‘Who else would it have been?’ he continues. ‘Maybe she didn’t intend for them to shoot him, but it’s like Leo said: she was out of her depth. She thought it was all a game.’
Joan feels the ground tip beneath her. ‘But she loved him,’ she whispers.
‘Exactly. But she couldn’t have him, could she?’
Joan looks at Nick. No, she thinks. No, no, no. She will not believe it. And yet there is something in the suggestion that makes her wince. The expression on Sonya’s face when she told her that he’d been shot, her breeziness over Joan getting on with her life. These things struck her as odd at the time but she had refused to think about them. She had been so determined to hold on a little tighter, wanting to protect their friendship from unravelling, as it had done once before. ‘But why would she do something so callous?’
Nick shrugs in an exasperated manner. ‘Because she was jealous.’
Jealous? Joan shakes her head, although the word prompts a sudden memory to flash in her mind and then disappear. What was it? Something Jamie said in the Albert Hall? She closes her eyes and tries to summon it up, but her mind is blank, empty. It has gone. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Sonya wasn’t the type.’
‘For God’s sake! Even now, you still think she’s some sort of super-human. She’s just evil.’
‘She’s not evil.’
Nick shakes his head. ‘And what happened to her then? Did she ever get caught? Oh no, let me guess. She didn’t. She got away. She was fine. She just left you to clear up the whole bloody mess.’ There is a pause. ‘Am I right?’
Somewhere in the distance a police siren wails and fades. Joan shudders. And then, so slightly that the movement is barely perceptible, she nods her head.
THURSDAY, 4.44 P.M.
There is a stunned silence in the laboratory. Nobody can quite believe that it has happened, that the Russians have beaten them to it and Max—Max!—has been arrested.
‘You don’t think he did it, do you?’ Karen asks.
‘Of course he didn’t.’ Joan’s voice is a scrubbed whisper. She turns the wireless on, hoping that the noise of it might calm her, might drown out the terrible thumping of her heart, but it is yet another news report about the Russian bomb. She turns it off again. She stands up. ‘I’m going home,’ she announces.
Karen raises her eyebrows. ‘Don’t you think we ought to stay here in case they need us?’
‘They’ll be able to find us if they need us.’ She pulls on her jacket. ‘See you tomorrow.’
But Joan will not be coming in tomorrow. She knows that already. At her front door, she pulls the dark strand of hair from the lock and slots her key into it. One, two, three. Undisturbed, for now. She goes straight to the bathroom cabinet and removes the box of sanitary towels in which she has hidden her most recent documents. She no longer leaves them at the laboratory after the previous incident with the police. It is easier to hide them here. Safer. She thinks of tearing the documents out and flushing them down the toilet but she has no faith in the cistern. She imagines them blocking the drains and being dragged out weeks later, incriminating her beyond all possible defence. She takes them to the fireplace and throws them into the hearth. The match will not light. She strikes it four times before it catches and even then it flickers and extinguishes before she can hold it to the paper.
‘Damn,’ she whispers. She tries again, and this time it catches straight away. She throws it onto the fire, watching as the flame spreads, devouring words and pictures until it burns itself out.
She stuffs a toothbrush and a change of clothes into her travelling bag and then stands perfectly still, her hand pressed to her forehead, and for a brief moment she wonders if she will ever come back here. Is there anything else she needs? No. There are things she might want, but nothing she needs. For a moment she wishes she had kept the money from Russia and then she would have something to work with. She could have made a plan, disappeared for a while until all this has blown over. But go where? she thinks as she unhooks her jacket from behind the door and slings it over her arm. To Canada? Australia? Russia? Her key sticks in the lock on the way out and she has to tug at the door to make it close. Would it be more obvious to run than to stay and stick it out? And what about Max?
She stands at the top of the stairs, suddenly giddy with the thought that Max might already have guessed her involvement. What if they have some real, actual evidence? Perhaps he is holding the evidence in his hands right now, shaking his head, wondering. Max, the only man in all the world with whom her cover is utterly useless, the only one who knows exactly how much she knows, who has taught her everything himself, who tells her that he loves her without the slightest hesitation. Would he tell them if he knew?
She does not know. Impossible to guess how he might react. Impossible to know if they have any evidence at all. The only thing she can be certain of is the knowledge that she has to leave Cambridge. She just needs a little time to think, somewhere to give her a few days’ start. And first of all, she needs to see Sonya.
She walks to the station, doubling back on herself to check that nobody is following her. Once there, she buys a ticket to Ely and hurries onto the train. She blinks as it pulls out, dazzled by the brightness of the sun, the green of the countryside. She squeezes her hands together and closes her eyes.
Sonya and Jamie’s farmhouse is quiet when she arrives, slightly breathless from the long walk up the lane from the nearest bus stop. The car has gone and there are no signs of tyre tracks on the path. She does not knock at the front door, not wishing to draw attention to herself, but goes around to the back and knocks gently on the glass. Nothing. She presses her nose up to the window and sees plates stacked neatly in the dish-rack with two wine glasses and a child’s beaker upside down next to them. There is a newspaper lying open on the table, and Sonya’s bright red coat flung over the back of a chair. Joan knocks again, but the sound only echoes and repeats.
She tries the door handle and, to her surprise, it is unlocked. She goes in. She calls out. ‘Sonya. Jamie. It’s me. Are you here?’ She listens. ‘Katya?’
Nothing. She goes into the front room. The fire has not been swept and the curtains are open but left untied, as if they have been dragged back in a hurry. She goes upstairs. There are no toothbrushes in the bathroom, no lipsticks by the mirror, no hairbrush by the bed. Joan whirls around. She goes to open the wardrobe and then realises that she should not touch anything.
Gloves. Where are her gloves?
She roots around in her handbag to find them, and her fingers are clumsy as she puts them on. She flings open the wardrobe door. There are gaps and spaces where clothes might once have been. She rakes her gloved hand along them until she comes to something familiar, her mink fur, hanging at the end of the rail. That’s where it got to. She always suspected Sonya of having taken it. She slips it off the hanger and folds it over her arm.
As she does so, she notices that it has been concealing a cardboard box at the bottom of the wardrobe. It is small and dusty, but there is something about the box that makes Joan curious. She leans forward and pulls off the lid, unleashing a puff of dust, and revealing a small pile of photographs. Joan feels a quickening of her heart, anxious in case any of them are ones Joan has previously passed to Sonya revealing aspects of the work being done at the laboratory, all to be sent back to Moscow. Surely she wouldn’t keep them here? She would have more sense than that.
Cautiously she slips her hand into the box and takes them out. Ah, she thinks, old photographs. Her hands are clumsy in the gloves but she is careful with the delicate paper. She flicks through the pile, just to verify absolutely that there is nothing incriminating, and almost at once a picture of a boy catches her eye. It is Leo as a child. It must be. He is perhaps six years old, skinny, with his head tilted and sunlight flashing from his spectacles, standing under a tree. His features are less pronounced but he still looks so like th
e man she once loved that her eyes burn. Shot, she thinks, and the word explodes numbly in her mind.
She crouches down on the carpet and flicks through the rest of the photographs. There are not many. In each one, the same boy looks straight at the camera, unsmiling but curious. It is Leo’s expression exactly. In some of them, he is standing with a man whom Joan assumes to be Uncle Boris, Leo’s father. He looks old. She did not expect him to be so old. She wonders if there will be some of Sonya as a child, but then she remembers that Sonya’s childhood was spent elsewhere, and does not sound like the sort of childhood which would lend itself to cheery snapshots. There are numbers scribbled on the backs of the photographs, which at first Joan assumes to be dates. The first photograph reads 30.06.46, which would mean it was taken three and a half years ago. She frowns. Not a date then. Something else.
There is a small pile of larger, more faded pictures at the bottom of the box, which Joan recognises as having been taken at Cambridge while they were undergraduates. Why has Sonya never shown her these before? She recognises herself in a few of them—such a strange feeling to be transported in time like this—and there are several of the whole group. There is one of William delivering a speech on a stage at one of the marches, and another in which he is kissing Rupert on the mouth, not a chaste, joking kiss, but a proper kiss, two men locked in a passionate embrace. Joan stares at this picture for a few seconds, wondering how it was that she never guessed at the time. Why did nobody ever tell her—Leo or Sonya or someone else—when they all knew anyway and were so accustomed to it that there is even a photograph of it?
She puts the photographs back in the box and replaces it in the corner of the wardrobe. She knows Sonya will not come back. She has gone for good, without even saying goodbye. She must have thought she was in real danger to leave so suddenly that she could not do that, as otherwise, surely, she’d have made some effort to get a message to Joan, even if only to warn her. Wouldn’t she?
At this, Joan feels a sudden jolt of fear as she realises that this is it now. She is alone. She is alone and they have taken Max. It’s only a matter of time before he realises. And then there will be nobody to turn to, nobody she can ask for help. Except, perhaps, William. She sits perfectly still. She cannot move. Her legs are pulled into her chest and her arms are curled around her knees but she knows she cannot stay here. What if they come for Sonya and they find her here instead? What if someone saw her come in? She stands up and hurries to the bedroom door.
But then a thought occurs to her. She turns back to the wardrobe and extracts a single photograph from the cardboard box. She slips it into the pocket of her fur coat, and as she does she feels a terrible flush of shame at the knowledge of what she might do with it.
For immediate attention:
I am anxious to establish the present whereabouts of a certain Sonya WILCOX née GALICH, her husband, James WILCOX, and their daughter Katherine (a.k.a. Katya) WILCOX of The Warren, Firdene, Norfolk. The aforementioned were the subjects of an interrogation approximately two years ago on 5 October, 1947. We have reason to believe that their house, The Warren, is at present untenanted, and no forwarding instructions have been given for correspondence to be sent on. We also believe that in January of this year Sonya WILCOX mentioned to her neighbour, Mrs. FLASK, that she intended to visit her son in Switzerland. We had been unaware of the existence of a son, but Mrs. FLASK informed us that he was born in 1940 and is named Tomas, and he lives with his grandfather in Switzerland. It is, of course, possible that she has indeed travelled to Switzerland and not returned.
I should be very grateful if you could make discreet enquiries as to where Mr. and Mrs. WILCOX have gone, and if possible what her intentions were regarding her future movements.
Yours sincerely
The name is illegible, a blue-inked scrawl across the bottom of the paper.
‘Did you ever hear from her again?’
‘No,’ Joan whispers. ‘Never.’ She does not look up. She is staring at the piece of paper. ‘But I don’t understand this. She didn’t have a son. She never mentioned—’
Nick groans suddenly and sinks his head into his hands. ‘Of course she did.’
‘What? Nick?’
He shakes his head but he does not reply. Instead he turns to Ms. Hart. ‘You knew, didn’t you? You knew all of this at the start.’
Ms. Hart glances across at Mr. Adams, and then back to Nick. She nods. ‘It’s our job to know these things.’
‘This is cruel. Can’t you see she’s old? This could kill her.’
‘What could?’ Joan asks.
Mr. Adams interrupts. ‘With respect, your mother is charged with a very serious offence. If we had told her this earlier, it would have compromised any information she might have chosen to tell us.’
‘Told me what earlier?’ Joan asks again, and suddenly the room falls silent. Nobody speaks. ‘Will someone please tell me what you’re all talking about?’
Ms. Hart looks at Joan and then at Nick. Her look is questioning.
‘Oh, just tell her,’ Nick says suddenly. ‘She deserves to know.’
Ms. Hart’s voice is soft. Her hand is on Joan’s arm, and even though Joan is listening and listening, straining to understand, and she can see Ms. Hart’s mouth moving, her mind has thickened so that she cannot hear a single word of it. She feels that same terrible blackness rising within her once more, and she knows she must not let it overwhelm her.
The boy, she thinks. The boy in the photographs. It wasn’t Leo. The dates weren’t wrong. Uncle Boris had looked old in those pictures because he was old. Not just a great-uncle to the boy but also a grandfather.
‘Excuse me,’ Joan whispers, putting up her hand. She does not want to hear any more. She does not need to. She allows Nick to help her to her feet as she stands up and walks out. Her body feels light and insubstantial, as if she is simply evaporating. She goes to the bathroom and closes the door, and then she sits on the side of the bath, gripping the washbasin with her hands and trying to hold herself in.
Quite suddenly, the recollection she was unable to find before is there again, flashing in her mind. Jamie, she thinks. Jamie in the Albert Hall, the last time any of them saw Leo. That was it. She remembers now. Oh, the memory of it thuds in her stomach. During the interval, she and Jamie had stayed in their seats while Sonya and Leo went to get tubs of ice cream from the usherette. ‘Feels like old times,’ Joan had said to Jamie, trying to avoid any prolonged discussion of Sonya’s pregnancy. ‘Before the war.’ And then she had paused. ‘Before you too, I suppose.’
Jamie had grimaced at this. ‘I can’t imagine how that worked.’
‘What do you mean?’
He nods towards Leo and Sonya. ‘I mean the three of you. Sonya must have hated it.’
Joan thought for a moment. ‘She wasn’t jealous, you know. Leo said.’
Jamie snorted with contempt. ‘Nonsense. She’s just good at pretending. She’s jealous now.’
‘Is she?’
‘Of course she is. They’re as thick as thieves, those two. You need to remember that. Nothing and nobody can come between them. You think you can but you can’t.’
‘They’re family. They’re practically brother and sister.’
Jamie raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that what you call it? They’re not like any brother and sister I’ve ever seen.’
Joan remembers how this had confused her at the time. She recalls how she had looked over to where Leo and Sonya were queuing for ice cream, and had watched as Sonya took Leo’s hand and pulled him towards her, placing his palm against her swollen stomach. ‘Wait,’ Sonya seemed to instruct him, and he did, even though his body was inclined away from hers and he was not looking at her. They stood like this for nearly a minute, until Leo seemed to start in surprise.
‘There!’ Sonya exclaimed, loud enough for Joan to hear. ‘Did you feel it?’
Leo had raised his eyebrows and stepped back, smiling at her and then patting her on the shoulder.
‘See,’ Joan had whispered to Jamie. ‘He’s just being brotherly.’
‘It’s not him, Jo-jo. It’s her. She does this every time she sees him. I think she sees it as a sort of substitution because he missed it the other time.’
The other time? Joan had turned to ask him what he meant but Sonya and Leo had come back over at that point laden with tubs of ice cream, and they had been obliged to change the subject. She had resolved to ask Jamie later after the concert, but there had not been a chance to get a moment alone with him, and then, after Leo died, the conversation had slipped out of her head.
She realises that if this child, Tomas, was born in 1940 as Ms. Hart had said, then that would fit exactly with Sonya’s sudden departure for Switzerland in the late summer of 1939, and her period of silence at the beginning of 1940 after her and Leo’s ‘clash,’ as he put it. Did Sonya know, she wonders, when she took Joan to that horrible woman’s house, when she sat by Joan’s bedside and nursed her back to health afterwards? Perhaps not. Perhaps that was when she realised that he was not so incorruptible after all. And then the thought strikes her that it must have happened while she was ill.
She remembers Leo’s despair over Stalin’s pact with Hitler. She can imagine how he might have turned to Sonya then, she being the only one who would really have understood the depth of this betrayal, the only one who had seen what it was like in Germany, how they had suffered, and Leo in particular. Sonya had even warned Joan at the time that she was not being sympathetic enough but Joan had not heeded the warning. She had wanted him to take it in his stride as she had done. She had not understood.
She can imagine how it might have happened. They were not brother and sister; just cousins, yoked together by their past. Sonya might have put her arms around him, comforting and familiar, and he wouldn’t have been able to help but feel the smallness of her waist, the nearness of her as she held her face close to his and looked up at him, knowing now that he was not as incorruptible as she had thought.
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