I nodded. My eyes filled with tears. ‘I saw the midwife yesterday. I’d read that my bump measurement should match the number of weeks, so I had a bit of a freak-out that the number was 27.5 centimetres and not 29.’

‘There must be a range of error.’

I nod. ‘She said give or take a couple of centimetres either side was fine.’

‘You see? You’re in range, then. Plus you’re slight to begin with. Are you resting enough?’

‘All the time. I’m going straight to bed when I get home.’

‘Good. Is Lord Voldemort behaving?’

I told her the truth. ‘No. He isn’t.’

‘What can I do?’

‘You can move into my house. It’s empty and it’s going to stay empty. You can live there and look after it for me and save up for your studio by not having to pay for this place. You can eradicate everything brown.’

‘May she rest in peace, but everything your grandmother chose was a different shade of shit.’

‘True.’ I hated lying to Milly about my grandmother’s death, but I still didn’t confess the truth. ‘So treat the walls as your canvas.’

‘I’m not a charity case, Holly.’

‘No. You’re my sister. You’re the only one I’ll ever have.’ I pressed an envelope into Milly’s hand. The papers inside were prepared by one of Maxine’s people, another of Maxine’s many proofs that doing this calmly and methodically, that taking enough time to set everything up before fleeing, was the right course of action. ‘This makes the arrangement legal. In case I’m not here. Any eventualities – it’s all you need.’

She put the envelope down without opening it. She was wrapping the tiny vase in bubble wrap. ‘Only if you take this too,’ she said. So I did.

Now
Further Intelligence

One year and eleven months later

Bath, Tuesday, 9 April 2019

The night has fully set in by the time George leaves the basement courtyard where we have been talking for the last hour. I enter my flat and sit in the dark, thinking about how intimate his knowledge of my past life is. The specifics of this make my chest go tight and my head pound. My heart starts to thump so hard I can barely catch my breath.

What I make myself think about instead is Jane’s missing brother, a whistle-blower like Snowden, but one who managed to stay in the shadows. There is absolutely nothing in the public domain about Frederick Veliko. I have no idea what he even looks like. Somebody cleaned away every trace. Was it GCHQ and the NSA, to try to limit the damage by making him invisible? Or did he erase himself, to make it easier to hide, to keep himself safe?