‘Maybe it’s not her in the picture,’ Kitson suggests, as if sensing my shame. It is embarrassing to hear him try to comfort me. ‘Maybe your eyes were playing tricks on you.’

‘Can I see it again?’

But it’s her. The image is blurred and shows only the back of a woman’s head, but the figure, the height and posture are exactly Sofía’s. She’s even wearing clothes that I recognize: a knee-length tweed skirt, high-heeled leather boots. I am consumed by rage.

‘Jesus Christ, what an idiot.’

‘You don’t know that. There might be another explanation.’

‘Can you think of one?’

Kitson struggles to reply. He can’t answer without knowing the facts. So, for the second time in a matter of hours, I have to strip myself of all obfuscation and tell him, in humiliating detail, all about my relationship with Sofía: the initial meetings; the endless lies to Julian; the stolen afternoons and the rows. God knows how I come across. And all the time I am trying to put the pieces together, trying to work out their long-term strategy. Why did they lure me in? Why would Buscon and ETA, Dieste, Julian and Sofía, target an Englishman abroad if not to set him up as a patsy? But why me? Why Alec Milius? I tell Kitson about Nicole and Julian’s life in Colombia, asking him to check their file, but can only conclude that this is an American operation, orchestrated by Katharine and Fortner as revenge for JUSTIFY. At the same time, it is impossible to see more of the trap which has been set for me. In spite of everything that I now know, I still can’t sense what they might have in store.

33. Reina Victoria

I go back to Calle Princesa. Perhaps it would have been best to pack everything up, to find a new apartment in Madrid, even to move to a different city, but that would have felt too much like defeat. I would rather suffer the final humiliation of witnessing the plot’s success, of seeing the look of triumph in Katharine’s eyes, than give up now. It is more important to me to do my best for Kitson, to see this thing through, than to cut and run. In any case, he has said that he still needs me, and with our knowledge of Sofía’s involvement in the conspiracy we now have a crucial advantage. We can turn the tables. I can start using her.

‘See her, sleep with her, habla con ella,’ Kitson advised. ‘Act like nothing has changed. You haven’t seen the photograph, you haven’t any knowledge of any dirty war. And don’t for God’s sake start telling her about Patxo Zulaika and ETA. If she knows about them, she knows. If she’s in on the conspiracy, she’s in on the conspiracy. Far as you’re concerned, the marks on your body came about as the result of a punch-up. Real-estate deal turned sour. A bunch of Zaragoza estate agents taking the phrase “two up, two down” a bit literally. Next thing you knew, you were in hospital.’

So I keep to our meeting at the Reina Victoria. I did not sleep on Sunday night because the Danish boy upstairs began his banging, his toy-hammering, just as I was dropping off at dawn. As a result, I feel obliterated by tiredness. I can no more pretend to Sofía’s face that nothing has happened between us than I can make the bruises and the cuts on my body disappear. This is rage, as much as anything else: it is what Katharine must have felt when she discovered that I had lied to her for the best part of two years. In all probability, my deceit ruined her career, yet the knife in the back of her self-respect would have been far worse. In this sense, it’s possible to see my pain as a kind of moral payback. Only I never kissed Katharine. I never slept with her.

Sofía is in a room on the third floor facing away from the square. It’s too late to try to change it and, in any case, I don’t want to make her suspicious about my motives.

Things seem wrong from the moment we first set eyes on one another. When I knock on the door, she answers it fully dressed. No negligee, no suspenders. No pigtails, no perfume. None of the visual paraphernalia of an affair. Instead, Sofía looks anxious and washed-out, a sheen of tears in her eyes, and I feel immediately wrong-footed.

‘What’s the matter?’

I follow her into the room and sit down next to her on the bed. Straight away she stands up and crosses to an armchair by the window. I worry that Julian has found out about us, even though such concerns are no longer plausible nor even relevant. Christ, perhaps she is pregnant. Then she wipes her eyes on a Kleenex and stares at me. Can this be part of an act? She has not yet spoken, but I feel a wall between us which I cannot breach. She starts sobbing and, in spite of everything, there is still the desire to protect her.

‘Sofía, what’s going on? Why are you crying? Why are you upset?’

Her eyes are black as she looks back at me through the tears. Then she says, ‘Who are you, Alec?’

The question is like a curse.

‘What?’

‘Who are you?’

She stops sobbing. I do not know how to respond. Kitson didn’t prepare me for this, nor could I have anticipated that she would be feeling this way. It has been so long since I played the professional game of lie and counter-lie that I feel ring-rusty and bewildered by what is happening. I can’t see the angles. She must be playing me, but why the anger? I was expecting a routine evening of sex and champagne, of faked orgasms and room service, not the double bluff of a woman’s tears.

‘What do you mean, “Who am I”? Why are you crying? Sofía, please…’

‘I mean what I say’ She discovers a new strength in her voice. ‘Who is Alec Milius?’

‘Well, I could ask you the same question. Who is Sofía Church?’

Her neck seems to slip here, her face a desperate mask. ‘What?’ Something is terribly wrong or I am simply not reading this correctly. ‘What do you mean by that?’ she says.

‘I mean I want you to tell me what’s going on. Let me help you.’ I pass her a tissue from the box beside the bed but she swipes wildly at my arm. This angers me, perhaps because I am so tired, and I lose my temper. ‘Well, what then? What is it that you want?’

And she starts screaming at me, as crazed as I have ever seen a woman. The change in her mood is terrifying and I wonder if the frenzy is designed to cover something up. Standing out of the chair, she comes towards me and lands a pathetic fist on my chest, then slaps me repeatedly around the face. Words are blazing out of her mouth, few of which make any sense to me. It is as if she has lost her mind. I try to envelop her body in my arms in an attempt to control her physically, but she merely screams, ‘Let go of me, you fucking liar!’ and the insults continue like poison. A part of me worries that we will be heard in next-door rooms, but my hands are too busy up around my head, protecting my face from her rage. Then I lose all patience.

‘Why the fuck are you hitting me?’ I am on the point of pinning her against the wall. ‘Why are you angry with me when you’re the one doing the lying? Why were you in the Hotel Carta this morning? Why?’

That stops her. I had not meant to betray Kitson, but it was necessary. Sofía is suddenly calm. In fact she looks stunned.

‘You know about this? How? How do you know?’

Is this a confession of guilt on her part or more of the masquerade? If only I was not so exhausted. I took a triple shot of vodka before leaving the flat but it has done me no good. Are we being recorded? Is this little scene another element in Katharine and Former’s grand plan?

‘Of course I know about that. And I know about Luis Buscon. So I want to know why you were picking up packages from him. Are you working together?’

She steps further away from me, shaking her head. She appears to lack the strength to cry again. Indeed she looks, to my eyes, like somebody who is going slowly mad. It is awful to see this in a woman whom I once cared about.