May sat down, facing Laure. ‘I’ll come clean. I’m good at what I do and I can usually hack it. But, with you, I’ve only got so far. We dodge around the questions. That’s my fault as much as yours but I like you very much, Laure.’

‘You mean you like Nic,’ Laure interposed gently.

‘Yes. I like Nic.’ She leant forward. ‘Here’s the thing. Why give up a promising career in your foreign office? No value judgements here, but it seems odd. Were you sacked?’

‘Actually, no.’

Actually, Laure had sacked herself. Petr had been acute in his assessment – she would give him that. The quasi-undercover life of the embassy that she thought would make sense to her did nothing of the sort in the end, only added to the muddle of regret and recrimination that she carried around. It had been a miscalculation.

May pressed on. ‘I know that you were probably in low-grade intelligence gathering in Berlin. Who wasn’t?’

‘You and I are done,’ she had told Petr. ‘Done.’

‘When I was working in Berlin, Germany was pulling itself together. Information was being traded all over the place. Ordinary citizens, businessmen, retailers. There’s nothing unusual about that. In a transition people will try and find out what they can. They have to.’

That meant she had reported back to David Brotton about Petr and his business activities. Such as she had uncovered.

‘You had a bad time in Prague.’

‘You have no basis for that assumption.’ Laure’s response was curt.

‘Aha,’ said May. ‘You did.’ She shifted in the seat. ‘What do you think about this. You go to Prague, all shiny and new and innocent. Something happens there. Possibly a man? Or a political shock?’

‘Czechoslovakia was a communist country. Of course it was different.’

‘So two systems, communism and capitalism, are battling away in you.’

‘May, you should be writing fiction.’

‘Your time there leaves you unsettled or, perhaps horrified or disgusted, so you dip your toe into diplomatic waters. It’s a bit half-hearted. You are still unsettled and something is nagging away at you. So you try something else…’

Laure’s mobile shrilled. It was Simon who she had been trying, and failing, to contact for the past twenty-four hours. ‘May, I have to take this.’

Simon’s voice was in her ear. ‘Your unknown sponsor will be pulling out. His or her reasons? He or she feels that the museum is now well established, and you will be obtaining funding from other sources with no difficulty.’

Laure eyed up the rooftops framed in the window. Things were changing. As always. Pleasingly, the thought of how she must absorb herself in new options for the museum, the many meetings to hack out a way forward and the preparation of myriad documents did not depress her. ‘We’re incredibly grateful. Is there any way we can thank him or her?’

He chuckled. ‘Offer your body?’