My latest book, Masquerade, focuses on Luz, a young writer who finds herself torn between two men. The first is Andrès, a smooth, sophisticated businessman who exudes intelligence and authority. Attractive, certainly, and a sensible choice in many ways – but whatever he says and whatever he does, he’s just not Leandro.

From the moment she first sees the gypsy Leandro, Luz is inexorably drawn to him:

Luz set eyes on him for the first time from her seat on Zeyna’s back as the fine white Arab mare stepped down the narrow path from the cliff that led to the beach. He was sitting on the edge of the track, leaning nonchalantly against a wild carob tree, watching her while chewing on a sprig of heather. As she drew nearer, she met his steady gaze, spirited and wild. At that moment she had no idea this man would have the power to change her world and create such havoc in her heart, that she would emerge from the experience a different person. Fate had not yet lit up the winding pathway of her life nor the echoes of history along it, but now, in front of this stranger, a disturbing awareness leapt into flame deep inside her and began to flicker intensely. Without thinking, she tugged on Zeyna’s reins to slow the mare down.

For a moment they stared at each other. He was clearly a gitano, one of those people that Luz’s family had always warned her to steer clear of. The frayed, cut-down denims sat low on his hips, revealing deeply tanned, muscular long legs, and his feet were bare as though he had just walked straight from the beach. Unruly chestnut hair, bleached golden in parts by the sun, tumbled to his shoulders; his smooth copper skin glowed more than that of any gypsy she had ever seen. As she allowed her gaze to flick back to his face, Luz caught the flash of amused, provocative arrogance in those bright, burning eyes, mixed with something deeper that she didn’t understand. She swallowed. The overwhelming masculinity of the gitano unsettled her. Luz lifted her chin resolutely, but felt the pull of his magnetism reaching out and gripping her, beguiling and dangerous, so that instinctively she nudged her mount and they broke into a smooth canter. The thumping of her heart sounded loud in her ears. She could sense his eyes on her, as a palpable touch, even as she rode away, trembling, and the feeling remained with her until she knew she was out of sight.

What is it about Leandro that so stirs Luz? Clearly, he is a very handsome man, but her attraction runs much deeper than that. As his gaze conveys, he is ‘spirited and wild’ – bohemian, a free spirit. He’s enigmatic, he’s elusive, he’s intriguingly different.

Also, note that one of Luz’s first thoughts about Leandro is that he’s ‘one of those people that Luz’s family had always warned her to steer clear of’. Luz is a young woman when (in the 1970s) rebellion was the spirit of the times. After so many years of repression under General Franco, the Spanish were finally free to be themselves and to explore widely, and the newest generation of adults embraced this spirit keenly.

The problem with non-conformity, however, can be that the reality does not live up to the expectation – or, indeed, that the expectation eclipses the reality.

Luz finds it near-impossible to fight her feelings for Leandro, because he is like a dreamy hero from the pages of a romantic novel! Take, for example, the day she sails to an isolated cove. She is swimming in the cool waters of the ocean when her attention is drawn by a figure on the cliff high above.

She watched wide-eyed, holding her breath, her heart beating furiously as the faraway figure sprang into the air and plunged over the cliff. His lean limbs uncoiled slowly in the air, like the wings of a magnificent bird. Arms stretched out in front of him, he dived headfirst, his body a lean, sinewy line, darting like a missile into the depths of the sea.

There was another breathless moment while he disappeared into the blue abyss when Luz waited for him to resurface. And then his head came up in the sunlit spray as he swam towards her with a powerful over-arm stroke. She hurried to meet him, her heart leaping tumultuously in her breast.

Clliff-diving: a spectacular display of courage and machismo. Leandro is a fantasy man par excellence. How can Luz help but be stirred? Yet she admits to being unnerved by his sudden appearance:

‘You always appear out of nowhere when I least expect it and then you disappear just as suddenly, like a dream. Sometimes I wonder if you’re even real…’

Luz knows that she is falling in love with this man, but on some level she also recognises that there is a dreamlike quality to her time with Leandro; that ‘her imagination, not normally quite so febrile, had spun a web of romantic fantasies in which she was now caught’.

But what is the fundamental truth at the root of this love story? Is Luz a hopeless romantic, lost in a fantasy world of her own making? Or is Leandro fuelling that fantasy?

Is there, in fact, a masquerade at play? If so, Luz would do well to remember the words of Ella Wheeler Wilcox in her poem ‘Masquerade’:

Look in the eyes of trouble with a smile,
Extend your hand and do not be afraid.
‘Tis but a friend who comes to masquerade,
And test your faith and courage for awhile.