The Wind From the East Read Free Page A

home, or the even more worrying possibility that his brother’s mental state might suffer as a result of the inevitable isolation of the first few months and of having to deal with unfamiliar teachers and pupils at a new daycare center. Now that there was no going back, Juan felt that perhaps his choices had been too hasty. Perhaps they needn’t have left Madrid. Perhaps it would have been enough simply to change minor details—a new house, new part of town, new hospital, new school. Perhaps there was no real reason to be so afraid.
     
    The fishing rods weren’t as far away, or as close together as they’d seemed. As he walked past them one by one, he also realized that the rocks he’d had to walk around for some time now were not a natural formation, especially on this beach where the sand was so fine. Molded into smooth, grey, slippery blocks by the imperceptible tenacity of the waves, they formed a perpendicular line into the sea where they met another line of rocks that ran more or less parallel to the beach, interrupting the path of the waves and forming a barrier in the water. Juan recalled that someone had mentioned there was a trap-net site in the area near the housing development, and he now understood why fishermen brought their tackle all this way, so far from the center of town. He watched some children armed with nets and plastic buckets as they jumped from rock to rock and, in the dim light of the dying sun, searched unsuccessfully for crabs and crayfish trapped in the pools closest to the shore. They were ignoring the insistent calls of a woman, assuring them, unconvincingly, that this was the last time they’d be allowed on the beach if they didn’t come out of the water right now, this minute. Juan stopped for a moment and saw that the children hadn’t the least intention of leaving. He walked on, comforted by the familiar elements of this little holiday scene.
     
    The small town the Olmedo family had just moved to was the only aspect of their new life that Juan was certain he had got right. He had decided from the start not to live in Jerez, not only because it was quite a distance from the coast, but because there was no point in leaving one big city to move to a smaller version, an embryo of the same thing.This was why he had also decided against El Puerto de Santa Maria; still too big, too urban, too formal for what he wanted. He’d tried to convince Tamara that the move was an inevitable consequence of his job, a decision taken for him by faceless strangers, a risk that all doctors working in the national health service ran, but he had a feeling she knew this wasn’t true, even though she was only ten.The child’s happiness was so important to him that he had done everything he could to ensure it, providing her with a completely different life from the one she had known so far—a house by the beach, on a private development with swimming pools, gardens, tennis courts, and lots of other children, a school that she could cycle to when the weather was good, and a small, pretty town that was quiet in winter, busy in summer, its population of some thirty thousand inhabitants swelling to over a hundred thousand during the months of July and August; a place small enough that she wouldn’t keep comparing it to Madrid, but big enough that she wouldn’t feel stifled by the size of the streets.
     
    He could have found a cheaper house, but he didn’t even consider it. He could have looked at other towns around the bay, but he didn’t have the time or the inclination. His new boss had recommended this development, and it fulfilled everything he had envisaged for Tamara when he first began thinking about moving. He’d put his top-floor flat in the Calle Martin de los Heros up for sale in mid-April, a few months after having made the last payment on a mortgage he’d taken twelve years to pay off, and by the end of June he’d found a buyer who didn’t need the flat until September. He hoped that