A beer later, she got up the courage to pose the question: ‘Is… was Lucia your girlfriend?’

Tomas was not at all put out. ‘She was once.’

To Laure’s distress, her hand holding the glass began to shake. ‘Oh.’

He rescued the glass and its contents and wedged it down into the grass. ‘I thought it was only films that were black and white,’ he said, and she recognized a reproof. ‘Lucia and I have a long history. We grew up in the same area of the city. Both sets of parents have suffered. We owe each other a lot and, unless our dear leaders decide to shut us up in prison, we will know each other for the rest of our lives.’

‘Did she believe Tomas? She all but told me that you were getting married next year and I should bugger off. She looked like she meant it.’ Laure’s tooth probed at her bottom lip. ‘She looked like she still wanted you.’

‘Did she now?’ He was amused. ‘Lucia has other plans.’ He took up a lock of hair, bent over and kissed it. ‘But you must remember you will go.’

‘Christ,’ she said, a word that never passed her lips but, in her agony, it arrived.

He peered into Laure’s face and what he saw checked him. ‘Laure, Laure, don’t look like that. What did you expect?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s impossible,’ he pointed out. ‘You can’t stay here.’

She could see the situation from Tomas’s point of view. From all points of view. A well-nourished English girl parachutes into a country that has been struggling with deprivation and lives under a tyranny that is slyly dressed up as paradise. A rock musician fancies her. Maybe something more? But she, on the other hand, is poleaxed by her feelings. Everyone knows, and she reluctantly and late to the party, that her love affair is only a summer’s lease. They know, as she knows, that when she leaves, it will be as though she had slipped into the river and the waters had closed over her head.

They will forget. She won’t.

She felt herself flush. ‘Tomas, I’m the outsider. Of course. But it doesn’t make you and me any less important. You must see that. Understand. Deep down understand.’

She tried to scramble upright but he pressed her back onto the grass.

‘It hurts me too,’ he said. ‘Very much.’

‘If you say you feel… strongly about me, if you say you love me.’

‘You’ll be in my songs. That I promise.’ He took one of her hands in his and stroked it. ‘Don’t spoil it, Laure. We have too much sadness in this country. Accept what we have for what it is. I love you very much. You are, remember, a woman from the dreams. A lioness from the African plains.’

‘From Yorkshire, actually.’