That had all happened in the summer, and now I sat on a bench in the November evening smog, recovering my breath and thoughts after my ordeal with Grest. It felt so raw. After a while, my hand fell on something poking up between the bench’s wooden slats: a little piece of paper that had been folded up and stuffed there to be found. I would have ignored it but it had been placed so as to expose large bold type at the top, with words that couldn’t be missed. POLITICAL PRISONERS HELD AGAINST INTERNATIONAL LAW IN MENTAL HOSPITALS. I pulled the page out, to find it was a small sheet of closely printed black type: the sort of cheap samizdat that one saw gummed to walls here and there before it was ripped down.

‘They are prisoners for what they believe! We do not know where they are. Please do not forget them,’ it added below the top line. There was a long list of names, most of them male.

I had heard – we had all heard – of the new usage that the mental hospitals were being put to. Those poor people. They didn’t deserve what had happened to them, but there were so many names on the sheet that I would never recall them. I looked along the road. With the paper in my hand, the memory of the couple, and the NatSec van receding into the distance, I began to wonder where on earth the Republic was going.

Grest’s words were still ringing in my ears and the sharp smell of his sweat was still on me when I arrived home. I needed to wash it off or I would be ill. As I entered the house, I found Hazel on the crushed silk sofa – one of Nick’s rescues from bombed-out houses – and the room warm, with a fire going in the grate. I usually loved returning to the house when Nick had the fire going, so we could cuddle and warm up. Now there was heat, but no warmth.

‘Did you find it?’ she asked the second that I stepped in. ‘You’ve been gone so long.’ She was still keeping her distance from me, but most of the resentment and defiance seemed to be gone. I think she had probably cried it away – her cheeks were wet with more tears – and she was now feeling sad and alone, rather than angry at me and the world. I wished that I hadn’t had to leave her when I went to search Lorelei’s house.

‘No, I’m sorry, there was nothing there,’ I said. I didn’t like lying to her, but I couldn’t have her involved any more. She sat down heavily. ‘But this will all be over soon. You don’t need to worry.’

Her expression changed. She struggled to get the words out. ‘Do they think Dad killed my mum?’