‘I don’t know any more,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to go to university.’ She couldn’t say more. It was too weighted with endings and decisions and difficulties. It seemed unbelievable that she could ever have thought she would be allowed to do such a thing. And what if, in some miracle, she’d been let in – she had no sense of how she would have lived, existed in an independent way. At the edge of her mind, she sensed that she was letting someone, or some concept of herself, down. Jack carried on smoking, idly caressing the back of her neck. She felt the heaviness of the air as they both waited for one of them to say something.

‘There are other things you could do,’ he drawled, which was true of course, but which one of those things was the right one, she had no idea.

‘Your turn,’ she said, afraid. ‘Tell me what you’re doing at the base. What’s it all for.’

He sat up away from her. ‘You know what we’re doing. Keeping you all safe.’ There was a tone of mockery and distance.

‘But I don’t, that’s the point,’ she persisted. ‘It’s all just rumour and conjecture. You can tell me. I’m not a Russian spy. Where were you today, for example?’

He gave her a long look and she thought he might actually tell her something real. But then in a sudden movement he stubbed out his cigarette and, underneath the blankets, drew his finger up her leg. She tensed. She was tired, would have liked to have slept, but her body responded anyway.

‘Does Art do this to you?’

She jerked her head forward. ‘What?’

He crawled under the covers. ‘What about this?’

‘Don’t Jack, please.’

‘You like it.’

‘Don’t tell me what I like.’

‘I know you,’ he said, and she wanted to slap him for his presumption. She drew back from him but not too far. It was true. He did know something of her that no one else knew.

He kept going and kept asking. ‘Please stop,’ she said, but it was hard to concentrate.

Later, she did sleep and when she woke the room was dark and cold. She was alone in the bed. The kettle on the stove whistled from the kitchen. She got dressed quickly. Her stomach was empty and she felt sick, light-headed.

She was pulling on her coat from the pile on the floor when Jack came in with two mugs of coffee.

‘Where are you going?’

She took the coffee from him, just for the warmth, but it was too hot and burned her tongue. The aftertaste was acrid, metallic. ‘I need to get back, I need to go home. I’m horribly late.’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘let’s just drink this.’

‘No, I need to go now.’

‘What’s wrong?’