He threw his fag on the ground, screwed it into the slabs with his foot and stepped into the hall. ‘Well, if you don’t think of me, think of her.’ He pointed over my shoulder. Hazel was standing at the top of the stairs. ‘You’re putting her at risk too.’ He was probably right but involving her raised my hackles. ‘Listen –’

‘No. You listen. Stop acting like a fool!’ I said, losing my temper. The sound of the telephone bell was now filling my ears.

‘I’m a fool?’ He glared at me. The telephone continued to ring. Without warning, he swept it from the table and it tumbled to the floor.

‘Mrs Cawson?’ a hoarse voice whispered from the receiver. I made to pick it up, but Charles kicked it from me.

‘I’m a fool?’ he repeated. ‘I have friends in the Party who can make sure your stupidity doesn’t cost your husband any more than his time. So, from now on, you wait here. You look after her. Nothing else.’

‘Mrs Cawson? Are you there?’ the voice pleaded.

‘Who is it?’ I called out.

‘Rachel Burton,’ she said quietly.

‘Rachel?’ I gasped, amazed.

‘Can you hear –’

But Charles was drowning out the words. ‘So be bloody careful,’ he growled.

I tried to push him aside, but he wouldn’t move and I caught only a few more distant words from the handset: ‘The orders are … where the bomb hit.’

I attempted again to grab it, but Charles got there first and slammed it into its cradle. ‘It’s for your own good!’ And with that he stormed out. I reached for the receiver. There was only the dialling tone now.

‘What’s happening?’ Hazel was visibly upset by the scene she had witnessed. I stared at the telephone to see if it would ring again. Those words.

‘Nothing. Just some trouble at the surgery,’ I said distractedly, but I was thinking of those strange words of Rachel’s.

An image formed in my mind: Rachel dragged from the room, spitting and screaming. She had cried out that she and Lorelei had fought about ‘big orders’. I didn’t want to think what she had had to promise an orderly in order to make a telephone call; she must have been desperate for me to know something. ‘The orders are … where the bomb hit,’ she had said. But her words made little sense.

And then they did.

22

Rachel’s words made sense when I thought of what I had found in Lorelei’s house. I lifted my head and spoke to Hazel. ‘Can you go to your room for a bit? I’ll come up and speak to you soon.’ She reluctantly agreed, and as she returned to her bedroom I went into the back garden.