‘A plan was hatched. We’d go in during the extra long Silver Jubilee weekend, when everybody’s attention was fixed on the celebrations: the night of Sunday the fifth of June. We were to meet Noy in the Victory Inn near Porthtowan, where he’d hand over the keys and a sketch plan showing the best route to the bunker from the seaward side. We’d need wire-cutters for the fence, a torch and a good camera with a flash unit to take the photographs. Beyond that, all we really needed was nerve – and luck. I didn’t have enough of the former and I wasn’t convinced we’d get enough of the latter. But my reservations didn’t stop me going. I sensed Alison was testing me – she kept saying, “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” And I couldn’t face failing the test. I had to go. I couldn’t bear not to.

‘We’d been down to Porthtowan a week before to reconnoitre the site. Getting through the fence from the coast path didn’t look difficult. Beyond that, we’d have to rely on the accuracy of Noy’s sketch plan – and his confident prediction that none of the locks were likely to have been changed since he’d left.

‘It was a long drive in Peter’s camper van that evening of the fifth. The sun was in our faces most of the way. Alison’s skin looked golden in the light. She glanced at me quite often during the journey, for no apparent reason. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses. I couldn’t guess what she was thinking.

‘Now I can. She was thinking she shouldn’t let me go in with them. I was too frightened to be careful. I’d mess up somehow, alert base security to our presence, blow our chance. That’s what she was thinking.

‘She must have got hold of some knockout drug from Geoff. He denied it later, but his denials weren’t worth much, especially with the police breathing down our necks. We took some wine and some bottles of beer down to Porthtowan beach after leaving the pub, lit a fire and did our best impressions of idle students watching the sunset. My guess is, once night had fallen and there was only the firelight to see by, she put the drug in my bottle of beer. I remember at some point, when it was too dark to make much out, feeling her hair brush against my cheek. Maybe that was the moment, though at the time … I can still recapture the sensation, if I try hard enough. You could say it was her farewell to me. Because soon after that, I was out for the count, and they were free to go ahead without me.

‘I never saw Alison again. Or Peter. Until a week ago.’

EIGHTEEN