Grest spoke to me again. I could tell he was enjoying it now. My face must have betrayed my feelings, the sense of falling. ‘I left you to it.’ He laughed. ‘When I came out the girl’s room, you were bent over the bath with your back to me, so I just left.’ He turned to Tibbot. ‘Not what you thought, is it? Backed the wrong horse? You can smack me again and again, but you know it’s like I say it was.’ Tibbot threw him to the side and he crumpled to the floor. I placed my head in my hands.

‘Did anyone else come in?’ Tibbot demanded fiercely.

‘No, mate.’

‘He’s lying,’ said Tibbot.

But I saw the scene as he had described it. Who’s there? I can’t see. Lorelei was speaking those words, until they were drowned by surging water.

Grest shook with laughter. ‘So someone killed her, mate, but it wasn’t me.’ He looked in my direction. ‘They’ll get what’s coming to them, though.’

I ran to Lorelei’s room, collapsing into the seat at her dresser. My hands dropped on to the table and under my palm I felt something hard and polished: her hairbrush. It still had some of her hairs entwined in it.

‘Is he telling the truth?’ Tibbot said quietly. I hadn’t heard him come in.

‘I think so.’

But what he was implying – it just couldn’t be true. I wouldn’t have done that. We know ourselves and our own lives, don’t we? Or is that what happens when we begin to mirror the divided world around us? We become strangers to ourselves. No, it couldn’t be true.

‘We have to decide what to do,’ Tibbot said. His tone was different. He was trying to work things out too.

I gazed at her hairbrush. ‘Were you keeping a watch on me?’ I asked. ‘When I went to Great Queen Street?’

‘And when you left. I had a feeling you weren’t going to leave things alone. The thing about the Secs is that they just can’t imagine someone doing to them what they do to everyone else all the time.’ There was a pause. Tibbot looked around. ‘She travelled overseas, didn’t she? Met all those foreign actors and Presidents. I bet she brought stuff back with her. Perfect way of doing it. Besides, she’s on our posters: Victory 1945. Pin-up girl for the Party. No one’s going to stop her and go through her case. It would be like stopping Blunt.’

I hesitated. ‘What about Nick now? Will they release him?’