The same route a second time. This time it feels even better, probably because we know what lies ahead. We enjoy it more. The mood is better than yesterday too. I think about the body lying on the road under a white sheet. But the thought doesn’t come often and doesn’t last long.

I could say that’s just how it is. Life goes on and I didn’t know this person. But that’s not it. It touched me, and maybe it’s somewhere in my subconscious, working away without my intervention. I’m not one of those people who simply carry on.

Right at the beginning, when we reach the challenging part of the trail, a man sitting on a rock speaks to us. He switches to English when we indicate we don’t speak Spanish. He can’t go any further, he says, because his knee hurts. His wife and a small child have gone ahead. He asks us to inform them if we encounter them. He gives us his name and we promise to do so.

It’s a warm, sunny day. That’s probably why we’re never alone on the path for long. Whenever I hear voices, I look to see if we’re about to meet a woman with a child. But time and again, this doesn’t happen. Sometimes it’s two men, sometimes a family. Then a group of young adults or a couple. We don’t see a woman with a child.

When we reach the upper part of the path, where the trail is gravel, where the rock face stretches out on one side and the land plunges into the sea on the other, I lose track of the woman with the child. Until I no longer think about it at all. Only when we’re sitting on one of the rocks at the beach, Cala de Moraig – a stone beach with crystal clear water – and she tells me she’s seen an older woman with a child further ahead, does the thought of the man return.

It’s not her. Because she’s not alone with the child. A young couple is there too, probably the parents. We conclude we won’t find the woman with the child. We hope she returned early. I go home with the thought that things ended well for this person. And why not?