We’d have performances at the inn too, whether we wanted them or not. Motorcars from Granada and Seville would bring the swells, slumming it in fine clothes that they would ruin with sweat and wine. They’d drink and weep and turn their starveling eyes on the girls and the gitanos, and the air would become raw with smoke and lust and gut on wood, and by the end of the first evening, the whole of Córdoba would have lost its mind.

On the night it happened, there were four of them; four men determined to drink the deep wells of each other’s pockets dry. They were from Jaén, and I wondered why they should have come all the way to Córdoba, when they had their own feria at home. If I’d looked closer, I would’ve found the answer in their indifferent laughter, in their loosened clothes, in the way they sucked on their cigars and put their boots on the chairs and never once lowered their voices. They were here precisely because this was not their home; here, they had the freedom to act how they pleased.

The four of them had already spent a great deal of money when they asked to see Morales. Their request, whatever it was, did not take long to convey, for she soon came weaving through the crowded courtyard towards the kitchen door, where Elena and I were shirking our table-clearing duties, laughing as we watched a large gitano woman try to sing her throat right out of her mouth. We jumped up when Morales approached.

‘Go and wash and put your Sunday clothes on,’ she told us.

We stared at her. Elena was silent. I was the one to ask why.

‘Because I say so.’ She turned and beckoned over one of the older girls, ‘Caterina!’ I did not hear what Morales murmured in her ear.

Was it the heat of the night that made Caterina’s hand so slick in mine? ‘Why must we wash?’ I asked her, as she pulled us up the stairs. ‘No one is looking at us.’

‘Someone’s always looking,’ she said, and gave us both a push into our room. We did as we were told, with a cloth and pitcher of water. Grumbling, I scrubbed my face and neck, my underarms, and did Elena’s while she shrugged into her blouse. She had breasts now, mostly, whereas I only had vague swellings that sometimes hurt in the night.

‘If I have to clear tables, I’ll get this blouse dirty and Morales will beat me for it on Sunday,’ I complained. Elena said nothing. Her face, always paler than mine, was paler than ever.

Caterina eyed us critically as she led us along the corridor. ‘Be good,’ she said, and her grip was hard. ‘Don’t talk back.’ She stopped outside the parlour. ‘Don’t cry.’