The League of World Nations has condemned an attempt by the so-called Democratic United Kingdom to hijack its proceedings yesterday. The truly democratic nations of the world, led by the Soviet Union, Jugoslavia and China, threw out a motion attempting to blame the Republic of Great Britain for the division of the British island. The democratic states refused to relinquish the microphone in the assembly chamber until the motion was withdrawn. They were roundly applauded by all the countries present.

News broadcast, RGB Station 1,
Wednesday, 19 November 1952

I took the Tube to the Aldwych. From there, I walked to the brass-studded front door of 60 Great Queen Street, a huge, faceless old building made of white stone blocks. I must have looked out of place and deathly nervous – the people freely entering this building were rarely civilians. After being searched, I was allowed inside to find a wide and tall lobby, plain to the point of austerity, where the reception desk was behind a thick glass window – thick enough to withstand a shot from a pistol, perhaps. I touched Lorelei’s letter to Nick, held in my pocket, to confirm to myself that it was there. It was what I trusted to get me out of there safely.

As I approached the thick glass, a young woman in uniform glanced up at me without interest before returning to the paperwork she was involved with. There were four forms, each with two carbon copies, and she seemed to be filling them all out simultaneously with the same information. Twelve copies of that report to be sent through the offices of government, some to be looked at and ignored, some to be acted upon, some to be binned, some to be filed unread. I waited. ‘Yes?’ she mouthed after a while.

I pressed myself to the glass. ‘My husband, Nicholas Cawson, is here. You … you suspect him of a crime.’ A young man in a uniform that was too small for him was standing right behind me, making no attempt to hide the fact that he was listening.

‘Yes?’ the woman repeated.

‘May I speak to someone?’

‘About what?’ asked the young man.

‘I have some information.’

‘Have you?’ He sounded intrigued and a little pleased with himself. The woman, seeing someone else take the burden of dealing with me, opened a file and extracted another ream of forms that she began to fill out. ‘You’ve done the right thing coming to us.’

It dawned on me that he thought I had come to provide information against Nick. I was about to tell him he was wrong, but it was more likely that I would have a hearing if I went along with his mistake. He took a key and let himself through a door in the wall, reappearing behind the glass partition. ‘Your name?’

‘Jane Cawson.’ I spelled it out.

‘And your husband’s?’