‘Ssh, they have started,’ she said quietly, looking solemn.

Marina hurried in, trying to slip unnoticed at the back, but she saw Sindo’s quick gaze catch sight of her, noting her tardiness: her lack of commitment to the cause?

‘. . . grave escalation of atrocities. I have personally had sight of a letter in which the devil Queipo de Llano wrote, the executions of our brothers must proceed with greater energy . . .’

She looked over at the man talking. It was Sindo’s contact, Miguel Modesto. She knew him by sight and reputation, but that was enough; even Paloma called him a thug. A former blacksmith, he was tall and athletic with a high forehead and swept-back light-brown hair, a broken nose and bowed lips. Good-looking, some said, but tales of his savagery preceded him. He had been one of the men to lead the massacre at the Montana barracks in July and his appointment as chief interrogator for the Commissions of Investigation was scant cover for the kangaroo courts in which justice was merely a bit-part. Everyone knew about the sharp increase in ‘motorized crimes’ under his watch, in which Nationalist suspects were simply driven to the city outskirts and shot. If he had been a dangerous man before, he was even more threatening now that he was sanctioned with official powers. Was it good to have a man like him on their side? Certainly he was a dangerous enemy, but she had heard Paloma tell Sindo several times that he was an equally dangerous friend.

‘Greater energy?’ he repeated in disbelief. ‘What more can they do to us? We know that to prevent any rebellion, they are killing all prisoners, their wives and children too. We know what they do to our women that they allow to survive – violating them repeatedly, shaving off their hair, forcing them to ingest castor oil and then shaming them by making them parade through the towns as they soil themselves.’ He pointed a finger. ‘No! Do not look away. Hear my words. Feel them.’

Marina felt the tears bud in her eyes. Was this true or propaganda? But she had seen some of the women herself, shorn and trying to disguise themselves under shawls, arriving in the great waves of refugees flooding the city.

Her own ragged cut was already growing out, its shocking roughness softening into a messy style that now swung gently at her ears, though her neck was still bare; Marta had taken to brushing and styling it for her each morning, curling the ends under and pinning it in place by the temples. Unbeknownst to Marina at the time, it was her cut that had first caught Paloma’s eye in the crowd, assuming her to be one of the ‘unfortunate women’ caught and abused by fascist troops, and it had been many weeks before Marina had managed to convince them that she had unwittingly cut it herself by way of disguise.

‘Far from the worst being over, this is just the beginning. The columns are advancing and the repression is intensifying. In the north, Navarre and Toledo have fallen. In the east, Huesca has fallen. In the west, Coruña and Lugo, Salamanca and León have fallen. In the south, Cadiz, Huelva, Granada, Cordoba and Sevilla have fallen. Fallen! Our comrades annihilated.’