‘No idea. But it’s strange to transfer ownership. Requisition cars, yes, but it’s not normal to transfer to another private citizen. Even less so back then. So what’s special about this Richard Larren?’ I wanted to know that too. Someone profiting, somewhere along the line, meant someone who had knowledge and influence over what was going on. Profits certainly hadn’t been banished to the old pages of history, they had simply been disguised as favours and rewards for loyalty. ‘Of course, it doesn’t mean he’s in on anything. He might just have been given the car for being a good boy, or he knows the local Party chief, or he paid a backhander for it. But, whatever it was, it’s something. So, we’ll call on Miss Burton, if she hasn’t moved, and hopefully she can also point us in the direction of Dr Larren. He might be able to fill in a few blanks.’

‘All right.’ Things were looking up.

‘What was it that you found? The key.’

‘I don’t know for sure if it’s right, but it could be. It’s to do with the names and the dates on her posters. Think about Victory Nineteen Forty-Five. VN came up twice, remember? We need to go back to her house to check the other posters – they’re in the bedroom, I’ll show you.’

He mulled it over and sounded cautiously positive. ‘All right.’

We turned on to the main road. A big car with darkened glass in the windows slowed beside us and I tensed. It had the hammer and compass in the centre of the registration plate and was immediately followed by another car, this one with the Soviet flag – their sickle in the place of our compass – indicating that it contained some of the Soviet officers who were here with their troops at the long-standing invitation of our government. A policeman waiting in front of a pair of solid gates stopped the traffic to let the two dark cars turn right across the road and in through the gates. Before they closed, I caught sight of a large, old house set back from the road.

‘What is that place?’ I asked.

Tibbot cleared his throat. ‘I’ve only seen two types of people enter those gates,’ he said. ‘Party officials and young women. And I don’t think it’s a secretarial college. I suppose that’s them celebrating Liberation Day.’

God knows my own background wasn’t privileged, but I had never had to consider some of the ways people survived now. I wondered more about those girls than about the men – their backgrounds, their families, the homes they had left or never had. And I remembered that, while Tibbot was helping me save my family, he too had had one once. I had been fearful at the thought of a life alone, but he was already living it.