue mission, and after only a matter of minutes he had managed to track his disgruntled but uninjured beloved down to a neighbouring garden hedge).

Cheli and I discovered we could share quite a lot: pet-care advice, mutual Apple Mac related commiseration (she had an iMac, I had an iBook), man-friend woes (I was in a permanent state of bother over one wastrel or another, she was in a long-term “relationship”… with a rather married man), an enjoyment of classical music and an interest in languages.

She became a good friend, and rarely a day passed without us calling to each other from our respective kitchen windows – handily facing over an internal patio – or tapping on one another’s door for a glass of something chilled and a natter.

At the other end of our corridor, a couple in their seventies shared a studio apartment no bigger than mine with their divorced middle-aged daughter, Julia and her teenage daughter, Julie.

I got to know the family even better when patriarch Paco – another fervent Francoist – was struck down by a terminal brain tumour. My teenage employment in residential and nursing homes enabled me to offer the family assistance with his day-to-day care, and thus we managed to muddle through until he peacefully breathed his last in the comfort of his own bed.

In what was really intended to be a storage facility in the basement, there lived a Moroccan family: round jovial Mohammed and shy but friendly Miriam, his wife.

During my four years in the building they produced three little boys, one after another, all absolutely identical to their father with their sturdy little limbs and dimpled smiles and only distinguishable from one another by their varying heights.

Eventually, the extended family came over from Morocco to join them in their underground home, and the entrance lobby of the building turned permanently fragrant with the smell of their cooking.

The person to avoid (all communities have at least one) lived on the first floor, but rather unfortunately had a balcony that overlooked the pavement just outside the front door.

An elderly woman – although she probably appeared older than she actually was – who had lived alone for many years, Eva had driven the few family members she did have away with her incessant self-pitying and self-absorbed blather.

Still she refused to learn her lesson: hanging around her balcony like a hungry spider, she employed whatever method she had at her disposition to reel unwilling passers-by into listening to her tedious monologues.

And she knew exactly how to push my buttons: employing her tatty little Yorkshire terrier as the bait of choice…

‘Creeesty, Creeesty!’ She was not alone in the mispronunciation of my name: I had given up introducing myself as Kirsty soon after my arrival in Spain, and proceeded to answer to variations on a theme of Cristina until my departure.

‘Creo que Miki está de nuevo enfermo. ¿Qué debo hacer?’

I would sigh, and pause, and battle with the possibility that Miki might actually be ill this time, only to find himself prisoner in a mausoleum with an old bat who didn’t take proper care of him.

Quickly losing the fight with my naïve conscience, I would slowly turn to face her, all the time knowing that instead of coming to the rescue of an innocent handbag dog, I was instead going to be dragged into the dullest of dull conversations; painfully drawn out until I was forced to start walking backwards down the street in order to get away and nurse my Eva-induced migraine.

As a pleasant antidote to the gruesome Eva, a noisy group of Bolivians moved in during my third year in the building. They filled the corridors with an eclectic mix of huayño, chacarera, reggaeton, Maná – the Mexican band beloved of much of the Latin American diaspora at that time – among other musical genres. A tuneful backdrop to what was to an apparently interminable social gathering.

They were later joined by a very strange woman from Ecuador, who insisted on feeding Strauss such enormous quantities of sliced white bread every time we crossed her path that I eventually had to invent a gluten allergy for him, much to his disgust and her incredulously raised eyebrow – it was still only 2003, after all…

At least as noisy – if not as generous with their baked goods or rhythmic soundtrack as the Latinos, were the fierce Russian hospitality workers renting the apartment above me. They, dear Reader, will definitely have to be a story for another time…