He replaced the papers in the briefcase and left as unobtrusively as he had arrived, bearing with him the blueprint for Petr’s future.

On cue, the door to his mother’s bedroom opened. ‘I knew they would come sooner or later.’

A suspicion ignited.

Petr whipped out a chair and eased her down into it. She had been – still was – a beautiful woman but one whose experiences during the Second World War in a Nazi war camp had left her pretty much a physical wreck and her gait was unsteady. He knelt beside her. ‘Did you do this?’

She cradled his face in her hands. Since she lost several of her teeth in the camp, she rarely smiled but she permitted herself one at that moment. ‘My son.’ She allowed the words, pregnant with love and tenderness, to fold him in an embrace. ‘This is the best thing for you.’

Somehow – God knew how – she had got hold of some scent and he smelt its faint, violet fragrance on her wrists which he would for ever associate with her. ‘How do you know what’s best for me?’

He knew his mother. She was, and ever had been since the defeat of Fascism, convinced, that in choosing communist values to guide her life, she was right. ‘Communism is the morally acceptable way, the only way. It is the only position capable of achieving goodness.’ She released his head but kept a hand on his shoulder. ‘I know you so well, Petr. You must keep a watch on your thoughts and desires. If you ever find there’s a gap between the Party’s commandments and your own wishes, you will be ready to clamp down on them. Consider them as bourgeois weaknesses.’

He thought of the implied threat to her medication. ‘They’re bullies.’

She skewered him with a ferocious intensity. ‘They will look after you.’

Petr knew of old that this was how it would be. A pang went through him – for the relinquishing of something irreplaceable. His freedom to choose. ‘It will be at a price, I think.’

She shook her head. ‘Not so.’

‘You’ve packed me up into a convenient parcel.’

He anticipated what was coming next. The crippled, twisted legs under her patched skirt (which must have been at least fifteen years old) trembled. ‘You must always remember that communism is the absolute opposite of Nazism and you must never doubt it. Only yourself.’

He knew, his father knew and she knew, that the psychological and physical damage she had suffered had not only destroyed her health but left her struggling to think well of human beings.

‘Sometimes,’ she said of those memories and the consequences, ‘I can’t fight them. But they won’t kill me.’ Yet, in a sense, they had.

She registered Petr’s disquiet. ‘Don’t worry.’