Madrid, January 2012. Low winter sun over Retiro, the Crystal Palace full of light. A beautiful day. Everyone was out enjoying it.
Someone had wrapped the middle of the hall in white rope, column to column, from the floor up to three or four metres. To keep people out of the centre, I suppose, without spoiling the view. It worked. Nobody went in. People kept to the edge, walking slowly along the glass wall, the way you do in a place too beautiful to rush.
Above them, the iron ribs of the roof spun the same pattern, only higher and older. The sun pressed it through the glass and laid it on the floor: long, thin shadows, reaching across toward the people walking. They didn’t look down. They didn’t look up either.
In Spanish, araña means spider. It is also the word for a crystal chandelier, the elegant thing that hangs at the heart of a palace. This palace had none. Its heart was kept for someone else…
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