I took some of the chips and placed them on the table. I recalled the line from the play that I had repeated over and over again to learn her voice. ‘Five pounds on red,’ I said.

‘Bravo,’ called my new friend. The wheel spun and the ball clattered through the numbers. A man in an evening suit and a woman in white, with a withering purple flower in her hair, were at the table. Two more men slipped in behind me to watch. ‘Now keep your nerve.’ I did my best. The ball fell into a red slot and I felt a thrill. ‘Well done.’ He patted me on the back.

‘And now, all my winnings on black.’

One of the men behind me placed his chips in the black square too. We won. The third time I went for a column of numbers, and in the next moment I had sixty pounds in my grasp. The man and woman at the table had lost all they had.

‘I’ll take that,’ said Jeremy, reaching for my pile of chips.

‘You can have your stake back. The rest is my luck,’ I said, passing him a few tokens.

He grinned and pulled his hands away. ‘Quite right. Come this way, Lorelei, let’s see how your luck holds at vingt-et-un.’ But the table that he took me to was full. He mulled something over for a moment. ‘On second thoughts, let’s go outside,’ he said.

‘And what do we find out there?’ I thought it useful to get the feel of the occasion before I pursued my true task.

‘Oh, just a different crowd.’ We passed out of a side door into the night, and he put his arm around my back to ward off the chill as we trudged towards some sort of low building made of Greek columns. There were lights shining, and, when the breeze blew towards us, I could catch a word or two from low voices. ‘The pavilion,’ Jeremy said.

‘Which is?’

‘A little outdoor home from home. Come and join the real party, Lorelei.’

‘That sounds marvellous.’

‘Oh, it is. They’re Parasites all. Don’t tell NatSec.’ Inside the pavilion, what had once been classical and austere stone architecture had been transformed by satin oriental cushions and velvet drapes to keep out the cold. An old wind-up gramophone was playing jazz.

It’s one for you, it’s one for me;

It’s two for you, yes, two for baby …

A group of people sat on cushions and wicker chairs surrounded by hot braziers. Niches in the walls showed the stumps of recessed busts that had recently been chiselled away. More history turned to dust.