Defeat was not an option. The atrocities committed by the Army of Africa were spreading word-of- mouth up through the country in a metaphorical shudder of revulsion, as refugees fleeing the countryside for the safety of the cities brought their tales of horror with them. It was already clear this was no ordinary war. The usual codes of conduct did not apply: there were no casualties left behind, no prisoners taken. Utter annihilation of the Republic was the aim, sending out one very clear and simple message: this was a purge; every red would die.

As a regular in the People’s Army, she had not yet killed, but she knew the moment was coming – it was all that anyone ever talked about in the shops, the cafes and on the wireless: the atrocities, the horror, the capture and fall of villages, towns, whole provinces . . . In the early weeks of arriving in Madrid, her role had been primarily educational, helping Luciana and Marta to distribute the leaflets and recruit numbers to their cause; but as the weeks wore on and the fascists’ forces marched onwards and inwards, towards Madrid, the tone had changed, the sense of urgency. Propaganda wasn’t enough. Action was needed. Defence.

Paloma, as their figurehead and speaker, drew widespread admiration as well as crowds with her bold rhetoric and charisma – all she needed was someone’s attention for two minutes and they were sold. Marina knew now that she too had been one of her converts, their accidental bumping into one another in the crowd, nothing of the sort. But Marina counted herself lucky to have been swept up. Her comrade and leader was gaining a spreading fame through the city, for the Republic’s supporters were splintered and fractured, the socialist, anarchist and communist factions all competing against each other for similar goals. Even in their own home, there were divisions. Paloma and Marta identified with the anarchists’ cause, Sindo with the communists, and Ivan and Luciana with the socialists. But Paloma was increasingly seen as a consolidating figure, bringing the Left causes together under her umbrella, and there was strength in unity, surely?

Marina wasn’t entirely sure which political position she took. The nihilism of the anarchists or the comradeship of the communists? Both or neither? She adopted their ideas, believing in some elements of each, but her real spur was not political faith but vengeance. The fire that burned within her raged at both Left and Right, at her family and Santi’s, for they had destroyed one another, each side taking from the other something irreplaceable, and she – caught in the middle – had suffered twice over.

She wished she had the certainty of Paloma’s convictions. Luciana had told her one afternoon, as they’d been printing the latest batch of propaganda material, that Paloma – smuggled recently over the French border in an apple truck on a covert mission to get weapons – had come back into Spain by jumping out of a plane over Catalonia with the machine guns strapped to her body. For Marina, it had taken everything in her merely to leave, to pick a side, and she knew she could never match the passion of the political zealot. Ideology was pure and uncomplicated. Life was not.