He turned halfway round on his chair to get a better look at her, not bothering to disguise his interest – he was sure she wouldn’t notice him anyway. Her figure was slight, and she had a pale, narrow face and skinny shoulders, the bones of which pressed sharply against the thin stuff of her dress. She sat hunched into herself, as though the evening had turned cold just where she was, with her hands folded and her back sloped and her chin lowered to a foot above the table edge.

A strange, striking creature.

Was she an actress? He didn’t think so. She was too muted, too self-contained – covert, that was the word that came to his mind. Yet she was demonstrative, too, and used her hands a lot, moulding elaborate shapes in air, as if she were illustrating the contours of some complicated thing she had fashioned. A stage designer, maybe? No, not that, either.

Was she angry, to be so animated? Was she airing a grievance? Maybe she was just describing a play she had seen. He couldn’t tell.

The man at the other side of the table seemed bored and mildly irritated. It was probably not the first time he had heard her opinions on whatever subject it was that she was expatiating on so animatedly. Quirke sympathised with him. He had a daughter himself. They could be relentless, daughters.

Now the young woman spoke that word again – ‘theatre’.

Quirke had once been in love, or something like it, with an actress. Isabel Galloway was her name. She was a thorn lodged in his conscience, too deeply embedded ever to be extracted. She wasn’t the only woman he had treated badly, in his time.

They had another glass of txakoli, and, to please Evelyn, Quirke consented to eat some pintxos with assorted fillings – ham, anchovies, sliced raw fish, red peppers. The little sandwiches were pierced through the middle with  wooden toothpicks, which accumulated on their plates and told the smouldering waitress, she of the sloe-black eyes, how many of them they had eaten and what their bill was to be.  Local colour, Quirke thought disparagingly, the stuff to tell your mum and dad about when you got home to Birmingham, or Burnley, or Barrow-in-bloody-Furness. There were  altogether too many English tourists down here, he considered, however much the muscle-men on the beach prized the females among them.

After the wine, Quirke took a risk and ordered a brandy. This turned out to be a mistake.