Why did she think things weren’t right with her father’s death? Something about it had always worried her. Only now was she willing to acknowledge she didn’t feel comfortable with the possibility that he chose to leave them? To leave her? Was that a pain too great to bear? It must have been.

She knew his death had been recorded as accidental. But it didn’t ring true. Not to the man who had come to life in the process of her recent research. Allan Trewin was accomplished and brave. He had served in the RAF in the Pacific and – reading between the lines – he was in intelligence, which made sense of his later career in the Foreign Office. Her father had been a spy. This was not a surprise. It had been the Cold War and he had worked in the Soviet Union. It was simply an occupational hazard. But there was something else. She could almost feel the answer but it remained beyond her reach. Her mother might know more but Diana had left it too late to ask the questions, which was unlike her.

MILESTONE

23

Joan

4 August 1962, 3.00 a.m.

All is quiet. Allan is finally asleep, and I creep through the house to Tom’s room. His door is ajar and, as I expect, he’s not in his bed. I have read his signal correctly. The tall clock in the hall chimes three. Silently in bare feet, I move down the stairs through the hall into the rear kitchen. The door is unlocked. My plimsoles sit waiting and I grab an old cardigan. The night has gone cold with the clear sky. The path through to the top garden is slippery with dew. Only the slight scent of pipe tobacco gives Tom away.

I scramble across the part of the garden Diana calls Primrose Hill to the top path where I know I will find Tom. The crescent sliver of a moon is low in the sky. He’s dressed in dark colours blending into the hedge. I sit beside him, taking one last look around and listening to be sure we are alone. Only the cry of an owl fills the night air.

‘Hello.’ My voice is husky. It feels like a clandestine lovers’ meeting. I push the thought away.

‘I’d wondered if you’d make it.’ He taps his pipe on the seat.

‘Touch and go, but Allan finally fell asleep.’

‘Do you know what’s bothering him?’

‘You noticed too?’ I relax my shoulders. What was the saying . . . a problem shared is a problem halved? But that meant I thought he was a problem.

‘Hard not to.’

I nod, forgetting that Tom can’t see my features any more than I can see his. ‘I keep thinking it’s the miscarriage.’

Tom shuffles closer to me on the bench.

‘I’m sorry.’ His hand reaches out, touching first my thigh, then my arm, before finding my hand and clasping it.

I hold my breath for a moment. ‘Thank you.’