Laure was not stupid. She was right when she said the Czechs were an interesting people. They would be scenting opportunities to make political and financial capital out of their new systems, even if they were still feeling their way. Certainly, the West would be interested in their emergence.

Making for the lift in the lobby, he noticed a woman in a mauve rayon dress nursing a drink in the corner, doing her best to convince Petr that she was not focusing on him. She was middle-aged and almost beautiful but her long hair twisted up into a bun had been dyed too heavily. A watcher? It would no longer be the Party but possibly the new Czech state, anxious that its industrial secrets remained intact. It could be the British, but almost certainly not. A rival pharmaceutical company?

Or, maybe, his habit of keeping watch for the watchers was engrained?

If she was a watcher she wasn’t very good at it because she was easy to spot. Pressing the lift button, he nodded in her direction. She started and colour crept into her cheeks. He toyed with the idea of asking her up to his room but decided against it. If she was on his case, it might result in her being taken off it and that would be a shame as he could identify her so easily.

Sinking down onto the bed in his room, he placed a hand either side of him and pressed down onto the mattress. One of these days, both sides would give up the pretence and just admit they wanted to grab as much information about the other as they could. Then there could be big hugs and declarations of love all round.

He pulled back the sheets, got in and lay down.

He thought about his wife.

Thanks to her care at the Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris, Eva had been under control.

When they returned to Prague from Paris, she was not. The downs were worse. The ups resulted in frequent hallucinations and a refusal to eat or to sleep. The dark seam of psychosis sewed into her family history and, which he now learnt, went back a long way had surfaced after Maria was born.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she would say after an episode. ‘I’m so sorry, Petr.’

Forgive me.

He remembered the promises they made. To respect each other. To love each other.

To make a good marriage. To be honest. ‘I hate you for not telling me,’ he said on one occasion as she shook like a wounded animal. ‘Think of the risk we’ve taken in having Jan and Maria.’

‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Don’t say that.’

He thought of her when they first met. So fresh and golden and, like him, longing for sex, for happiness in a partnership and willing to take on a younger man.