Pablo responds to Andrew's email message the same day. He writes that he never forgot him, and after three years of silence he is still in love with him. He writes that this love he guarded in his heart has been inspiring and empowering him to be the best version of himself over this time. He writes that despite Andrew's rejection, his feeling has grown deeper and stronger. He says that even though his celebrity status made him increasingly concerned about privacy, he couldn't think of changing his email address because he never gave up the hope that he would one day hear from Andrew, and happily this day has come. He says that he met a lot of new people and had a few on-off relationships with women over these years, but no other person felt as close and special and connected to him as Andrew still feels.
Their relationship restarts, now with both of them being fully aware of its romantic nature. Again, they email each other every day. Feeling how much they missed each other over three years, they write long emails telling their stories. Needless to say, Pablo has more amazing things to share, and Andrew initially tries to keep their correspondence on a positively polite note, but quickly opens up about his ongoing struggles. After all, they can be authentic and vulnerable with each other in their love. Meanwhile, Andrew's attitude to his wife has changed. Any affection he's ever had for her is no longer there. The way Nathalie lives her life no longer bothers him. He no longer cares where and with whom she spends her time. Seeing this obvious shift in their relationship and feeling guilt for neglecting their child on her birthday, Nathalie makes a step to fix things between them. She offers Andrew to go on a vacation in Greece with Ann in a month. Andrew agrees under the condition that he will be the one to fully pay for the trip. Aware of his small earnings, Nathalie is surprised but Andrew insists. A few days before their planned departure, it turns out that she cannot leave the city due to an urgent business matter, so now Andrew has to go alone with the kid. It doesn't take him long to contact Pablo and suggest that he join them in Greece. Pablo is caught off guard by the proposal and hesitates to accept it initially, but then he realizes he cannot miss the opportunity to reunite with his loved one even for a brief ten days. His team is preparing for another major match in earnest, and his coaching schedule is grueling, but the conditions of his contract allow him to take a short unplanned leave once a year, so he makes up a story to tell to his club management and his parents, and in a couple of days packs his stuff and flies to Greece.
When they meet, Andrew introduces Pablo to his daughter as his brother. He also tells her she should never say a word about him to her Mom and Grandma. Despite the language barrier, the little girl becomes emotionally attached to Pablo. From now on, Andrew speaks Spanish instead of English to Pablo, and Pablo is impressed by Andrew's perfect pronunciation and fluency in his native language, which, as he knows, has been achieved only through self-teaching over such a short span of time.
On the very first night when two men find themselves in the same bed, they are gripped by a burning physical attraction. Andrew makes the first move toward physical intimacy, and even though Pablo is just as randy, he refuses to have sex. He explains that he treasures their love as a platonic and spiritual relationship, rather than the one catering to his carnal instincts. Still overcome by unacknowledged homophobic shame, Pablo insists that they avoid physical intimacy in order to keep their love "pure", no matter how much lust is sizzling in their bodies. Andrew argues that their love will not become any less "pure" if they make love, but Pablo is adamant. He is also ashamed at the thought that Andrew's daughter sleeping in the same room might see them having sex. Andrew tries to allay Pablo's fears, but Pablo doesn't give in. Finally, Andrew understands that his loved one is just not ready to fully embrace the nature of their relationship, and he knows better than to force it. Continuing to sense each other's intimate presence, the two stay up for a few hours, turning and tossing in bed and avoiding to touch each other. At dawn, they finally fall asleep because of exhaustion.
Save for this bedtime argument, the couple spends a blissful vacation together, much like a family. They take jogs on the beach in the morning, enjoy delicious and nourishing Greek food, spend most of the days swimming and sunbathing and building sand castles with Andrew's daughter. On one of the last days, Pablo gets a car rental and they go on a daylong road trip exploring the island. Savoring every moment by each other's side, they do not worry about the fact that their time together will soon come to an end. Saying goodbye to each other, both realize that they want to live the rest of their lives like that. However, Andrew does not venture to voice his dreams about emigration to Spain to Pablo, even though now these dreams have assumed a whole new meaning — the prospect of living by Pablo's side is in and of itself a life-changing reason to move over. For now, Andrew only says how grateful he is for this little time that destiny allowed them to be together and that he hopes they will someday have another chance to reunite. In response, Pablo invites him to come to Barcelona for his birthday three months later. With his budgets compromised by their current trip, Andrew is not sure he will be able to afford it in Novemver, but he says he will be happy to come if his circumstances allow him to.
As he returns to his everyday reality in Moscow, it doesn't take long for his dreams about a better future in Spain to run aground on a complex of interrelated obstacles. First, he understands that getting an educational course in Spain that is required to apply for residency will take at least one year, while he thinks he cannot leave his daughter and mother-in-law in Russia for so long. Given how Nathalie has treated them over the last year, he is afraid that she is going to coerce Sofia to move out and leave their child without proper care that Nathalie herself seems unlikely to be willing to give. As he considers divorce, he understands that given Nathalie's father's money and connections he will hardly get the child's custody. Even if he does, he cannot bring her along with him to Spain immediately because during one year of intense educational course, before he secures a residency position with a stable salary, he will not have enough time to get employed in a job that would allow him to properly provide for her. Conditioned to a frugal living from his university years, he can cut on his own expenses, but not on his daughter's childhood needs. In his thirties, scraping a living in the underfunded and corrupt public healthcare system in his country still leaves him unable to quickly amass money that could allow him to fund one year of his prep-course education in Spain, and the rent he gets from leasing his inherited apartment is fully spent on inevitable monthly expenses of his family, such as food, utility bills, and fuel costs. It's ironic that Nathalie, despite having a much greater income, makes almost no contribution to the family budget — as a woman, she considers herself exempt from this responsibility and spends the most of the money she earns on shopping and high-society parties. Trying to figure out financial difficulties, Andrew considers starting a private medical practice and reckons that in a couple years it could make him enough money to fund his emigration. It turns out, however, that private healthcare sector is wretchedly underdeveloped in his country due to the absence of effectively working healthcare insurance, lack of solvent demand from individuals, and pervasive corruption in governmental agencies that have the exclusive authority to license this kind of business. Overall, investment risks turn out to be disproportionately huge compared to realistically expected profits. Eventually, instead of starting a private practice on his own, Andrew gets employed part-time at a private out-patient clinic, and his salary there turns out to be just as small as it is in his public hospital with no additional earnings in tips. This gets him yet more clear on the fact that the crisis of the industry in his country is underpinned by large-scale socioeconomic factors that he has no power over, so emigration and looking for work abroad remains the only solution.
In the meantime, Sofia discerns the cold shift in his attittude towards Nathalie, which gives her an inkling that Andrew might have an extramarital affair. Anticipating his intention to divorce, she confronts him face-to-face and reveals to him another ugly truth. Years ago, he and Nathalie were young and careless to not sign a marriage settlement before their legal marriage procedures. This is why, according to the current divorce legislation in Russia, each spouse will get one half of their common assets acquired during marriage. Andrew doesn't have much accumulated over these years, but Nathalie's possessions, as Sofia reveals, include a few impressive bank deposits, and most of all the apartment that they currently live in that her father bought. Given that he has never been on good terms with Andrew and disapproved their relationship from the very beginning, he will not allow Andrew to take his half of the property, while legally Andrew cannot opt out of it. Sofia fears that her ex-husband might want to physicially harm Andrew as she witnessed him doing it many times to his business rivals in 1990s, the years of his criminal past. Although Andrew believes that Sofia exaggerates the danger, he is aware of Nathalie's father's hateful character as well as his connections with corrupt police and courts. Deep down, he wants to just escape to Spain and start over and be with Pablo, but he feels ensnared in the Web of his conflicting obligations. Most sadly, continuing to stick to his notions about masculinity and strength, he doesn't share the details of his struggle with Pablo in their continuing correspondence. On the one hand, he realizes that Pablo now has enough resources to help him to emigrate and settle in Spain, but on the other hand he thinks of his vulnerability as weakness and feels ashamed of asking Pablo for help. He thinks that in doing so he will lose Pablo's respect, and then his love, and this he cannot afford. While the pain in his heart grows exponentially, he continues to wear the mask.
Due to his ongoing financial troubles and other difficulties, Andrew is unable to come to Barcelona by Nov 10th, 2007, Pablo's twenty-fifth birthday. The footballer anticipates Andrew's congratulation, but during the day he doesn't receives a call or text or e-mail and gets increasingly anxious. He doesn't think it's possible that Andrew forgot the date, and he proves right. In the late evening Andrew finally phones him and tries to sound joyful, but from the tone of his voice and the late time of the call Pablo understands that something bad happened. It's time for Andrew to put down the mask. It turns out that he got in a traffic collision a few hours before. Even though he escaped with no injuries, his car was seriously damaged. The accident was caused by the aggressive driving of a teenage guy who smashed his luxury SUV into the side of Andrew's car when pulling out of a driveway. Even though a major moving violation was obvious on his part, he turned out to be the son of a high-ranking police officer, so the road police arriving at the scene registered Andrew as guilty. Another incident of ubiquitous corruption and lawlessness in his country now affected him personally. Not only did the falsified guilt cause Andrew a great emotional distress of feeling powerless in the face of injustice, but it also made him ineligible for insurance coverage, so he was going to have to repair his badly damaged vehicle at his own expense. For the first time, Pablo clearly realizes that Andrew is struggling financially even though he has tried his best to never bring this issue up. Andrew adds that his wife also believes him to be guilty for not "giving the way to a more expensive car in the traffic" even though she didn't take the trouble to learn the particulars of the situation. As Pablo learns, Nathalie herself drives around a luxury SUV that her father bought her, while Andrew commutes by a compact economy car that now is wrecked. Andrew feels ashamed for disturbing Pablo's holiday mood with his sadness, so he leaves unspoken the most real part of his pain: the money he will have to fork out for the expensive car repair will significantly subtract from the savings he has been amassing penny by penny to fund his emigration to Spain. While the dark realities of life in his country hit him from where least expected, his dream of a better future feels increasingly distant.
A few months later, Andrew observes an unexpected positive change in his family: Nathalie's maternal instincts finally manifest out of the blue. Andrew doesn't know why, but she gives up on nightlife and parties and shopping sprees and starts spending more and more time with their daughter. Initially, Andrew does not believe what's going on. Given their emotional distance, he doesn't ask her what triggered such a radical change for her, but with time he is happy to see that it is permanent. He is happy to see that the kid at last gets the motherly love she had so long craved for that Andrew and Sofia, try as they might, could not give. At the same time, Andrew is glad that Nathalie doesn't make attempts to restore their emotional or physical intimacy. Although now unlike before she spends nights at home and they sleep in the same bed, in fact they're already like co-parenting ex-partners now. As time goes by and he sees how his wife mends the broken relationships with her daughter and her mother, Andrew feels that the burden of obligation of caring about them is now lifted off his shoulders. In this aspect, he is now free to leave for a better future, even without legally divorcing.
Although Andrew's funds are still reeling in the wake of the costly vehicle repair, this landmark change in his family life encourages him to finally go to Barcelona and visit Pablo, who he misses so painfully despite their ongoing correspondence. In February, 2008, he comes back to the city of his dreams. After some hesitation, he accepts Pablo's offer to stay at his house instead of a hotel. Andrew is somewhat embarrassed, because he knows that Pablo doesn't live here alone. He knows that unlike most young men of his status in Spain, Pablo chose to live together with his parents in a townhouse he bought a while ago instead of leaving them in the apartment where he grew up, because he has a warm and caring relationship with them. Although Andrew is anxious about meeting Pablo's parents who are not aware of what is happening between him and their son, their hospitality and friendliness make him feel comfortable and at peace when he arrives. His feeling of belonging not just comes back but gets a thousand times stronger: staying at Pablo's house, he can't escape the thought that he always wanted a family like that. On his first full day in Barcelona, after he and Pablo share a morning jog on the beach, he goes out rambling into the city and stumbles upon the city cathedral. For the first time in his life, he enters a church to pray. As someone who has considered himself an agnostic for more or less his entire life, now he knows that faith is one of the central tenets of Pablo's life. The depth of their connection now inspires him to start believing in a power greater than them, the power he never believed existed. One of the few people in the cathedral on a weekday morning, he experiences an unexplored bliss as he prays. He thanks God for giving him the chance to find his true love and learn its meaning and to be loved back. He is not yet ready to crack his heart fully open to Pablo, but not he opens it to the all-seeing God. He prays for his dreams of a better future in Spain to come true. He prays for finding a way to be with Pablo. Believing in the gift of their love and in God's love for all humans, he now refuses to accept that God can be against their relationship just because they're of the same gender.
After leaving the church, he feels light and relieved. He saunters down the seafront street and revels in watching the Mediterranean. The view of the sea has always brought comfort and peace to his soul, and now he soars in elation contemplating it and listening to music from the iPod Pablo borrowed him. His reverie is interrupted when he hears a voice calling him by name in Russian from behind. He turns around and sees Irina, his university mate, the one who had moved to Madrid long ago and who he contacted after his first life-changing trip to Spain three years before, when he started to consider emigration seriously. After more than a decade, now he can hardly recognize Irina looking like a gorgeous lady, so different from the image of a poor girl as he remembered her in their university years. Now, she tells him that she came to Barcelona for a scientific meeting. As they continue walking down the seafront, she tells him the details of her life, her marriage, and her successful medical career in Spain. Andrew is happy for her since he knows how hard-working and good person she is. At the same time his heart sinks as he realizes how many years he is lagging behind in his pursuit of a better future. Irina presents a conference message the same day, and on the next day she invites him to attend a surgical workshop held as a part of the same conference in a major hospital in Barcelona. It goes without saying that Andrew eagerly agrees. As he gets a chance to see the insides of Spanish healthcare industry with his own eyes, he understands why the level of medical care there is a far cry from that in his country, and why the same holds true for professional self-actualization opportunities. His tantalizing dreams about emigration and making a career in Spain burn an increasingly bigger hole in his heart.
As Pablo's training routine takes the most of his morning and afternoon hours, he cannot be with Andrew all the time. However, the evenings they spend together in the city are unforgettable. As it turns out, by Andrew's arrival Pablo has created an entire program of visiting sights, museums, theaters, and art galleries to make their week feel dreamlike. He still doesn't know that Andrew's thoughts about emigration are now flooding his heart, and Andrew can hardly contain his joy about seeing the city where he envisions a better future in its full grace. Unlike three years before, Pablo is now a well-known celebrity, so he wears sunglasses in the street and asks Andrew to do the same. They drive around the city in Pablo's luxury car instead of public transit. Andrew fully leans into the joy of being in the place that he belongs and with the person that he belongs. He lives in the moment despite the knowledge that just one week later he will have to return to his troubled reality in Moscow. Once at the supper with Pablo's parents at home, his mother compliments Andrew's intelligence and wonders if he ever considered relocating to Spain. Andrew gets extremely nervous as with this question Doña Juana unwillingly rubs a good deal of ounce in his hidden wound. On the outside, he strives to keep cool, again feeling that he is not ready to take the risk of revealing his dearest dream to Pablo, never mind his parents. In the same conversation, he hears that Pablo's parents are concerned about their son's being unmarried, and he sees how embarrassed Pablo feels about their pressure, as gentle as it is. He also learns that Pablo has been recently upset since Pedro González, the head coach of his team, who previously appreciated his outstanding playing skills and treated him as a favorite, now without any apparent reason changed his attitude towards Pablo and started picking on him, at the same time promoting his nephew Julio into the team. Pablo describes the new guy as a slimy person and mediocre player and feels a threat to his status. Both Andrew and his parents don't take it seriously, thinking that Pablo has become a bit addicted to always being in the center of attention.
When Andrew and Pablo are saying goodbye to each other, Pablo promises that their separation will not be long, because his team is going to come to Moscow for a major game three months later, in May 2008. Andrew still says no word about his growing resolve to move to Barcelona, but he leaves the city of his dreams feeling belonging as painfully as ever. After the full career briefing that Irina gave him and his first-person experience in a clinical setting, he can no longer ignore the truth: it's better to starting building his career and a better future here now than never.
In Moscow, Andrew continues to amass what he sees as his emigration fund from the tips he earns at the hospital and his salaries there and at the out-patient clinic. Happily, he watches as Nathalie successfully becomes a caring mother and understands that now him leaving the family will not be as traumatic for the child as it would have been earlier. He realizes that after all, he cannot love his daughter more than he loves himself, and his self-love now demands him to move away. Given the thaw in his relations with Nathalie, Andrew hopes that they can peacefully discuss divorce and settle property issues without the intervention of her father. Ready to start from scratch abroad, he doesn't want a penny of the money that he hasn't earned.
Meanwhile, his e-mail correspondence with Pablo becomes more intense and his feelings grow stronger, including physical attraction. He fantasizes about Pablo at night while his wife sleeps within an arm's reach. In May, Pablo comes to Moscow for a match as scheduled, and even though he is about to stay in the city for a few days, they cannot miss the opportunity to meet and spend some time together without anyone else knowing. On one of the team's free evenings, when Pablo does not risk attracting attention to himself from his team mates and managers, Andrew picks him up at the hotel and they drive to Sparrow Hills, a large riverside park that Andrew believes to be one of the few beautiful places in his otherwise grey and joyless city.
As they stroll in the park wearing sunglasses for Pablo to not get recognized, Andrew finally tells him the truth. He says that after many years of unwavering effort he is totally disappointed with career prospects in Russia. He finally opens up about his financial situation. He says that the car crash last November was a tipping point and a painful reminder about how frustrated, unbelonging, unfulfilled and unsafe he has been feeling for years in this country. Pablo cannot believe Andrew kept it all bottled up for so long, and now he clearly realizes the wide gap of social class difference separating their lives. Andrew proceeds to tell him that in a week he is going to be laid off from his academic clinic, along with tens of other doctors because the newly appointed Minister of Health, a woman who doesn't so much as have a medical education herself, needs to secure vacant positions there for her protegés who are going to fully take over the under-the-table-money-making surgical practice in the institution. Pablo refuses to believe that tens of people can get sacked this way, but now it's time for Andrew to fully apprise him on the corrupt reality of his industry in Russia. Pablo suggests he find a position in another hospital, but Andrew presses his argument to a more radical decision. He tells Pablo that he is going to relocate to Barcelona for good, to start from scratch there taking a prep course and then applying for medical residency, like one of his university mates did years ago. Andrew says that this decision has been growing in his heart for a long time as he kept putting forward his best effort in Russia to get what he deserved to no avail. Now he feels full resolve, despite having to leave his daughter in Russia with Nathalie. He sees as Pablo gets increasingly anxious, and in order to relieve the tension he says that he wants to live his life in the city where he feels like he belongs and when he can see Pablo oftener than for a few days in a year. Despite his expectation, Pablo gets on the defensive. He says that Andrew's decision is reckless and he is not being a good father by making it. He says Andrew had better stay with his child in Russia, even if it takes giving up on his professional ambitions. Taken aback by Pablo's misunderstanding, he asks about their love and how they can hardly make it work staying two thousand miles away from each other, to which Pablo claims that he should give up on their relationship as well for the sake of caring for his child. Andrew feels hurt by such reaction, but Pablo proceeds to say that their love, as fierce and passionate and true as it feels to them, in inconceivable and unnatural in the eyes of God. Andrew tries to object by way of logic and reason, not understanding that Pablo stays knee-deep in internalized homophobic shame and speaks from emotion alone. Pablo says that if anyone learns about the real nature of their relationship, society will reject them as "perverts". In his ordinary emotional manner, Pablo speaks Spanish loud enough, and at this point Andrew notices a group of teenagers staring at them from a hundred feet away. Even though they're both camouflaged in their aviator sunglasses, in a couple of seconds Andrew sees a girl take a camera out of her bag and aim it at them. The flashlight follows before Andrew is able to say anything, and Pablo's interrupted in the middle of a sentence by the realization that he got recognized. They run-walk to Andrew's car and start off with a jerk.
The most important objection to their relationship now hangs in the air in front of them as they drive in silence. When they get to a safe place and find themselves completely alone, Pablo says it out loud. Him being unmarried and without a girlfriend causes an increasing amount of gossips in the Spanish media, and he is sure that the revelation of his homosexuality will ruin his professional sports career. Years of effort he put into building it will have been for naught. When Andrew asks what is the way out, Pablo sadly says in Spanish that there is no way out and they are doomed to forever remain "souls of silence" ("almas del silencio" - hence the title of the book).