Purificación wants back the storm she paid 40 euros for

09:41. —National Meteorological Agency, 2039-2040 list. Ovidio Lantero speaking, head of forecasting. This call is being recorded.

—Purificación Bedoya, seventy-one, retired. I put forty euros into the letter E.

—It's here: contribution of 12 September. The E closed at twelve thousand four hundred euros. A mattress factory in Yecla won it and proposes «Espuma». We'll refund your forty this week.

—I don't want the forty euros. My husband was called Eleuterio Bedoya and he cleared snow for thirty-one years on the Somosierra pass. He died on 3 March. I wanted to hear his name on the nine o'clock forecast.

—Madam, the bidding is closed and signed off.

—Well, that's that, then.

[Eleven seconds of silence. Keyboard noise.]

—Hold on. Article four requires a person's first name, and «Espuma» isn't one. I'm the one who signs the approval on Monday. If I send it back to the committee, the letter E is free again and I fill in the box by hand.

—And the twelve thousand four hundred?

—Refunded, same as yours. They pay me to get the wind right, not to sell letters.

—And what do I put in there?

—You don't put anything. Spell your husband's surname for me: the first storm of January goes into the nine o'clock forecast.