She looked good in the photograph, in an elegant white jacket and skirt, looking past the camera, into her brilliant future. The photo session had been thrilling, the outfits, the poses, the attention. The photographer had fussed over the light, seating her at the back of the room, then choosing a silk upholstered chair with a gilded wood backrest and putting her in front of the window, with the light to the side.
Credit Bernardo Aja/El Comercio
It had been taken over twenty years ago. The look of relaxed confidence, one arm resting casually on the chair, could not hide an insecure young woman, a little overweight. The short skirt and the crossed legs were a mistake perhaps. “But it was the 1990s,” she told herself, “and I was just eighteen.”
She had a great smile. It was one of her strengths. The smile of an innocent girl who has just opened a present. She could look tired too, and stressed, if caught unaware, but it was the smile that people remembered, radiating joy and confidence. In this photograph, so young, she was trying to project elevation and self-assurance. The innocence came later.
And how was the brilliant future? She was a mother now, with two young children. She would like to spend more time with them. Running the family business took up all her waking hours. But it was her passion, her purpose, her destiny.
She was not close to her mother. People thought her drive all came from her father, but her mother too had been powerful and determined. For years they had not spoken. But they sometimes got together as a family, to smile for the camera. At election time.
She had been smoking in the photograph, a teenage pose. Mother would have hated it. Mother had smoked, and the herbal treatment, to help her give up, left her back and neck scarred with burns.
“That’s what Daddy said.”
She remembered playing in their small house in La Molina, the youngest child, her mother cooking noodles. The Japanese garden. She tried not to think about the past.
Her mother had been married at twenty-four and divorced at forty-four. After the divorce she battled to take over the family business. They changed the law to stop her.
“Now I am forty-two” she realised.
She had been at college in New York then. She came back to be be her father’s partner. She sat at his side at fabulous dinners and watched him make speeches. It was a wonderful time.
They lived in El Pentagonito for a while, and Uncle Vlad worked in the basement where they kept the ovens.
Of course, like all teenage girls, she had been in love with her father. But she had grown up. She was a mother. Although she had missed her father when he went away, she came to enjoy the freedom too. And the power, but most of all the crowds, the cheering, the love.
That’s why she kept him locked up. Until her brother interfered.
At least she had not been photographed with a dog.
Her brother and sister had traveled to Chile to tell the court that her mother was a crazy fantasist. “I was tortured with electric shocks whilst I was imprisoned in the basement of the Army Centre by the Intelligence Service. You can still see the burn scars on my face and all my body. He would take my children out every weekend to the countryside. And at six in the evening eight men with military haircuts came for me.”
Mother, why do you tell these lies.
Next year, she hoped, she would become President. Fourth time lucky.