‘Well I’m glad.’ She forced a smile, hoping he wouldn’t misread it as something she didn’t intend. ‘It is an area of the city I like very much. It is good it belongs to us once again.’

‘Then we should walk there some time. Perhaps when the flowers come into bud.’

Marina nodded, although she couldn’t imagine anything flowering in the city ever again; corpses were more numerous than flowers these days, the fetid stench of death overpowering the delicate aroma of jasmine and oleander. ‘I’d better help Luciana with dinner,’ she said quickly, turning away and feeling how his eyes followed after her. She saw Ivan and Luciana watching him watching her too. Were they threatened by his interest in her, or was it her they were worried for?

‘Miguel, come – the papers I mentioned are through here,’ Sindo said, leading him out of the kitchen.

Wordlessly, Luciana pushed the bowl of onions her way; Marina began chopping, wishing Paloma was still here. There had been safety creeping about in her shadow, but now she was doing what she had been built for – fighting on the front line – and Marina was left blinking in the glare of a spotlight, hopelessly exposed.

Paloma had returned to the apartment only twice in the three months since she’d left – the first in the dead of night, between operations, staying only for thirty-six hours and sleeping for thirty-two hours of that. The second time, she had returned injured, a flesh wound in her arm needing medical attention before an infection in it grew worse. Luciana had doused it with iodine and as Paloma endured the stinging agony, she tried to pass the time telling them about the regiment’s exploits; they were working closely with a small unit called Hijos de la Noche who specialized in nocturnal exploits, sabotaging operations behind Nationalist lines, and led by an American captain, Jack Quincy, who had been attached to the unit from the International Brigade.

Each time, Marina had sat with her for as long as she could, revelling in the daring of their exploits and wishing she too could believe in something so passionately she was prepared to die for it. But sometimes she wondered if perhaps a part of her – the vital part – had already died, for it was becoming increasingly hard to feel; so much of her existence was concerned with surviving – and having to fight to survive – that ironically any joy in living seemed to have disappeared altogether. She couldn’t remember when she had last laughed or smiled even, and hunger, tiredness and fear were her constant companions.

Had she made a terrible mistake coming here? Wasn’t life continuing as it always had for her family? She didn’t have to be living in this way. She could be safe. Protected. The Nationalists had control of Andalusia, the power balance remaining in the hands of her father and his friends; after a brief tussle with the reds, nothing had changed for them. Whilst the rest of the country struggled and fought, Left against Right, socialist against Nationalist, the battle was already won there, the status quo re-established. Santi’s uprising had been quashed and he was dead.