I could still feel Aliya’s kiss. I sat up again, opened the laptop and went back into her phone, planning to wipe all traces of myself. I would take a look first, though, after the effort of gaining access. Lord, let me be pure, but not yet. I began with text messages and WhatsApp. Friends, social occasions, advice to one girlfriend about a break-up, plans for a holiday. Eighty-one entries in the address book, fifteen landlines, sixteen addresses outside Astana, none overseas. In images: a crowd around a table in a restaurant, a young Kazakh woman with a baby. Aliya’s parents and grandmother. I activated the camera. It was dark, the phone face down on a surface. I reversed directions, selfie-mode, got a blade of ceiling fan. I kept the visuals open in the corner of the screen, put headphones on and activated the microphone. Listened to what sounded like crockery being set down, then her parents’ voices.

Seventeen anodyne videos. I watched through them all: someone’s baby, a friend’s birthday party, a 360-degree view of mountains. No sex. It was all so generic I started to wonder again if she was real.

I checked the sent file. A lot of people didn’t realise it stored sent images even when the original had been deleted. I looked through until I got to a view that made me stop.

The Houses of Parliament.

Aliya stood in Parliament Square, Big Ben behind her, smiling and saluting.

23rd April last year.

Similar photos beside the Thames, in a London park, Chinatown. A view from a hotel window across the London skyline. Then one inside the hotel.

It showed a large hall, with tables lined up. Old paintings and busts and dried flowers. The tables were laid out with what looked like conference packs, lanyards. No name or sign was legible to suggest the nature of this event.

I went in to her messages and scrolled back to April; there were several to a girl called Sabina.

I’ve arrived.

Still don’t really know what this is about!

They’ve asked us not to use our phones while here. No pictures! See you when back!

The cutlery of her home clinked. The family conversation involved Semey: how many dead, what the protest meant. The image from her phone camera moved as Aliya picked it up. I killed the connection. A minute later my own message light blinked.

Good night, Toby. Thank you for this evening. See you soon. x

London.

Smartphones embed GPS coordinates in each photo they take. The information is stored as metadata embedded in the photo files themselves. All you had to do was view the file’s properties and look for it.