Laure was not sure that she did. Folding up the offending dress, she fell silent.

At the end of Laure’s second week in Prague, the Kobes family were slated to attend a lunch to honour a delegation of railwaymen from the north of England. As an English speaker, Laure was also to attend.

Having got ready in an aquamarine sleeveless dress, Eva appeared troubled by the idea of the outing. Her lipstick was dark orange but there was a pale line around her lips. ‘I warn you, it will be boring,’ she said.

Petr hushed his wife. He focused on Laure with that trick that he had of making her feel that she was only person in the world. ‘I will make every effort to ensure that you enjoy yourself.’

The hall hired for the event was so large that the fifty or so guests were dwarfed by its brick bleakness. The top table, the only one with the luxury of a tablecloth, was arranged at right angles to several trestle tables and had a microphone clipped to the edge. Whenever the microphone hiccupped, the electrician slapped down his beer glass and headed at speed over to it.

Trussed up in suits, the railway delegation looked dazed. Some had brought their over-heated wives, most of whom wore frocks more suitable for a Scottish winter than a Prague summer. They were being introduced to the Party wives who, as a group, had a tendency to bottle-yellow hair and very thin eyebrows.

Laure was seated between Jan and Maria at one of the trestles which had been magnificently laid with paper napkins and metal plates. Placed on each setting was a badge embossed with images of Lenin, Stalin and the Czech flag. To reinforce the solemnity of the occasion, pennants in eye-watering yellow and green flew from the water glasses into which they had been stuck and proclaimed in Czech and English: ‘Welcome to our Brothers’.

Seated opposite Laure were a couple of the railwaymen whose accents triggered a moment of homesickness. Between bouts of coping with the children, she tried to engage them in conversation. They weren’t inclined to be friendly until she informed them in her broadest accent that she was born-and-bred Yorkshire. Relations thawed. ‘Not saying, mind, I approve of your neck of the woods,’ said the older one who had a thin indentation at the back of his head where his cap usually sat.

Laure did her best to wriggle past their defensiveness. In desperation, she pointed out Eva and Petr on the top table. The younger man whistled. ‘Your employers must be in with the chiefs.’ He cocked a knowing eye. ‘You won’t get nowt unless you have some folk on the inside.’