I said he had gone to see someone about the passports. Someone he knew on the other side of London who he hoped would be able to get them. Judy came back and the photography session began. Jason, who might have made a fuss at being expected to sit still, enjoyed posing and faced the camera with an engaging smile. Andrew consented to comb down his hair into a fringe across his brow and when this was done looked even less like his former self. Alison had been cutting his hair and not very successfully, but this way the chopped-off pudding-basin effect worked. We got Alison to make herself up heavily and use a dark lipstick Judy had brought with her. It aged her, making her seem more tired and worn than ever, but at least she looked quite unlike all the newspaper photographs. They were both dubious about their appearance in these shots. Did such small subterfuges really create a disguise? I reminded them that, without Jason, no passport official was likely to give them a second glance, but all this did was to start Alison off again on the horrors of being parted from him.

We took their shopping list, promised to report back on how Silver had got on, and then we left, Andrew muttering as he accompanied us to the door that we did understand, didn’t we, that he wasn’t made of money, he couldn’t pay some ridiculous price for false documents, it wasn’t as if he had a regular income.

“They’re not very nice, are they?” Judy said as we clattered down, not bothering to muffle our footsteps with no one to hear us. “He’s no charmer and she whines all the time.”

I thought how odd it was that the oppressed, the disadvantaged, the victims, are always supposed to be nice people. To be virtuous and lovable, almost saintly. If they’re not, and they’re just as often not, there’s resentment, a feeling that they don’t deserve rescuing. But people can’t change and become perfect overnight as soon as they find themselves in a trap or in peril. I said some of this to Judy and she laughed and said it was all very well in the case of hostages but Andrew and Alison’s situation was of their own making. If they expected help, they ought to be pleasanter to their rescuers.

“You haven’t rescued them yet, anyway,” she said.