By now, the lighting had come on in the street and he seized on it as diversion. ‘I can never get over how bright the lights are in the West. The West should be careful and not waste resources. We did better.’

‘What rubbish you talk.’ Laure sounded astonished. ‘The old days were awful. The Party was awful. Life was awful…’ A red-tipped finger was jabbed in his direction. ‘Could I point out you were clever enough to escape to Paris.’

‘And now, with the changes, I’m becoming a rich man. How’s that for irony?’

‘Nice.’ She swished the whisky around her glass.

‘I didn’t mean to become rich, but it’s happened.’

‘Do you enjoy it?’

‘I do.’

She looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe it was always going to happen. You loved living in the West.’

He wasn’t about to deny it.

‘What are you going to do with your new riches?’

The sausage was a pinky-red and fresh-looking. He helped himself. ‘I’ll find something.’

‘Establish a fund to find out what happened to people?’

She spoke without malice – but the implications stung.

‘I’m going to defend myself,’ he said. ‘In my work, I did my best to bring badly needed know-how back home. The West shouldn’t have a monopoly on knowledge. The Second World War brought terror, destruction, the collapse of order, and left the results for us to deal with. We wanted – needed – a system to heal our sore psyches, our dented political systems, our social myopias. Communism promised us that we were all in it together.’

‘“Sore psyches, dented political systems, social myopias”… Good God.’ Laure was laughing at him. ‘And don’t you mean the Russians?’

He looked across to the face that had, for so many reasons, haunted him. ‘Are you taping this conversation?’

There was a hint of smile as she replied, ‘Actually, no. But, if I’m doing the work you accuse me of, I could have been. Don’t worry. Your coming here has been OK-ed. You’re not considered a threat.’

He appreciated the information. ‘I could take offence.’

‘See if the Brits care.’

‘Not cultural attaché speak, I think.’

Laure gave a proper smile.

Cradling the glass, he leant back against the sofa feeling that he could stay here for ever, swapping anecdotes, sharing a past.

And, yes, they could sit in a neutral, perhaps satisfactory, silence.