‘. . . After everything that had passed between their families, at the very least he would have put the child up for adoption. But Franco’s government legalized changing the names of Republican orphans and children of prisoners; if Marina Mendoza was in a psychiatric hospital when she gave birth and he was adopted, she never would have found him again. Now I’ve just double-checked the paperwork – the hospital she was sent to was bombed and burnt down in ’38, the year after she was admitted; many of the inpatients were killed, but others fled and disappeared. If she was one of them, by taking Quincy’s name and not Esperanza’s, she protected her child and found a way to ensure her brother could never find her.’

Charlotte felt herself go cold. Carlos had said it himself, right there in that room. I never would have thought to look for that name.

She stared over at Marina, words running through her head. Omens. Clues. Both loved men we have tried to hate . . . This last week . . . Bringing it back to him . . . He’s long dead . . . We came into this world together.

She stiffened suddenly. They came into this world together and, it was implied—

‘Oh my God!’ The phone dropped from her hand as she began to run, limping badly but the adrenaline lifting her as it had in the bullring.

‘Charlotte, wait! What is it?’ Marina cried, panic suffusing her voice as she raced after her.

She limped up the stairs, not caring about the searing pain that shot through her with every step. ‘No! No-no- no!’ she cried, seeing the two orderlies sitting outside the room, leaning against the wall and scrolling on their phones. They had been sent out too? They looked up in alarm at the sound and sight of her.

‘What’s wrong?’ they asked as she tore past, throwing open the door so that it banged hard against the wall.

She felt the breath knocked out of her as she took in the sight on the bed. Marina was only a moment behind her and she screamed, her legs giving out as saw the growing red stain, the two pale frail bodies lying beside one another. Two letters in separate handwriting were propped on the side table, an all but empty bottle of pills tipped on the floor and a vivid red cut on each one’s wrists; the stained shark’s tooth was on the blanket, and their hands tightly clasped as the blood pooled between them.

They had come into this world together. And now they had left it together.

One blood.

Guadalajara, March 1937

She stared at him, the black eyes that were seared onto her soul – awake or dreaming, ever-present – burning back at her. ‘You’re alive,’ she whispered, her hand reaching out to touch his skin, to check he was real.

His flinch told her he was, the warrior more threatened by the tear than the spear. ‘I couldn’t die yet. Not until I found you again.’