Unlike the other girls, Marina had nothing on her ‘bedside table’: not a photograph of her family or beau, nor even a hairbrush. She had taken only food with her and a kitchen knife, just enough to keep her safe and alive on the journey to the capital. But beneath it, innocuous and seemingly irrelevant if anyone should chance upon it, was an irregularly heart-shaped pebble. She had found it in the pocket of the old trousers she had stolen from Arlo the night she escaped and it had become her last remaining tie to him, to the land she had once called home, to La Ventilla, to Santi: they were all interconnected, joined together by a shared childhood. She rubbed the stone, remembering the day she had stolen orchard oranges for Santi, when they had dangled happily in the oaks and watched the cork harvest come in, the same day they had found the dead bull in the field and Señor Martin had whipped him till he bled, the same day Arlo had saved her from their father’s wrath but could not save her friend.

She held the stone now, recalling how the joyous and horrific memories of that day intermingled, inseparable from one another and all conjoined by the mere few minutes that separated them. There had been no such thing as a good day or a bad day back then. Life had been marbled, a constant mix of both, and she had longed for the purity of a clear path. But now that she was on it, was it any better? She had picked her side but every day here was unremittingly bad, and if Miguel Modesto was to be believed and his words hadn’t just been propaganda – albeit their own – then they were going to grow worse. She was always hungry, barely slept, cooking and cleaning for the team, working for the cause from the moment she woke till she dropped back down here last thing at night.

What did the protection of a man like him actually mean? A full belly and a soft bed? A day to walk in the park and see grass and trees again? Was all that worth it against what Paloma warned, the unmentionable her mother had never discussed with her but which hung like a mist from almost every man she met?

And which man could she trust anyway? Why was he any more of a monster than her father, her eldest brothers, Santi. What made him any worse than them?

Santi.

He was dead. He was dead. When would it sound true? How many times did she have to say it to believe it?

‘Marina?’

She looked up with a start, realizing she was rocking, the pebble in her hand squeezed tightly in her palm. Had she betrayed herself? Paloma’s voice was questioning, there was scrutiny in the word. With effort, she pushed a stillness through her limbs and slid the pebble under the edge of the box again. She looked up, hoping she looked careless and carefree, that her face wasn’t overwritten with the spasms of pain wracking her body like thunderbolts.