Atop the chest of drawers in Thorpe’s London bedroom sits a photograph of the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She’s on a riverbank, holding a book in her lap, and she regards the camera with a touch of surprise, as if she’d been absorbed in the novel and the photographer called out her name. She wears a pale, plain dress, and her hair, gathered in a loose knot on her neck, seems to be made of sunshine. She has large, light eyes—blue, probably—and exquisite cheekbones. Her mouth forms a neat, perfect bow. Her neck is long, and so are her arms, slender and elegant, and while you can’t see the shape of her nose, since she’s looking at the camera, you simply assume that’s as lovely as the rest of her, as well-formed, in exact proportion to everything else. I don’t need to be told that this is Thorpe’s mother. In the first place, it sits on his chest of drawers, in a silver frame. In the second place, while most of the rest of Thorpe seems to belong to his father, I know the eyes in that photograph like I know my own name.

Margaret confirms my suspicions in the morning, over tea and powdered eggs. “I gave him that photograph,” she says. “I thought he should know what she looked like. It’s the only one we had of her.”

“What happened to the rest of them?”

She rises from her chair and clears her plate. Her eyes are soft and swollen, and her skin looks as if it were bleached and hung out to dry during the night. “I’m afraid I must leave for the office.”

“The office!”

“If I don’t turn up, it’s going to look suspicious. We’re lucky enough B— didn’t notice me in the hotel.”

“How do you know he didn’t notice you?”

She’s putting on her gloves. Her fingers are long and slender, just like the rest of her. “Because he’d have tracked us down already. As it is, we haven’t much time before somebody remembers Thorpe’s got a sister in G section and decides to ask me a question or two.”

“But what are we going to do? If the—the department, whatever it’s called, isn’t going to help us—”