In Shepherd’s Bush Anna hadn’t wanted to be noticed, but in this market she was brazen, enjoying playing the part of the high-society woman on her way to the ballet.

She walked under the arches that lined the edge of Covent Garden, past the shut-up fruit and vegetable stands and beneath the covered path’s old gas lamps, then turned off the market and strolled up Bow Street to the Royal Opera House.

Black cabs and limousines were disgorging a steady stream of people in front of the opera house. Anna joined them, and let them carry her through its columned entrance and past the line of people in ill-fitting uniforms who were discreetly checking everyone’s invitations and tickets.

Anna thought the building matched its staff. It was ostentatious, and tired. She saw the cracks in the ceiling and the worn patches in the carpet.

The book that had been delivered to her at Durrants, along with her invitation and a set of blueprints for the Royal Opera House, had been full of pictures of its past glory, before its foundations had been shaken by the bombs of war.

She milled with the crowd, listening to old women pretend they were happy to see each other, gossip about who was and wasn’t in attendance, and speculate on whether one of the royals might grace Nureyev with their presence. And she watched the poorly disguised security personnel in their cheap suits or borrowed dinner jackets hugging the walls and doorways that led deeper into the building. She was impressed by the number of them, but not concerned. They had no idea who she was, or what she was there to do. And, thanks to the architectural plans she’d spent the afternoon studying, she was confident she knew more about the opera house’s deceptively labyrinthine corridors than any of them.

Anna was tempted to crash into one of the vapid conversations swirling round her and say something truly scandalous to a couple of well-to-do ladies, but instead she decided to take her seat before the rest of the audience began rushing into the auditorium at the last minute.

She walked through the double doors that led to the stalls and let an usher guide her to the seat that had been arranged for her at great expense, at the very end of the left-hand side of the second row, by a short exit staircase. She casually took in the three large BBC television cameras that had been installed around the edge of the stalls under the rim of the grand tier. One was on the far right, one was on the far left, and one faced the dead centre of the stage.