He had taken off his cardigan and was talking to Asunción, who held Tromso’s hand under the table, about Pablo.

“Querida,” he was saying, “if you let him do what he wants, he’ll have no one to blame but himself – and that can create enormous problems afterwards.” To himself he thought, Could it really be in ten years time that Asunción and Tromso will be sitting on a sofa saying to the young man between them, “So you want to be a hairdresser?”

“Cassoulet!” Periclito arrived with more plates. He set them down and turned off the television.

“Hey!” said Tromso.

“Talk to your wife, Tromso.” Periclito, chucking Asunción under the chin, kissed her full on the mouth. An olive pip distilled on his lips. He spat it into the ashtray and drew back two chairs.

“Mohamed!” He pointed to those in the room who lacked a full glass. “Maman!” he called on his way to the kitchen. “Rosita!”

Periclito’s sister had removed her gold braid belt, her black top. She wore only a dark slip and a girdle of red silk, folded twice about her hips. A long amber necklace bounced against her bare stomach as she moved in small steps onto the stage. In the coloured lights her face was expressionless.

Gallo followed behind. When she half turned to indicate his chair, the lights glinted on something shiny in her hand.

David’s teapot! thought Marie Amaral and her heart pounded so fast against her chest she could not breathe.

“Rosita!” called Periclito, careering from the kitchen with two more steaming dishes. Still he could not see his stepsister. He had seen her talking to Silkleigh, but the diver stood alone. Periclito was scanning the tables around the pillar when he heard the sound. His head jerked towards the television set he had turned off a moment before. “Tromso!” he was about to bellow. But it wasn’t the television. It came from behind him, from the stage. He spun round, a plate of hot cassoulet in each hand.

Until that moment, no one else was alert to the commotion. Several of those nearest the stage, when they heard Gallo’s portentous guitar chords, lowered their heads and groaned. But the café was too noisy, too crowded for those in the middle of the room to know what was going on.

It can still be nipped in the bud, thought Periclito, lurching forward. “Rosita . . . .” She sipped from her glass, then placed it on the floor beside the teapot. She cleared her throat, nodding to Gallo. She had eyes for no one. With a stamp of her foot she stepped into the red and blue light.

“Não peças demais à vida,” she began.

It was not until near the end of the first verse that she caught the café’s ear. Her voice began low, finding its balance, finger-tipping its way through talk of Periclito’s performance, between the back-slaps and the toasts and the sound of Pablo’s knife against the beer bottle.