“Pom, pom, pom,” said Silkleigh to himself at the bar, something furrowing his brow.

This is ridiculous, thought Periclito, desperate. He saw his victory snatched away, all because of his stepsister’s crucifying disregard for harmony.

“Quite out of this world,” Zamora was saying, rhapsodising over his cassoulet.

And now the voice breasted its way into the open, struggling to free itself of everything it had been taught by the conductor, so that Zamora hesitated over his fork and Periclito forgot the hot plates in his hands and Pablo looked up from the beer label he was mutilating and Asunción wrested her gaze from Tromso and Marie Amaral felt the same profound shudder as Genia Ortiz, whose first protective instinct was to grip her white stick, and together they all looked towards the stage where a small woman, growing less nervous by the second, was singing fado.

It was unlike anything anyone had heard. It was no longer the voice of Rosita Amaral, Ernesto’s student. It poured out raw, like blood, as if announcing itself for the first time, unadorned, honest. It was a voice smelted by despair. It sang of shipwrecked sailors and a dead bull, but to all who heard it, the voice seemed to understand the exact measure of their own pain, reaching into the most locked-away parts of themselves, insisting they forget what only minutes before they had been saying, thinking, drinking, eating – and listen, because in the perfect expression of her pain there was affirmation too.

She stepped down from the stage, her necklace swinging in a wild improvised dance. “But Rosita . . . ” Periclito tried to whisper as she passed him, his chins descending in silent lips to his throat. She revolved to face her brother, dancing her way backwards through the silent tables to the bar.

“Rosita,” whispered Silkleigh, prodding Mohamed in the back with his glass to stand aside and let him see. Mohamed, misjudging the mood, stumbled forward and squatted behind her in the narrowing space. His hands made circles, outlining her bottom, mimicking the motions of her stomach, until Silkleigh kicked him out of the way.

The song was over. In the silence, Silkleigh found his voice. “Bravo! Bravo! Rosita!” Soon everyone in the café was chanting. They tapped the floor in an accelerating rhythm of feet, shouting “Ro-si-ta! Ro-si-ta! Ro-si-ta!”

She danced through the last of the chairs to the bar where Silkleigh and Wavery were standing. Slowly, she turned to face the two men. Wavery could smell the sweat on her breast.

“That. Was. Magic,” said Silkleigh.

Under the television set, Periclito set down his steaming plates, howling.

The drink was working its extravagant effect on Wavery. Magic. Love. They had nothing to do with knowledge, he reminded himself at the bar. They were illusions. Just as his career had been an illusion. Just as Abyla was an illusion, and all the people in this café who lived on top of each other, not knowing about each other, only Silkleigh knowing, Silkleigh the mirror, piecing together the shards of their lives, holding up the result, catching the multi-coloured lights and shadows, saying “Hey! That’s you, isn’t it, kara mia? What do you think?”