“That amazes me—they look as if they’re at it hard enough. Do you think they sleep with each other?”

“Who cares? They’re probably all celibate.”

“In a way, I care…” Miriam nodded briskly to herself, mind already set on an urgent recovery project, the retrieval of those possibilities that marriage and motherhood had consigned to some cul-de-sac. I often caught her staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, as if she sensed that her entire life, her husband and children, were a detour from the main road.

Every morning we returned to the island, leaving the crowded beach at Santa Margarita with its haze of sun oil and deodorant that formed an almost visible microclimate. We berthed the inflatable on the sand below the headland and joined the others under the tattered parachute awning. In the afternoon the French couple, keen birdwatchers, put on their saris and prowled the creeks and dunes of Ampuriabrava, sketchpads and camera at the ready. Sally swam with Henry and the girls, while Miriam helped Lykiard to extend the patio, carrying stones from the seawall.

Watching Sally, I was surprised by her unforced pleasure in the children. She was forever down on her knees with them, devising games and conspiracies, mysterious errands that sent them darting off into the sand-grass. Miriam told me that her father was the owner of a Boston department store and that she had achieved the distinction, rare for a rich man’s daughter, of being expelled from both her private school and exclusive women’s college. She had set off for the Mediterranean, crewing the yachts of her father’s friends, and had come to England to meet the Beatles. Self-consciously a free spirit, she seemed deliberately to neglect herself, living on nothing but tapas, sangria, and pot. I sensed that in some way she wanted to revenge herself on her own body.

Miriam also told me, in her most casual voice, that Sally slept with both Lykiard and Joubert, a piece of information that she swallowed whole and was digesting at her leisure. But it was only when we drove to Barcelona to see Cordobés and Paco Camino that she recognised the raw edge of Sally’s mind and her uncertain grip on the world.

*   *   *

Leaving Lucy and Alice in our apartment with the Jouberts, the rest of us set off in our car. In honour of Cordobés, we sat in the primo barreras and bought thimbles of fundador to toast the Beatle of the bullring who scandalised the traditionalists with his bizarre stunts and reckless bravery. Henry sat between Sally and myself, clutching a huge plastic bull with a penis and scrotum, Sally whispered to me, larger than his own.