The child’s summer play

by Cristina Pérez Ternero

When I was a little child we used to play in the basement of my grandmother’s house during our summer holidays. However, if it hadn’t been the coldest place in the house, we would have chosen somewhere else as the scene of our summer adventures.

One day while we were playing hide and seek, I decided that the old dusty wardrobe would be the perfect secret place where no-one would go to find me. But it was me who found something amazing. I was pushing my body against the rear of the wardrobe and that was enough to unlock a hidden door to a room that could be the dream of a 12-year-old boy full of imagination. It was the greatest room filled up with old spying devices, books, yellow handwritten pieces of paper that I found behind the wardrobe… everything ideal to build a summer of exciting activities without precedents.

I had never been so surprised in all my life. My friends and I, as a team, decided not to tell the adults about our plans of further investigations. If we had told them, I’m sure they wouldn’t have allowed us to go down there anymore. We ourselves felt like spies with a secret mission.

Years later, my grandma told me that that was the room where my grandpa had to be hidden in order not to be discovered during the civil war. The place where they also discovered something: their love.