When I walk into the kitchen in the morning, the rest is already sipping on their coffees. While I make a cup myself, I put both phones on the table. Since we run a Bed & Breakfast, I do my utmost to always be available. That means I’m constantly dragging both my personal phone and my work phone from room to room. Annoying? Sometimes. Especially because I like to switch off completely every now and then. While I wait for the milk to warm up, I tell my sisters and our guests that I missed four calls from the same number last night. All between half past seven and eight in the evening. Just when I left them charging upstairs, while we were drinking a glass of wine by the fireplace downstairs.
The telephone number, which I have already googled, is – surprisingly enough – not spam for once. It turns out to come from a store in Dénia. Just as I’m about to take a sip of my coffee, the phone rings again. I immediately recognize the number and answer it. In rapid Spanish, the lady on the other end of the line starts chattering. Although I get the gist of what she is saying, I have no idea what she is talking about. “What time was that approximately?”, I therefore ask her. “Around twelve o’clock,” she answers quickly. Ah. I understand. At that time I wasn’t at home. When I put the phone down again and walk back into the kitchen, the others looks at me curiously.
“Did someone come into the house yesterday around twelve o’clock?” I ask both my sisters and our guests (friends of ours from Switzerland). They all start laughing. “Yes!”, one shouts. “So the children were right after all?!” This time I look at them in surprise. ¿Qué pasó? They start talking animatedly. “We were sitting quietly in the bar drinking a glass of wine when the children came storming into the bar. According to them, there was a woman in the hallway who was not only shouting ‘Hola!’ very loudly, but was also knocking on the doors of the various rooms on the ground floor. But by the time we got there, we couldn’t see anyone anymore. Not inside nor outside.” I start laughing. It suddenly becomes clear to me. “So I just got off the phone with that lady…,” I start to explain the story. “Apparently she was diabetic and her blood sugar levels were far too low. She had nothing with her and because it was raining there wasn’t a soul on the streets. Because the door to our house was open, she decided to walk in. She apologized a hundred times for it and indicated that she had done her best to call someone. But since no one responded, she took some sugar from our coffee station.” There is a silence. “So the children really weren’t crazy?”, says one. I shake my head. “No. It was an emergency,” I answer. “So it wasn’t a Jehovah Witness either?”, another one adds. “Since she was knocking on all the doors…” I start laughing again. “No! But she was very grateful that our door was open,” I continue. I think for a moment. A Jehovah’s Witness… Why would they think that? She did not come to bring us the light. She just came to get a little bit of sugar.