I did know that his colleagues, his comrades, visited him late at night. He had told us this would happen, and soon enough Emily had told me about it. She said men, two or three men, came every night, around midnight, they let themselves in the back gate, walked through the servants’ yard, into the garden, and down, down, to the end of the garden, to his room. She told me the dogs’ barking woke her, every time, they woke Josias and Tiny too, but they all knew what it was, so they simply went back to sleep. Two or so hours later the men would leave, the same way, dogs barking again, and they’d all be woken, once more.

I imagined it: the blackness of night, and a car pulling up, its engine turned off, its pooling lights. Perhaps the car pulled up two or three doors away, and parked in a different place each night. They wouldn’t do things exactly the same each time, and take the risk of being noticed.

The three men, or two men, shadows, would make their way along the pavement, against our white walls, one of them carrying dinner, food, for Joseph in our garden. As I imagined it. What would the dinner be? I did worry about what he ate, I worried about that from the beginning. Perhaps they picked up something from the Indian take-away at the other end of Corlett Drive, I think they did that. A curry and rice. Coca-Cola to drink, paper cups. Paper and plastic utensils. And they’d crowd into his low room, only one chair to sit on — standing, then, or sitting on the bed, or the floor.

And then, to work: plans rolled out. A white map. Discussions, arguments, late into the night, under the dim light bulb. It was summer then, the months of summer, there would be moths against his light, moths batting their frail wings against his light.

Sometimes I wished I could be there, to hear what they were saying. I imagined Joseph’s silver-rimmed glasses, his dark hair. I felt deep respect. And then I felt moved. These feelings accompanied my days, then. They were new, there was a new space now, in my mind. A space for the work they were doing, for the respect I felt.

I think Howard felt the same, although he never said much. Just: everything okay with the garden room? Yes, yes, all fine, I’d say.

And the servants. How could they believe he was a ‘friend come to stay’? They spoke, I saw now, more quietly among themselves, in their own language. I wonder what they said. Perhaps they understood. They knew there was a resistance, of course they knew. Now they understood the resistance had come here, right here, behind our whitewashed walls, beside our glittering swimming pool, under the trees, to the end of our garden. They understood.

And this was why I now told Emily not to tell anyone, anyone she knew. It was a secret, that’s all I said. And tell Josias and Tiny, I said. She looked at me. Alright ma’am, she said. It’s alright. Perhaps I was trembling a little, when I told her that, I felt myself to be quite pale. I went to my room to lie down. This had become more than we’d thought. I remember that afternoon. It took me a while to calm down before I lay on my bed, I remember my face in my mirror, my dressing table mirror. It was pale, against my smooth dark hair.