Laure knew those wooden features so well. Intimately. If age had crackled the painted complexion, the scarlet bow lips were still defiant.

May shot Laure a look from under her lids. ‘How would you describe her?’

‘Well,’ began Laure. ‘She’s an innocent.’

‘Ah,’ said May.

‘But not innocent. Marenka knows things. To look at her, she’s wooden and stiff and, yet, she pulses with life.’ She could hear her voice reflect the excitement she had once felt all those years ago. ‘She’s a marionette but possesses a soul.’ She paused. ‘You might think this rubbish. It isn’t.’

‘Go on,’ said May. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’

‘Marenka is a bundle of paradoxes. She can be seen for what she is. Or, you, the onlooker, can project an image of yourself onto her.’

Marenka was Milos’s creation. He was the artist and painted into those odd eyes was the craziness and despair of how it had been.

‘Does she have a prince?’

‘He hasn’t shown up yet,’ said Laure. ‘She’s still waiting.’

‘Same old story,’ said May. ‘In my experience, they rarely do.’ She lowered the veil over Beauty’s face and backed out of the cabinet. ‘You said you never had two of anything. Shouldn’t Marenka lose her veil now you’ve put the other one in? If you follow your own rules, I mean.’

‘No,’ replied Laure, more sharply than she intended.

‘The eyes are weird,’ May said. ‘Haunting in their way. So, the marionette theatre. What happened to it?’

‘Politics,’ answered Laure. ‘The company always hoped to perform in Paris but never made it because they weren’t allowed to leave Czechoslovakia. Anyway, they got into trouble with the communist authorities. As I mentioned, it was years later that I was given Marenka.’

May peered at the now drooping marionette at the back of the cabinet. ‘“Politics made it impossible to keep our promise,”’ she read out from the label. She shoved her hands into her pockets. ‘Are you ever surprised by what you learn here?’

‘All the time. These objects invite you to the edge of an abyss and urge you to look over.’

CHAPTER 9

Prague, 1986

WAS IT NORMAL, WHAT SHE HAD SEEN IN THE KOBES’ bedroom?

She pondered over it. Perhaps it had been about power – as she now realized her disastrous coupling with Rob Dance had partially been about.

Forget Rob.

Had it been a sex game? Was Petr abusing his wife? In the daytime, Eva frequently called him ‘darling’. In the light of what she had seen, what did it mean? Back home, she read about terrible things that happened to some women in the papers but, having examined her scanty knowledge of what was what in the sexual department, she failed to reach enlightenment.