He felt the stirring of a familiar unease. She rarely spoke of home and homeland, of loved ones and the loss of them, and when she did, it laid down a darkness between them, like a shadow falling across an expanse of mud and ashes. This was a zone into which neither of them cared to venture very far. He too, like her, had his losses, though his losses weren’t at all like hers, and they both knew it. He had been orphaned early, and whatever he had been deprived of he couldn’t remember ever having had. She, on the other hand, had lost a world and the people in it whom she had loved, and whom she could never forget.

‘Let’s drink some wine,’ he said shortly, snatching up the bottle. He began to pour the Rioja, then paused. ‘But you’re having fish. I’ll order you a glass of white.’

She smiled her solemn baby’s smile.

‘You know, my dear,’ she said, ‘you are so very much nicer than you will admit.’

The wine waiter came. He was the old fellow from the bar, he of the hairy ears and squeaky shoe-leather. He pretended not to know Quirke, and Quirke did the same for him. There were the niceties to be observed. Quirke requested a glass of txakoli for his wife.

The old boy murmured something obsequious in Spanish, and shuffled off, creakingly.

Quirke had begun to feel a little better, unaccountably. It couldn’t be the wine, he had hardly started on it yet. He looked across the table at his wife and made himself smile. She knew these wordless apologies of his. In return she drew her lips together into a kissing shape. He leaned back expansively on his chair, keeping his bandaged hand out of sight below the table edge.

‘We should invite them to lunch,’ he said. ‘Doctor Cruz, I mean.’

‘You said “them”’ – she lifted an eyebrow – ‘do you mean both?’

He shrugged. He suspected he was blushing. How absurd.

‘Yes, why not?’ he said stoutly. ‘Chief Geronimo and Doctor Frosty Face, who refused to treat me.’

‘But you don’t like seeing new people,’ his wife said, doing her innocent act.

Quirke shrugged again, and looked away from her.

‘We’re on holiday, as you keep reminding me,’ he said. ‘Let’s make a grand gesture.’