By the time I returned to the kitchen my palms were clammy with fury and nerves. I swiped them down the apron, trying to think, my mind cloudy as old fat. He might have ordered the rabo but he didn’t know about the bull, about the blood. Did that make it my weapon, or his? I wasn’t sure. All I knew in that moment was that it was a weapon, and that it was dangerous.

I busied myself with whisking oil and garlic, with dredging fish in flour. I didn’t want to think about him, but I couldn’t stop, the smell of the stew kept getting in my nostrils. Before, the Señor had been content to eat and drink like anyone else, to grasp Elena’s waist and throw the occasional leer my way as I crossed the patio. Why did he now …?

My hands stilled. This was the first feria without Ifrahim; the first year without his quiet presence, filling the kitchen. Perhaps he had spoken for me, all these years, in more ways than one.

I took a breath. I would serve the rabo de toro. I would leave them to their drinking. I would be the cook, nothing more. I told myself all of that, but I also picked up one of the kitchen knives and dropped it into the pocket of my apron. I was no longer a child. I’d do more than vomit on the man if he tried to touch me.

A flicker of movement in the doorway made me start. It was Elena. She was wearing the pale flowered silk dress that the Señor had given her, the year before. It was girlish, but then, that was how he liked her. The lace mantilla, his first gift, fell around her face, over her shoulders and down her back. It made her look like she was on her way to communion. Morales wanted her to seem that way for him, the man who paid to have her clean and to himself for the feria.

We stared at each other, Elena with her soap-scrubbed skin, me soaked in sweat and reeking of the stove. For a moment, the kitchen seemed to fill with the smell of gelatine and roses.

‘Mama sent me to check on the rabo,’ she said. ‘Is it ready?’

I pulled the stew pot towards me and gave it a stir. Rich, viscous and silky with marrow. A piece of the bull’s tail rose, tender around its star of bone.

‘Almost.’

‘Well, hurry up,’ she said. ‘They are drinking imported whisky. It’s making them impatient.’

I glanced over at her. There was something odd about her manner, something furtive. She was worrying at the web of skin between her thumb and forefinger, worrying it red.

‘The Señor seems different tonight,’ I said.

Her round face flushed. ‘What do you mean?’