Piers put me at the end of the sofa so I couldn’t move away, and sat up against me, with his hand on my knee. We were in semi-darkness, the heavily shaded overhead light not reaching to the edges of the room. I resolved to watch from a distance for now and try to work out what to do. Although I was in the gloom, and Fellowman had seen me for only a few seconds the previous time we had met, I was thankful for my mask.

‘These are some of the most important men in the country,’ the fat man whispered in my ear. ‘Senior Party men. That’s Alan Turner. He’s in charge of the railways now. And Ian Fellowman, he tells us all what to think.’ He guffawed to himself. He believed that I would be impressed by these men. No doubt he was, despite his studied nonchalance around them. In the old days, people would drop the names of the local gentry, and those names would carry weight and inspire awe entirely because of tradition. Now it was commitment to the cause and the sheer power that these men had over the rest of us that impressed: the power to modernize, the power to destroy and rebuild. But the man by my side didn’t know what I knew: the grubby depths to which at least one of them had sunk.

‘Pair of sevens,’ Fellowman said.

Piers returned to his normal voice. ‘But it’s going to be very dull for you, watching these men play cards. Why don’t we find somewhere for you to have a rest? Have you had enough Champagne? I can have someone bring us some.’

‘Do be quiet, Piers,’ Fellowman muttered from the table.

‘Sorry, Ian,’ he replied.

‘And a straight flush, well played.’

But Piers was fidgeting. His hand slid a little up my thigh, and I tried to brush it away without being too obvious about it. ‘I haven’t even seen you, properly,’ he whispered again, his lips almost touching my ear. ‘I think you should take this off.’ He indicated the mask. There were chuckles from the table as someone conceded defeat in the game. ‘Come on, off with it,’ he said, reaching for the ribbons at the back.

‘No, please,’ I said, fending him off.

‘Look – they’ve taken theirs off.’ He pointed to the other girls in the room and reached up again. He disgusted me.

‘I want to keep it on.’

He wasn’t listening, but if I fought him off it would only draw more attention to me, so I let him tease out the ribbons and prise away the mask. ‘There now. You are a lovely one.’

‘Thank you.’ I dipped my head down a little to hide.

‘Another hand?’ asked one of the men at the table.