He was quiet for a moment before looking back at Marina. ‘There’s a lot that still doesn’t make sense. Your grandmother doesn’t appear to have met Jack in Ronda, yet Felipo Mendoza and his sons were murdered by him in December 1936, even though we know he had already left for Madrid by then – there was simply no way he could have still been in the area and not been caught in the reprisals in the bullring. But, for Quincy to come back here from Madrid at that time would have been incredibly risky. The capital was under siege by then and Franco’s forces had surrounded the city, so crossing the Nationalist lines would have been very, very dangerous. He risked his own life to take theirs and that means it has to have been personal, it wasn’t just war. Something else must have happened between them that we don’t know about yet.’

Marina stared at him. ‘I can’t believe this is my grandmother we’re talking about. That this was her life,’ she said. ‘How have you even been able to find out all this?’

‘It’s my job to know where to look, but I’m working from old military records, newspapers, civic photographs, church records, ledgers, files – but there’s only so much that they will reveal. Like I said, the full truth falls down the cracks; there are some things only your grandmother will ever know and which only she can tell.’ He looked at her closely. ‘Do you feel you’d be able to bring it up with her, now that you have some background?’

‘I don’t know. She is always so adamant whenever I’ve tried.’

‘But that was before you knew this. If she does feel guilty or ashamed of what her actions meant for her family – and we do know that her husband murdered them – then that may be why she doesn’t feel she can explain them to you. But if you show her you already know, that perhaps you even understand . . .’

‘Well, I guess I could always try,’ Marina agreed, staring into her coffee sadly. ‘After all, we can’t help who we fall in love with, right?’

Chapter Twenty-One

Madrid, February 1937

Once, the kitchen had been a place from which to steal, small hands swiping strips of iberico ham as they coursed through in planned lightning raids. Once, the kitchen had been a place of refuge from their father when his temper saw him marching through the house, a stick in his hand, never thinking to check the staff areas for them. Once, the kitchen had been a place of comfort and homely aromas when their mother was at parties in the capital. But now, with the siege in full effect, it was the hub of war, the place where they made bombs.

Marina was boiling up the condensed milk, staring into the frothing whiteness as she stirred. Luciana stood beside her, measuring out the nails like she was sifting flour for a cake, crystals and rocks heaped in buckets beside her; the dynamite was kept in the pantry, away from the heat and any ignition sources. They made a good team: efficient, calm, dextrous, though they didn’t talk much; there didn’t seem to be much to say these days anyway, conversation had become transduced from a means of connecting with people to merely communicating ways to stay alive.