We went to 4E, Wim accompanying us, not that we had any news to impart or any shopping to carry beyond that day’s papers, but because we had got into the habit of paying nightly visits. For reassurance, for comfort, to relieve the monotony of their dreadful days and interminable evenings. And we wanted to show them the pictures, the several versions Judy had produced. Andrew seemed fascinated by his own face, so greatly changed by the mustache (now more luxuriant) and the fringe of hair covering his forehead. With one of his laughs, which were shrill and unkind, he called Alison a “painted hussy” and hinted he might find her more attractive if she looked like that all the time. Silver asked what they wanted to be called on the passports and Alison suggested Blythe, her half-brother’s name. It was Wim, rather surprisingly, who objected. The police would know everything about their backgrounds, he said, all their past, all previous names and connections. It didn’t mean they hadn’t got it fully documented just because there was no mention of it in the papers. There were things they would keep dark in case revealing them hampered their inquiries.

Andrew sat at the table and looked through The Times and the Mail. For the first time since the hunt for the three of them had begun, Jason’s natural mother had appeared on the scene and given her story to a journalist. The newspaper was weary of reproducing the stale old photographs and no doubt delighted to feature instead this portrait of a very good-looking woman in her twenties. Nelima Patel looked a lot like Jason, or perhaps I should say he looked very like her. I was desperate for him not to see this picture, not to ask who it was and perhaps guess without being told. Eager to read anything he could get his hands on, he often snatched the papers we brought. Andrew and Alison had told him a good deal about their escape with him, they’d had to, they’d had somehow to justify the hiding away, the necessity of staying indoors, his lack of companions. He was fond of reading about himself. Especially when he had been seen on the seafront at Weston-super-Mare, say, when he knew perfectly well he had been in Maida Vale. But this time his attention was held elsewhere, concentrated on the photographs. There were twenty-four of them from which three must be selected. He shifted them about on the table as if they were cards in a solitaire game.