Get out by train from Prague to Austria. The Vienna option.

Whoever it was on the run was instructed to go to the restaurant at the southern end of Wenceslas Square owned by Milos’s father, to walk through the tables and to let himself out of the back entrance. Next, they were to head for the telephone booth at the bottom of the street. If a piece of string was tied around the receiver, they were to dial the number they had been given and wait for the code word. (If no string, they were to abort.) Next, they were to make their way to the safe house used by dissidents on the move (rumour had it that it was run by the British) and once they had given the correct code word, they would be given new papers and a bicycle to get to the station.

Results were fifty–fifty.

But that time, someone released the information, maliciously or carelessly or innocently, and the carefully constructed chain fell apart. Where and by whom? Milos? Lucia, the Boadicea-like fighter for regime change? The nameless contact who was to supply the code word?

Fatigue gritted her eyes and her limbs were heavy with exhaustion. Even so, she knew it would be one of those nights when she didn’t sleep much. (They used to send Xavier crazy.)

Kočka woke several times, mewling and restless. On sentry duty on the floor, Laure calmed her as best she could. Towards dawn, she lost consciousness.

Tomas was playing the piano. This puzzled Laure because his instrument of choice was the guitar.

His hair was cropped uncharacteristically short and she noticed a strip of white skin above the sunburn on his neck.

‘The keys are too stiff,’ he was saying in his good, but accented, English. ‘I have to work doubly hard.’

He was playing Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ which was not his music at all either. ‘I know it’s a cliché for the West,’ he said, swivelling to look at her. ‘But not for us.’ He turned back to the keyboard. ‘For us, the end of the war is a long way off.’ He played more. ‘Music is the best kind of warrior and will have to do the fighting.’

It filled her ears with sublime sound.

‘My God,’ she heard herself say. ‘I’ve waited for you for so long.’

‘On arrive.’ His French was nowhere as good as his English and he would have struggled in Paris. ‘On arrive. I promise.’

I have been awakened, she thought. I am dizzy, enraptured, without boundaries. I never dreamt that being in love meant to be exultant and at ease at one and the same time.

Watching him at the keyboard drove the breath from her body.

The notes became choppier as she swam up towards consciousness.