‘I thought I would learn something about you.’ May tightened her grip on her phone. ‘You’re very difficult to get through to.’

‘And what makes you think you have the right to do what you have just done?’

‘No right.’ Her voice slithered over the words. ‘Only the desire to write truthfully.’

‘Get out.’

May stood her ground. ‘Laure, I’m not a spy.’

‘You know nothing about being a spy.’

Quick as a flash came the retort, ‘And you do?’

May did not, and could not, know about that universe. The colourless years. The watching, the uncertainty. The voluntary venture into grey, incomplete moral territory from which there was no return. It was an enterprise, sometimes a fearsome one, that left no one unmarked. ‘Give me your phone.’ May flinched at Laure’s tone. ‘Now. And the password.’

‘You can’t take my phone.’

‘Yes, I can. And I will.’ There was no mistaking Laure’s anger and May handed it over. Laure tapped in the numbers and deleted the photograph of the medical insurance forms that had been on the top of the pile of papers. ‘Were you also snooping when you went to the bathroom?’

May owned up at once. ‘I looked into the room with the boxes. I’m sorry. But I was fascinated by the labels. “Prague”, “Berlin”. I would love to talk those over with you. I know they’re important in your story?’ She kneaded one hand against the other. ‘I noticed the Czech railway ticket in the frame.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘Not that you’ve stolen it.’

‘I should bloody think not.’ As the museum’s curator, she had handled worse situations – and this should be no different. ‘You have abused our arrangement.’

May gnawed an already bitten fingernail and did not move. ‘I apologize, Laure. It was wrong of me. Very.’

May was clearly panicked. Losing this assignment would not be good for either but May would be the real loser.

‘How can you write so acutely and act so stupidly?’

‘It has to be done sometimes,’ she said. ‘It’s not good. But it achieves good.’ The uncertain expression was back. ‘By good, I mean clarity.’

‘Leave. Now.’

What a performance May was putting on, she thought. A good theatrical one.

‘Go. And don’t come back.’

‘The papers were there. You were in the kitchen. I wanted to find out more about you.’ May assembled her defence. ‘If the papers were really important you would not have left them lying around.’

‘If you mean I hadn’t anticipated inviting someone without principles or morals into my flat, then no.’

The grey-blue eyes were now huge rock pools of distress and contrition.

‘Please,’ said May, all pretence apparently ripped away. ‘This will be a big feature. It was my idea and I went after it.’ She added in a low voice, ‘I need it.’