‘May I see your identity card?’ I handed over the card, which had been in her box of possessions, thankful that it had been issued in her legal married name rather than that of the famous actress Lorelei Addington, or I would have been wholly unable to use it. In the darkness I looked enough like her photograph not to arouse suspicion. ‘Just a moment, ma’am,’ the guard said politely. He went into his hut, glanced at me and turned on an overhead electric bulb to examine the pass. I tensed as the light shone out over me and half turned so that he couldn’t see me so clearly.

‘So cold tonight,’ I said to the other guard.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘I had no idea it was so far from the station.’

‘Most of our guests have motors.’ He said it in a way that suggested it was strange that I had come by foot.

‘My husband crashed ours yesterday. Silly man. He’s still up in town trying to get it fixed.’ I was about to go on with the story, but could feel it spiralling away from me and forced myself to stop, surreptitiously watching the guard in his hut examine the card. He reached up and pulled the switch to turn off his light, and for a moment he didn’t move. Then his silhouette began to shift and flow, back out the doorway of the guard post. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said, handing me the document.

‘Thank you.’ Relieved, I took a few paces up the path before stopping to open my evening bag and take out the glittering red lace mask that had come with Lorelei’s belongings. I tied it around my eyes and forehead. The house remained a block of stone, punctuated by beams of light glaring out on to the front lawn, and by its glow I noticed that the hem of my red dress was ripped, probably from bushes I had brushed against on the path. It was a stubby, jagged tear with threads drooping from it; I knelt to pull them away.

A black official car, with the hammer and compass on the registration plate, stopped in front of the house, and a thin man with a chicken-like neck and ridges of hair only over his ears eased himself out to stand imperiously still. On the other side, a sylph-like girl at least twenty years his junior was helped out of the vehicle. He slid a carnival mask over his face and ignored her as he strode unevenly into the house, taking a glass of fizzing wine from a waiter standing by the doorway. The girl followed.