Sample Chapter: Marta's Story

Marta – Sample Chapter (4,000 words)

Runners call it The Wall: the sudden collapse of energy that happens when the body’s stores of glycogen have run out. It’s the point when any sane person would simply lie down and rest. But for Marta that wasn’t an option. With her fortieth birthday approaching, she had set herself the ultimate challenge: to complete the Georgia Marathon and prove to herself that age was just a number.

For more than five years now, Marta had been a serious runner, with more than a dozen half marathons already under her belt. But every time she reached the point in the race where the full marathon runners peeled off from the halfers, she had been hit with a wave of relief. ‘Bye bye, crazy people!’ she had said to herself as she headed for the finish line, knowing that she would soon be back at home. She always felt good after a half, but the idea of doing it all over again straightaway seemed crazy to her.

And yet somehow, that was where she found herself now. Her lungs straining, her feet aching, the muscles in her legs resisting every next step, it had become truly a battle between her mind and her body. And right now, seven kilometres from the finish line, her body was doing its best to shut the whole mad enterprise down.

Marta had already run through her full repertoire of strategies to keep herself moving. She had blasted through hours of perk-me-up music on her headphones, everything from Metallica to AC/DC. She had reminded herself of the reasons she was running, and of how hard she had trained for this moment. She had imagined the faces of her family standing at the finish line, and told herself how proud they would be of her for getting through it. She had tried to convince herself that her desire to finish the race was stronger than the pain she was feeling. But for the first time, none of it was working.

Now she was about to break her own cardinal rule. For years, one of the main reasons Marta ran was to get a bit of time to herself, away from the high-pressured world of CNN and the demands of family life with two small children. One of the first times she had gone out to train for a local 5k, she had been interrupted ten minutes in by a call from her children, complaining that they had run out of toilet paper. When she got back home, she had sat them down and explained, ‘If there is blood, you call me. If you need an ambulance, you call me. If not, you deal with your own stuff.’ And ever since, her family had respected that, even as training took her away from them for long periods of time. They recognised that this was her time, that this was her thing, and she was not to be disturbed while she was doing it.

But this time, the solitude wasn’t helping, and Marta knew she needed help. She was on the brink of giving up, of throwing away everything she’d worked so hard for. It just felt impossible to keep on going.

Breathlessly, she reached for her phone and dialled her husband Alvaro’s number.

‘Oh my God!’ he answered. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m running,’ Marta replied feebly.

‘You’re running, and you’re calling me?’ Marta could hear the concern in his voice.

‘I can’t do this!’ she burst out desperately.

‘Yes, you can,’ Alvaro insisted. ‘It’s only a few kilometres. The kids and I are here waiting for you at the finish line. Come on Marta, you can do it!’

Immediately, Marta’s confidence returned, and a slight spring came back into her weary step. When her own reserves of positivity had run out, her husband’s had come through for her. She hung up the call, and kept going, step by step, metre by metre, until half an hour later, she somehow found herself at the finish line.

Crossing the line, Marta raised one fist in the air, before falling to her knees. Suddenly, the tears began to flow, and before long she was in floods of them. Through bleary eyes, she searched the crowd for her family.

Marta was shocked to feel hands on her, and something cold being placed around her neck. She looked down to see a little gold medal. ‘No!’ She protested confusedly. ‘I didn’t win the race!’

An official in a branded jumper smiled at her indulgently. ‘It’s because you participated,’ she told her. ‘So you can feel proud of yourself.’

Marta was baffled. ‘I already feel proud,’ she told the other woman. ‘I don’t need a medal to feel proud.’

‘Please,’ the woman insisted. ‘Just put it on.’

‘Okay, whatever,’ Marta agreed weakly. The medal was the last thing on her mind, as she searched the bustling crowd for three familiar faces.

Suddenly she saw them, beaming at her with a mixture of love and pride. She ran over to them, and hugged them tight to her. Alvaro handed her a beautiful bouquet of white flowers, which she accepted gratefully. These meant far more than the silly medal.

She had done it. Somehow, despite all the struggle, she had made it through to the end. And everyone she loved most had been there waiting for her.

It was the first of many marathons for Marta. All were tough in their way, but the knowledge that she had done it before always kept her going, along with the memory of that feeling of crossing the line and being reunited with her family. She never had to call anyone again.

*

By the time Marta did turn forty, things were looking pretty good. Her role as a segment producer at CNN was challenging, but not all-consuming, allowing her to pick the kids up from school at 4pm every day and spend plenty of time with her family. Her co-workers – including two fellow Spaniards – were great, her boss, the anchor Guillermo Arduino, was a pleasure to work with, and she had even made a new best friend at work, Carolina. Living in America long term was beginning to feel a lot more bearable, and she and Alvaro had just renovated their kitchen.

The kids, meanwhile, were thriving in the local schools, even if Marta struggled not to roll her eyes when she saw them zealously saluting the Stars and Stripes every morning. They were, she realised, becoming increasingly American. Despite her protestations, they genuinely believed they were living in the greatest country on earth. Although Marta knew that she herself would never come round to their way of thinking, she had decided to tone down her anti-American comments, feeling it wasn’t fair on the kids to make them feel bad about their adopted country.

The children were thrilled, too, with their mother’s exciting new job. In fact, knowing that Marta was appearing on TV every day was a source of enormous pride to them – far more than it ever had been to her father, whose passionate love of books left little room in his life for screentime. ‘Mommy’s on TV!’ they shouted excitedly, ignoring her protestations that the show was only screened in Latin America and nobody they knew would ever see it. As far as they were concerned, that didn’t matter – being on TV was the most exciting thing either of them could imagine.

Every morning, at the 8 am team meeting, Marta would be given a topic to research for the show that afternoon. One day it might be the rise in gun crime, another the threat from hurricanes across the United States. Although the topics were generally quite heavy, the work was engaging and fun, and she always managed to find a human angle on every story. She would research and write a script in the morning, and then while it was assessed by a team of rigorous CNN fact-checkers, work on gathering all the images and video clips that an editor would need to turn it into a beautifully produced package. After it went out during the programme that afternoon, she and Arduino would chat about the topic on air for a few minutes, and then Marta would be free to go.

One morning, she arrived at the meeting as usual, to be handed a particularly troubling topic. The producer had printed out an article from a newspaper in Texas, about a local schoolgirl who had shot and killed herself in front of her parents because her ex-boyfriend was bullying her. As Marta looked through it, she could scarcely believe what she was reading. ‘There’s a video of the father crying,’ her editor told her. ‘Just do something simple. Cut, cut, cut.’

Marta went to work on the piece, pulling up information on the girl who had died, as well as on the topic of teen suicide – and particularly suicide of teen girls – more generally. The more she read, the more heartbroken she felt, and for much of that morning she was sat at her desk in tears. As someone who had been bullied at school herself on account of her weight, she couldn’t help feeling a kind of kinship with the dead girls.

Her producer had allocated only a couple of minute for the segment, but to Marta it felt cruelly superficial. Working with the video editor that afternoon, she discovered she wasn’t the only one. Daniela was a tall, burly woman from Argentina, and she too had been bullied as a teen for the way that she looked. ‘This piece is too much for me,’ she told Marta sadly.

The two women soon fell into a heart-to-heart about their bullying experiences. ‘I can’t imagine you ever being fat!’ Daniela told Marta, when she explained the reason she had been picked on. Neither one of them felt ready to let the story go at the end of the day. ‘Let’s talk about doing something together,’ Daniela eventually suggested.

Before long, they were pitching their bosses on the idea of an in-depth documentary, looking at the phenomenon of teen suicide. For months the executives ummed and ahhed about whether or not to commission it, but in the end it was the death of a girl in Argentina that finally swung them. She had sent some nude photos to her boyfriend which had since made their way around her school, and she had been receiving up to 20 messages online ever day calling her a whore and telling her to kill herself. Eventually the barrage of hostility, combined with the shame, had been too much for her. Her parents, along with her two younger sisters, had opened the door to her bedroom to find her hanging from the ceiling. To make matters worse, the dad had been home for some time already, cheerfully watching football on the TV downstairs while his daughter’s body was hanging above him.

Marta was horrified by the story, but for her bosses it was the key to unlocking the proposed documentary. ‘If you can get the father to agree to speak to you,’ they told her, ‘then we’ll do it.’

She knew that this was easier said than done. Distraught by what had happened to his daughter, he had so far avoided speaking to the press. But very gently, Marta began a conversation with him. ‘I don’t want what happened to your daughter to happen to anybody else,’ she explained. ‘If we can make somebody out there think about this, and maybe prevent it from happening to other parents, then that’s the reason I want to make this documentary.’

Eventually, after several weeks of talking, the father agreed to go on camera, telling Marta, ‘Yes, I want to do it.’

She was very clear with her supervisors, though, about the approach she would be taking. ‘I have got the guy,’ she told them, ‘but don’t expect me to go digging up dirt. I’m going to go there and try to be like a friend to him and share his experience, and we’ll see what happens.’

As it turned out, the bereaved father was one of the most open people Marta had ever interviewed. Living in a tiny rural town in Argentina, he had not received any kind of counselling for his grief, and telling the whole story on camera was a kind of therapy for him. Much of the time he was sobbing as he spoke, and Marta, Daniela and even their cameraman were all crying too. His wife, meanwhile, was pretty much catatonic, and one of the younger sisters had become mute.

For three months, Marta devoted herself solely to the documentary project, letting other producers handle her daily segments. She tried to interview representatives from the school, but was blocked by their lawyers, and told she couldn’t speak to other students because they were minors. She did, however, manage to speak to plenty of experts, who offered thoughts on how the epidemic of teen suicide might best be held back. She even interviewed a former bully who was willing to go on camera and talk about why they had treated others the way that they had.

The documentary went out in segments, as a major special investigation for Encuentro. After Marta’s interview with the father was aired for the first time, she did her usual on-camera chat with the anchor in the studio. This time, though, she had to really fight to keep the tears from coming as she talked about the story she had heard from him.

The reaction from the public was extraordinary. CNN was flooded with letters from viewers praising her and Daniela for the work they had done and thanking them for shedding light on such a difficult subject. When they did Facebook Live broadcasts to promote the investigation, many more people came forward to share their own heart-breaking stories. Before long, the higher-ups had edited Marta’s footage together into a feature-length documentary that went out internationally. One day, as she was about to go out for a run, she answered her phone to her CNN supervisor. ‘Are you sitting down?’ the other woman asked her. ‘Your documentary has been nominated for an Emmy!’

Marta could scarcely believe it. She knew they would never win – the competition included docs from Telemundo dealing with much more popular topics concerning immigrant stories and America’s controversial ICE agency. But being nominated in itself was a massive honour.

Best of all, though, not long after the documentary went out, the school officials who had hid behind their lawyers when Marta tried to speak to them were fired. To her, it felt like a modicum of justice for the girl’s parents. She had never felt more proud of a piece of work she had done in her life.

*

As much as Marta had gradually adjusted to the idea of making a life in America, the vast distance between her and her family back home in Spain was something she could never quite come to terms with. She had learned to have a relationship with them that took place largely on Skype – it was how she had informed them of her two pregnancies, among other significant life developments – but her father was uncomfortable with the cold screen that formed a barrier between them, and had never quite accepted the idea of his own image being beamed half way around the world. He would generally slink off to do other things early on in the conversation, or lurk just out of frame where he couldn’t quite be seen.

Marta made sure to take the family home to Spain every summer, so her kids could form a close relationship with their grandparents, but one thing they could very rarely afford to do was spend Christmas together. A ticket from Atlanta to Madrid could cost $2,000 at the height of the festive season, so a holiday for the four of them might run to $8,000. The run up to Christmas, when so many other families were preparing to see their loved ones, was always a stark reminder of the 4,000 miles separating her from her own.

Normally, Marta called her parents on Sundays, but for some reason on Saturday 9 December, she decided to give them a ring a day early. It was 9 o’clock in the morning in Atlanta – 3pm Madrid time – and she was just getting ready to go for a long run. True to form, after a few minutes, her dad came up with a reason to excuse himself, and after a bit more chat with her mum – mainly about her sister Susannah, who was holidaying with friends in the Dominican Republic ¬– Marta told her she had better get going.

When she got back from her run, she found five missed calls waiting on her phone, from a number whose dialling code she didn’t recognise. Probably a junk call, Marta told herself. But that evening, while she was tidying the mess her kids had made of the living room that afternoon, her phone began ringing again. This time it was a number from Madrid.

‘Ola!’ she called out, wedging the phone between her chin and shoulder.

The voice on the other end belonged to Susannah’s new fiancé. ‘Marta, are you okay?’ he asked her.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied, tossing a fireman’s helmet into the dressing-up box. ‘I’m just tidying up after the kids. You wouldn’t believe how much mess they can make in the space of a couple of hours. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose, just to see how much chaos they can create. I’m sure Susannah and I never left a scene like this, but then we probably never had as many toys in those days, so maybe it’s my own fault for spoiling them. I’ve told them a million times, but of course they never listen.’

It wasn’t until he butted in that she realised how much she had been rambling. ‘Hey, listen to me,’ he said, a little louder than before.

Marta stopped in her tracks.

‘Your father passed away,’ he continued.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘I just spoke to him this morning.’ Clearly there had been some kind of mistake.

But the sombre tone of his voice left no room for doubt. ‘He died, Marta,’ he repeated. ‘I’m sorry.’

As the truth sunk in, Marta fell to her knees, letting out an ear-splitting, ‘No!’
Alvaro rushed into the room seconds later, with the two kids following in his wake. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked anxiously. Marta was still on the floor, muttering to herself, ‘No, no, this can’t be happening.’ Their daughter took one look at her and burst into tears.

‘What’s going on?’ Alvaro repeated anxiously.

She turned to him and said, ‘My father died.’

‘No!’ he replied, thunderstruck. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’

‘Yes,’ she said, a little more composed already.

Looking up into her husband’s face, Marta could see he was as stunned by the news as she was. ‘What happened? He was fine,’ he exclaimed feebly.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, only now remembering the phone clutched tightly in her hand. At the other end, Susannah’s boyfriend was still on the line. ‘What happened?’ she echoed mechanically.

Before long, Marta had heard the whole awful story. About an hour after talking to her that morning, her father went out with some friends to play cards at a local bar, telling his wife that he’d be home for dinner by eight. But a little while later, she had received a call from the bar staff. ‘You’re husband isn’t well,’ they had told her. ‘We think you’d better come as soon as possible.’

Marta’s mother had already changed into her pyjamas for the night, but she grabbed a thick coat and scarf and ran as fast as she could down to the bar. By the time she got there, she found a police cordon outside. ‘My husband’s in there,’ she told one of the officers, making to push her way through. But he held her back, replying thoughtlessly, ‘You can’t cross the line. There’s a dead body in there.’ At this, Marta’s mother had passed out cold.

She had woken up lying in an ambulance, with a kind nurse gently holding her hand. ‘Your husband passed away,’ she told her. ‘You can’t see him right now, but everything is going to be fine.’

‘How is everything going to be fine?’ Marta’s mother shrieked. It wasn’t until the nurse offered her a sedative that she was able to think a little more clearly.

‘Can we call your family?’ the woman asked her.

She replied, ‘I have no family. One of my daughters lives in America and the other is in the Dominican Republic.’ For the first time she burst into tears, telling the nurse desperately, ‘I have no-one!’

Eventually, Marta’s mother had thought to call Susannah’s boyfriend, and he had rushed over to help. It turned out that her husband had collapsed in the middle of the card game, after suffering a massive heart attack. One of the blood vessels in his chest had exploded and he had died within a matter of minutes.

Susannah had heard the news right away from her boyfriend, and had tried to get in touch with Marta – hence the mysterious missed calls from a number in the Dominican Republic. When she failed to get through to her sister, she had persuaded him to call her directly.

As she listened to the story, the tears continued to flow down Marta’s cheeks, and looking over at Alvaro she saw that he too – uncharacteristically – was weeping. But as soon as she got off the phone, he flew into action. Marta, still sitting there stupefied, was shocked to realise her husband was already on the phone to Delta Airlines, booking her onto the next available flight. ‘I’m sorry honey, it’s going to have to be tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘The last one has already departed today.’

It seemed like only moments later that her friend Carolina was with her too. ‘Don’t worry honey,’ she told her, folding Marta into a tight hug. ‘I’ll pack a bag for you, and take care of everything you need.’

Between them, Alvaro and Carolina whirled around sorting everything out, as well as calming the kids down and putting them to bed. Marta just sat stunned, and filled with relief that the responsibility had been taken from her shoulders. But when Carolina left for home, and Alvaro finally stopped and sat down in his chair, a look of panic suddenly passed over his face. ‘I can’t breathe,’ he whispered, clutching his left arm.

Marta looked at him, horror-struck.

‘I can’t breathe,’ he repeated, even more quietly.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’ She told herself that it was almost certainly a panic attack – she had seen similar symptoms overwhelm him when an old schoolfriend had died in a car accident – but having just lost her father to a heart attack, the whole experience was utterly terrifying.

Before long, Alvaro was on his way to hospital. With the kids fast asleep in bed, Marta had the house all to herself.

All that night, as she lay alone in bed, she was unable to get a wink of sleep. It was hard to comprehend that by this time tomorrow she would be back home with her family in Madrid. But even more so that the family she was going back to was now one that was missing its father.