Fifteen minutes of being in traffic and she pulls into a side road. The library is a dusty Victorian building. Inside, Marina enquires about past copies of newspapers and is sent to a room along the corridor. It has high windows and cracked linoleum and reminds her of an old classroom. Here, another woman gives her a quick explanation of how to use microfilm and shows her the filing cabinets where the reels are stored in boxes.

There are hundreds to choose from and Marina dithers. How far back should she go? Finally, she selects October 1936, slots the reel into place, loads it correctly, brings up the images and adjusts the focus, using the buttons to scroll. It’s a local paper dealing with local issues, but still, there’s plenty of mention of Hitler and the threat of war and the rise of Oswald Mosley and the Blackshirts. She comes across an article about the march in Cable Street and reads about barricades and local men fighting with makeshift weapons and women flinging debris from their windows. It reminds her of a castle under siege and she feels a thrill imagining these people routing the fascists, and then a sadness understanding what Agata had faced.

She returns the reel, selects another and this time she reads about the Second World War, the bombing and the Blitz, brave boys and D-Day, references to concentration camps and refugees. She reads about the Jewish population in London. She thinks of Natalia Kolinski and Eva as well as Agata, and tries to understand what life would have been like for them.

Her stomach growls. More than an hour has passed. She glances around. Most of the visitors are older than Marina, but she catches the eye of a young woman with braids and they exchange a complicit smile.

Next, she picks out a reel from the 1950s. Now she reads about rock and roll and a new dance hall. She reads about the Windrush generation, the hostility of signs on boarding houses and hotels – No Blacks No Dogs No Irish. It’s the same old discrimination, the same old hate-filled speech. History lurching forwards, repeating itself. She glances at the girl with braids and sees that she is looking at the same period. Another complicit smile – although it’s more of a grimace this time – and Marina pushes into the 1960s. If only it was so easy in real life to swipe away the past.