That was it. They walked out without another word, thumping the doors so hard that they continued to swing on their hinges long after the suits had gone. My knees buckled on me and I slumped into a chair, my cheek on fire. My anger was stretched taut and my need to find my brother gnawed at me, but I allowed myself a small ripple of pleasure. I had discovered three things in the last hour.

First, the men sent to kill my brother were French, not Russian. Though that didn’t mean they were not in the pay of Soviet masters.

Second, the people I’d phoned who had taken André had acted fast and efficiently and he went with them willingly. I just hoped they were as fast and efficient with medical treatment.

Third, I had a name: Piquet.

It was a start.

*

Hospital bathrooms are the worst of places. Their tiled walls have absorbed so much pain and have seen the private tears of so many diseased patients that the room feels weighted with sadness.

This one was green with a white border at waist height and the taps were old-fashioned heavy ones that were stiff to turn. But I locked the door and washed my hands in the basin for far too long, soaping each finger over and over, taking care not to wet my plaster, delaying the moment when I had to look in the mirror. I rinsed them. Dried them. And raised my eyes.

The face wasn’t mine. I blinked, expecting it to change, but it didn’t, so I lifted a finger and touched the glass as though there might be another person hiding behind it. All I found was a flat distorted version of myself, but I knew it must be me because of the eyes. They were dark oak-brown. My father’s eyes. But where was the happiness that lived inside them?

It wasn’t just the bruises or the cuts and nicks and the swollen side of my jaw that robbed me of me. It was also the huge white dressing that covered my face from my temple to my chin, and that was what I was here to make right. I needed to see me. To know I was still there.

With care I picked at the adhesive strips one by one, sliding my nail under the sticky tape. I winced but that made it worse, so I sped up and with just two left to go, I tore it off.

It was bad. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t. But not as bad as I’d feared. A neat sickle-shaped scar ran from in front of my ear to my chin, red and angry and swollen with spidery stitches criss-crossing it, and blackened with dried blood at the top. I looked in the mirror and managed a very small smile.

‘Hello,’ I said.