She stopped again. Charles was walking towards us. ‘I’m going to see what I can find out,’ he said.

‘All right,’ I said, exasperated by his interruption.

‘You should go inside. Both of you. Wait until I come back. Don’t do anything else.’

‘Charles, he’s my husband.’

‘I’m as concerned as you are. But we have to understand that the state takes precautions when it feels a citizen may be endangering society.’ He had changed his tune.

A fury hit me. ‘Is that what you think he’s done?’ I demanded. ‘Put the state in danger?’ It seemed so absurd. He seemed absurd. I saw the curtains of the house beside ours twitch.

‘It doesn’t matter what I think. It is what the state thinks that matters. And that is precisely what I’m going to find out.’ He stalked away without another word. I had no time to argue with him too.

Hazel had composed herself. ‘Please, can I go?’ she said.

‘No.’ But there was clearly something she was keeping to herself, and I softened. ‘Hazel, whatever it is, you can tell me. I only want what’s best for you and your dad.’ She hesitated, unable to decide whether to tell me. But the girl was fourteen and her need to trust someone was winning. ‘Hazel?’

‘I think …’ she stammered. She lowered her voice and I had to lean in to hear her properly. ‘I think Mum was hiding something. In my room.’

I glanced around. ‘What do you mean?’ But already my mind was racing on. It made some sense out of a situation that seemed inexplicable: the Secs wouldn’t normally attend a domestic death; their work was political – subversives, plots against the state. So what had Lorelei got herself into? ‘Is that why NatSec was at your house?’ I asked, with some trepidation. She nodded, and I began to understand why the girl was so desperate. I gripped her hand in mine and stared straight ahead as my mind worked double speed. ‘Hazel, what was she hiding?’

She was about to answer but halted at the sight of a young couple walking past, wearing worker’s caps with Spartacist badges on them. They were probably off to a meeting in advance of Liberation Day. Hazel waited until they had gone before she spoke. ‘I’m not sure.’ She put her hands to her cheeks. ‘She did it even before Mum and Dad split up. They didn’t know I knew about it.’

‘Where is it?’

She hesitated. ‘In the ceiling. You can take the light fitting out and there’s a sort of hole you can put things in. Mum put them there when she thought I was asleep.’

It wasn’t unusual for people to have hiding places – for fake food coupons, foreign currency or pro-American samizdat leaflets surreptitiously circulated among the most trusted friends. But somehow this sounded different.