Vasily. Walking in the opposite direction, on the other side of the street. There was no mistaking him. She froze, ice sliding down the follicles of her skin. He’d bulked up since she last saw him, his weeping sores now pitted scars. He limped, a stiffness in his leg, as if a muscle or a tendon had been severed, or a bone chipped, once. He passed by, not noticing her. He turned into Bury Place.

If he suspected she was there, he didn’t show it, his eyes focused forward. She stood on the corner, checking her watch, peering along the street as if waiting for someone. She saw him stop at the door to John’s rooms. Ring the bell. He pulled out something from his jacket and for a moment she thought it could be a gun before he disappeared into the building and she saw it was a bottle.

She could hear in her mind the thud of his tread as he stumbled up the broken stairwell in Mitte, the scratch of the key in the door. Of course. Strange how memory plays tricks, how it buries a detail so deep that only the right trigger releases it, like the secret compartment in Mutti’s bureau, levers pressed in sequence before the big reveal.

He’d had the key to their apartment. He and Boris always entered from the service door. But he’d come through the front door. The key could only have been taken from Lieselotte. She kept it on a chain around her neck. Had he taken it from her after she was dead, or before? Or had John taken it, and given it to him? She stared down the street to John’s doorway. Nothing made sense except the terror of those memories, a frozen axe that stilled her nerves. She saw him as he lurched towards her, felt his hands grab her crotch as he lifted her onto the bike.

He had come for her that morning. Not Lieselotte. Her.

The Russian was real. It was Vasily, and John was in cahoots with him. John claimed he was protecting her. How could she trust him? He could be playing for time, ready to deliver her. She couldn’t imagine what business they would want with her father. But she could see what business Vasily might want with her.

Betty was breathless, her heart heavy in her chest, its hefty drum thumping the beat. She swallowed, shut her eyes for a second, organising her thoughts. Dee had made her promise to think very hard about her decision. The embryo inside her was no larger than her little fingernail, a tumbling mass of cells and glands and fluids. She couldn’t forgive John. Ever.