I moved away from the edge of the slope and crawled deeper into the darkness of the field. Beneath the top layer of damp earth the soil was hard as iron and my elbows and knees were soon burning with agony as I wriggled further and further away from the tracks. When I was sure that I couldn’t be seen over the rise of the hill, I pulled myself up and started to run, my only goal to get far away from the man with the Guatemalan cigarettes.

I cursed myself as I stumbled through the darkness. I wasn’t panicking, not yet, but I was scared. There was no doubt that the man from the train had been MI6. He’d known too much to be anything other than a senior figure from the Service. I started trying to make sense of it all as I plunged deeper into the field, senses alert for any sounds of pursuit. Could meeting with Walt really be the kind of infraction that would see me followed, interrogated and hauled back to London? I knew his name was far from popular in the corridors at Whitehall and Millbank, but all that I had done was meet an old colleague. I cursed myself for my own naiveté as I tried to make my mitigation sound less feeble. Was that really all I had done? I’d met him at the crypt. I’d used a covert location for a clandestine meeting with a disgraced former member of the intelligence community. I’d rambled on, unguardedly, about my frustrations with the Service, with the West, with Great Britain’s place in the world. My God, I’d made myself sound like somebody on the very cusp of defection. And I’d been recorded saying it. That recording had somehow made its way into the hands of my employers. And then I’d gone to see Talbot, all guns blazing, telling the silly sod some cock-and-bull story about a secret source offering information that flew in the face of current policy. Not content with that, I’d given Walt use of my old country house and set off for the cold and distant north without so much as a cover story in place.

‘Felicity,’ I muttered, as I ran. ‘Flick, please, tell me you’re home safe. Tell me you didn’t even go to the house. Tell me you’re sitting there feeling guilty that the roads were too dark or the rain was too hard and you never made it out to Gilsland.’