Outside the back door, the gardens were warm, fanned by a breeze that smelled of brine and sea fog. The noise of the party reached me as I knelt among the dark plants. The scent of herbs rose up; must from oregano, the tough greenness of parsley, bright, clean rosemary. Rocío del mar, Ifrahim had always called rosemary; the dew of the sea. That was what I needed.

It was not until I returned to the kitchen that I realized how tired I was. Luckily, my hands remembered the work. The guests outside were drunk, for the most part, so they’d want strong tastes, guilty, heady morsels. And salt. It was the easiest charm to work upon a tongue, especially ones drenched in liquor.

I found potatoes and onions in the pantry, a shrivelled chilli pepper, the end of a chorizo sausage that I guessed the chef had been gnawing on. It would do for a patatas a lo pobre. The onions hissed like laughter; I’d serve poor man’s potatoes to those rich beasts and they would wolf them down like caviar. Soon the onions were joined by spicy sausage, turning the oil crimson.

What else? Anchovies, freed from their coffin and plunged into a pool of olive oil and lemon and garlic. More garlic for an aioli, another trick, a way to dazzle the mouth. No matter that it would linger long after it was welcome; what mattered was approval, here and now.

Watch what comes out of their mouths, as well as what goes in, and you will know them for what they are.

Leaning out of the back door, I listened to the party. It was raucous still, but the voices were growing languid. Somewhere near by, foliage rustled and two people hushed each other’s laughter. I smiled. Sweetness was what I needed to add, and decadence. There was a lump of hard cheese on one of the shelves, which I sliced finely to disguise its age. Next came a pot of honey, which I drizzled all over, followed by a scattering of rosemary flowers. It wasn’t subtle; it was blatant and heady. That honey would linger tantalizingly on fingers, shine on lips, and the guests would praise me silently for helping them in their seductions.