She looked from one to the other of us and nodded. “When they said we’d have to give Jason up they fixed a date for when they’d come and fetch him. All this has been in the papers, I think, only the papers didn’t always get it right. Anyway, what do I know about the papers? There’s not much of it on television, though I expect there would be if we were caught. They made this date and we decided we’d have to get out two days before. By then we’d stopped protesting, not because we’d given up, far from it, but we knew that if we made public protests our—well, our intention to escape would be known. The bank, for instance, would have been suspicious when we drew out everything we had. Maybe the building society would when we sold our shares. So we didn’t tell anyone except Gordon, my half-brother. He lives a long way away, in Exeter. I wasn’t sure I could trust my half-sister but I know I could trust him. I told him everything and up to a point we’ve kept in touch. We told the woman who cleans for us we’d be away three months but not why or where and we paid her in advance for that, so no doubt she’s stopped coming.”

“According to the paper,” I said, “she’s still going into your house to keep an eye on things.”

“Bless her. She’s got a kind heart. We left everything, nearly all our possessions, our books, our clothes. We left our car behind. We just walked out of our jobs, we didn’t resign, we didn’t give the requisite notice. That too would have attracted attention to us.”

“One thing,” Silver said. “You may not know this. Andrew’s father died.”

She put up her hand to her mouth, took it away in a fist. “Oh, no, oh God. You mustn’t tell him, I must tell him.”

“We won’t say a word.”

“They were very close. He was an only child and his mother died years ago. He’ll take it very hard. It’ll be worse because he wasn’t there. I wonder if he asked for him—oh, I hope it didn’t break his heart Andrew not being there. What did he die of?”

“The paper didn’t say.”

She was silent for a moment, a pause in time during which Andrew came back. She lifted her head and gave him too bright a smile. “I’m telling them about our great escape.”

He nodded, if not very enthusiastically, but he evidently felt the same as Alison. Revealing everything to us would make no difference to the final outcome.