Chico had stopped listening to the Californian some time ago.  Her voice merged into the soundscape, background noise competing with the wind and the rumble of cars over cobbles.  He had picked up enough facts to work with.  He had located the emotional hooks that he could twist in his favour. 

They stood on the Moorish bridge that spanned the chasm for which the town was famed.  The sun was setting beyond the Sierra Bermeja.  It was the most dramatic place Chico had found in the whole of Spain, and he had made it his base.  The wind toyed with the Californian's hair, and she almost looked beautiful as she leant against the wall of the old bridge.  They always look softer in the last light of the day, he thought.  It's a great time. 

Chico let the girl’s words tumble over him and scanned the gorge that split the town in two.  El Tajo was a tourist draw, but he had been in Ronda for a year and usually he barely noticed it.  Tonight though, the limestone wall beneath the Plaza de Espana caught his attention.  The area was stained dark in a swathe a hundred feet across.  Chico frowned as the setting sun touched ruddy tints into the stain.  It was something he had not noticed before and it disquieted him. 

"Hey!  Are you listening?"

The girl’s question made him jump. 

"I’m sorry," he said.  "This place is so dramatic . . .  I get lost in it sometimes."

The girl nodded, wide-eyed. 

Naïve to fall for that, he thought.  Can’t be that experienced.  She’ll be easy to get into bed, but stage two might need some effort. 

"It’s an amazing place," she said.  "Do you know much of its history?"

Chico shrugged.  "I prefer to focus on the present.  Shall we go for a drink?"

He raised his hand to her waist, but she sidled away with a coy smile. 

"I don’t drink alcohol."

"Ever?"

"No."

Chico hesitated.  He did not usually bother with teetotallers.  They were like bedrooms without doors: he could never find a way in.  For a moment he considered looking for another option, but this girl had sparkling blue eyes and she had that coy smile, so he shrugged and gestured towards the plaza.

"Can I get a drink?" he asked.

"If you need one."

"I don’t need one, but I’d like one.  You coming?"

"Okay."

"Bueno.  Vamos."

The girl lingered on the bridge, looking towards the plaza fifty feet along the gorge, its flagstones jutting out over the drop like a pirate’s plank.  Chico stared again at the strange staining on the wall beneath it.  As the sun inched behind the hills the stain seemed to writhe, as if a million russet worms were squirming from cracks in the rock.

It’s just a shadow, he told himself.  Calm down.  You’ve been on edge ever since . . .  but forget that.  It wasn’t your fault.  Focus on this girl.  Focus on the game. 

"Come on.  Let’s find a nice bar with fruit juice and milkshakes," he said.

They left the Moorish bridge and entered the Plaza España.  It was gone ten now, and the plaza was being claimed by loose-trousered boys and tight-jeaned girls.  Chico flinched as an engine revved in a parked car at his side.  The boys inside leered at a group of girls across the street.

"Bloody kids are as bad as back home," he muttered.

The Californian smiled at him.

"You’re showing your age," she said.

"I’m not so much older than you."

"Old enough to get upset by the difference?"

Chico scowled, and then grinned, pleased that she had opened up, even at his expense.  It was a good sign.  Perhaps there’s a way into this bedroom after all, he thought.  There must be a trick for bedding teetotallers or they’d die out. 

He reached out again to link arms with the girl and this time she did not evade him, but let him pull her close.  The warmth of her body shone through her thin jacket.  He could feel the soft nudge of her breast against his arm as they walked.

"The best bars are around the Plaza Santa Ana.  They’re a good mix of locals and travellers.  Have you been out much since you got here, Rebecca?"

"My name's Jessica."

"I know.  I’m just teasing."

"No you aren’t." She flicked long, dark hair from her face.  "This is a nice street."

They had wandered past the plaza and beyond the tourist zone and into a quiet arcade where the branches of orange trees bowed with fruit.  In the gutters the windfalls rotted.  Chico wrinkled his nose at the scent, but Jessica breathed in happily, her eyes shining as she pointed to a sherry barrel that served as a bodega sign.

"How about this place?" she asked.

Chico eyed the dark wood around the entrance.  No music came from within.  In the dim interior he could make out an old Spanish man leaning on the bar.  It was not the kind of place he would choose, but he reminded himself that this was a new challenge and called for new tactics.  Go with it, Chico, he thought.

They entered the dim light of the bar, a traditional Andalucian drinking hole, or at least a recreation of one.  Porcelain tiles above the counter declared: "Hacemos de las tapas un arte desde 1907", but there were no tourists to sample the tapas, just the old man and an older waiter.  Neither looked up.

The walls of the bodega were crowded with bull fighting memorabilia and guarded by a mounted bull’s head.  Jessica paused to gaze up at the trophy.  She stretched up to stroke its cheek with her fingernails, slowly and tenderly. 

Chico watched her with interest.  Maybe it was the dim light, but she seemed older all of a sudden, and a little sad.  The insight made him uneasy.  There was always sadness in the game, he knew, even at the moment when their pupils were wide and welcoming.  Especially in that moment. 

"Sherry de Jerez.  A strong one.  Muy fuerte," he said, and then turned to Jessica.  "I don’t think they’ll have many soft drinks."

"Water is fine," she said, and smiled at the barman.  "Para mi, agua mineral."

"You speak Spanish?" he asked, surprised.

"A little," she said, taking her drink.  "Let’s sit here, near to my bull."

Chico gazed at the memorabilia on the bodega wall, and fantasised about the bedroom that Jessica's sobriety might conceal.  There was darkness about her; darkness in the way she stroked the dead bull and studied the morbid relics.  The darkness conjured up a gothic chamber, lavish and dramatic, with a four-poster bed and satin sheets draped across it like liquid, like blood . . . 

Chico!  Forget about that business last month!  It wasn’t your fault!

Chico drained his glass and signalled to the waiter for another.  As he did so Jessica moved closer, her breathing deep, as if savouring the scent of the drink on his breath.  They had not spoken since they sat down, but now tension crackled between them.  Chico smiled, dark thoughts distracted by the feeling that he lived for, the heart-thumping anticipation that always overruled the sadness that was to follow. 

The camarero delivered his sherry.  Jessica sat so close that he could not focus on her.  All he could see was the shape of her eyes: wide and white.  He could feel her breath move across his cheek as she leant to whisper in his ear.

"What’s your real name?"

Chico flinched.  He turned his head so that he could sip a little more of the strange, sweet sherry and avoid her gaze.

"I told you.  Chico.  My name is Chico".

"That’s not your name."

He glanced around, looking for a route out of the conversation, and found himself staring at the bull.  Its eyes reflected an upside-down view of the bar and disorientation rushed in on him.  The room in the bull’s eyes pulsed out of focus, making his reflection stretch and blur and his stomach twist.  He blinked and looked back at Jessica, but her gaze was just as unsettling. 

"My name’s always been Chico."

"’Chico’ means boy in Spanish.  You’re hiding, little boy."  She leant closer still and stroked his cheek with her nails, just as she had the dead bull.  "What was your name before you met her?"

And then he was picturing Diane, remembering her narrow body in her hostel bed as she shook with tears.  He saw himself climbing from the bed, scared by her reaction to their love-making, slipping away into the night.

The sherry was thick on his tongue, and its dull heat formed a pressure in his forehead.  Jessica’s eyes still filled his vision.  She knows, he thought.  She knows that I was with Diane before it happened.  How could she know that?  It wasn’t my fault!

"Why are you here, Robert?"

"I . . . I teach English . . . Why did you call me Robert?"

"I know who you are.  I don’t care what your job is.  I’m asking you why you are here, with me.  I’m asking you why do this."

"I don’t mean to hurt anyone.  I never force them . . ."

"You’re not answering my question!  Why do you do it?"

He could feel the eyes of the bull on him.  Or perhaps it was his own reflection that he could sense: the distorted mirror-image staring down, silently interrogating.  And the Californian was so close, her words and body language confused somewhere between accusation and seduction.  He could not hold back.

"I don’t know why I do it," he murmured.  "At first it was fun.  You know, like a fantasy . . . I came here to escape.  Things in England were bad and they said I should get away, get things out of my system.  I was running away, and then I got here and I still needed something, something, and this is what I started to do, and it helped keep things at bay, kind of.  No, it didn’t.  It made things worse, but I don’t mean to hurt anyone.  I’d like to stop, but there’s nothing else.  Nothing.  It’s all I have.  I can’t stop."

Jessica sat back and regarded him in silence.  He waited for her judgment, scared by how much he needed absolution from this stranger. 

"Pay the bill," she said finally.  "Let’s go for a walk."

***

Chico followed Jessica through the deserted streets of Ronda.  Shuttered windows reflected the sound of their footsteps, and water trickled down the stone gutter.  In the dark of the night the water ran black, and once more his eyes played tricks, slowing the flow to a viscous crawl that did not look like water, but something tainted and base.  He tore his eyes from the gutter and focused on Jessica, but she was walking ahead of him and her hair rippled on her back and that movement too sent fear flickering through his fractured nerves. 

They passed through a maze of streets and emerged finally where he knew they would: at the place on the edge of the gorge where Diane had leapt to her death.  Chico stared down into the depths.  The shadows were reaching out to him.  He swayed forward until the top of the barrier dug into his thighs.  The gorge brimmed with liquid darkness, swum through by shifting patterns of deeper black that seemed to twist and turn like demons in flight.

"We were going to meet in Rome, Diane and I.  We were going to meet today.  Now I am here with you and she is dead and you are carrying on just as before.  Untouched.  Well, I can’t carry on untouched."

"How did you know?"

"Because she was my soulmate!  Do you even understand what that means?"  Jessica laughed.  "Of course not.  Well, I'll tell you, Robert.  I'll tell you what it means to be bound to another human being.  I felt what you did to her, even across the miles.  I heard every lie you told her.  I knew her longing to believe.  Your betrayal broke my heart at the same time it broke hers.  I felt you kill her, you stupid, selfish child."

They stared down together into the swirling dark and he heard her breathing grow shallow.  The dry wind stung his eyes and lips, and he gripped the rail, the iron cold and real against his skin.  Chico closed his eyes against his tears and concentrated on the sensation, on the contours of the railing’s moulded design, on the flakes of paint that caught beneath his nails.

A soft brush of cloth against his wrist made him flinch, but he did not open his eyes until he heard the sound far, far below.  Blood pulsed in his veins and he knew she was gone and that only shadows remained, calling out to him from the gorge.

He felt a warm ooze of liquid on his lip, and reached his hand to his face.  Blood poured from his nose, soaking his sleeve and shirt, mingling with the tears that ran freely now.  He had been a fool to come here.  He could not escape by running, because the thing would always remain when the names and faces fell away: the shadow that lined his path was himself.  Weakness was what drove him to run and seduce and to run again.  He could not escape, no matter how far he went.

Blood dripped steadily to the flagstones.  He imagined it seeping down the cracks and into the limestone, spreading and staining the porous rock.  His head grew light and he leant forward over the chasm, letting the blood fall soundlessly into the void.  So easy, he thought.  It would be so easy to follow her.

"Robert."

Jessica’s voice sent tingles through him like a physical touch, as if she had reached out and run her nails across his cheek again.  He gasped and looked up and she stood beside him, just as before, watching him with eyes that glowed wide.  He stared back, lost, confused, and when he tried to speak his throat was too tight and all he could do was wait. 

"It’s time to stop running, Robert," she said.  "It’s time to go home."

Robert gripped the rail and looked down on the lights of houses below.  He felt raw inside, but clean, as if something had reached into his body and torn out a cancer. 

Home.  

The word echoed around his head, resonating with promise. 

Home. 

It would not be easy, but as he stared through the clear night to the plains below, Robert realised that she was right.  It was time to go home.  He looked up to thank her, but he was alone and he knew that she would not care.