Free The Poet's Wife by Rebecca Stonehill

barely breathe or see. We make our way down the slopes of the Albaicín in single file, one hand holding onto the shoulder of the person in front to prevent slipping. Father walks at the back, and when I turn I see him struggling under the weight of Mother’s best skillet pans we have decided will serve best as sledges.
    At the foot of the Albaicín we walk out to a wooded slope on the other side of the Río Darro where we spend hours hurtling down hills at top speed. On one of my descents, during which I go so fast that all the breath is punched from me, Father stands in my path to prevent me careering into the ditch beyond. I don’t know if it’s Father or I who is more terrified and thrilled as I plunge towards him and before the pan and I crest the next ridge, he pulls me free and we laugh with cold and with joy. Moments later, I show him the pattern of a snowflake which has lodged on my mitten and Father stares at it, his eyes widening in amazement and then he picks me up and holds me under my arms as he spins me round and round.
    I bottle up a handful of snow in one of Conchi’s pickling jars, leaving it beside the icy draught beneath my bedroom window in the hope it remains intact. When it melts, I am bereft. Not only does all the snow vanish as quickly as it settled, but this year spring seems almost forgotten as a thick blanket of heat descends upon us as early as May. By July, the heat is unbearable and my face turns pink and bothered. On one of these breezeless days, most of my family are inside trying to nap after a heavy lunch, but the combination of a large meal and the high temperature, rather than encouraging sleep, just makes me restless. Mother has insisted I attempt a short siesta, but it’s no use. Instead, I lay a rug out in the inner courtyard in the shade of my orange tree, as I so often do, imagining shapes in the clouds through the leafy fingers of its canopy. All my family call it ‘Isabel’s tree’, and it’s as though there is a metre circumference around it that nobody may enter. Do I appear that unwilling to share the tree that Father planted at my birth, I wonder, or is nobody else interested in coming near? Even when it begins to bear fruit, those scaly, dimpled Seville oranges that are far too bitter to eat but which Mother sometimes adds to her fortune cookies, it’s my unspoken task to collect them in a basket and hand them to her. Nobody in my family ever talks about it but somehow the orange tree remains, quite indisputably, mine.
    Lying under it this breezeless summer day, I hear the sound of footsteps approaching the main door. I wait for the knock, but when it doesn’t come, I stand up and listen to the pacing back and forth. Conchi must have heard the footsteps too as she has made her way out of the kitchen, her apron and hands bloodied from the meat she’s preparing.
    ‘ Está bien , Conchi, I’ll see who it is,’ I tell her. I leave the courtyard through the kitchen and run out into the garden. From as early as I can remember, along with my younger brothers and sister, I’d haul myself up onto the ivy-covered wall surrounding the house and garden and lie flat on top of it, peering down into the alleyway below to see who is visiting us. Father always panics when he sees us up on the wall, convinced we will fall and break our necks, whereas Mother just says that if we’re stupid enough to go up there, it will be our own faults if anything happens.
    On this occasion, I pull myself up and lie on the wall’s surface, sucking my breath in and studying the woman below. She is clearly upset, but she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, with long night-black curls and an expressive face. As I lie there gazing at her, a small pebble dislodges itself from the wall and rattles down noisily. I’m not sure who is more startled, because we both stare at each other, shocked, for some time.
    After a while, she clears her throat. ‘Are you Luisa’s daughter?’
    I