But they wouldn’t leave us alone. Two drag queens, both wearing platform ankle boots which looked like goats’ hooves, made a stab at a conversation. We established that the whole group was from a town called Messina and tonight was a birthday party for someone called Giuseppina. But it was hard work for the four of us, and eventually the duo said something to each other in Italian, along the lines of, Ah, fuck this, Vera, and went back to their friends.

‘I’m hungry,’ I said to Quin. ‘Scrap that. I’m hangry.’

‘Oh no,’ Quin muttered as two more fabulously attired fashion types materialized, grinning, from the gloom and the excruciating attempts at chat began again.

Quickly, though, they tired of us but our relief was short-lived, as two fresh ones showed up, black-toothed and garrulous from the wine.

‘They’ve done a rota.’ Quin looked as though the misery might kill him. Then both of us began to wheeze with laughter while attempting to apologize to the Italians.

For the next hour, new companions continued to join us every ten minutes, until they burnt out, and replacements popped up in their stead. In normal circumstances, I’d have said, ‘Hey, Quinster, I’m having the worst night of my life, can we cut our losses?’

But circumstances weren’t normal.

Eventually we were led into another room—just as dimly lit—for dinner. There was a scramble for places at a dark-wood table as long as a runway and Quin and I found ourselves shunted right down at the end. It was for the best.

It was no surprise that not a single one of the browbeaten waiters knew anything about my pre-ordered vegetarian meal. Quin, who was normally very good at complaining—calm but effective—was all set to weigh in but I sensed nothing good would come of it. ‘It’s fine, it’s fine, I’ll just eat the non-meat bits.’

‘Or we could leave?’ he said.

‘No!’ Bailing early would stamp the evening as an Abject Failure and we needed some sort of a win.

The menu was delivered in loud Catalan by the maybe-Comte. The Italians seemed to understand but Quin and I hadn’t a clue and there was no written menu to translate. However, when the first course arrived, our new friends did their best to demonstrate. From their flapping, it seemed to be a bird.

‘Chicken?’ Quin was deep into Google translate. ‘Pollo?’

‘No, no, no!’ They did bombing motions.

‘A bird of prey? Seriously?’ Quin was looking up words on his phone. ‘Falco?’

‘No!’ some of them said, but just as many others exclaimed, ‘Sí!’

‘Aquila!’ a voice yelled from the gloom.

‘Aquila? Is that not Spanish for “grandmother”?’ I remembered it from watching Dora the Explorer with JJ.

‘That’s abuela,’ Quin said.

The others overheard this and took up the cry. ‘Abuela!’ they declared, pointing at their plates and laughing their heads off. ‘Abuela!’