“Officially? Officially, I am Sebastian Herbert Ashton, engineer, overseeing the building of the sewers. My papers are British. Of course there is the matter of my accent. But then, the English refuse to believe that anyone can learn their tongue, not fluently, you see, so I must be a native after all, reared in some far-flung colony perhaps.” He gives a giggle, quite literally a giggle, the sort of sound some of the girls at school might make after someone has made a chancy remark. “And of course, half my men are foreign. The beauty of the embargo is that nobody receives adequate training here. It is hard to instruct engineers when the books are all censored. ‘Forbidden science,’ ‘immoral physics’—it really is quite funny! So we have Poles and Italians and Czechs and Russians. And Germans, of course. Grand engineers! Without them, London would sink in its stink. The English gentlemen on the project are largely there to supervise their morals and to make sure they finish on time. Good, earnest Liberals these gentlemen are, one and all. A great deal rides on the project, the whole of the Liberal Party’s reputation. A clean London, a moral London. Oh, it’s very ambitious in its way.” Again he giggles. “There you are. For a decade I was not allowed to enter on threat of death; now I get paid to come. But you must excuse me now, Miss Naylor. I am expected at work. Good-bye. Or rather: Au revoir. Auf Wiedersehen.”

ф

Livia watches Sebastian leave and goes looking for Thomas. But it is Charlie she finds, standing by the open window of the room the boys share. She is tempted to leave at once. In the past few days she has come to terms with Thomas’s darkness. It’s Charlie’s kindness, his forgiveness, that are difficult to accept.

“Auf Wiedersehen,” he says, his eyes on the rain outside.

“You heard us talk.”

“Yes. ‘Until I see you again.’ Not ‘good-bye.’” He puts a hand into the downpour outside. “Hundewetter, the Germans call this. Dog weather. That’s about all I remember from class. Isn’t it funny that they make us learn French and German but nobody’s allowed to travel? Nor to read any foreign books.”

He turns his face and she sees his earnest, honest face. It cuts her, not with guilt but with something more complex that has its own flavour of Smoke. Your heart leapt, she hears her mother’s words. Or perhaps some other organ.

“Dog weather,” she says and annoys herself by the cool primness of her pronunciation. “‘Until I see you again.’ You are worried about Julius!” The realisation helps her move past her emotion. She looks out into the street. “Have you seen him?”