‘My father? What for?’ The Nazis. It had to be that. He said he never knew. But she saw how terror drove people into silence, fearful for their families. There were plenty who believed, too. Waltraud. The Baumanns. Perhaps her father. ‘War crimes,’ she said. ‘Is he a war criminal?’ On Sark? Perhaps he committed some crime before he went there.

‘No,’ John said. ‘Not that.’

He stared ahead. She sat down on the edge of the chair, the clock in front of her, John’s face distorted through its glass. She went cold, as the truth rose like the sun on the horizon.

‘Are you in with the Russians?’ she said. ‘Did you befriend me so they could get to me? Seduce me on their orders?’

He sat, unmoving, expressionless save for a muscle twitching in his cheek. He opened his lips as if to speak, clammed them shut as he lifted his hands to cover his face. She leaped up, pulling out her cigarettes, throwing five on the floor.

‘Take your filthy money back.’ She grabbed the clock, chucking the rest of the packet at him. ‘Keep the rest, too, give it to the Russians. Settle the debt, you cynical bastard.’

She ran out of the door, down the stairs, onto the street, John’s voice echoing after her. Stop. Betty, please.

Round the corner, into Bloomsbury Way. John had manipulated her in cold blood. What debt did John owe the Russians? What terror had they injected in him that he would sacrifice her to save his own skin? Or was he just a scheming reptile without a qualm? Or deranged? She should have recognised that the first time they met, with his bouts of frenzied tremors. This Russian could be a figment of his imagination.

Lieselotte. Her beloved sister, murdered. Why? Why? It happened often enough at the end, she knew that. But every murdered woman was someone’s sister, mother, daughter. Not another body. Had she struggled before she was plunged into darkness? There had always been a sliver of hope that perhaps somehow she had survived, would turn up, Hallo, meine Bettelein, although that hope had grown smaller with every day and year that passed until it was no more than a pinprick on the horizon.

Betty stopped. She was tired of running. Tired of running from him. She looked at the clock, at its familiar shape, the worn chrome, the chipped II on the Roman numerals of its face. Her sweaty fingers had left greasy prints. Her father had never asked about his clock collection, any more than he’d asked about what happened to his family, or to Germany.

She was about to set off again when she spotted him.