‘The point is nuclear weapons. Do you know what they do? It would be the end of the world if they were unleashed.’ She softened her voice. ‘Don’t you see that? No one would win. There’d be nothing left.’

‘Well,’ Goodfellow said, ‘what are your sympathies for the Russians?’

They weren’t listening. Fixed on their tracks like freight trains.

‘None.’

Communism?’

She hesitated, marshalling her thoughts.

‘I consider myself a socialist,’ she said. ‘I vote Labour. This is not a crime.’ She reached over for a cigarette. She saw them note the move. Chain-smoking. Nervous. ‘And I am passionately against war, especially nuclear war,’ she said. She fiddled with the cigarette in her fingers. ‘You’ll know where I stand on that, since you seem to know everything about me.’ She looked at James Goodfellow, staring him out. She would not be intimidated. ‘May I trouble you for a light?’

He pushed the lighter towards her. Gloves off, she thought. He hadn’t come round the table to light it for her.

‘Pretty girl like you,’ James Goodfellow said, his lips slick and rubbery, ‘good Lord, in another time I’d have claimed the droit de seigneur over you.’ He chuckled, and his colleagues smirked. He licked his lips again, the drool gathering in his mouth. ‘You don’t want to get involved in all of this left-wing ban-the-bomb nonsense.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, standing up. ‘I have nothing more to say.’ She turned, grabbed her coat off its hook, opened the door and left without looking back. The door clicked behind her.

She hurried from the building, over Vauxhall Bridge. Bastard. Sleazy bastard. How dare he. He hadn’t been serious about her, hadn’t a clue what troubled her, probably didn’t care either. Just saw a pretty face to crush beneath him. Had her father had regrets about his former life? Remorse? Despaired of Germany? Or had he killed himself to save her? Perhaps Vasily had been at the door and he’d felt he had no choice.

What demons were in his head that drove him to do it? She would never know. It was a selfish act in a life that revolved round him, leaving behind an eternity of questions with no answers, a particular kind of earthly hell.

EPILOGUE

London: May 1959

Betty cradled her coffee, opened the French windows and stepped onto the balcony. It wasn’t large enough for a chair, but it would take a window box and perhaps a couple of pots. She’d grow pansies for the spring, geraniums for the summer. She heard the click of the letter box, a gentle plop-plop on the mat. Letters, addressed to her, in her own home.