He pulled his hand away. ‘I need to explain to them I’m not bad,’ he muttered. He’d been biting his nails again, a habit he’d kicked long ago.

‘Don’t be so silly, J. They don’t think that, and they don’t even know where you are. I just don’t think—They’re so little, James, they wouldn’t understand. I don’t think we need to tell them.’

Yet. The unspoken word whirled heavily between us, like a spinning plate on a stick.

I clasped my hands on my lap. I took a deep breath. ‘I need to ask you something, James.’

The couple next to us started kissing hungrily, the burly man holding the girl’s dark ponytail and twisting it round his hand. There were scratches and nicks all over his bald head. From the end of our row, the warder spotted them.

‘What?’ James muttered, biting his thumb-nail. His knee tapped incessantly, nervously, against the divide beneath the table.

‘The trapeze artist, Katya …’

‘What about her?’

‘Who was she?’

‘Just someone I hired for the party. She worked in the Paris Revolver, then in London, on the trapeze. She was good.’ He tore into the skin around his nail. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ he muttered.

‘I thought you said she was a friend of Star’s?’

‘Did I?’ He met my eye. It was a direct challenge.

‘But she wasn’t, was she?’

‘I dunno.’

‘James,’ I felt the first flickers of anger, ‘that’s not good enough. We talked about this before. All this not remembering. I don’t believe it. You’ve got to be straight with me.’

‘I am being straight.’

I grabbed his hand. ‘You are not. You’re lying through your bloody teeth. After everything we’ve been through, I do know when you’re lying.’

He tried to pull his hand away, looked at his lap.

‘James, it’s not fair. Think of the kids. Think of what this is doing to them. The better idea I have of what’s going on, the better chance I have of helping you. Surely you can see that?’

He looked at me venomously. ‘How the fuck can you help? Can you get me out of here? No. Can you make it go away? No. So how are you going to make it better, eh, Mummy Rose?’

I swallowed hard. I pinched the skin on my hands. It hurt but I hardly felt the pain.

As quickly as James lost his temper, he saw the error of his wrath. ‘Sorry, sorry.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment. It’s like I’m in one of my bloody nightmares and I just can’t wake up.’

‘Well, start by telling me the truth. Who—’

‘Five minutes for all visitors,’ the Tannoy announced flatly.