‘So you think Jack and Marina eloped together,’ Charlotte said, seeing how his eyes flashed dangerously at her use of the ‘e’ word. ‘They left Ronda and came to Madrid?’

‘That’s what I’m not sure about. I don’t think he can have been the catalyst for her leaving – the dates don’t fit. We know Quincy didn’t arrive in Spain till autumn of ’36 but your grandmother seems to have left the area just before that, in the summer. The last time she was seen publicly here was at the grand fiesta I mentioned. There’s a notice in the local paper at that time speculating that she had gone missing, even rumours she had been kidnapped – this was big bandit country back then. But no ransom was ever demanded and the family made no public comment; war broke out literally a week later so it was forgotten, replaced by much bigger stories – the military campaign was waged in the countryside to begin with and the fascists were merciless: no prisoners of war were taken, there were no wounded. It was a purge. Every man was killed.’ He looked at Marina again, trying to find a silver lining. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if your grandmother left because she truly supported the Republican cause, rather than because she fell in love. If she did, then she almost certainly saved her own life by leaving when she did – the fate of Republican women was almost worse than for the men. Dying was often preferable.’

‘How?’ Marina asked, looking dumbfounded.

He looked down at the table before looking back again. ‘Some were shot. Most were raped. Gang-raped to death. Their heads were shaved. Humiliated by being forced to drink castor oil and then marched around the villages as they lost control of their bowels.’

Marina slapped her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes, trying to push his words away. ‘How do we not know about any of this?’ she asked finally in a quiet voice.

Nathan shot her a sympathetic look. ‘Because Franco won and ruled for another thirty years. And history is always written by the victors.’ Charlotte looked up at his choice of words. ‘The history he saw to it was written, was carefully edited and . . . sanitized to the fascists’ benefit. The history you have been passed down is only one tiny perspective of how it really happened, written through a narrow, reductive lens. We know some of the truth but not all of it. The full story falls down into cracks we could never know to search. We never get to know everything about a story, even if we’re there ourselves.’

Charlotte looked up at his words. He was staring at her, remembering too – she could see it in his eyes. That tutorial. Their first night . . .

She felt the current surge between them again. It was undeniable – and yet impossible too. She saw it all in his face: the longing. The conflict. The pain.