They strolled about in the Old Town. In one of the squares they came upon an outdoor market. The stalls were set up under canvas lean-tos that flapped and rattled like sails in the sea breeze. Quirke was dazzled by the profusion and colours of the produce laid out enticingly on all sides. He found the rich fragrances of fruit and fish and poultry almost overpowering in intensity. What would home seem like, after all this? Grey, and stale. And yet he had a sudden, sharp longing to be back there, walking along a shining pavement in slanted April rain, with the scent of rained-on laurel in his nostrils. Home? Well, yes.

The odours from a fish stall made him think of sex. On one of their first nights in bed together, years before, as they lay side by side in the languorous afterglow of love-making, Quirke had expounded to Evelyn his theory as to the origins and purpose of sexual desire.

‘It’s nature’s way of making sure we can overcome the natural revulsion we feel towards other people’s flesh.’

‘What?’ Evelyn had murmured sleepily.

‘Think of it, and you’ll see it’s true,’ he said. ‘If it wasn’t for blind lust, the species would have died out aeons ago.’

Evelyn had chuckled deep in her throat. ‘What a silly idea.’ Her hair gleamed darkly in the light of the bedside lamp. She hadn’t a single grey hair – whenever she spotted one, she would pluck it out. He wondered what would happen when the day came that there was too much grey and she had to give up the struggle. ‘Animals feel no disgust of each other,’ she had said, ‘so what is the purpose of lust for them?’

‘Animals are machines.’

‘Oh, so you are a Cartesian?’

‘A what?’

He smiled into her face.

‘A follower of the philosopher Descartes,’ she said.

‘Oh. Right. I thought it was something to do with wells.’

‘Now you’re teasing me.’

‘Tell me about Descartes.’

‘He’s the one who said what you say, that animals are only animated machines.’ She had paused then, with a finger to her cheek. ‘Or was it Pascal? I can’t remember. They were equally foolish, both of them. Very clever and very foolish.’ She smiled, drawing in that plump upper lip and biting on it lightly. ‘Like so many men.’

He had made to reply, but she silenced him by turning in the bed and clambering on top of him, laughing. ‘Mein geliebter Ignorant.’

That was the night he had asked her to marry him. Or was it she who had asked him? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter.

Now, as they stood in the Spanish sunshine surveying the stall of wet and glistening fish, she asked him what he was thinking of.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why do you want to know what I’m thinking.’

‘Because I think you are thinking of sex.’