She lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes. The bedside light was still on, but she didn’t want to be in the dark yet, the images from the day still rolling silently round her head. She must have dropped off, though, because she wasn’t totally sure if she heard the knock on her door, or whether it was in a dream.

Groaning silently, she stumbled out of bed to check. A passenger who can’t undo his toothpaste, she thought, irritable at being woken.

‘Who is it?’ she asked through the door.

‘Me,’ said a voice she instantly recognized.

11

Connie, still clutching the door handle, didn’t move, didn’t even breathe.

The voice again, more cautious this time: ‘Connie?’

She hesitated for a second longer, swallowing hard, then slowly pressed down on the handle and pulled the door open a crack.

Jared stood in the corridor, looking uncertain. When he saw her, his face broke into a broad grin. ‘Phew!’ He spoke quietly. ‘I thought maybe you’d swapped rooms with one of your people and I’d be frightening some poor eighty-year-old to death.’

‘You nearly frightened me to death,’ she retorted. Although the sight of him made her stomach lurch, she said, with as much firmness as she could muster, still through the crack in the door, ‘Jared, go away. You can’t come in. It’s the middle of the night.’

Jared looked surprised. ‘Don’t be angry, Connie. Please.’ And, when she didn’t move, he went on, ‘Can I come in … only for a minute? I just had to see you again.’

His voice trailed off as a young man in the grey uniform of the hotel walked swiftly along the corridor, staring at them both as he passed.

Connie panicked, terrified that some of the group might still be up and spot a strange man outside her room. She pulled the door wider and ushered Jared quickly inside before anyone could see him.

Finding herself face to face with him in the dimly lit hotel room, she didn’t know what to do or say, very conscious that all she had on was a T-shirt that barely reached her knees. She crossed her arms, didn’t ask him to sit down and he made no move to do so, just stood close to the door.

‘So, it was you … last night, in the square?’

Jared looked puzzled. ‘Me? I’ve only just arrived.’

‘Really? I could have sworn I saw you, around eleven, walking across the Rynek.’

‘Not me, Connie. My plane got in at eight this evening.’

She went and sat down on the bed, her whole body trembling with surprise, and finally indicated the only chair in the room, a wooden armchair with padded, patterned cushions. ‘You really can’t be here, Jared.’