‘Put down that case and come into the kitchen.’ I said it not as an invitation, but as an order. Our visitor obeyed, without a word, following me round the stairway and through to the back of the house.
Susie had got as far as breaking half a dozen eggs into the blender, and heating oil in a saucepan. ‘Make enough for three,’ I told her quietly. ‘This kid looks as if she’s starving.’
‘Freezing too. You mix more eggs and give her some coffee. I’m going to get her something warmer to wear.’
I poured her a mug from the percolator, added some milk and handed it to the strange girl. She gave me her first smile as she took it, wrapping both hands round it for warmth, taking a sip, then holding it to her chest. ‘Gracias,’ she whispered.
I didn’t try to question her as I broke more eggs into the mixer. She probably wouldn’t have heard me, anyway; she was looking at the mug too intently. I took some focaccia from the freezer, defrosted it in the microwave for a few seconds then put it in the oven to bake. As I closed the door, Susie returned; she had her red sweater, and she motioned to the girl to put it on. I felt a pang of regret: I liked her in that jumper, and she sure filled it better than the youngster did.
She went off again, leaving me to cook. I stayed silent, letting her get used to me. . Whoever or whatever she thought I was.
I looked across at her as I took the pot off the hob. ‘Huevos?’
‘Si, si. Por favor.’
I tipped half of the eggs on to one plate and shared the rest out evenly. I took the warmed through focaccia, cut it into wedges on a chopping board, then set the lot out on the breakfast bar. Susie returned as I did so, in her tan trousers and another red sweater, a polo-neck that I hadn’t seen before.
The girl ate so voraciously that I wondered when she had last seen food. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked her quietly, in English, as she picked up her fourth chunk of the Italian herb bread.
‘Gabrielle,’ she replied, without thinking, then gave me a guilty look as she realised how easily I’d slipped through her ‘No hablar Ingles,’ pretence.
‘Where are you from?’ I poured her some more coffee.
‘Manila.’
‘Have you just arrived in Spain?’
‘Si.’›
‘How?’
‘On a ship, a big ship from the Philippines to Barcelona.’
‘Did you work on board this ship?’
‘Si. I help in the galley and I clean the crew’s cabins.’
‘Nothing else?’ asked Susie, fairly heavily. The kid looked at her, then back to me, with a puzzled expression on her face.
I put it another way. ‘Did you have to be friendly to the crew?’
She shook her head until I thought she’d dislocate something. ‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘The man in Manila told me not to be friendly with the sailors. He said that if I did, you would know and I would be sent back home.’
‘He would know?’ Susie sounded incredulous. I waved her to indignant silence.
‘Okay, Gabrielle,’ I went on, gently. ‘Why did you come here, to this house?’
‘When the ship came to Barcelona, the captain gave me some Spanish money. Then he took me to the bus station and he put me on a bus and he told me to get off in L’Escala and to take a taxi to this house.’ She lifted up the sweater, delved into the gypsy blouse and produced a folded sheet of paper from her cleavage. ‘Here it is; he gave me this address.’
I took it from her and checked; sure enough, there it was, written in a big scrawl in ballpoint. Villa Bernabeu, Carrer Caterina, L’Escala, Girona.
‘So,’ I said. ‘You were sent from Manila to Barcelona, then here to see me. What were you told will happen now?’
Gabrielle looked up at me; she was a pretty wee thing, very pretty. She didn’t need any of that make-up. ‘You will look at me, and you will talk to me, and you will have a doctor examine me. Then I will go to work.’
I knew what was coming; I could tell from Susie’s expression that she did too. ‘Where do you expect to be working?’
‘In your club, senor; the Bluebird Club, the man in Manila told me it was called that. He tell me to dress nice, so you will like me.’
‘And what do you expect to be doing there?’
‘I ’spect to be a hostess; to wait on the tables, to serve the customers their food and drink, and to be nice to them.’
‘How nice? You mean friendly? Like you were told not to be friendly with the sailors?’
She frowned at me as understanding began to dawn. ‘The man in Manila did not say that. He only told me I would wait on tables and be nice, and I would make a lot of money and could send it home to my father and mother. My father is sick, so he cannot work. The man in Manila give him dollars; that’s why he let me go to Spain.’
‘You mean he sold you?’ Susie exclaimed.
Gabrielle caught the anger in her voice; it scared her. ‘No,’ she protested. ‘The man give him money to let me work for his friend. That was all.’
‘So you can go back to Manila any time you like?’ I asked her.
The youngster’s face fell. ‘No. The man said that I must stay in Spain and work at the club till you tell me I can go home. If I run away, he will hurt my father, and my mother.’
‘Tell me about this man. Do you know his name?’
She nodded. ‘He is an African man; Moroccan. His name is Hassani.’
‘Shit,’ I whispered. Susie was looking at me now; completely bewildered.
‘What’s my name?’ I asked Gabrielle.
‘Senor Capulet. You are Senor Capulet; isn’t that right?’
I shoved the last piece of bread towards her, across the breakfast bar.
‘No. I am not Senor Capulet, and I don’t own the Bluebird Club, or any other club for that matter. Capulet has been gone from here for over a year now. I don’t think the man who paid your father can have known this at the time.
‘I’ve never heard of the Bluebird, kid, but there are plenty of places like it in Spain. Do you know what a brothel is?’ She shook her head. ‘En Espanol, un burdel?’
‘Si.’ She nodded, and I saw her colour rise beneath the make-up.
‘Did you really not know that’s where you would be working?’
‘No. My father said it would be all right for me to go there.’ Her face fell. ‘Can you find out where it is, senor? For I must go there. If I don’t, the African man will do things to my father.’
‘No way are you going there, kid,’ said Susie. ‘Do you want to go home?’
Gabrielle was silent for a few seconds, then whispered something, so quietly that I couldn’t make it out, but I knew that it was ‘Yes,’ in one language or another.
‘Then that’s what will happen,’ I told her.
‘Susie,’ I said. ‘Take Gabrielle upstairs and put her in a hot bath. Then she should sleep for an hour or two. While you’re doing that, I’ll make a phone call.’
She nodded and squeezed my arm. ‘You still have a soft side left, then,’ she whispered, as she slid off her seat.
‘Don’t you go getting maternal on me,’ I answered her, more than half seriously.
‘What’s your surname?’ I asked the girl.
‘Palacios. Yo soy Gabrielle Serafina Palacios.’
Left alone, I scratched my chin and thought carefully. Logically, there was only one guy I could call, but I was hesitant. There was a Catalan Society magazine lying on the bar, beside the telephone. I looked up ‘Useful Numbers’ and found the British Consulate in Barcelona. The telephonist told me that the only person on duty that day was the Commercial Counsellor, Ms Willis.
‘Anyone will do,’ I said. I introduced myself, and was wounded; the name meant nothing to her. I explained the situation, exactly as it had happened. ‘Phone the police,’ she advised at once. ‘She’s a foreign national, obviously an illegal; she’s not your problem.’