‘Wasn’t Prysor handsome when he was young?’ she said, pointing him out to Adrian.

‘Hmm… His brother was pretty cute too; was he the best man?’ Adrian asked.

Jane looked at the man he was pointing to:

‘Oh… That’s Rubén Ibarruri; he was their best man. It’s funny, until you mentioned it I never realised how much alike they were. Look Sam…’ she said, passing the photograph to him.

Adrian poured the contents of another envelope onto the hearthrug:

‘These are old club membership cards going back years and… Cor… Look at this. A blood donor book with little stamps inside it for every donation he made; he was ‘AB’. What are you Sam?’

Jane made a low moan and pushed her fingers through her hair.

‘Is this too much for you Jane?’ Sam asked. ‘Would you rather leave it until tomorrow?’

‘I’m ‘O’,’ Jane said quietly; ‘my blood group is ‘O’’.

‘No Jane. Not if dad was ‘AB’. You can’t be Group ‘O’,’ Sam corrected her.

‘I’m ‘O’,’ she said determinedly. ‘Margaret knew it all along. She told me, you know, the second time I met her. I thought she was just being mischievous; that twenty years in jail had made her bitter. She told me I was Rubén Ibarruri’s daughter… But honestly, I didn’t want the proof of it. Prysor was my dad. But here we have it; all the proof we need.’

She picked up the little book filled with stamps, and she wept. Both Sam and Adrian held her for a long time.

Much later, after they’d drunk a few glasses of Prysor’s Laphroaig, Adrian said:

‘None of this really makes sense to me. Why did Margaret kill Rubén Ibarruri if they were lovers and she knew him to be your father?’

‘He took another lover,’ Jane said.

‘God… That’s a bit over the top, isn’t it?’ Adrian quizzed. ‘I mean, killing him just because he found another woman. She was married after all… He was only doing to her what she was doing to Prysor.’

‘Rubén’s new lover was a man and that made Margaret angry as well as jealous.’

And Sam heard Prysor calling out for Rubén: Mis ojos de terciopelo.

The Magenta Silk Thread

Mrs Amelia Roberts had waited on the platform for the eight eighteen to Shrewsbury for a good ten minutes before the train pulled in. The wind, which came right through the town off Cardigan Bay, carried a light drizzle, and in the fifteen-minute walk to the station from Prince of Wales Crescent it had left her feeling chilled; through her Aquascutum raincoat and navy Viyella suit she felt the dampness niggle the rheumatic in her hip. She’d thought of phoning for a taxi when she’d pulled back the heavy velvet curtains of the front sitting-room bay window and seen the overcast seascape, but Cader Cabs had let her down twice before. Run by a local boy, too. It was a shame he was so unreliable; with that rough crowd from the Midlands moving in and buying up everything, she liked to support the few locals still in business, but… While she was generous enough to give people the opportunity to make amends, no one ever got a third chance with Mrs Amelia Roberts.