Later, my hands cracked from scrubbing soap and blistered from the kitchen knife, I moved my things out of the room I had shared with Elena. I can’t say exactly what made me do it, only the knowledge that something had shifted for us both. She did not look at me while I collected my few clothes, only sat on the edge of the bed, holding the hem of a beautiful white lace mantilla between her fingers. I supposed it was a gift from the señor with the cigar. The box of Turkish Delight was there too, open beside her. They were untouched save for one, chewed and glistening, spat out amongst the others.

‘Take them away,’ she said, when she saw me looking, ‘I don’t want them.’

I didn’t want them either but I picked them up, chewed lump and all. I thought about giving them to Ifrahim, in thanks, but I knew it wouldn’t be right. I burned them instead, in their pretty box, until the whole kitchen smelled of animal bones and roses.

I slept in the kitchen every night after that, on an ancient truckle bed wedged next to the stove. On colder nights, I’d wake to find the inn’s cats tailoring themselves to my body, beneath my arms, against my neck, in the gap between my knees, purring for warmth. I didn’t mind them. They had fleas, but they kept the rats away. With them, and Ifrahim in his storeroom near by, I felt safe.

I told him that one night, a few weeks after he’d spoken for me. We had finished our labours in the kitchen, the inn gates were closed, and everyone else had moved upstairs, to sleep or entertain. He’d nodded slowly.

‘There’s safety here,’ he agreed. ‘Cooking saved my life.’ He took a drag on his pipe then, and looked at me through the stove light. ‘Feed them, Ale,’ he said softly. ‘Feed them well and they will want you, they will need you. Make them forget you’re a girl and think of you instead as a kitchen-thing, a duende, a stove-spirit. Then, they will want you for your usefulness, and leave you be.’

We looked at each other in the silence. The memory of Morales’ words hung between us, and I shifted, hunching further beneath the kitchen smock, willing my growing breasts to remain flat, to stay away. In that moment I wished I was Ifrahim’s son; I wished we truly were kitchen-spirits, untouchable and free. But I wasn’t, and we weren’t. Ifrahim closed his eyes, and I could tell he too was thinking about his body, his heart made of guts. He was thinking about the day it would unravel, and take his life with it.