Crossing the road at the T-junction, they took a left off the main drag onto a narrower street. It would be far too tight for cars to pass down – except perhaps an old-school Fiat 500 – but mopeds were parked nose-to- tail in a line along the bollards. The street was entirely in shade at this time in the early evening and flanked by older, umber-coloured buildings with wooden doors and wrought-iron balconies on the upper floors. A few trees softened the unremitting hardness of the urban block, as did the washing tied to some of the balustrades, and, on one balcony, an Atlético Madrid flag. But a collection of overflowing bins halfway down the street had attracted the attention of a stray dog, sniffing for scraps, and one of the ground-floor windows further along had been boarded up, shards of glass still peppering the ground.

Marina stopped outside a tall arched door and fished for a key in her hip pocket.

‘Here, let me take that for you,’ Charlotte said, offering with her outstretched arms to take the basket. But Marina found the key and let them in, pointedly leading her up three flights of stone stairs with the basket still on her hip, silently reiterating both her independence and pride.

The common quarters were clean albeit tired, with marks on the walls, some of the plaster missing in areas, and cracks like a crazy glaze spidering the paint. A bicycle was propped outside one apartment, several Amazon boxes stacked on the floor outside another; and a broken washing machine had been left on the half-landing two floors above, waiting to be taken away.

‘Is that yours?’ Charlotte asked, as Marina walked around it and put her key in the door.

Marina looked over at it with disgust. ‘It had been threatening to die on me for months.’

‘There’s never a good time for them to break, is there?’ Charlotte mused. Marina looked back at her sharply, as though trying to gauge her tone, before letting them both in.

Marina dropped the basket with a groan onto a small square elm table. ‘I expect you would like coffee?’

‘No, really. I’m fine,’ Charlotte demurred, feeling the oppressive heat in the flat. The last thing she wanted was a hot drink. A glass of rosé on the other hand. Oblivion . . .

Was it really only three hours since she had been in bed with Nathan? Their bodies pressed together, fingers and legs intertwined . . .

‘You think I can’t look after my guests?’ Marina asked defensively, pulling a dirty t-shirt off the corner of a chair.

‘Am I a guest?’ Charlotte smiled, trying to soften her hostile mood. Inwardly she felt exhausted. Defeated. This meeting was the last thing she needed. ‘I did rather invite myself over.’

‘You said you have something to offer me,’ she shrugged, as though this was the payment in return. ‘I will get coffee. Take a seat.’

Marina disappeared from the room, and as she wandered to the sofa, Charlotte took the opportunity to openly look around. It couldn’t have been more different from Lucy Santos’s home in the La Finca district just a few miles away – that had been all clean angles and space and light; this apartment was its polar opposite: dark, stuffy and cramped with low sloping ceilings. There was no air-con that she could see and one of the eaved windows looked painted shut; Charlotte had to resist the urge to try to open the other.