Leaving their mops with the fifty-eight others in the shed that had once been the school’s coal store, they began to walk back quickly to the apartment, Marta talking nineteen to the dozen: about the blister on her left index finger from holding the mop, a new hairstyle she had thought up herself, her date tomorrow night with the boy from the print shop . . .

Marina smiled as she listened, loving the mundanity of it all. The thing she had learnt about war was that it flipped everything into reverse: making heroes out of ordinary people, making small lives extraordinary, and turning the trivial into the epic. When every day was a fight for survival and just living to see the sun both rise and set again was a victory in itself, these tiny day-to- day details assumed greater importance than they could ever achieve during peacetime.

They were almost home and Marta had moved on to bemoaning the prospect of the meeting in the apartment. It wasn’t that her commitment to the cause was waning but all she wanted to do, she said, was to ‘fall on the bed and sleep for a week’.

She stopped suddenly, looking shocked. ‘Oh! Oh no.’

‘What is it?’ Marina asked, feeling an immediate ripple of fear. Danger was only ever a heartbeat away these days: the muzzle of a gun pointing from a window; a mortar whistling through the sky.

‘I saw old Lopez earlier. He has got some tomatoes.’

‘Fresh tomatoes?’ Marina repeated, her mouth beginning to water.

Marta nodded. ‘He promised to hold some for me.’

‘But how did they get past the blockade?’ Marina asked, her tummy giving a rumble for good measure.

Marta shrugged.

Food was growing harder and harder to come by. The Nationalists’ siege meant supplies from the country increasingly couldn’t get past the lines. Many Madrilenos had already packed up their families and relocated to the Valencian coast in anticipation of a further assault on the capital. The city was steadily shutting down and looting was beginning to be commonplace.

Marina looked left and right. The apartment was another quarter-mile to their right. ‘But it’s in the opposite direction and we’re already late for the meeting.’

‘I know, but . . .’ Marta’s eyes brightened. ‘Fresh tomatoes, Marina.’

Marina hesitated – to her stomach they were more urgently needed even than guns. ‘Okay, fine, let’s go. But we must run.’

‘No. We can’t both be late. Explain for me. I’ll hurry.’

‘But—’

‘It’s fine. I won’t be long!’ She was already tearing away. Marina thought she looked like she had lost weight. Perhaps they all had. Their days were long: working for the cause through the daylight hours and then keeping the team going after dark – cooking, washing and, increasingly, nursing comrades with injuries.

She ran the rest of the way home and let herself into the apartment building, giving the special knock at the door.

Luciana let her in.

‘Marta’s just getting some tomatoes. She’ll be ten minutes.’