This was her third June at home. She had made no friends. Except for the necessary pleasantries with the helpers, her mouth was only for eating and drinking. Some had wanted to talk—even to have whole conversations—but she was suspicious and had ignored them. Far better to die an unfriendly enigma, without the shame. Too many had tried to find out, and the memories gave her pain. Each one came wrapped in guilt, uncertainty, anger and self-loathing.

The letters were the worst. Inquiries, no matter how well-meaning, unpacked years of attempted forgetfulness. She would scan each one, picking out the few words common to them all, and then she would put them in one of her carrier bags. Now she no longer opened them, and they would go straight into the bags, which were arranged neatly at the bottom of the cheap wardrobe, next to the pair of shoes she wasn’t wearing.

The bags too were unopened. She wondered whether she would be set free if she threw them away, shedding her past and starting again with what little time there was. But she couldn’t do that—it wouldn’t be fair to him, no matter what he had done. So they remained unopened, their photographs, letters and diaries neither examined nor discarded, in a state, like her, of being somewhere in between.

All she now had to look forward to were the visits from Amy, who came as often as she could. She would be coming today, at teatime, said she had some important news, something so special, something for which she had been fighting for a long time. “Oh not that,” she had said, but Amy told her this was different, this was it, Mum. Well, she doubted that.

Amy was breathless in her telling, and at first her brain felt too muddled to take it all in. Something about a female Russian agent’s testimony, found in Moscow, saying that he was not a traitor, saying that he’d wanted to blow up some secret gas. Something about him only joining the BFC because he wanted to save his wife.

“This Russian agent was in fact a German, Mum,” Amy said, “called Leni Steiner. She escaped from the factory disguised as a prisoner. In her testimony, she says that she was the only one to get out of the factory alive.

“Do you see now, Mum? That’s what Dad was doing in your factory! And now we know why—because of this gas. That’s why he was there—he wasn’t on their side, he wasn’t a traitor. He was pretending to be one so he could destroy this sarin. In fact, it looks as though he saved the whole of London, or maybe even changed the whole outcome of the war. It’s incredible! The MOD say that he’s going to get a pardon, along with the rest of the unit, and will probably even get a medal.”