Shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

by, he had got over his instinctive reluctance to talk about any subject that truly worried him. One of the first consequences of that progress was that he began to show his obvious disapproval of my relationship with Clara.
    'You ought to go out with friends your own age, like Tomas Aguilar
    - you seem to have forgotten him, though he's a splendid boy - and not with a woman who is old enough to be married.'
    'What does it matter how old we each are if we're good friends?'
    What hurt me most was the reference to Tomas, because it was true. I hadn't gone out with him for months, whereas before we had been inseparable. My father looked at me reprovingly.
    'Daniel, you don't know anything about women, and this one is playing with you like a cat with a canary.'
    'You're the one who doesn't know anything about women,' I would reply, offended. 'And much less about Clara.'
    Our conversations on the subject rarely went any further than an exchange of reproaches and wounded looks. When I was not at school or with Clara, I devoted my time to helping my father in the bookshop
    - tidying up the storeroom at the back of the shop, delivering orders, running errands, or even serving regular customers. My father complained that I didn't really put my mind or my heart into the work. I, in turn, replied that I spent my whole life working there and I couldn't see what he could possibly complain about. Many nights, when sleep eluded me, I'd lie awake remembering the intimacy, the small world we had both shared during the years following my mother's death, the years of Victor Hugo's pen and the tin trains. I recalled them as years of peace and sadness, a world that was vanishing and that had begun to evaporate on the dawn when my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Time played on the opposite team. One day my father discovered that I'd given Carax's book to Clara, and he rose in anger.
    'You disappoint me, Daniel,' he said. 'When I took you to that secret place, I told you that the book you chose was something special, that you were going to adopt it and had to be responsible for it.'
    'I was ten at the time, Father, and that was a child's game.'
    My father looked at me as if I'd stabbed him.
    'And now you're fourteen, and not only are you still a child, you're a child who thinks he's a man. Life is going to deal you some hard knocks, Daniel. And very soon.'
    In those days I wanted to believe that my father was hurt because I spent so much time with the Barcelos. The bookseller and his niece lived a life of luxury that my father could barely dream of. I thought he resented the fact that Don Gustavo's maid behaved as if she were my own mother, and was offended by my acceptance that someone could take on that role. Sometimes, while I was in the back room wrapping up parcels or preparing an order, I would hear a customer joking with my father.
    'What you need is a good woman, Sempere. These days there are plenty of good-looking widows around, in the prime of their life, if you see what I mean. A young lady would sort out your life, my friend, and take twenty years off you. What a good pair of breasts can't do ...'
    My father never responded to these insinuations, but I found them increasingly sensible. Once, at dinnertime, which had become a battleground of silences and stolen glances, I brought up the subject. I thought that if I were the one to suggest it, it would make things easier. My father was an attractive man, always clean and neat in appearance, and I knew for a fact that more than one lady in the neighbourhood approved of him and would have welcomed more than just his reading suggestions.
    It's been very easy for you to find a substitute for your mother,' he answered bitterly. 'But for me there is no such person, and I have no interest at all in looking.'
    As time went by, the hints from my father and from Bernarda, and even Barcelo's intimations, began to make an impression on me. Something inside told me that I was