Take one teaspoonful of Angostura bitters and half a pony of orange Curaçao. Add to it one teaspoonful of white sugar and one teaspoonful of lemon juice. Then pour in half a wine glass of brandy. Shake up well and strain in a claret glass. Brief, dark and bitter.

We once had a conjurer visit the inn during the feria. He was a shabby-looking man with drooping moustaches and a threadbare velvet cloak. I wasn’t very impressed; no one was, until we saw his trick. He took a duck from a cage, and wrenched its head clean from its neck. The girls shrieked to see it, and flinched as he paraded around the courtyard, the body in one hand, the little feathered head in the other. Then, he put his hands beneath a red silk handkerchief, said a word and whisk! the duck was back, whole and quacking and pedalling its legs in protest.

That’s how I felt as I stood in the doorway, looking at the Señor as the life flowed out of him. I kept expecting someone to say a word and wave a cloth, for him to stop his empty gulping, open his bloodstained mouth and grin. But no one said anything. Neither of us moved until the soft, wet gasping sounds finally ceased.

Then, Elena staggered. The broken bottle fell from her hand, the bowl of ice from mine as I stepped forward to catch her.

‘I didn’t,’ she gasped, clinging to my apron, her eyes bulging and frantic. ‘I didn’t …’

She looked down at the Señor, his blank eyes fixed upon the ceiling. ‘Ramón!’ she screamed and dropped to her knees beside him.

She was gripping his face, trying to lift his head, but he was gone, the wound at his neck bleeding sluggishly. That’s when I heard footsteps on the stairs, and the echo of voices. I turned to meet Morales’ gaze.

I didn’t know that a life could change so drastically in the space between one heartbeat and another. For one trembling breath everything hung suspended, like alcohol in water: Elena holding the Señor’s head, me with blood on my apron, the dropped ice, the broken bottle. Morales’ eyes flicked to her daughter, before settling on me.

‘Murder,’ she said softly.

I started to cry out, to explain, but my voice was lost in hers as she shouted the word. The doorway behind her was filling with the reddened, sweating faces of the Señor’s friends, on their way to the parlour. I saw their redness curdle, their mouths fall open, and still I stood paralysed. Then Elena looked up. Her pretty face was tear-streaked, her fingers slippery with blood as she pointed at me.