The women stopped talking suddenly and stared along the street. Barbara saw a couple of horse-drawn carts coming towards them. As they passed she smelt the fresh tarry paint and saw that they contained little white coffins, for children whose souls had not yet been soiled, the Catholic practice living on. The women stared at them, bleakly and silently. One made the sign of the cross, then began to weep.

‘People are at the end of their tether,’ Barbara said. ‘They can’t take much more. All the death!’ She burst out crying too, there in the street. Bernie put his arm round her but she shrugged him off. ‘I see you in a coffin! You!’

He held her at arm’s length and looked into her eyes. ‘If Franco takes Madrid there’ll be a massacre. I won’t abandon them. I won’t!’

CHRISTMAS DAY CAME. They ate a greasy mutton stew in Barbara’s flat, then went upstairs to bed. They lay in each other’s arms and talked.

‘This isn’t the Christmas I expected,’ Barbara said. ‘I thought I’d be in Birmingham, going with Mum and Dad to visit my sister and her family. I always get restless after a couple of days, I want to get away.’

He held her tight. ‘How did they make you think so badly of yourself?’

‘I don’t know. It just happened.’

‘You should be angry.’

‘They could never understand why I went to work for the Red Cross.’ She ran a finger over his chest. ‘They’d have liked to see me married with children, like Carol.’

‘Would you like children?’

‘Only when there are no wars any more.’

Bernie lit cigarettes for them, fumbling in the dark. His face was serious in the red glow. ‘I’m a disappointment to my parents. They think I’ve thrown away everything Rookwood offered. I wish I’d never won that bloody scholarship.’

‘Didn’t you get anything out of school?’

He laughed bitterly. ‘Like Caliban said, they taught me language, so I know how to swear.’

She found his heart and laid her hand there, feeling the soft thump-thump.

‘Perhaps that’s what drew us together. Two disappointments.’ She paused. ‘You believe in fate, Bernie, don’t you?’

‘No. Historical destiny.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘You can influence destiny, you can hamper it or hurry it forward. You can’t do anything to change fate.’

‘I wish my destiny could be with you.’

She felt his chest rise and fall sharply as he took a deep breath. ‘Barbara.’

‘What?’

‘You know I’m nearly fit again. In a couple of weeks they’re sending me to the new training camp at Albacete. They told me yesterday.’

‘Oh God.’ Her heart sank.

‘I’m sorry. I was waiting for the right moment but there isn’t one, is there?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t think I really cared if I lived before, but I do now. Now that I’m going back.’

FOR TWO WEEKS after he left she had no news. She went to work and stumbled through the day, but when she returned to the flat and he wasn’t there the silence seemed to echo as though he was dead already.

In the first week of February news came of a Fascist offensive to the south of Madrid. They were aiming to sweep round and cut the capital off completely, but they were held at the Jarama river. The radio and newspapers spoke of a heroic defence, Franco’s advance checked before it had really begun. The International Brigades were prominent in the fighting. They said there were heavy casualties.

Every morning before work Barbara went to army headquarters in the Puerta del Sol. At first the staff were suspicious, but when she came a second day and a third they were kind to her. She had let herself go, she was losing weight and there were dark rings under her eyes, her pain visible to all.

The headquarters was chaotic, uniformed clerks running around clutching papers, telephones ringing everywhere. Barbara wondered whether some of those phone lines connected with the front, if there might be a connection between one of those buzzing rings and the place where Bernie was now. She did that all the time now, made connections in her head: the same sun shines down on us both, the same moon, I hold a book that he held, put a fork in my mouth that he put in his …

There was serious fighting in the second and third week of February, but still she had no news. She had had no letters, either, but they told her communications were difficult. Towards the end of February the fighting lessened, turned into another stalemate. Barbara hoped news might start coming through now.

She heard on the last day of February, a cold early spring day. She had come to HQ before work as usual and this time a uniformed clerk asked her to wait in a side room. She knew at once it was bad news. She sat in a shabby little office with a desk and typewriter and a portrait of Stalin on the wall. She thought, irrelevantly, how does he keep that big moustache in order?

The door opened and a man in captain’s uniform came in. There was a paper in his hand and his face was sombre. Barbara felt a chill run through her, as though she had fallen through ice into dark water. She didn’t get up to shake hands, just sat there.

‘Miss Clare. Good afternoon. I hear you have come here many times.’

‘Yes. For news.’ She gulped. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

The officer raised a hand. ‘We do not know for sure. Not for sure. But he is on the list of those missing believed killed. The British Battalion was in heavy fighting on the thirteenth.’

‘Missing believed killed,’ she said flatly. ‘I know what that means. You just haven’t found a body.’

He didn’t answer, just inclined his head.

‘They fought magnificently. They held back the Fascist advance on their own for two days.’ He paused. ‘Many could not be identified.’

Barbara felt herself fall from the chair. As she collapsed to the floor she started weeping uncontrollably, pushing herself into the floorboards because under them was the earth, the earth where Bernie was buried now.

THE RITZ DINING ROOM was lit by sparkling chandeliers. Harry took his seat at the long dining table reserved for the embassy staff. Tolhurst sat next to him; on his other side, Goach, the old man who had instructed him in protocol, settled carefully into his chair. He was bald, with a drooping white moustache and a soft voice, and wore a monocle on a long black thread. The collar of his dinner jacket was spotted with dandruff.

Harry’s wing collar chafed at his neck as he looked round the table; two dozen embassy staff had come to show the flag. At the head of the table Hoare sat with his wife, Lady Maud, a large plain woman. Hillgarth was on Hoare’s other side, his naval uniform bright with medals.

Harry had reported back to Hillgarth after his meeting with Sandy. Tolhurst had been there too. Hillgarth had been pleased with his progress, especially with the invitation to dinner, and intrigued to learn about Barbara.

‘See if you can get him to talk more about his business,’ Hillgarth had said. ‘You don’t know who the other guests are going to be?’

‘No. I didn’t ask. Didn’t want to press too closely.’

Hillgarth nodded. ‘Quite right. What about his girly, could she be in on his plans?’

‘I don’t know.’ Harry frowned.

‘You were just friends?’ Hillgarth interjected sharply.

‘Yes, sir. It’s just, I don’t want to involve her unless I have to. But I see it might be necessary,’ he added. ‘It’s odd, their getting together – Sandy didn’t get on with Bernie.’

‘Wonder if he went after the girly because she was his enemy’s girlfriend?’ Tolhurst mused.

‘I don’t know.’ Harry shook his head. ‘When I knew Sandy he was still a boy, really. He’s changed. Everything about him seemed contrived, showy. Except for his being pleased to see me, that was real.’ He frowned again.

‘Use that.’ Hillgarth looked at Harry seriously. ‘What you’re doing is important. This gold business fits into a bigger picture, the question of how we handle the regime. It matters a lot.’