But as the car eased away, her stare became fixed on the windows of Apartment 3 above the tapas bar: a woman had come onto the balcony. At this distance the details were hazy, but Charlotte could make out that she was tanned, wearing a black strappy sundress and her long curly dark hair was wild. Even 150 metres away, she looked sexy.

But as the car glided round the corner and out of sight, the last thing she saw was not the woman on the balcony – it was the baby she was bouncing on her hip.

Ronda, 10 July 1936

The snip of the scissors was the only sound to be heard as the dark lengths of hair fell into the white basin, feathering it like a nest. She kept her eyes on her reflection, working fast, not caring if it was level or neat – only that it was gone. What had taken years to grow halfway down her back was being undone in moments, and as the last cut fell she allowed herself the luxury of absorbing her new identity. She ran her hands quickly through the cropped cut, shaking it out and feeling the peculiar new lightness of her own head. It felt boyish and feathery through her fingers, like a baby bird’s down, and she was pleased to see there was nothing now to reveal who she was, or rather had been – her luxuriant hair left here not so much unceremoniously as pointedly, all the other trappings of her former life unclipped and pulled off and left in defiant tangled heaps on the mahogany bed.

With one final glance she met her own eyes, seeing the determination within them. She was going to have to find resources she had never needed before; she was going to have to be fast, strong and wily if she wanted to stay safe for there was danger outside these walls, yes – but it was still nothing to the threat that persisted within them.

Grabbing the swollen grain sack she had carefully packed with food – stolen over a week from the kitchens – she hurried to the window and looked out. The dark sky was still peppered with stars, only the faintest blade of light beginning to bleed up behind the distant hills. Throwing one leg over the sill, she took a moment to marvel in the freedom that came with wearing trousers (another steal, this time from Arlo’s room). She jumped like a cat onto the veranda of the porch, and carefully scaled down the bougainvillea trellis; she had done it numerous times as a child but as a full-grown woman she couldn’t be absolutely sure it would take her weight, and when her foot touched the parched soil she breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Without looking back, she broke into a sprint, heading for the cover of the cork oaks on the far side of the pasture. Leviatan was in there, somewhere, but she didn’t care – tonight she knew she could outrun him; she had something bigger than a two-tonne bull to escape. Her feet kicked up red dust, dirtying her clothes and legs, but she embraced it, for it was yet another small sign of the freedoms now afforded to her. She ran until the house was out of sight and her lungs were burning, keeping crouched down as she vaulted the estate wall. And as the moon slid behind a cloud, she slipped into the open countryside and the big wide world, leaving behind one life and stepping into the next.