The Time in Between

Set against the upheaval of the Spanish Civil War and the early years of World War II, this novel follows a young seamstress whose life is upended by love, betrayal, and political turmoil, ultimately leading her into the world of wartime espionage.

Sira Quiroga is born in 1911 in a modest Madrid neighborhood. Raised by her single mother, Dolores, a skilled seamstress at the workshop of Doña Manuela Godina, Sira knows almost nothing about her father. At 12 she becomes an apprentice at the workshop, gradually mastering the art of sewing. At 20 she meets Ignacio Montes, a kind civil servant candidate, at a neighborhood dance. They plan a quiet wedding and a modest future together.

Everything changes when the couple visits a typewriter store. The manager, Ramiro Arribas, a confident, worldly man 10 years Sira's senior, pursues her with brazen charm. Despite her initial resistance, Sira falls into a consuming affair, breaks off her engagement, and leaves behind her mother and her entire past.

Through Dolores acting as intermediary, Sira meets her father for the first time: Gonzalo Alvarado, a wealthy engineer. Fearing political violence in Spain, Gonzalo gives Sira nearly 150,000 pesetas, valuable jewels, and a notarized document recognizing her as his daughter, advising both women to leave for Morocco. Ramiro takes charge of the assets, registers a company in Sira's name, and in late March 1936 insists they leave for Tangiers.

While ostensibly awaiting authorization to open a business academy, the couple lives extravagantly at the Hotel Continental. Ramiro grows increasingly distant, staying out late and drinking heavily. When Sira discovers she is pregnant and returns from the doctor, she finds their room ransacked. Ramiro has fled with all her money and jewels. In a daze, Sira ends up on a bus to Tetouan, the capital of the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco. She collapses upon arrival, losing the baby, and is hospitalized with severe anemia.

Commissioner Claudio Vázquez, a local police official, reveals Sira's legal troubles: an unpaid hotel bill, a fraud charge for typewriters Ramiro ordered in her name but never paid for, and a jewelry theft accusation filed by her half-brother. Ramiro has fled to South America. Vázquez grants Sira conditional freedom if she remains in Tetouan, finds honest work, and repays the debt within a year.

Vázquez places Sira at the boardinghouse of Candelaria Ballesteros, a resourceful smuggler known as "the Matutera." As Sira recovers, she rediscovers the pleasure of sewing, and Candelaria proposes they open a haute couture workshop targeting wealthy foreign women. To raise capital, Sira disguises herself as a Moorish woman and delivers a cache of pistols left by a former guest, navigating the darkened medina, the old walled quarter of the city, past soldiers and checkpoints in a harrowing nighttime exchange.

With the proceeds, Sira establishes her atelier on Calle Sidi Mandri and reinvents herself with a cosmopolitan air. Her neighbor Félix Aranda, an imaginative and cultured man, becomes her closest friend, naming the business "Chez Sirah" and helping fabricate a glamorous backstory. Clients arrive: German, Italian, Jewish, and Spanish women.

A pivotal friendship develops when Rosalinda Fox, a charming young Englishwoman, becomes a client. Her lover is Juan Luis Beigbeder, the Spanish high commissioner in Morocco. When Rosalinda needs an evening gown, Sira improvises a replica of a Fortuny Delphos dress, a finely pleated silk design, cementing their bond. Rosalinda confides her troubled past and reveals her ambition to draw Beigbeder toward Britain, fearing the consequences of Germany's deepening alliance with Spain.

When Serrano Suñer, Franco's powerful brother-in-law, visits Tetouan, a grand reception is held at the High Commission. Sira attends with Marcus Logan, a British journalist who has come to arrange Dolores's evacuation from war-torn Madrid. Sira accidentally overhears Serrano and German businessman Johannes Bernhardt negotiating a secret deal to install radio antennas on Moroccan territory, deliberately excluding Beigbeder, and relays this intelligence to Marcus. Over the following weeks, Marcus and Sira grow close, but she holds back her feelings, fearing another abandonment. Marcus arranges Dolores's evacuation, then is recalled. They part with a near-kiss.

Dolores arrives traumatized but gradually recovers. The Civil War ends in April 1939, and Franco names Beigbeder minister of foreign affairs. Rosalinda follows Beigbeder to Madrid. On September 3, 1939, Britain declares war on Germany.

In September 1940, Rosalinda proposes that Sira move to Madrid to spy on the wives of high-ranking Nazis for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a covert branch of British intelligence coordinated in Spain by naval attaché Alan Hillgarth. Sira initially refuses, but her mother urges her to accept, arguing Spain cannot survive another war. After an intensive briefing with Hillgarth, Sira flies to Madrid under the alias Arish Agoriuq, created by reversing her real name.

Sira opens an atelier on Calle Núñez de Balboa with two German-speaking assistants, Dora and Martina. Powerful clients speak freely about their husbands' activities, and each night Sira compresses the intelligence into inverted Morse code disguised as dressmaking patterns, delivering them through a beauty salon locker and a portfolio left at the Prado Museum. Overwhelmed by demand, she secretly recruits her old employer Doña Manuela.

Sira notices she is being followed. Meanwhile, the recently dismissed Beigbeder arrives at her door, entrusting her with letters for Rosalinda, who has fled to Lisbon to escape the Gestapo. The follower reveals himself as Ignacio, now a security official, who searches Sira's apartment and confronts her with the suffering their old neighbors have endured while she has lived in wartime luxury.

On New Year's Eve 1940, Sira unexpectedly reconnects with her father, Gonzalo, at the Madrid Casino. They begin meeting regularly, though Hillgarth warns that their public association risks exposing her dual allegiance, since Gonzalo appears on pro-British lists while Sira is registered as a Germanophile.

A new mission takes Sira to Lisbon to investigate Manuel Da Silva, a Portuguese businessman suspected of abandoning British partners to deal exclusively with the Germans. Posing as a dressmaker seeking fabrics, Sira attends a dinner at Da Silva's estate where she witnesses Bernhardt and Da Silva finalizing a deal to supply the Germans with tungsten, a mineral crucial for manufacturing artillery. She records every detail in coded patterns. Through Da Silva's secretary, Beatriz Oliveira, Sira also obtains a list of British businessmen Da Silva has ordered "neutralized," with Marcus's name among them. Defying orders, Sira arranges through Rosalinda for Marcus to be warned.

On the Lusitania Express back to Madrid, Marcus pulls Sira off the train moments before Da Silva's hired killers reach her cabin. She risks everything to retrieve her notebook of coded patterns from the tracks, and they flee across the border by car. Back in Madrid, Sira delivers her intelligence to Hillgarth, who reveals that a Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agent, whom Sira now understands to be Marcus, had already reported the Da Silva connection but without the specific details her 40 coded patterns provide.

Emboldened, Sira arranges a gathering at Gonzalo's house, bringing together Marcus, the Hillgarths, and her father. She compels Hillgarth to brief everyone on her role as SOE operative under the code name Sidi. That night Marcus returns with a single small rose. They acknowledge the dangerous path ahead but embrace, certain of each other at last. The novel closes with Sira reflecting that their destinies remained on the reverse side of history, invisible lives stitched into the time in between.