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to refuse. Dance already seemed like a driving force in her life and she was addicted to the sense of release it gave.
     
    ‘How fantastic!’ she said. ‘When exactly?’
     
    The trip was in three weeks’ time, to tie in with the day of Maggie’s birthday.
     
    James’s froideur was no surprise. If James had disliked his wife’s new interest in dancing, his antagonism intensified when she had announced this trip to Granada.
     
    ‘Sounds like a hen party,’ he had said dismissively. ‘Bit old for that kind of thing, aren’t you?’
     
    ‘Well, Maggie did miss out on the whole wedding thing, so perhaps that’s why she’s making such a celebration of a big birthday.’
     
    ‘ Maggie . . . ’As ever, James’s contempt for Maggie was ill concealed. ‘Why didn’t she ever get married ? Like everyone else?’
     
    He could see what Sonia saw in her university friends, her colleagues and the various acquaintances she had made within sugar-borrowing distance of their home, but his attitude to Maggie was different. As well as being part of his wife’s dim and distant schooldays, Maggie did not fit into any boxes and he could not begin to see why Sonia kept in touch with her.
     
    Far away from her husband, under the sympathetic gaze of a cheaply reproduced Virgin Mary in the breakfast room of the Hotel Santa Ana, Sonia realised that she had ceased to care what James thought of her unconventional friend.
     
    Maggie appeared, bleary-eyed at the doorway.
     
    ‘Hi, sorry I’m late. Have I got time for coffee?’
     
    ‘No, not if we’re going to get there for the start of the class. We’d better go straight away,’ instructed Sonia, keen to obstruct any further procrastination that Maggie might be dreaming up. In the daytime, Sonia felt she was in charge. At night, she knew they would swap roles. It had never been any different.
     
    They went out into the street and were taken aback by the sharp air. There were few people about: a handful of elderly folk with small dogs on leads, and the rest sitting in cafés. Most shop fronts were still hidden behind metal grilles, with only bakeries and cafés showing signs of life, the alluring fragrance of sweet pastries and churros scenting the air. Many of the cafés were already densely fogged with the steam of coffee machines and cigarette smoke. Most of the city would only really stir itself in another hour. Until then, early risers like Sonia and Maggie would have the narrow streets almost to themselves.
     
    Sonia hardly looked up from her map, following the twists and turns of the alleyways and passageways to steer them to their destination. Every step of the way was guided by the blue lettering of the ceramic street signs, the musical charm of the names - Escuelas, Mirasol, Jardines - taking them closer. They crossed a recently hosed-down square, sloshing through puddles of water, and passing by a glorious flower stall that was set up between two cafés, its huge fragranced blooms luminous. The smooth slabs of the marble pavement were soft underfoot and the fifteen-minute walk seemed like five.
     
    ‘We’re here,’ announced Sonia triumphantly, folding the map into her pocket. ‘La Zapata. This is it.’
     
    It was a tatty building. Layers of small posters had built up over the years on the walls of its façade, one after the other stuck over the brickwork advertising flamenco, tango, rumba and salsa evenings taking place all over the city. Every phone box, lamppost and bus-shelter in the city seemed to have been used in the same way, informing passers-by of forthcoming espectáculos , one flyer plastered over another often before it had even taken place. It was a chaotic kind of collage but it represented the spirit of this city and the profusion of dance and music that was its lifeblood.
     
    The inside of La Zapata was as scruffy as the exterior. There was nothing glamorous about it.This was not a place for performance but for practice and