Laure closed her eyes in the face of the inevitable deep, dark dive into a memory. Shadows licking up and down pocked and peeling walls. Her friend, Milos, working calmly away on their strings and talking to one of his marionettes who he treated like family. Like his children.

‘I deny absolutely that I come from a bourgeois background,’ Spejbl had said to Milos.

‘But Spejbl,’ countered Milos severely, ‘your father was a well-known shop owner.’ He glanced at Laure. ‘You mustn’t tell lies in front of visitors.’

The click of wooden joints. The acrid sweat of puppeteers working furiously under the theatre’s unreliable lights… these were filed away, as sharp and pungent as they ever were.

She opened her eyes. ‘I used to work in a Prague marionette theatre. I think I mentioned. Before the revolution when things were difficult.’

‘Oh?’

‘I had a friend at the marionette theatre. He said—’

He said. Laure checked herself. She must always give Milos his name because the State would have tried to make him vanish and, God forbid, may have succeeded. Because he was her friend.

Milos had said: ‘Please don’t forget what we do here.’

May waited for Laure to finish the sentence. Laure shrugged. ‘I can’t remember what he, Milos, said.’

‘Did Milos give her to you?’

‘Actually, he didn’t. As it turned out, someone else gave her to me. Many years later.’

May gave Laure space to elaborate but she didn’t.

‘She looks world-weary. As if she’s seen too much,’ said May.

‘You may be right.’

May slotted a finger under the marionette’s arm and raised it in a Nazi salute. ‘Marenka, I must ask you on behalf of women everywhere who know about you. Did it work out well?’

Laure watched. ‘She won’t tell you. She’s taken a vow of silence.’

‘That fits. Nobody wants to admit to having been taken for a great, big ride. You could answer for her, Laure. You could tell me.’

Laure bit her lip and turned away. Resolved as she might be, the questioning got under her skin. ‘Not really qualified,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Really.’

May was sceptical. ‘Whoa. I’ve just dived up a cul-de-sac. Right? Can I look under her veil?’

‘If you must.’

The lace was exquisite and too good for a marionette. Easing it back, May peered at Marenka’s face. ‘How odd. One eye is blue, one green. Did they run out of paint?’

‘Getting hold of paint was always a problem. You had to take what you could get.’

‘It would have been easy enough to mix?’

‘True. But not everything was as straightforward as that.’

May was not in on the secrets but the mismatched eyes conveyed the message to anyone who understood: not everyone thinks the same.

May shrugged. ‘Makes me feel a little odd, that’s all.’