Sofía

Sofía is Blanca’s closest friend, a conspicuously elegant and exuberant woman whose independence shapes both her approach to motherhood and her place in Blanca’s intimate circle. She is at once a devoted mother, a generous companion, and a figure of lively contrasts: meticulous in dress but unserious about life, delicately presented yet entirely willing to pursue what she wants. Her relationships help show how family in the novel extends beyond marriage and blood ties, through friendship, shared care, and the willingness to remain connected.

Identity and Presence

Sofía’s style is distinctive enough to attract Blanca’s notice before the two women have even spoken. She appears in unusual combinations, including an enormous hat worn against the rain and fuchsia wool shorts over black tights. She also recovers her mother’s old hippie dresses, having them altered by a dressmaker into elegant new clothes. Her attention to detail stands apart from Blanca’s habitual old jeans and men’s shirts; for Blanca, Sofía seems like an eccentric who has made impeccable dress her own form of expression.

That visual precision accompanies a temperament Blanca describes as worldly, generous, tolerant, honest, and transparent. Sofía is enthusiastic, passionate, and sometimes childlike, with an intensity that can also be narcissistic. Blanca reads her willingness to give herself fully to people and to the world as the product of both a passionate, trusting nature and a protected childhood. Sofía’s buoyancy is not carelessness so much as a way of meeting life wholeheartedly.

Motherhood and Independence

Sofía becomes a mother through a deliberate arrangement with Tom, a former partner from their youth who remained her friend after their relationship ended. When she saw that the opportunity to have a child was becoming more time-sensitive, she went to him and asked him to father a child with her. Tom agreed after having married, had two daughters, and separated. He was willing for the boy to bear his surname and to see him occasionally, but made clear that the child would be Sofía’s responsibility alone, since he was already actively caring for his daughters and did not want another parenting role.

Sofía accepted those terms with gratitude and with an understanding of what Tom was giving her. The arrangement gives her son Daniel a connection to his father without displacing Sofía as the sole parent responsible for him. Her decision presents motherhood not as something that must follow a conventional couple relationship, but as an objective she pursues through a negotiated, clearly bounded bond. Tom, for his part, continues with his life while remaining a friend and an occasional presence in Daniel’s.

Friendship with Blanca

Blanca and Sofía recognize one another through shared tastes and habits: an enjoyment of white wine, a common set of aversions, and a tendency not to take things too seriously. Blanca likens their immediate affinity to the sudden friendships between teenage girls who discover someone who feels unmistakably like their own kind. The likeness is not a claim that they are identical. Rather, Blanca is struck by the same wholehearted way of trusting and engaging with others, despite the differences in their appearance and daily lives.

Sofía’s practical generosity often takes the form of small, animated acts. When Blanca is unsure what to do with the only garment she has kept from her deceased mother, Elisa advises her to have it cleaned and put away until she is ready to decide. Sofía offers to make cocktails at once to cheer Blanca up. She is an expert at them and sometimes carries a carefully equipped canvas bag around the city so she can prepare them. At the meal, Elisa brings sushi, Blanca finds leftover cheese, and the three women raise a glass to life, to one another, and to summer. Their toast carries a note of uncertainty: Blanca feels that people are trying to summon a future she cannot yet be sure will arrive.

Place in the Wider Circle

Sofía’s connections reach beyond Blanca. When she hears that Guillem will arrive the next day, she is curious to meet him, though Blanca finds it hard to imagine two people more different. Sofía is socially fluent, trusting, enthusiastic, and attentive to clothes; Guillem is sardonic, ironic, plainspoken, and impatient with what he regards as nonsense. At a shared meal, Sofía flirts with him, and he counters her remarks with teasing disagreement. Their exchange is presented as a familiar courtship tactic, giving Sofía an easy place within a gathering where former partners and their children meet with warmth and respect.

The larger table also makes visible the kind of social family around Blanca. Óscar and Guillem treat each other cordially and show affection toward one another’s sons; Elisa and Damián are absorbed in their intense relationship. Sofía’s flirtation with Guillem belongs to this lively, interwoven company rather than to a separate social world. She is not simply Blanca’s friend at the edge of the family: she participates in the same network of meals, children, former partners, and new attachments.

Loyalty and Change

Sofía’s affection for Blanca is strong enough to occupy hours of conversation. Óscar tells Blanca that Sofía spent much of the previous day talking about her. When he asks whether Blanca would mind if he pursued Sofía, Blanca recognizes the odd tenderness of the moment: on what feels like one of her deathbeds, her former husband is asking permission to approach her best friend. She tells him to go ahead and grips his hand more firmly, adding a protective warning that she will kill Sofía if Sofía hurts him.

The exchange captures the unusual balance of intimacy and freedom in Blanca’s relationships. Blanca does not treat Óscar’s interest as a betrayal or claim Sofía as someone who must remain romantically unavailable. Instead, she gives her blessing while making clear that her care for Óscar remains. Sofía’s place in the novel is therefore defined not only by her friendship with Blanca or her independent motherhood, but by her ability to enter and strengthen a complicated circle of attachments. Her presence makes that circle feel less like a set of broken couples and more like a family sustained by ongoing attention and loyalty.