“Enough of that. Sun’s rising. Our time is up.”

IRIS PRACTICALLY DANCED THROUGH the kitchen door, giddy as a new bride, just as the phone started to ring.

She made a dive and answered it on the second bell.

“Honeysuckle Cottage,” she said.

An hour later, she was on the train to London.

IRIS WAS SHOCKED TO see the flat in Oakwood Court. When she’d left it nine weeks ago, every article was in place, every surface shone, the air smelled of lemons and wood. She’d closed the door with a sense of satisfaction and purpose and imagined—as the taxi sped to Victoria Station—some ritual return at the end of August, refreshed and suntanned and ready to tackle life’s challenges.

Now she banged up the lift in rising panic. Guy Burgess had been so cryptic over the telephone, so smug and English, she couldn’t tell if Sasha had committed some unspeakable criminal act or simply went a little too far at a friend’s party, as he so often did. The door, when she rattled the knob, was unlocked. She pushed it open and stepped into the foyer, where she gasped in horror.

For an instant, she thought they’d been burgled—ransacked. The few framed pictures had fallen off the walls; the floor was strewn with broken glass. An empty bottle of gin rolled helplessly across the parquet. The air stank of vomit and decay.

Then she thought—Sasha!

Burgess had said he’d left him in the bedroom. Iris picked her way around the broken glass, the bottle, the shoes left in a tumble. She walked down the darkened hallway, past the kitchen and study and the boys’ bedroom, the family bathroom—didn’t look inside any of them. A stink of spoiled milk turned her stomach. The bedroom door hung wide open. Iris hesitated. She hadn’t seen Sasha in a month, not since the catastrophic expedition to the Isle of Wight. She’d spoken to him on the telephone a few times—he’d called down to Honeysuckle Cottage to ask about the milkman and where do we keep the checkbook, she’d rung up the embassy so he could speak to his sons twice a week—but each conversation was veneered in politeness, an almost excruciating formality. Anyway, both times she’d tried to reach him last week, his secretary informed her that he was out.

Until now, she hadn’t thought to worry. Not any more than usual, at least.

Iris gathered herself and stepped into the bedroom.