He was locked up in the civilian police station. The cells were freezing, and Lockhart struggled to keep warm under the predictably feeble blanket that he had been issued. But even if it had been less cold, he wouldn’t have slept. The matter of his incarceration did not concern him, as he was certain that no court-martial would believe him to be stupid enough to kill someone in the middle of the street and then wait next to the body.

All he was able to think about was Anna, and the last time he had seen her, the last time he now knew he would ever see her. He almost felt angry with her, angry that she had risked her neck, angry that she had been so headstrong. It was selfish of her to have deprived a daughter of a mother and a husband of a wife. Her mother would have been all right, Lockhart had thought. Indeed, she was probably still alive.

And then he cried, because he had lost her, because he had let her go, because he was feeling angry with her. It was his fault—he should never have allowed it. She had done what she had thought was right, and it was unfair to her memory to lambast her for that.

He recalled the day when he had heard about the invasion. It had been May 10, the Friday after Anna had left. She had sent a telegram the day before, saying that everything was going according to plan, and that she and her mother would be leaving on Friday. Lockhart had been in the flat in Pimlico, listening to the Home Service during breakfast.

“Germany has invaded the Netherlands. Nazi paratroopers are reported to have seized several frontier towns early this morning….”

He had felt sick, unable to finish his toast. Not stopping to turn off the wireless or find his keys, Lockhart ran out of the flat and down to Belgrave Road, where he hailed a rare taxi. Five minutes later, it had deposited him outside the office in Whitehall. He was panicking, he knew he was, but the only place to find out more was at the office. He hadn’t told his colleagues about Anna’s mission—they would certainly have stopped her, and he knew that Anna would have hated him for eternity if he had thrown the book at her.

He spent all morning on the phone, but nobody could help. Many had more important matters to attend to, as Lockhart had anticipated. The line to the Dutch Embassy in Portman Square appeared to have failed. Some in the Foreign Office were rude, telling him that he was a fool to let his wife go in the first place. It was impossible to send a telegram, as every telegraph office he tried told him that services had been suspended. He even posted a letter, out of sheer desperation, knowing that it would never make it across the Channel.