Chapter 1

When I (F) lost my retail job at 25, I suddenly couldn’t afford the rent. I was devastated. My dream of making it abroad came crashing down, and I found myself on the verge of packing up and returning to the small coastal town where I’d grown up.

When my fears and anxieties reached the ears of my old widowed mother—though I did not expect her to do anything—she pleaded with Philip. He was her cousin, and he used to live next door to her when they were children. He was close to her, and she told me that she lost one of her best friends the day he left for the very country I was in now.

Just like that, Philip—my uncle twice removed—called me a few days later to tell me that his daughter from his second wife, Cher—my cousin twice removed—would be more than happy to let me stay with her. He told me it was better for me to live with her, since he and his wife lived in a different city and travelled often. Cher, on the other hand, lived in the same city as me, and she could offer the kind of stability I needed.

The very next day, Cher called me, reassuring me that she’d always help out a relative in trouble and that I could stay with her until I was back on my feet. She sounded so mature on the phone, with an air of courtesy that only someone older could have.

I had seen Cher before. Her family had visited us a few times when we were younger, but they never stayed long enough for us to actually get to know each other. I didn’t remember much about her—except that she really intimidated me, even though I was the older one.

Cher was very pretty, with the kind of beauty that could make even us girls fluster. Like those who grew up in rich countries, she was confident, fashionable, and always seemed to know exactly what she wanted. I remembered boys in my neighborhood falling over themselves to talk to her—the same boys who had never looked twice at me. If truth be told, I felt inferior to her, especially when I had to rely on her for housing.

On the day my lease ended on the little room downtown, I packed all my belongings into two suitcases and left for Cher’s house. I took a taxi to her suburb, where you would find hundreds and hundreds of big, identical, one-storey houses with a lawn and a driveway in the front and a bigger yard in the back.