Marina looked down, plucking at a loose thread on the duvet. ‘I should probably go check on her,’ she said evasively, protectively. If she felt betrayed by her grandmother’s actions, she wasn’t prepared to admit to it yet. ‘She’s been sleeping a long time. I have to watch her or she won’t be able to sleep tonight.’

‘But—’

Marina jumped off the bed with a focus that said the conversation was over, and still in her dressing gown, a tattoo of a butterfly evident on her bare left ankle, she walked out of the room and into the one next door.

Disappointed to have been rebuffed, Charlotte followed at a distance, hesitantly putting her head round the door once she heard their voices.

‘Good afternoon,’ she smiled, stepping into a room identical to next door, only here the bed was draped with grass-green linen. Señora Quincy was lying on top of the bed, pillows plumped around her. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Just wonderful,’ the old woman smiled back. ‘I’ve had the most wonderful sleep.’

‘All that time, Abuela?’ Marina chided. ‘But I’ve been gone for three hours!’

‘The journey wore me out. I needed the rest. I am an old woman, remember.’

Charlotte frowned as Marina fussed over her. ‘You’ll never sleep tonight,’ she tutted, rearranging the pillows for her.

‘Then perhaps I’ll stay up past my bedtime,’ her grandmother chuckled, her eyes flashing up to Charlotte’s. She looked bright. Lighter somehow.

Charlotte smiled back but it was forced. Señora Quincy was not the frail, dotty old lady she might like others to believe. She had not slept for three hours straight; Charlotte had seen her with her own eyes heading straight for the jacaranda tree. And perhaps there was a simple reason for it – a long-forgotten childhood relic now reclaimed. But if it was innocent enough, it begged one equally simple question: why lie about it?

Chapter Sixteen

Madrid, 19 July 1936

She was part of the crowd, a single speck in the sea of bodies gathered up and down the length of the boulevard. There were more people than she had ever seen, far more than she could ever count, and she felt wonderfully insignificant and anonymous for the first time in her life. It wasn’t just her image that had changed, with her oversized men’s clothes and roughly chopped, boy-cut hair; she had given herself a new name too: Marquez, borrowed from her housemaid. Mendoza carried less social heft in Madrid than in Andalusia but she was taking no chances – not only did she need to stay hidden from the people her family would send looking for her, she also wanted to be judged from now on by her values and intellect, not her pedigree.

She let the tide gather her up and spirit her along towards the plaza, the fervour of the crowd’s shouts matching the screams that had raged in her heart ever since that day in the stable almost three weeks earlier. Giant speakers had been positioned in front of the Cortes and the crowd swarmed, waiting for the distinctive voice that always put a shape to their thoughts and dreams; her arm joined theirs, collectively punching the sky, as they shuffled ever onwards, some people standing atop cars or climbing on the street lights, making their voices heard and their might felt as they chanted they would rather die on their feet than live on their knees.