‘Nicholas Cawson.’ He glanced at the scratch on my cheek that the bird had made. I put my hand to it. He didn’t seem too interested, though, and wrote our two names on a piece of paper before going to the back of the reception desk to look through some cards. ‘Wait over there,’ he said, picking up a telephone and pointing to a line of chairs bolted to the floor.

On the wall was a poster of a man in a narrow alleyway, a shadow obscuring his face. ‘Saboteur. Parasite. Black marketeer. You THINK he is your friend, but he is working against you. Report counter-social behaviour. No matter who it is.’ There was a telephone number and I wondered how many people had called it – some proud to do their political duty, others ashamed and hoping no one would ever know.

I took the only available seat, next to an old man dressed in clothes that looked like they might once have been smart but were now torn and frayed. He had the air of someone who had felt his high hopes and ideals crushed out of him, and in between little sobs he opened a briefcase and pulled out what appeared to be pupils’ exercise books – distracting himself by reading over them. A teacher who had welcomed the arrival of Socialism with open arms, perhaps, only to find his syllabus restricted and his students staring at him as a relic to be eased out and forgotten.

After a while, the loudspeaker in the corner of the ceiling began to whine, then bark. It was time for Comrade Blunt’s address. ‘… banished superstition to the silvery pages of the history books. Our children will read of religion as they read of the Black Death – a terrible scourge that they will, thankfully, never encounter …’ He didn’t mention that his deceased father had been a vicar and he had been brought up a good Christian. Of course, Stalin had studied at a seminary, hadn’t he? Perhaps it was the constant immersion in these ideas that had resulted in their violent loathing. Churchill and Blunt fighting over us with words and ideals – it never seemed to end. And the letter in my pocket set out the price that we had paid for their warfare.