I could hear the nervousness in her voice, barely held back. I left the stew and took a step towards her, my eyes on the door.

‘What’s going on?’ I whispered.

She looked at me for one shallow breath, two.

‘I’m leaving.’ Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear it over the din coming from the courtyard. ‘He’s going to take me with him, after tonight. He said … he told me that when I turned eighteen he’d take me away from here, set me up in my own apartment.’ She pinched at the skin of her hands. ‘I’m eighteen now. So he’s got to take me with him tonight.’

The lace mantilla, the sherry, the Turkish Delight, they weren’t what had made her bow her head and follow him into a bedroom, four years ago.

‘Elena—’

‘He has to.’ There was a tremble of panic in her voice. ‘He swore he would.’

‘But you hate him.’

She looked up at me. In that moment, I saw Mama Morales in her, in the defiance that coloured her cheeks and made her lips compress, in the rigid stare that said there is no way but this.

‘I hate this place more,’ she said.

And so I set the stew in front of them. I watched from the shadows as they ate, as their mouths and moustaches became coated with juice from meat and bone, as they mopped the thick, brown sauce with bread and washed it down with glasses of their expensive, foreign spirit. When the Señor lifted a piece of meat on a spoon and held it to Elena’s lips, I wanted to rush out and tell her about the blood and the bull, tell her not to eat. But I couldn’t. I could only watch, and wait.

Trouble was brewing. As I crossed the yard to clear the table I could hear it in the music, in every cracked-throat cry and feverish guitar note, in the hands that beat slap slap slap against each other. I collected the dishes. The Señor’s eyes crawled over the nape of my neck.

‘A fine rabo de toro,’ he said, as I loaded the tray. ‘Though a little forceful for my liking.’

I couldn’t help it. I looked at him. He was drunk, his face reddened from sun and alcohol, the brash smell of whisky all about him. His friends had been diluting theirs with seltzer, but I watched as he tipped some into his glass, neat, spilling it on the tablecloth. Beside him Elena sat, pale and sweating. He caught my glance towards her.

‘Poor little Elena, your rabo was too much for her.’ He drank his whisky. ‘Perhaps the two of us should take her up to bed.’

‘Be my guest,’ I retorted and walked away before I could see the consequence.