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By Root 342 0

ink. Skimming the other pages, actively looking for familiar personal words, she found nothing more. She carefully closed the notepad and put it back where she had found it. She had been idly casting about the room, looking for something to do. They had rushed back here, Jueves holding up the exhausted Anji and then hurrying off to find the Doctor. Eleana had been left to keep Anji company, wake her up a bit, but the Asian woman had sunk on to the bed and not moved. Like she was the only one to have spent the evening running through the parc in terror. The note had her curious now, though, so Eleana picked up the next book in the stack on the dressing table.

This one was chronological at least. Each date had a page, sometimes two, to itself. The margin had little reference codes in it. This was the first key to Anji’s project, clearly. Eleana still wasn’t sure what the two were up to. They had said they were working on stories to file back to the English papers, something to do whilst they waited to leave the city, but Eleana’s party held the wire service for Barcelona and there was no record of any stories being filed by them. November 23 caught her eye. It had been double-underlined with a vigorousness that had torn at the paper. Durruti’s funeral. She read the next line.

E thinks Durruti killed by sniper. Disparity.

‘Perhaps I should keep my diary under my pillow?’ Anji asked.

Eleana looked up. Anji had propped herself up on the bed and was looking at her calmly, one eyebrow raised and her head at an angle. Anji gave a short smile.

‘S’OK, that’s not my personal diary anyway. Find anything good?’

‘E is me?’

Anji sat up fully, curling her legs up under herself and leaning back against the faded wallpaper. ‘Yes. Saves time.’

‘You’re keeping track of me?’

‘No! Just the odd note of stuff. We’re looking at the way different people see the same event. For our work? You’ve got a perspective that’s useful.’ Anji waved a hand about. ‘In the final book, we’ll change the name.’

Eleana thumped the notebook back down on the dresser and stood. She couldn’t believe Anji had been so foolish. The notes revealed when Eleana was about, when she wasn’t, what she thought.

‘Can you imagine what the NKVD would think if they saw that?’ she asked. She realised she had shouted when Anji winced back against the headboard. ‘It’s not just me, it’s lots of people. They could use it against us.’

‘But –’

‘Anji, you read the papers every day. You hear the stories that can’t be printed. You know people disappear in this city. Where do you think they go? You’ve heard the gunfire in the night, you must have done. Yet what do you do? You keep a diary, a list of who was where when! You’ll betray us.’

Anji got off the bed and glared back at Eleana. She folded her arms defiantly. ‘You’re being paranoid.’

‘You’re not even accurate! Durruti was a maverick, killed by his own men. He wasn’t hit by a sniper – that’s just propaganda.’

Anji’s jaw dropped. ‘What? I was there! You said that. You said he was your hero!’

‘She seems fine to me,’ the Doctor remarked from the doorway. It took Eleana a moment to realise he was addressing Jueves. The two men must have arrived during their argument and she hadn’t heard the Doctor unlock the door. Anji was scowling at them both.

* * *

There were still fires burning in the morning.

Throughout the night, more people had arrived, both from the blasted city and from the Bilbao road. The ones approaching the town were gabbling, shocked at the fiery red eastern night sky, disbelief at the rumours bleeding away in the face of it. The trickle of fleeing townspeople had thickened, become a near-silent flood. Sasha’s supplies, intended for who knew what frontline company, were gone. Fitz had ensured a couple of blankets were hidden under the front seats and then handed out the rest. On the slopes, anywhere there was a clear space, the people were sitting watching Guernica burn. Some had lain down, shivering and huddled, trying to sleep despite the chill April air and the unnatural light.

In the grey misty morning,