‘I think I’ve given you enough,’ says Cordelia, and stretches out her shoulders in a manner that suggests she’s tired and could do with some solitude.

‘The house is a shell now,’ says Fergus. ‘I saw it on the drive in.’

‘Still mine though,’ says Cordelia. ‘I get letters from the council insisting I do something with it. They don’t seem to understand. It’s got a life, that house. It deserves to die of old age, not the bulldozer.’

‘It was the start of the high-flying for you, was it?’ asks Fergus, chewing his pen. ‘After what happened, you went up through the ranks like a rocket. Head of MI6 by the time you left. It surprises me you’re willing to talk about all this.’

‘You can’t print much of it,’ says Cordelia. ‘But Flick’s not long for this world and John’s gone and I think it would give her a kick to see her painted as a bit of a hero somehow, even if it’s only she and me that know it’s her. You can do that from what we’ve given you, I know that much. I’ll write the bloody thing myself if you don’t.’

He scoops up the pages. Shuffles them. ‘You haven’t signed them,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a green biro, if you’d like.’

She gives a snort of laughter. ‘I didn’t write it,’ she says, quietly. ‘You ever say that I did and I’ll grind you into the ground. I may be old but I still have friends.’

He starts to stand. Stops himself. ‘The brother and sister. Sera and …’

She closes her eyes as if the memory pains her. ‘They were flown home. Carried on the good fight. President Rios Montt was toppled a few months later and the new guy introduced something a bit more like democracy. It still carried on, though. The genocide, the disappearances, the death squads. Two hundred and forty thousand is the conservative estimate. She wrote to Felicity twice. We intercepted the letter so she never saw it. She was thanking her for what she’d done – the way she’d acted like a friend, like a sister, when they were together in that room and sharing their pain. Flick would have been embarrassed and Sera, well, she got all gushy and sentimental and started apologizing over and over for taking the book.’

‘The book?’

‘John’s poems. She’d held onto it, gripped it like a talisman all through the night. Read every silly word in the blasted thing in the years that followed. Can you imagine? John Goose’s ditties being read in the jungles of Guatemala? He was good, though. Nice ear for a rhyme.’

‘You know where it was found?’ asks Fergus, gently. ‘What must have happened.’

‘1986,’ says Cordelia. ‘Village in the west. Just one of many. A brave lady.’

‘And her brother?’