‘Easy.’ May laid a tentative hand on Nic’s who snatched it up. ‘After we talked, Laure, I flew to Prague – I do recommend it – and started with marionette theatres. Didn’t take long. And here we are.’ She paused. ‘I owed you.’

‘You didn’t go home,’ said Nic.

‘No. Obv.’ She placed a hand on her hip. ‘Do I look as though I’m in New York?’

Good luck, Nic, thought Laure, with a lift of her heart. With the future. With the fact that May most definitely has the upper hand.

‘I have something for you.’ Milos reached down and placed a battered-looking package on the table. ‘I have kept it for all these years. Just in case.’

She stared down at the package. Time did a backwards flip. She began to be aware of her skin, her breathing, her pulse.

Milos undid the parcel and the tissue paper parted like a bivalve to reveal a collapsed puppet, resembling nothing so much as a pile of bones in the ossuary.

The beat at Laure’s temple intensified.

She registered a black cap, wooden outstretched hands, folded limbs, the face of a marionette, tangled sundered strings and uttered a cry. ‘Pierrot.’

‘Tomas instructed me that, if anything should happen to him, I was to get him to you,’ said Milos. ‘He was insistent about that. He said it would be the most important thing I could do.’ He repeated, ‘the most important thing…’

Laure was powerless to move.

‘Tomas said you would know what he meant by sending him.’

Laure closed her eyes and hung onto the edge of the table.

Nic coughed. May stopped writing.

‘He also said you were to promise to reattach the strings.’

As usual, Chez Prune was busy but Laure managed to get a table by the window and ordered a carafe of red wine.

It arrived with a plate of roasted nuts. Laure poured out the glasses and pushed one over to Milos. Together they raised them and drank a toast to Pierrot.

At first, they didn’t talk much.

She clasped her hands on her lap. ‘Tell me everything.’

Milos had already downed his wine and helped himself to a second glass.

After Laure fled, the theatre was closed down and everyone was scattered, he told her. Leo was eventually released from custody but his left hand had to be amputated. He was given a minor role in the new Czech republic. Manicki went to ground. Rumour had it he cut his hair and worked as a barber. Milos and Lucia got a bus south out of Prague and settled near Tabór where he set up a carpentry business and sat out the remaining days of the regime. He and Lucia had two children. After they had grown up, he and Lucia returned to Prague to set up the theatre.

‘It’s our one true love,’ he said.

Laure held tightly onto her glass of wine. ‘Did Lucia betray me?’