'Ethel Jurado had approached the group to ask for help,' Marcos Recaj tells us in this novel, 'and we gave her our unconditional support. Her need for help was so great, her situation so precarious that, without planning to, perhaps unconsciously, Ethel came into our lives and took them over, to the point where for a period everything we did and experienced centred around her tragic personality. And without us being aware of it she changed our lives, mine at least, for ever. If we'd really been brave we would simply have called the police, as Laura suggested, but we didn't; we performed the absurd role of friends, therapists and saviours, with no experience at all, not knowing how to act or what repercussions this might have in our lives, and that's how it was.'