‘I see.’
‘Yes, old Charles is all right. Actually, he can be quite warm sometimes.’
‘He hides it well,’ I said.
‘He does rather.’
‘Maybe he just needs a girlfriend.’
Nick almost howled. ‘Now that’s something I never considered in relation to Charles. I’m afraid I don’t think he’s much of a Casanova. From what I can tell, he wants nothing more than to marry some quiet girl who will love, honour and especially obey, before she pops out a couple of sons and they all spend Sundays in perfectly dull silence.’ He looked a bit shifty. ‘In fact, I’m not certain that he has ever “had” a girlfriend. If you catch my drift.’ He winked. I smacked him on the shoulder. ‘Perhaps that’s why he’s like he is.’ I smacked him again, harder. ‘Ouch! All right, I get the message. Now, tell me how you got on with Hazel.’
‘Well. Yes, well.’
‘Good. I’m really glad. God knows what the poor kid’s going through. I’ll take some time off work and spend it with her.’
‘Good idea.’
He rubbed my hands. ‘I thought about you a lot,’ he said.
‘What were you thinking?’
‘I was thinking that if I get sent to a re-education camp, all I’ll have to look forward to are letters from you. And that’s not much good because you may be an English teacher but whenever you leave me a note I can make neither head nor tail of it.’
‘Do you want me to slap you?’
It was a joy just quietly cooking for us all that evening, making up a recipe involving the lard, flour and eggs we had in the house and the carrots and turkey ham we managed to buy on the way home. I created a sort of pie that was more successful than I had expected.
When Nick and I went to bed, there was absolute silence in the street for the first time that I could remember. No one was shouting at the neighbours; no police car was tearing along in pursuit of a petty criminal. The air was still and heavy, and I think being cooped up in his cell for three days meant Nick had a lot of pent-up energy that I was perfectly happy to help him expend. I lost myself then.
‘I do love you,’ he said.
‘I hope so. My God, it was so hard with you in there.’
‘I won’t be going back.’
‘Thank heaven.’ I waited a minute, thinking. ‘Nick, shall we have another baby?’
He kissed me again. ‘Let’s think about it later,’ he said.
Well, having been through such a shock it was only natural that he wouldn’t want to commit to something like that straight away. But lying there I saw a rich future with my belly swelling and knowing looks from other women on the Tube; followed by the two of us each taking a hand of our young child as we walked the corridors of the National Museum or through the grassy paths of Victoria Park.
My cheek rested on his chest and I could smell the musk on his skin.
The moon was poking through the misty sky when I spoke to him later.
‘Nick,’ I whispered.
‘Yes,’ he muttered in the dark, his voice muffled by the stillness.
‘About Lorelei.’
He reached out and rubbed my back. ‘It’s over now. All of it.’
‘It isn’t, though.’ I shivered in the night chill. I had been thinking about what Grest had said. His wild implication about me. ‘We don’t know what happened to her.’
‘The most likely thing is that it was just an accident. You said she had been drinking.’
‘Champagne. There was a bottle there.’
‘Well, there you go. She got drunk on her own – not for the first time – and slipped down. Drowned. It happens sometimes. More often than you would think.’
‘Still, it seems so strange.’
He sighed deeply, becoming more awake. I could see bruises on his stomach that were the result of his time with NatSec. ‘People die a hundred different ways. The only thing you can be sure of about the human body is that it will keep surprising you.’
I rubbed my skull with my knuckles. ‘What about the investigation now?’
‘I don’t know. I presume NatSec will continue with it, though I don’t know why it’s anything to do with them. They probably have “areas of enquiry” they’re following up, or whatever they call them. It’s nothing to do with us and I’m happy to be out of it now.’ I understood. He had good reason to want to let it all go. But I couldn’t. ‘For Hazel’s sake, I hope if she was killed by someone, then they catch him, but, otherwise, I just want nothing more to do with it.’
I stared through a gap in the curtains into the dark.
‘Lorelei wasn’t her original name, was it?’
‘No. It was Anne,’ he said.
‘You never mentioned that.’
‘Why on earth would I? Why do you care?’
‘I used to see her in the films. It was as if I knew her.’
‘She hasn’t acted for years.’ He was getting annoyed, but I couldn’t stop.
‘Did you get on with her? I mean, you saw her at parties, didn’t you? And you had friends in common from when you were together.’
‘We were polite to each other. We weren’t friends.’
I pulled the blankets tighter. ‘How did you meet?’
‘Mutual friends.’
‘And why did it end?’
‘I was told she was having an affair.’
‘Oh. Oh, darling. Who was it?’
He hesitated. ‘Someone in the Party.’
‘In the Party?’ That hesitation suggested there was more to it. ‘Someone senior?’
‘John Cairncross,’ he said through the dark.
‘Cairncross?’ The traitor Cairncross. At first I was amazed. But then why was that so unlikely? As the beautiful face of our idealistic young nation, she must have been introduced to them all. To those of us who lived in the Republic, the part she had played in the new regime was as great as Philby’s or Burgess’s.
‘She denied it but she was lying, I could tell. She did that a lot, even to me, and I could always tell.’ I had never before detected any real bitterness in him towards Lorelei. But then I had hardly asked him about her – deep down, I think I had been afraid of what I might hear. ‘Lorelei and I were not friends. Yes, she was exciting to be with, but I can’t say I liked her very much as a person – let alone as a mother to Hazel. Now, the past is past. Let’s not rake it up.’
‘I… yes, of course.’ I came to myself. ‘I’m so sorry. After all you’ve been through.’ I wanted him to be open with me about her; but, if I were being truthful with myself, as I lay there in bed with him and there was silence outside in the street, I would have taken a future together over total honesty.
‘Yes,’ he muttered. His breaths slowed and deepened in his throat.
John Cairncross. I lay in the dark and worked it out. It had been four years since he had pleaded guilty to using his place in the Politburo to sabotage our food production in return for American money. Four years since Lorelei’s last film and four years since the last story about her in the Morning Star. Surely that was no coincidence – his fall had resulted in hers, the taint running from one to the other. So she was no longer for public consumption. Even now, her death hadn’t been reported – the censors had cut her out of our history.
I tried to settle down but a noise outside made me sit bolt upright. It was shouting – too far to hear distinctly, but not distant. Somewhere in our street. A banging sound, like a door being thrown open. There was more shouting and the sound of a car door slamming before the vehicle was driven away. Nick had woken up too. We heard a desperate knocking on someone’s door. No answer. A voice calling out. The knock moved to a different door. Then another one. ‘We can’t get involved,’ Nick said. ‘Not now.’