Angela Bloodworth

Angela Bloodworth is an English woman who, with her husband Roger, runs a bed and breakfast in Spain. She first encounters Driss alone at a gas station, then offers him food and shelter when he has no papers and nowhere safe to stay. Her generosity develops into a working arrangement and a measure of companionship, but Driss ultimately robs and murders her. Through Angela, the narrative makes hospitality tangible while showing how Driss’s calculations gradually recast a person who helped him as an obstacle to his plans.

Identity and First Encounter

At four in the morning, Angela is fueling her car at a self-service gas station near San Martín. Driss has arrived on foot and watches before approaching; he assumes she is alone, and initially regards her through a suspicious, judgmental assessment of her appearance. When she releases the pump and speaks to him, he realizes she is English. They communicate in French, a shared language that allows the encounter to move beyond his few words of Spanish and her first cautious assessment of the stranger.

Angela introduces herself as the owner, with Roger, of a bed and breakfast on a hill outside the village. She asks where Driss intends to stay and recognizes that sitting at the station is not a viable option. Her offer of a ride and a meal is practical as well as compassionate: she warns that someone without papers may be stopped on the road and invites him up for soup. Driss, meanwhile, recognizes that he could take advantage of her trust, including by taking her car, but does not do so at this point. The imbalance between her open assistance and his awareness of possible theft is present from the beginning.

Shelter, Work, and Daily Life

The Bloodworths’ home is a walled farmhouse at the summit of a hill, surrounded by commercial greenhouses and gardens. Angela takes Driss through the house to the kitchen, serves him gazpacho, and arranges dry clothes, flip-flops, bedding, and a small room in the guest wing. She gives him a key but tells him not to go out onto the road alone until she has spoken with Roger. Her welcome is therefore generous but not without boundaries: she is responsible for his immediate safety while also making clear that decisions about his stay belong to the household.

Roger is asleep when Driss arrives, so Angela postpones explaining the situation to him until morning. She nevertheless gives Driss a place to sleep and food that night, and the couple subsequently employ him. Driss tends their garden faithfully for four months, a period in which his practical labor becomes important to the bed-and-breakfast business. Roger later tells him that he has saved the business and says he cannot see how they could replace him. The acknowledgment matters to Driss, who receives it as recognition after a long period of patience and work.

Daily life brings Angela and Roger into repeated contact with Driss. Roger walks with him in the mornings and would like him to teach him Arabic. At home, Driss plays chess with Roger, who consistently beats him, while Angela prepares dinner. Their meals, music, fruit, and conversation offer Driss a calm domestic life unlike the insecurity he associates with his earlier circumstances. Yet his account also reveals a persistent suspicion: he wonders whether the Bloodworths’ warmth is genuine and whether they are Christian or godless. His affection for them grows without erasing the distrust through which he interprets their kindness.

Growing Intimacy and Driss’s Plans

Angela and Driss’s relationship shifts when Roger leaves for England to attend to business affairs. Before going, Roger asks Driss to look after Angela and says that they will discuss Driss’s plan to go to Paris when he returns. Driss is moved by the trust and by the prospect that the couple might help him. The request also changes the household’s immediate arrangement: for a time, Angela and Driss work together without Roger present.

After Roger’s departure, Angela and Driss plant a new bed of sunflowers. Their time in the garden is followed by tea and raisin scones, and their conversation becomes more personal. Angela explains that the business is not doing as well as they had hoped. Fewer tourists are coming to the marina at Sotogrande, and Roger has gone to England to raise more money from his family; it will take months for that money to arrive. Driss hears this information as an opening. The same exchange that gives Angela room to speak candidly about financial difficulty prompts him to decide that he must act before Roger returns.

The Safe and the Betrayal

Driss asks Angela about the safe, presenting his curiosity as an attempt to understand how Roger opens it. The request is not an innocent question: he has watched Roger and is seeking access to the money. When Angela resists his demands, Driss forces her to disclose the combination by threatening her with a household knife. He then takes the money. This is the decisive reversal in their relationship: the person who gave him shelter and entrusted him with work becomes the target of a planned theft.

After taking the money, Driss has no workable escape plan. He realizes that leaving the house at night could bring an immediate call to the police, while reaching the road would require time and a chance to find transport. He considers killing Angela as a way to remove the risk of being identified. The narrative identifies the outcome as her murder, making clear that the betrayal does not end with the robbery. Her earlier hospitality, the couple’s reliance on her labor, and the trust Roger explicitly placed in Driss all sharpen the contrast between the household’s welcome and the violence of his final decision.

Narrative Significance

Angela is presented largely through Driss’s perspective, and that perspective changes in moral significance over time. At first he notices her appearance, her clothing, and the possibility of taking her car; later he benefits from the home, meals, clothes, and employment she provides. He recognizes the Bloodworths’ calmness and feels affection for them, yet continues to classify them through his suspicion of unbelievers. These conflicting responses do not excuse his actions. They show how he can experience care and still subordinate the people offering it to his own plans.

The household’s material details mark the trust that Driss violates: a guest-room key, the garden he tends, Roger’s request that he look after Angela, and the safe inside a kitchen cabinet among ordinary household things. Angela’s role is not simply that of a benefactor who appears briefly; she gives Driss a sustained place in the household and participates in the work of keeping its business going. Her fate turns that reciprocal arrangement into a stark account of vulnerability: the intimacy and dependence built through everyday routines cannot protect her once Driss decides to treat her confidence as a resource to exploit.