‘Yes?’ she asked. Luciana was filing her nails, a book open on Paloma’s lap.

‘Where’s Marta?’

Marta? Marina looked at them both. In the shock of dealing with Modesto’s attentions and Santi’s death, she had forgotten all about her. ‘She went to get fresh tomatoes,’ she said quietly, even as a sudden cold dread replaced the fracture in her heart. ‘Why? Hasn’t she come back yet?’

Luciana stopped filing. Paloma sat up straighter. ‘No. She hasn’t come back.’

Chapter Twenty

Ronda, July 2018

‘They’re just in there, señora,’ the driver said, pointing to the vast, over-scaled wooden double doors. ‘I will take your bag back to the house for you.’

She stared out blankly. ‘. . . Thank you.’

She got out of the car and stood on the cobbles for a moment, looking up at the round building. A magnificent bronze sculpture of a bull dominated the courtyard, the curved walls a dazzling white in the ferocious sunlight. She pulled on her wide-brimmed straw sunhat and walked towards it, making for the shadows the first chance she got. It must have been thirty-five degrees today.

‘I’m sorry, we are closed for a private tour,’ the ticket clerk said as she approached.

‘I’m part of the Mendoza party.’ Her voice was flat and toneless.

He bowed his head in apology. ‘They are in the stadium, señora. Through the doors and up the stairs to the right.’

It was hard to concentrate. She wasn’t quite sure why she was here, only . . . there hadn’t seemed to be anything else to do. ‘Thank you.’

She stepped through the inset door into the outer courtyard that ringed the arena, her gaze blankly riding up the thick curved walls. A horse was tethered at the opposite end, drinking from a trough. Behind it was a series of low buildings with various stairways leading onto roof terraces, where several people were working in unison and operating some sort of mechanism out of sight. Behind them was a much larger, longer building with a sloping roof, and through the windows she could see the glitter of several chandeliers, a voice shouting out instructions from within. The royal riding school? It was famous throughout Spain.

But there were other voices calling out, one she recognized much closer to hand. She turned right and stepped through another set of doors into the outer arc of the stadium itself. On either side, left and right, steps rose up in steady flights along the back wall, the timbers of the shallow roof which shaded the spectator stands looking like the gills of a mushroom from here. She went to climb the steps when she heard the voice again. It was Marina’s.

She stepped forward instead and pushed up the latch of a vast wooden door in front of her; it led to a circular pathway that ran between the seating stands and the perimeter of the bullring. A wooden gate was closed and she opened it, her eyes up as she took in the sight of the dramatic colonnaded arches encircling the amphitheatre. She had never seen anything like it before. Of course, the generic image was familiar from old films, spaghetti westerns and Hemingway novels, but in the flesh . . . the sheer scale of it was impressive. She tried to imagine what it must have been like in days gone by, filled to capacity, the spectacle of colour, the pomp . . .