‘Yes,’ I said firmly.
‘Your choice. I remember dinner at their house – Lorelei’s house now – all through the meal they were needling each other. “Nick thinks he’s very amusing; it’s lucky somebody does.” “Lorelei looks like she needs to be taught a lesson – better make it a simple one.” In the end, she threw her wine at him and he jumped up, ran around the table and slapped her. After that we didn’t see them for an hour, only heard them upstairs making the furniture bounce on the floorboards.’ His voice drifted. ‘You look so much like her, you know.’
So Lorelei was engaged to a foreigner, or to someone in the DUK who could get her out if she were granted a marriage exit visa. She had therefore made a deal with Fellowman: she would put him in contact with the American doctor who supplied the medicines in return for that visa. But Nick found out about their deal. And then Adam told him Lorelei was pregnant with his child.
‘She met Ian Fellowman at your parties, didn’t she?’ I asked.
‘Yes. But I–’
‘What medicine was she supplying him with?’ I wanted to know everything now.
Another pause. ‘Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but I was told Comrade Burgess picked up a dose of the clap – that’s why he wasn’t around on Liberation Day. Some nice little soldier, they say.’ There had certainly been rumours about Guy Burgess for a long time. ‘The Americans have these wonderful new antibiotics that clear it right up, so Ian was getting some for him. Besides, Guy could hardly go to one of the state doctors, could he? The Secs would be looking through his files before he had even left the room. No, the Party doesn’t like nancies very much. All that sex without making babies. It interferes with your duty to the state. Very bad for morale.’
On the way home, the train passed a hoarding and I recognized the full-page advert of Britain cut in half, with ten occupied babies’ cribs on the DUK side, nine on ours, and an empty cot bearing the words YOUR CHILD. STRENGTH IN NUMBERS!
Strength in numbers. In the new era, the state would take the place of the family, or, at least, that was what many had suggested. The regime itself was tight-lipped on the subject, probably because Blunt felt that we weren’t yet ready to ditch our parents, our siblings and our children. It didn’t affect me now. I had no family to speak of.
When I reached home, I dropped my mud-spattered evening dress on the bedroom floor, hid my winnings from the roulette table, bathed, washed my hair and put on more sensible clothes to go out into the afternoon.
‘Hello, Charles,’ I said, as I entered the surgery.
‘Mrs Cawson.’ He tore a sheet of paper from his typewriter. ‘Damn thing keeps chewing up the pages.’
‘You need a new one.’
‘The licence is taking months to be approved.’
‘That must be frustrating. Oh, by the way, I bumped into a friend of mine in the Ministry of Building yesterday. She said that they often send out notices of reassignment for homes but don’t follow through on them. So you might find you’re staying in your flat after all.’ I had resolved that I would ask Fellowman to arrange for Charles to stay where he was, as part of my price for the information he wanted.
He looked cautiously hopeful. ‘Did she? Well, that would be wonderful news.’
At that moment, Nick wandered out of his consulting room and looked up from a set of patient notes. ‘Hello, darling. What are you doing here?’ he said.
‘I just wanted to see my husband. It feels like so long since I saw you.’
‘You’re very sweet.’
The telephone on Charles’s desk rang and he answered it. ‘The consulting rooms of Nicholas Cawson, Charles O’Shea speaking. Yes, please wait.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘The ministry.’
‘I see. Better put it through, and by the way,’ he said to Charles, ‘a few people are coming to ours for dinner tonight. Why don’t you join us?’ He looked to me. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it, darling?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Seven o’clock.’
‘Thank you,’ said Charles.
‘Oh,’ Nick said to me, sighing. ‘I was accosted by Patricia next door this morning, asking about Lorelei again. She said she heard Hazel playing a record of one of Lorelei’s plays or something. I couldn’t make out what she was on about.’
‘It was probably the radio.’
‘Probably. Patricia can be very tiresome. Well, let’s hope she leaves us alone from now on.’ He returned to his room and closed the door. I could hear him speaking on the line.
On the spur of the moment, I took Charles by the arm and led him towards the corridor. He was so bemused he banged his hip on the corner of the desk. ‘Damn it!’ he spat, screwing up his face and thumping the wood to distract from the pain.
‘Oh, God, your wound,’ I said.
‘It’s all right,’ he muttered.
We moved out to the stairwell. ‘Charles, what was Lorelei like? As a person.’
He pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know what to say about her, really.’
‘Was she stepping out with anyone?’
He looked at his feet, embarrassed. ‘I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me things like that.’
‘Maybe there was someone special? A boyfriend? Anyone foreign? Or in the DUK?’
‘Foreign?’ He had a blank look.
‘Charles, I want to say something.’
‘Yes?’
‘You and I have had our differences in the past.’
‘One or two but–’
‘You’ve been very good to Nick, using what influence you have in the Party to help him. So I want to thank you for that. Thank you.’
‘It was my pleasure, Mrs Cawson.’
‘I’m glad. Charles.’ I put my hand on his arm and left it there. ‘Would you do something for me?’
‘If I can.’
‘Nick has been through so much recently. And now he’s applying to join the Party. I worry that he’s overdoing it.’
‘Overdoing it? I wouldn’t think so.’
‘I expect you’re right. You probably know him better than I do. But he has had a lot to deal with, hasn’t he?’
‘Well, yes, no doubt.’
‘Today, for instance. He must have had lots of calls.’
‘A normal number.’
‘Do you recall them all?’
He looked proud. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘All work, I expect.’ He furrowed his brow. ‘Or some weren’t?’
He hesitated and looked back to his desk. ‘I should probably get back to work.’
‘Yes, of course. But if you do find he’s overworking himself, let me know and I’ll do something about it.’
‘Well, all right, yes.’
‘Thank you.’
Sitting on my bed that afternoon, I supposed no one would ever know whether it was Nick who was the father of Lorelei’s child or whether it was the other man, the one who was going to marry her and take her out of the country. She might not have known herself, of course.
When NatSec had suggested Nick was involved in Lorelei’s death, I had thought the idea ludicrous. But, after what I had learned about norethisterone and what Adam had told me about Lorelei’s plan to betray Nick, the thought had wormed its way into my mind. I had precious few facts, though, only suspicions and vague ideas.
There was still one thread I could follow, however. What Ian Fellowman had told me had also enabled me to work out the role of someone else: Crispin, the man who was to secretly receive Lorelei’s disguised negative.
‘Crispin could get me papers if I needed them, couldn’t he?’ I said to the man in the seedy Soho print store while the presses rumbled in the background.
‘Get the fuck out of my shop,’ he replied in a low growl.
I checked the street. Stephanie the hairdresser was watching, ready in case something happened. The first time I had come here she had told me that producing ‘snide papers’ was one of the shady side lines the print shop operated; and, five months earlier, Lorelei had supplied Crispin with a photograph – the sort of drab, head-and-shoulders picture that you used for passports or visas – hidden in a book. When Fellowman revealed that Lorelei had later asked him for a marriage exit visa – presumably after Crispin had failed to come up with the goods – it was clear what she had wanted here.