Dolores considered. “Bran flakes, orange juice, tea, toast, butter, jam, a boiled egg.”

“Milk?”

“Milk –” She couldn’t remember.

He wanted to see her tonight, he blurted.

“Yes?” She laughed, then realised what was being said. “No.”

Panteco. What did she care for Panteco? He was no oil painting – unless one thought of that Flemish painter Ernesto had liked. He had bad skin and never listened and his kisses were more slobbery than Toribio’s. Dolores thought she preferred the dog’s kisses. Last night, Panteco had insisted on taking the animal back to the rooms he rented in Alfau. Emilio’s mother was so godamn crazy she hadn’t fed him for a week. Panteco had all sorts of plans to train him as a drug-dog. If he didn’t take care of Toribio, there were plenty of El Callado’s men who would. The hash-heads would cut off his ears and tail so he wouldn’t make a sound when he came out of the water.

“Oh, no, you can’t let that happen to Toribio,” said Dolores, sitting on Panteco’s floor, stroking his ears, knowing Panteco was not thinking about Toribio, but how to make Dolores move from where she sat, useless for his purpose, and onto that mattress where he might place his hand on her knee, all the while talking of Toribio but looking for a sign that might give him the courage to say in his loud voice, without her laughing at him, Dolores, shall we go to bed? So to spare Panteco the trouble, and not wishing to hear his booming sales pitch, Dolores stood up, walked over to the mattress, sat down, moved the instep of her ankle into vision and said: “Oh shit, my tights have laddered.”

Panteco advanced to touch the spot where the tragic laddering had taken place, scattering a pile of magazines, knocking over a fishing-rod and dashing his head against the overhead light shade.

“What does it matter anyway?” she said, as the shadows rocked still on the wall. She looked at him with the round eyes of a turkey-cock. She felt nothing for Panteco, but she didn’t want to hurt him. It was nice to be liked. She had few more expectations than to capture the hearts of men who loved stereotypes. She was a passive girl. Men invariably made the initial move and with few exceptions – Mohamed, Ghanem the Mute, Gallo, the bellboy – she didn’t resist. She never mistook their attentions for affection, yet that is what she sought. The saddest moment in each relationship was the moment when she understood she fitted into a pattern. Gradually she had renounced all claim to the love which appeared in those romances she was always having to find for that inflamed jellyfish Señora Menendez. Dolores had been too free with her body for that kind of love. She was a car who had spent her time off the road, parked on the cliff by La Mujer Muerta where the tarmac ended, exposed to the sand and the spray. She never counted the men she had known in the back – out of superstition, she supposed. Ernesto, of course. Periclito, caterpillar-fat, making her laugh, hardly able to squeeze over the seat. Emilio, the fisherman, who hadn’t been particularly keen on The Act. Rosita’s husband, tenderer with his guitar, left carefully on the front seat, than with Dolores. And one night in a strange language she didn’t understand, Joseph Silkleigh – although this she had never told Rosita.