'Have you been watching me, Dona Consuelo?' he said, his face appearing over her shoulder, the sourness of his winy breath in her nostrils. 'Have you been keeping a little eye out for me? Perhaps…since you lost your husband your bed's been a bit cold at night.'

She gasped as he slipped his hand between her bare legs. It was rough. An automatic reflex clamped her thighs shut. He sawed his hand up to her crotch. A voice in her head remonstrated with her for being so stupid. Her heart walloped in her throat while her brain screamed for her to say something.

'If it's money you want…' she said, in a voice that whispered to the flaking whitewash.

'Well,' he said, pulling his hand away, 'how much have you got? I don't come cheap, you know. Especially for the sort of thing you like.'

He took her handbag off her shoulder, flipped it open and found her wallet.

'A hundred and twenty euros!' he said, disgusted.

'Take it,' she said, her voice still stuck under her thyroid.

'Thank you, thank you very much,' he said, dropping her handbag to his feet. 'But that's not enough for what you want. Come back with the rest tomorrow.'

He pressed against her. She felt his obscene hardness against her buttocks. His face came over her shoulder once more and he kissed her on the corner of her mouth, his wine and tobacco breath and bitter little tongue slipping between her lips.

He pushed himself away, a gold ring on his finger flashed in the corner of her eye. He stepped back, kicked her handbag down the street.

'Fuck off, whore,' he said. 'You make me sick.'

The steel tips receded. Consuelo's throat still throbbed so that breathing was more like swallowing without being able to achieve either. She looked back to where he'd gone, confused at her escape. The empty cobbles shone under the yellow light. She pushed away from the wall, snatched up her handbag and ran, slipping and hobbling, down the street to the main road where she hailed a cab. She sat in the back with the city floating past her pallid face. Her hands shook too much to light the cigarette she'd managed to get into her mouth. The driver lit it for her.