‘Of course you do. Maybe your sister underestimated you?’ Caro suggested. ‘Maybe love has smashed all the hate out of you?’

What, like a reverse Breaking Bad? Was I breaking good? A tear rolled down, landing in my glass with a plink.

Caro sat back, glass rested against her necklaces. ‘There’s love, right there. Hurts, doesn’t it? It’s the greatest feeling we were given the capacity for but it’s also the most painful. I think I would rather experience it than not.’

I drank and drank until the angry flame for Ivy dulled and went out. I drank until I was happy and laughing about every single little stupid thing. I didn’t care if the entire Spanish police force marched in and loaded me into a straitjacket and a Hannibal mask.

Old Moneybags paid our bar bill, thank God, and I wheeled her chair outside where the sun was still beating down and the day wasn’t done with us. ‘Do you want to have a mooch round the square before the ship leaves?’

‘Oh no thanks,’ she said. ‘I need another church like I need another tumour in my tits.’ And we were laughing again. ‘I’m hungry,’ she announced. ‘Let’s go and find something stodgy to mop up all this booze.’

The rest of the afternoon, we wandered about the old town laughing at hats on souvenir stalls, eating churros and free samples of roasted snail, tapas and Spanish sausage. I couldn’t be arsed to be Hilary so I let the act slip and went a little more Rhiannon. There was something about Caro which made me feel like I could be more myself – to a point, anyway. After lunch we flagged down a cab large enough to accommodate Caro’s wheelchair and went to Jardin Botanico – the botanical gardens.

It was my kind of place – parkland, flowers, stray cats everywhere. But I felt so ill. I puked in a bush and lay down on a bench groaning.

‘I’m never drinking again,’ I said, my head spinning like a top. I’d gone from spoilt child in the restaurant throwing food to pissed teenager on a park bench in one hour. Around Caro I had regressed.

Caro parked her chair next to me. The giant trees offered a cool shade from the scorching sun, and every so often a cat would appear and nuzzle our legs or snuggle up in the flower bed to sleep. One sat directly in front of us and licked its own arse clean.

‘I wish I could do that,’ she said.

‘Yeah, me too. I’d never need another man again.’

There were a few beds in bloom, quite odd for January. Caro said Spain had a warm winter which explained it. ‘The flowers don’t know what month it is – all they know is warmth so they come out.’ A welcome smattering of almond blossom sprinkled down on us as a breeze blew through the grove.