Doctor, the Englishman was saying, and I felt a stab of panic. A doctor was a thing that could not be fooled: the girls at the inn had never been successful in concealing their ailments from the health inspector. If the gentleman and the lady discovered I was a woman, what would they do? Question me? They would undoubtedly think I was no good, a whore on hard times perhaps, and tell the hotel to take me back to the border, once they were satisfied I would not die. I might have time to get away, if the Spanish authorities had not alerted the British about the murder, but if they had …

My mind racing, I began to look around the room for a way to escape. It was like the car: wide and cool and very clean, with thin curtains that billowed like sails. At any other time I would have sighed to be there, but all I could think about was my lie, and how to maintain it, and how soon these people would lose interest, and leave me to my fate.

The lady appeared with a wet cloth in her hands. I smelled her perfume again as she pushed me back into the cushions of a sofa.

‘You must stay calm, the doctor will be here soon.’ When she tried to wipe gently at my face, at the blood on my lip, I flinched away. No one had ever touched me like that before.

If anything, she looked sorry. ‘We should see about your chest,’ she murmured. ‘Let me—’ Before I knew what was happening, she had slid her hand inside the jacket, dangerously close to the strips of cloth that bound my breasts. I cried out, cringing away from her.

‘Leave him be, Hilde.’ A voice came to my rescue. ‘He’s clearly frightened. And in shock, I would guess.’ The man was standing at a sideboard. When he turned, he held two glasses, filled with brown liquid. He seemed to belong in that room the way a painting would, or a statue.

‘Here.’ He held out one of the glasses towards me.

I took it, unable to look at either of them, and sipped the liquid.

Scotch. It was Scotch. The smell of it ambushed me and I was back at the inn, breathing in spilled liquor and the stink of blood that rushed from the Señor’s throat. I choked and the glass tipped in my hand. The lady plucked it from my fingers.

‘Arthur, really. The poor boy’s probably never had a drink of whisky in his life. Go and get some brandy instead, that’s better for shock.’

Soon I found a big, bulbous glass pressed into my hands, filled with brandy. Exceptionally good brandy. I gulped it, gasped as it stung my lip and gulped the rest.

‘Bueno,’ the man said. ‘¿Cómo estás? ¿Dónde estás herido?’