Eventually, he took down a clean towel from a stack on the shelf and wrapped it around himself. She was sitting on the bed but had put on her robe. He stood over her and said, ‘Laure, you took a bloody stupid risk. Women get beaten up. For less. I could have beaten you up.’

‘Maybe.’ She looked up at him. ‘But I don’t think you are that kind of man.’

Lust still coursed through him and made him additionally savage. ‘It’s bloody foolish and you’re not a fool.’

How many violent emotions was it possible to feel in a few hours? Many, as it turned out, and he was exhausted by them. Looking into Laure’s face, he read in it triumph and, also, shame.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘For how changed you are.’

She stood up and her hair fell over her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry too, Petr. But you did something to me all those years ago that makes it possible for me to behave… well,’ she shrugged, ‘as I have just done.’

‘So be it.’ He reached into his jacket pocket for a cigarette and thought the better of it. He shoved the cigarettes back into the jacket pocket. ‘For what it’s worth, Tomas made it to the railway station where he was arrested and put into solitary.’

She was on him like a shot. ‘Which prison?’

‘On the Bartolomĕjská. It used to be a convent.’ He settled himself against the bedhead. ‘The nuns’ cells turned out to be fit for purpose.’ He frowned. ‘And the church was used as a shooting gallery.’

‘And you weren’t going to tell me even that?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it will haunt you.’

‘Like it must haunt you? Or, should do.’

‘Have some pity.’

To his surprise, she nodded. ‘How can I find out? The StB must have kept records. Like the Nazis and the Stasi.’

‘Good luck looking.’

‘You will look for me, Petr. To right the wrong, to be peaceful … you find the information.’ She twisted up her hair into a knot. ‘You destroyed a future. Think of it as reparation.’

He had read somewhere that love was heightened and deepened by pain. But there was a limit and he was close to snapping point. ‘Laure, did you ever really consider Tomas was probably using you?’

She had gone white. ‘You’ve used that method before, Petr. Wasn’t it called the contamination method? Maybe you still use it?’ She refused to look at him and wrenched open the door. ‘Tomas was a man who dared to take you all on and who never compromised. Who was brave. Who I loved. Who loved…’ She stopped. ‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Get out.’

He put on his shirt and began buttoning it up. She picked up her scattered clothes and placed them on the chair. ‘Let yourself out.’

She moved off into the other room.