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the Cuban-originated dance of salsa was more commercial and would appeal to an audience who might not be drawn to the dramatic intensity of flamenco. Some dancers of their age still performed, but Felipe and Corazón knew that they could not make a decent living out of doing so. Their strategy had worked. They had mastered salsa and created new choreographies, attracting many Granadinos as well as foreigners to their classes. They liked salsa; it was more superficial, less emotionally draining than their true passion, like a light Jerez next to a full-bodied Rioja.
     
    For a few years there had been a steady wave of people wanting to learn salsa and Felipe and Corazón, old and experienced as they were, had no difficulty in becoming experts. Given a short demonstration of the steps, the pair could have danced any dance in the world. Just as musicians with perfect pitch can listen to a complex tune and then repeat it back, note perfect, and then a second time with variations and inversions, so it was with these two. One day they might watch a series of moves and the very next they had mastered it, having observed the male and female parts just a single time.
     
    Salsa instruction now began. It was Corazón who did most of the shouting. Her voice cut through the music and even the strident tone of jazz trumpet that blasted its way through the salsa tune.
     
    ‘ Y un, dos, tres! Y un, dos, tres! And! Clap! Clap! Clap! And! Clap! Clap! Clap! And . . .’
     
    On she went. Repetition, after repetition, after repetition of the beat until it would haunt them and penetrate their dreams. Every turn their pupils mastered was greeted with huge encouragement and enthusiasm.
     
    ‘ Eso es! ’ That’s it!
     
    When it was time to move on, to try something new, Felipe would call out: ‘ Vale! ’ OK! And a demonstration of the next turn, or vuelta , would commence.
     
    ‘ Estupendo! ’ the teachers would cry out, unashamed of the hyperbole.
     
    Between attempts at each new move, the women would move round one partner, so that by the end of the lesson’s first half, they had danced with all of the taxi dancers. Even if none of them could speak English, these young men were all fluent in the language of salsa.
     
    ‘I love this,’ said Maggie as she passed Sonia on the dance floor.
     
    In dancing, mused Sonia, perhaps Maggie showed her true self. She certainly looked happy being passed across a man’s body this way and that, her hand running down the back of his neck to an instruction given precisely by him. A dismissive flick of his hand was all that was required to tell her when to spin. She responded on the beat, without hesitation. Sonia watched her friend being used to demonstrate a complex sequence of steps and found it strange that Maggie seemed so attracted to a dance where the man played an entirely dominant role. The feisty feminist who wanted to be in charge seemed happy being twirled.
     
    Maggie received praise from the teachers and an expression that Sonia remembered from schooldays passed across her face. It was a look of slight surprise, accompanied with a huge beam of pleasure.
     
    There was a break when big jugs of iced water were brought in and poured into plastic cups. It had become stifling in the room and everyone drank thirstily while polite snippets of stilted conversation were exchanged between people of different nationalities.
     
    When they had quenched their thirst, the two Englishwomen went off to the cloakroom. Sonia noticed huge quantities of graffiti, particularly several sets of initials heavily scored into the old wood. Some of the scratches had almost been polished away through the passing years, and others were freshly done, the recent carvings still the colour of naked flesh. One particularly ornate set of letters reminded her of a church carving, a work of art. It must have been a labour of love to have made such deep dents in these solid doors. Anyone who had bothered was not making a