They were still kneeling. His face was close to hers. He saw a glimpse of the girl she’d once been, before this present adventure. Blonde hair, blue eyes, clear skin. He remembered Sally Talbot’s talk of a lot of the kids being middle-class rebels, running away from their nice homes. And, of course, that was true of Martin as well. It was an act of escape as old as mankind, dressed up in different clothes for each generation.

The girl was shaking quite badly now and her eyes were glazed, and he wondered if she’d taken anything. But it wasn’t really a physical effect, more a psychological state.

‘Tell me your name, at least.’

She drew in a heavy breath and said, ‘Esme. That’s what people call me.’

‘Esme. OK.’

It was a start. He stood up and she followed him. There was a bench near by and he led her to it. They sat down. He said, ‘You’ll have to get a new badge soon.’

‘What?’

‘Word has it that the Anti-Nazi League are on the verge of breaking up. The Socialist Workers Party have fallen out with them.’

‘Divide and conquer?’

Hobbes smiled. ‘Oh, the left are very good at doing that for themselves. From Marx and Engels onwards, they’ve loved fragmentation. All those tiny differences of belief. And people wonder why nothing really changes.’

‘But something new will arise. Won’t it?’

‘Of course. A new name, the same old struggle. It never ends.’

Esme breathed a little easier. She said, ‘We all know about you. About you being a cop, I mean. Martin told us all, one night. He was ashamed to admit it.’

The words cut into Hobbes, but he remained silent.

‘We have these sessions, where we’re meant to tell of our troubles, any worries or complaints we might have. Nadia insists on it, once a week.’

Nadia. Hobbes filed the name away.

‘That’s when it came out, about you, during one of these meetings. Your job, and all that.’

Now he turned to her. ‘Did it get a bad reaction?’

‘What do you think?’ She started to roll a cigarette, but shreds of tobacco kept blowing away. Her fingers were trembling.

‘Esme, I swear to you. I only want to know if Martin’s all right.’

Her answer wasn’t what he expected. ‘You spoke out, didn’t you? Against the other pigs.’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘You know, Martin tried to keep his identity secret, to begin with.’

‘But someone found out?’

She nodded. ‘So then I was curious.’

Hobbes was worried. ‘He told you the story, did he?’

‘No. He wouldn’t. I looked it up in the library, in the old newspapers.’

‘Right.’

‘So I don’t understand. Why is he so upset? After all, you did a good thing. You told the truth.’

Hobbes considered his answer carefully: he knew he was getting closer to her, and nearer to finding out about his son. ‘It took a long time for the truth, as you call it, to come out, a very long time. And even then, there were suspicions on both sides. In between … well, my family suffered. And that’s when he ran away.’