She sat in her bedroom.

It was no ordinary room, in a far from ordinary house, in a swanky district in Getxo.

She was a Neguri.

With this came duty, and tonight was no different. 

The middle child, and eldest daughter, nothing was ever denied her. She never felt truly comfortable and had developed some strange idiosyncrasies.

It is true to say, she was not from the comfortable family background usually envisaged of those on the Iberian peninsular.

She applied the black eyeliner in moderation, preparing evening duty to her father.

It was on one of these evenings that she had first met him, but his absence now made the chore of getting ready just that bit different.

Pressure put her way, her younger brother at school, and her elder struggling to maintain any equilibrium due to his taste for opiates.

How unfair it was that the burden of her position was only to cover and act as the attractive foil.  Her mother, to add to the cocktail had so unfortunately died in a road accident the previous year, and left a void that naturally fell to her.

Liking the attention, thoughts wandered as she hitched up her stockings and stroked her silky thigh.

Stretching out her right leg she let her hand momentarily rise up and feel the satin.

Holding for a moment, then suddenly stopping herself, she turned, took a sip of cool water before standing abruptly before the long mirror and pouted.

A shout from downstairs indicated she had taken too long. 

Slipping a Walkman in her Balenciaga bag, she took one last lingering look in the mirror. It was going to be a long evening.

The driver opened the door for Isabelle who slid casually into the back seat next to her impeccably dressed Father.

“Good evening, I understand you are Joseba?” The Father spoke to the driver.

“ Yes, It’s a pleasure to be working for you tonight Sir?” Joseba replied.

They took off in the silver Mercedes as the last of the day’s sun drifted below the Asturian mountains to the west.

Isabelle pretended to gaze out of the window, but secretly she was admiring the sharp, dark shadowy features of Joseba in the wing mirror.

“We are taking a slightly longer route this evening. I have instructions to take the road away from the coast.”

Isabelle smiled.

The light gravel announced their arrival as they pulled into a dark parking space under a canopy of billowing tailored plane trees.

Joseba opened the door for Isabelle first before rushing around to catch the opposite as it began to swing out.

“I hope you have a pleasant evening, and I will be waiting here.” 

Isabelle took one long lingering look at the man as he spoke to her father, turned, and marched slowly towards the restaurant holding her arm out to catch hold of.

There were a few familiar faces at the reception bar, none of which Isabelle was that  pleased to see.

Mostly employees of her father, they, and their wives, were keenly interested in material wealth.

Catching the eye of a friendly barman she requests two martini’s.

It was not long before they were all chatting away in the manner they were used too. The special guests were introduced and they enjoyed the array of small plates of tapas presented on the large semicircular oak bar.

Isabelle drifted amongst the crowd of ten or so guests, doing her duty as her fathers aide. She played a little game, slightly changing the reply to the expected questions she would get from each of the polite guests.

Sometimes this would drift so far off the scale of plausibility she would have to excuse herself quickly and escape to the bathroom, to let out a snigger.

“Mummy, I am terribly sorry, but I just could not help telling that lady that I was enrolling to be a fighter pilot”, she said out loud staring at herself in the mirror. “ I bet you don’t miss these dinners where you are”.

it was moments like this that she lost to the urge to be bad. It welled up inside her, unable to deny it,

Sitting on the toilet she tried to force a change of mood, but the more she tried the more intense the urge became.

Thoughts rushed around her head, she started to panic, she closed her eyes and started to dig her nails in to the back of her neck, covering her ears with the palms.

Just as she started to rock forwards, the door to the bathroom swung open and she jumped up with a start.

“Are you alright young lady” said a middle aged lady in a Dallas style twin set with bulging shoulder pads.

“I dropped my favourite lipstick and was just looking for it, and you gave me a fright” Isabelle lied.

“Oh let me help you find it” the lady continued.

“No no, that’s alright, I have it here in my bag”, she tuned away and stifled a grin. 

Isabelle rejoined her grip quietly as they were being ushered to the dining room.

The table was made up with the most sumptuous white linen and ran the entire length of the dining area. 

The Restaurant was her fathers favourite, and used it when treating high caliber Bankers and Businessmen as he was this evening.

His dinners were quite informal though the quality was of the highest, with no expense spared.

Isabelle was always allowed to mingle and choose who she would sit near, but this evening she had trouble deciding and ended up between two slightly overweight gentlemen.

Swishing her hair left and right, she politely smiles at each. “ So which of you two likes to sail?”

Isabelle, did not take any notice of the bumbling replies, it was all part of the duty, and one that could be handled without much thought, so long as she steered the conversation in the right direction. 

Joseba reached into the passenger side of the Mercedes and slipped his hand inside the pocket of his discarded jacket.

The paper Ducados packet had a blue stripe, and with a sharp flick of his finger, a small trio of beige filters slid up through the torn off corner.

Not keen on talking to the other drivers he walks towards the iron railings of the nearby cemetery.

Rolling his thumb on the cheap lighter and sucking in the pungent smoke.

A keen player of pelota, his hands were rough and calloused, which made holding the cigarette look clumsy.

With the long drive back to his home in Guernica, it was looking like a long night. 

“Fucking stuck up Bankers” he cursed.

Isabelle, meanwhile was allowing her thoughts to drift. 

Drifting out of focus, she stared at each of the dinner guests one by one. The noise of their dull conversation muted, Isabelle imagined each one naked.

Blurred images with strange details, huge hairy moles, or scaly psoriasis, presented themselves in her imagination.

Invariably the journey would complete with a vision of the guests genitals, and this evening, amongst many, she had seen a pubic medusa, the writhing ball of mini snakes, belonging to the wife of the  Electricity Company Chairman, whilst he himself had presented a penis resembling a skinned monk fish tail.

The chunky man to her left was nudging her upper arm, and she turned in the snap of the illusion breaking. 

“would you like a glass of wine?’ he asks politely, realising that she was not participating in the conversation.

“Oh, oh yes OK” she hastily replies whist burying the image of a large razor clam.

“These functions must be a little boring for a young girl like you?”, he continues as he picks up the bottle with his strangely small chubby hands.

“Oh no” Isabelle beams out a large smile. “ It has been a long day and I am just a little tired. Please forgive me, what is it you do again?” 

“ I am just here on behalf of a workers cooperative”, as he loads their glasses.

“That sounds very interesting, I have heard many good things about your results.”

“Yes, its true, we have increased our turnover by nearly six percent this year, and enabled our workforce to grow by nearly the same level.”

Isabelle had already begun to flow down the bulge in his tightly done up shirt collar, and was scaling the heavily eucalyptus covered folds of the man’s chest.

“ Our output, increased, along with the size of my balls” he continued “ and my monkey has been protected along with our ejaculations in northern Germany.”

Isabelle’s eyes wandered allover the man.

Her bottom lip began to quiver slightly, and she felt a twitch, although invisible, in her left eye. 

“I like horses” she began, “I am hoping to buy a new one soon, but I need to convince daddy that I will look after it properly”.

“Oh really” said the chunky Industrialist, and before he could expand she continued. “ We used to keep horses when we lived out of town, and we all had a horse each. Mine was called Generalissimo, though I mostly called him Gemo, and he was a very stubborn horse that we could never easily catch.

My brothers had horses too, they were much more obedient, especially Miguel’s, it was little more than a pony, and had a long flowing main, and loved to eat apples, so he was nicknamed Beetle. Antonio did not ride his much, as he preferred models, so we did not keep his horse for long, though it was the most beautiful grey you had ever seen. I miss that horse so much’”

“Beetle?” the man bleated 

He was beginning to feel uncomfortable, so excused himself,  got up, and asked a waiter the direction of the the mens bathroom.

“Yes Beetle” she continued as he had stood, and then stopped to gaze around the table only seeing more than one female face intently staring in her direction.