Even though they couldn’t possibly have suspected me of anything, I still felt worried walking away from them. It’s strange, really, how successfully the government had ingrained this layer of anxiety – of paranoia, really – into all of us. I just trusted that it was a phase we would be able to leave behind when the state was more stable.

I asked a passing cabbie for directions to the Rising Sun pub and soon found it tucked away in a narrow backstreet, with a few young men standing outside with drinks in their hands. It looked to me like the interior was packed – not surprising, when people had a rare weekday off work.

‘Excuse me!’

I froze as I was about to enter. One of the men standing outside was calling to me. ‘Yes?’ I did what Tibbot had told me to do: smiled and tried to look unconcerned.

He was a young man, with a hard body, standing with two others like him. They had barely touched their drinks. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ he said.

‘Me?’ I screwed up my face in a pantomime of trying to recall his. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think we’ve met.’

‘No?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

He paused while he and his mates scrutinized me. ‘My mistake.’

My smile was fixed as I moved away. Did I know him? I didn’t think so. But perhaps he knew me because my photograph had been handed around in Great Queen Street. Or was it a genuine error?

I fought my way into the rammed saloon bar to find the air wet with breath and a television bracketed to the wall showing the parade. Tibbot was at a table, nursing a drink.

‘He hasn’t come,’ he said quietly as I reached him.

‘Can you think why?’

‘No.’

A sudden cheer rose from the bar and I turned to see what had caused it. The picture of the parade had disappeared from the television, to be replaced by a single fading white dot – the power cuts got even worse on Liberation Day as people held parties in their homes – but the cheer slid into a groan when it quickly flickered back to life.

I examined the lapel of my jacket and rubbed away at a stain. ‘Is it a worry?’

‘Could be,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s go outside.’

‘I think I know how the code works,’ I said, as we shuffled towards the front.

‘The key?’ He sounded impressed.

‘I think I’ve got it. Well, part of it,’ I said. ‘There was a fight near Liberation Square. The police went after the Teddies. I saw it there.’

‘How?’ I was about to tell him. ‘No, wait. Outside.’