In one sense at least, Stephen’s papers somewhat resembled her mother’s. Her mother had collected newspaper cuttings about the Royal Family. Stephen seemed to have collected ageing yellow items from court circulars. She came across a little wad of them, stapled together, with some items picked out in fluorescent pink. He had highlighted the movements of various aircraft of the Queen’s Flight, had saluted the General Committee Dinner of the Kennel Club and the reception at St James in aid of the Racing Welfare Charities, and had noted royally attended events in aid of the NSPCC, CARE, MIND and Mencap. As Stephen had been a known republican, his intentions could not have had much in common with those of the late Rita Ablewhite. Except, perhaps, madness. Collecting newspaper cuttings is a well-known sign of derangement. Why on earth should anyone have wished to note that the Annual Newsletter of Moxley Hall School would be published in May of 1984 with full details of Old Moxleian Day? What junk, Liz found herself thinking, what a waste of time!

Atrocity stories, Parisian revolts, Mumm champagne, Kennel Clubs, Pol Pot’s baby niece, John Stuart Mill, they add up even less than Hestercombe and Oxenholme on a silver wine cooler. At least the Hestercombes and the Oxenholmes had inhabited the same country and spoken the same language. This stuff was all over the place.

On her third evening of study, she came across the photograph of Mme Savet Akrun. It was cut out from a newspaper, and the reproduction was not good, but nevertheless it had a power. The image looked hauntingly familiar. Had she seen it somewhere before? The caption was ‘Where is my son?’ Mme Savet Akrun, erect and dignified, her hands folded on her lap, sat on a low chair and stared at the camera. Her eyes were large, her face thin and wasted, her lips gently curved. She wore what looked like a slightly Westernized sarong. Her greying hair was neatly pulled back into a bun. Her expression, adopted perhaps for the camera, was of grave suffering. It was a posed shot, slow, expressive. (If Liz had thought to look for a credit, which at this stage she did not, she would have seen for the first time the name of Konstantin Vassiliou.) Liz read the story, which told her that Mme Savet Akrun, mother of four, was held in Camp Site Ten, on the Thai—Kampuchean border. She had walked over the border in 1979 with her three younger children, from the countryside of Siem Reap province, where she had been living and working in a village. Her husband, her parents, her parents-in-law, her sisters, a brother and several of her nieces and nephews had all died in the terror, some of illness and some by violence. Her husband had owned garages and a small cinema in Phnom Penh. She had taught in an infants’ school and was now employed in the camp by the Khmer Women’s Association Centre for Adult Education. ‘I am one of the lucky survivors,’ she was quoted as saying, ‘but my life can give me no joy until I find my son.’ She had last seen him in a small village near Battambang. He had been marched away by a group of Khmer Rouge soldiers, the article said. ‘Is he still alive? How can I find him?’ she asked. The journalist went on to say that she was one of thousands trying to trace lost relatives through the International Red Cross and other agencies.