A tall, slim man with untidy white hair hurried into my cubicle, checking a sheet on a clipboard. He had a harassed air about him. ‘I am Dr Clement,’ he said in a French accent. I guessed he was one of the refugees from ’40 who hadn’t returned to their ravaged land. ‘May I have your name?’

‘Jane Cawson.’

‘Good, now what seems to be the problem?’

‘I had a miscarriage.’ It was the first time I had pronounced the words, and I hated every one.

‘Oh.’ He sat down and looked grave. ‘I am sorry. When did it happen?’

‘A month ago.’

‘I understand,’ he said, thoughtfully, noting down some details on an index card.

‘I want to know what caused it.’

‘What caused it?’ he repeated.

‘Yes. I want to have another child so I want to know.’

He looked a little troubled. ‘Please tell me the details of the pregnancy.’

I told him, keeping my voice low so that it wasn’t shared with the occupants of the adjoining cubicles. At the end, he took off his glasses. ‘Mrs Cawson, it is probable that nothing was the cause of the miscarriage. I am very sorry. It is something that happens sometimes. It is not your fault. It just occurs.’

‘Has it … damaged me?’ I asked.

‘For becoming pregnant again?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there are tests.’

‘I would like them, please.’

‘Of course. I will first take a blood sample and a urine sample to see how healthy you are in total.’

He searched through a desk and found a jumble of instruments, including a hypodermic needle that he cleaned and sterilized in a jar of liquid. He fitted it to a syringe, rolled up my sleeve and drew out a line of my blood. ‘Good,’ he said, holding the tube up to the light. He labelled it and put it on his desk. ‘Now, here is a pot for the urine.’ He wrote on an envelope and placed a small glass phial inside it. ‘Please hand it in at the desk outside and make an appointment to come back on Monday, I will examine you properly then.’

On my way back to that seedy print studio in a Soho backstreet, feeling my way through the thickening smog, I tried to guess what I would find there. There was no indication that it related to Nick and what he and Lorelei had been involved in. It was something personal to her. Something involving a man named Crispin, whose name had appeared on the envelope containing the negative. But still I wanted to know.

Inside the shop, the man with green tattoos on his neck greeted me. ‘Got it here,’ he said, reaching under the counter. He handed me a paper bag and I drew a print from it. It was so confusing. The face on the picture was one I knew, and yet it had changed almost beyond recognition.