It was a statement. I was still standing and turning slowly towards the door, so they didn’t argue.

The new signboard went up. The kitchen was clean enough but tiny. The eating area was ‘compact’ and ‘rustic’: grimy, grey concrete walls, cobwebbed wooden beams, a bar decorated with pebbles and shells stuck in these dollops of plaster, ashtrays made from upturned half-coconuts. I got them to wash it all down and paint the walls sunny yellow while I went off to shop for stock.

I cadged some old concert posters from a tourist agency and put them up, stuck a few candles into old wine bottles. I rehearsed some songs and psyched myself up for showtime. It had been years.

Thursday was opening night. Sergio’s drinking cronies were in, thinking it was freebies all the way, which he encouraged, playing some kind of second-rate Don Corleone, while they devoured my chicken curry. I was dressed up in a ‘tropicana’ kaftan – a print of parrots surrounded by lime-green and metallic-blue flowers – but I wasn’t going to get on stage for those louts, so I put Ella Fitzgerald on instead. Sergio left with his crowd well after midnight and didn’t show until an hour before opening the next evening, grinning idiotically, sauntering drunkenly in the door, while Eeva-Lina hurled several wine glasses at him that smashed into the street outside. Then she darted into the kitchen, emerged with a knife and rushed at him, cursing, Senkin saatanan kusipää! Mä vihaan sua! Saat nähdä, sä toivot vielä ettet olisi ikinä syntynytkään!

I restrained one business partner and sent the other off to sober up.

Sergio’s bank manager was in on Friday. ’Course he didn’t pay either and I wasn’t doing a show for one. Against Equity rules, I told them, when the audience is the same as or fewer than the cast.

Saturday – we got twelve Irish tourists who’d prebooked, only to walk right out again when they sniffed the whacky-backy Eeva-Lina was blowing out her nostrils. She was lounging by the bar in a PVC cat suit, red, seventies, and so skin-tight it rode up her crotch.

I told her to put it out, to which she replied, ‘But tis is Marpella.’

Sunday – two passing couples were seated and actually eating when Eeva-Lina took it upon herself to jump on stage (I just knew she’d been itching to get up and show off) and start to do these ridiculous catwalk poses (white leather hot pants, white boots, white cellulite), singing out of tune ‘Vallink in love akain/ Vhat am I to do/ Vhat am I to do/ I cahn’t hilp it.’

It was hysterical. The audience thought so too. They didn’t leave a tip.

I noticed white powder on her nose.

Each night Sergio walked off with the takings in a canvas bum-bag. Wouldn’t let me check.