Chapter 1
The AVE train pulls out of Madrid’s brand-new Atocha station.
Overflowing, the young man muses, with businessmen, holidaymakers and, most probably, considering the destination, pilgrims, although this is a word he associates with Chaucer and Bunyan, not a world approaching the dawn of a new millennium.
He cannot wait to leave this city, even though he knows that it is most probably splendid and he has only been here three days.
Not enough time to “do” the museums and galleries (which, for him, is no great misfortune).
But sufficient to make him seriously question that famed Spanish hospitality and love of family about which he has been told so much.
His only consolation is that, for probably the first time in his life, somebody else understands how he feels. Or, if this is not quite possible – he wonders indeed if this could ever truly be so – at least allows him the right to feel it.
And that same somebody’s hand has hardly been unentwined from his since the entire journey began.