a scandal in a small Seville parish. The rest – the lives and stories contained within the walls of the church – was of no consequence. As Father Oscar had said, Our Lady of the Tears was too far from Rome. Like Captain Xaloc's doomed Manigua, it was just a small ship heading unsteadily towards the implacable steel mass of a destroyer.

Macarena placed her hand on his arm. He didn't pull away, but she must have felt him tense. "I'm leaving Seville," he said.

She said nothing for a moment, then turned to look at him. "Do you think they'll understand in Rome?" she asked.

"I don't know. But whether they do or not isn't important." He gestured at the trunk, the bell-tower, the city in darkness below. "They haven't been here. The hacker drew their attention for a moment, but to them this is just a tiny point on a map. My report will be filed the minute it's been read."

"It's not fair," said Macarena. "This is a special place."

"You're wrong. The world is full of places like this. With a Carlota waiting at the window, a stubborn old priest, a dilapidated church… The Pope isn't going to lose sleep over Our Lady of the Tears. You people aren't important enough."

"What about you?"

"It doesn't matter. I don't sleep that much anyway."

"I see." She moved her hand away. "You don't like to get involved, do you? You just have your orders." She pushed her hair back abrupdy and moved so that he had no choice but to look her in the face. "Aren't you going to ask me why I left my husband?"

"No, I'm not. That's not necessary for my report."

She laughed quietly, contemptuously. "Your report," she said. "You came here and asked questions. You can't leave without hearing all the answers. You've pried into everybody's lives, so here's the rest of mine." Her eyes were fixed on Quart. "I wanted to have a child, so there would be something between me and the abyss. I wanted a child, but Pencho didn't." Her voice became sarcastic. "You can imagine his objections – too soon, a bad time, a crucial period in our lives, we need to concentrate our efforts and energies, we can have one later… I ignored him and became pregnant. Why do you look away, Father Quart? Are you shocked? Pretend this is confession. Part of your job."

Quart shook his head, suddenly firm. His job was the one thing he was still clear about. "You're wrong again," he said gently. "It's not my job. I told you before that I didn't want to hear your confession."

"You can't get out of this, Father." Her voice was harsh. "Think of me as a soul in torment that can't be turned away. Anyway, I'm not asking for absolution."

He shrugged, as if that released him. But intent on the moon, she seemed not to notice. "I got pregnant," she went on, "and Pencho felt as if the bottom had fallen out of his world. He insisted it was too soon. He put pressure on me to get rid of the baby."

So that was it. Things were falling into place.

"So you did," Quart couldn't help saying.

She smiled with a bitterness he'd never seen in her before. "Yes. I'm – Catholic, and I refused for as long as I could. But I loved my husband. Against Don Priamo's advice, I checked into a clinic and got rid of the baby. There were complications – a perforation of the uterus, haemorrhaging, and I had to have an emergency hysterectomy. Do you know what that means? Now I can never be a mother." Her face was towards the moon. "Never."

"What did Father Ferro say?"

"Nothing. He's old, he's seen too much. He still gives me communion when I ask." "Does your mother know?" "No."

"And your husband?"

Her laugh was dry, brief. "He doesn't either." She slid her hand along the windowsill, towards Quart's arm, but didn't touch it this time. "Only Father Ferro and Gris know. And now you." She hesitated a moment, as if to add another name.

"Did Sister Marsala approve your decision to have an abortion?" asked Quart.

"On the contrary. It nearly cost me her friendship. But when I had the complications at the clinic, she came to see me. I didn't let Pencho come with me, so he thought everything went smoothly. I went home to convalesce, and seemed fine to him."

She turned to the priest. "There's a journalist," she said. "A man called Bonafe. The one who published some photographs last week…"

She paused, as if expecting him to say something, but Quart was silent. The photographs were the least of his worries, but he was concerned to hear Macarena mention Honorato Bonafe.

"An unpleasant little man," she went on. "You wouldn't want to shake his. hand. It would probably be clammy."

"I know who you mean," said Quart.

Macarena looked at him with curiosity. She lowered her head and her face was hidden by her hair. "He came to see me this morning," she said. "Actually, he stopped me at the door. I would never have asked him into the house. I told him to go away, but before he left, he hinted at something about the clinic. He had been there asking questions."

Dear God. Quart wished he'd been more forceful with Bonafe at their last meeting. He hoped he'd find the journalist in the hotel lobby again when he got back, so he could wipe the smile off his greasy face.

"I'm worried," Macarena admitted.

"It's no longer illegal to have an abortion in Spain," Quart said.

"Yes. But that man and his magazine feed on scandal." She crossed her arms, suddenly cold. "Do you know how an abortion is done, Father Quart? No, I don't imagine you do. Not the details. The bright light, the white ceiling, a woman's legs wide open. You feel you want to die. And the endless, cold, terrifying loneliness…" She moved away from the window. "Damn all men, including you. Damn every last one of them."

A deep sigh. The play of light and shadow on her face aged her; or perhaps it was the bitterness.

"I didn't let myself think about what had happened," she continued. "It was like a nightmare I desperately wanted to wake up from. One day, three months after I left the clinic, I went into the bathroom while Pencho was taking a shower. We'd just made love for the first time. I sat on the edge of the bath watching him. He smiled at me, and suddenly he wasn't the man I loved but a stranger. A man who'd made me lose my chance of having children. I felt then worse than I had at the clinic. I packed my things and came back here. Pencho didn't understand. He still doesn't."

Quart breathed in slowly. "That's why you're hurting him," he said.

"Nobody can hurt him. His selfishness and his obsessions are like armour. But I can make him pay: through that church I can strike at his prestige as a financier, and at his pride as a man. Seville can turn on you very quickly. My Seville, I mean. The Seville whose recognition Pencho wants."

"Your friend Gris claims you still love him."

"Sometimes she talks too much." She tried to laugh but couldn't. "Maybe that's the problem, that I love him. Anyway, it makes no difference."

"And me? Why are you telling me all this?"

"I don't know. You told me you're leaving, and suddenly that bothers me." She was now so near that when the breeze blew, her hair brushed Quart's face. "Maybe it's because by your side I don't feel so alone. As if, despite yourself, you embody the old ideal of a priest that so many women have always cherished: someone strong and wise to trust and confide in. Maybe it's your black suit and your collar, or the fact that you're also an attractive man. Perhaps your arrival from Rome and all that it represents has impressed me. Maybe I'm Vespers. Maybe I'm trying to win you over to my side, or simply trying in a twisted way to humiliate Pencho. It might be some of these things or all of them. In what my life has become, you and Father Ferro stand at opposite edges of reassuring terrain."

"That's why you're defending that church," said Quart. "You need it as much as the others do."