Kane thought back to the events of eighteen months ago: the search for a missing colleague in Kazakhstan, a woman he’d loved and who he’d failed to save. It wasn’t a search of which his bosses approved. Having burnt his bridges with MI6, he’d holed up in Jakarta for a while. One day, he decided to try returning to the UK, to face up to things: to who he was, and to the grief. He did not trust how long it could be held at bay simply by avoiding his own life. Kane was glad to have returned on his own terms, not to have waited for them to find him. The immigration officers at Heathrow had looked troubled by whatever message appeared on their screens when they scanned his passport.

Would you mind stepping this way, sir?

So, they led him from his exile into three months of discussion and negotiations.

What do you want?

I’d like to study. I’d like to transfer careers. I have no intention of damaging the reputation of the service or compromising its operations.

It was testament to the healing power of state secrecy that so much snow had been allowed to settle over those tracks. He had followed a trajectory that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar: from rising star to pariah. And perhaps the quiet bathos of his current existence was typical too, and sustaining notoriety was as rare as sustaining heroism. But it wasn’t without loneliness. He had lost someone special to him in that final escapade, and grief had a way of haunting you with the future you had imagined. There was a sense of strangeness about his new life that he had failed to shake, a lingering lack of faith in it, having mastered and disposed of so many personas in his professional career.

“I heard you ran away to Kyrgyztan.”

“Kazakhstan.”

“No issues returning?”

“I’m a lot easier to keep tabs on here, as you’ve discovered.”

“I wrestled with whether to call on you.”

Kane nodded. He made the teas and handed her one.

“Can I smoke?” Taylor waved a packet of cigarettes.

Kane opened the window and she propped herself on the ledge. He took the sofa.

“Seeing anyone?” she asked, from behind the first veil of cigarette smoke.

“No.”

“No starry-eyed postgrad?”

“Not allowed. You? I heard about a divorce. I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. Yes. Astonishingly, I’m single.”

“Your young sidekick seems nice.”

She laughed.