Loveday wets his lips. He screws up his eyes.

‘Was I talking? In my sleep?’

‘German. Arabic. You cried out a lot. Said her name.’

He closes his eyes at that. Swallows, painfully. He wriggles his left arm free from under the covers. The pyjama sleeve is knotted at the elbow, just below the stump.

‘She did this,’ he says, quietly. ‘Held my hand in the harvester because I wouldn’t do what she wanted.’

‘And what did she want?’ asks Cordelia.

‘Everything I had. She was just cruel. Just liked pain. Some people see a duckling and coo about how pretty they look with their brothers and sisters and their mother. Other people throw a rock. That was Audrey.’

‘And yet you allowed Christopher to recruit her?’ asks Cordelia, sitting back in her chair. ‘Why?’

‘We were made of the right stuff,’ says Loveday, with a faint smile. ‘Father was part of the right clubs. We knew the right people. It wasn’t hard to be selected – you just had to be a good chap. I was good at codes. Good at strategies. It wasn’t unusual for members of SIS – MI6, as it is now – to use their families for some operations. And when they started building the POW camp, it was a perfect cover for Audrey.’

‘Christopher?’ asks Felicity, quietly. ‘How did he end up part of it?’

Loveday finds the strength to give a slight shrug. ‘He had a flair for it. I did well in the early days of the war and was running my own unit by ’42. I bumped into Christopher on a trip home. He was still scribbling in his notebook. Still writing stories. He wanted to do his bit and I was in a position to help him. We got him a position as a foreign correspondent for a news agency. Told them back home he was a wireless operator. He proved himself very useful.’

‘Fairfax never said,’ mutters Felicity.

‘As far as his family knew he was a wireless operator, far from danger. In truth he was a valuable member of my unit. It was a huge sacrifice, pretending he had lost his life, but the job demanded it and he carried the pain without showing it, even as he knew the agony his father must be going through.’

‘But you allowed him to corrupt the village he was from,’ says Cordelia. ‘You let him place Favre in your sister’s house.’

Loveday blinks. Holds his eyes closed for several breaths. He seems to be making up his mind.