'I don't need help.'

'You go to railway stations in order to hide your unhappiness. Don't you think that a marriage in which a wife is frightened to be unhappy in the presence of her husband might leave something to be desired?'

Fiona found his apparent simplicity and honesty disarming. She had no great faith in psychiatry and in general distrusted its practitioners, but she felt attracted to this amusing and unusual man. He was obviously attracted to her, but that had not made him fawn. And she appreciated the way that Kennedy so readily confided his fears of the Immigration Department and the trust he'd shown in her. It made her feel like a partner in his lawless activities. 'Is that the sort of dilemma patients like me bring along to you?'

'Believe me, I have no patients who in any way resemble you, Mrs Samson, and I never have had.'

She gently pulled her hand away from his and went through the door. He didn't follow her but when she glanced up, before getting into the taxi, she could see his face at the window.

She looked at her watch. It was late. Bernard tried to phone about this time each evening.

'Hello, sweetheart.' To her astonishment she arrived home to find Bernard, Nanny and the two children sitting round the little kitchen table. The scene was printed upon her memory for ever after. They were all laughing and talking and eating. The table displayed the chaos she had seen at Bernard's mother's house: tea in cups without saucers, teapot standing on a chipped plate, tin-foil frozen food containers on the tablecloth, sugar in its packet, a slab of cake sitting on the bag in which it was sold. The laughter stopped when she came in.

'We wondered where you'd got to,' said Bernard. He was wearing corduroy trousers and an old blue roll-neck sweater that she had twice thrown away.

'Mr Samson said the children could eat down here,' said the nanny nervously.

'It's all right, Nanny,' said Fiona and went and kissed the children. They were newly bathed and smelled of talcum powder.

'You've got a cold nose,' said Billy accusingly and then chuckled. He looked so like Bernard.

'You're rude,' his little sister told him. She had been raised to the level of the table by sitting upon a blue silk cushion from the drawing room sofa. Fiona noticed that a dollop of tomato sauce had fallen upon it but kept smiling as she gave her daughter a kiss and a hug. She had a special love for little Sally, who sometimes seemed to need Fiona in a way that no one else had ever done.

Fiona embraced Bernard. 'What a wonderful surprise. I didn't expect you until the weekend.'

'I slipped away.' Bernard put an arm round her, but there was a reluctance to his embrace. For some other wives such a hesitation might have been a danger signal. Fiona knew that it was a sign that something had gone wrong in Berlin. A shooting? A killing? She looked at him to make sure he was not injured. She wouldn't ask him what had happened, they didn't talk about departmental matters unless they concerned the both of them, but she knew it would take a little time before Bernard would be capable of physical contact with her.

'You're all right?'

'Of course I'm all right.' A smile did not hide the hint of irritation. He did not like her to show her concern.

'Will you have to go back?' The children were watching them both with great interest.

'We'll see.' He contrived a cheerfulness. 'Nothing will happen for a few days. They think I'm chasing around Bavaria.'

She gave him another decorous kiss. She wished Bernard would not be so intractable. Deliberately disobeying instructions in order to come home early was flattering but it was the sort of behaviour that the Department found inexcusable. This was not the time to say that. 'It's a lovely surprise,' she said.

'Eat some dinner, Mummy,' said Sally. 'There's plenty.'

'Mummy doesn't eat frozen meals, do you Mummy?' said her brother.

Nanny, who had no doubt purchased the 'delicious ready-to-eat country farmhouse dinner', looked embarrassed. Fiona said, 'It depends.'

'It's not meaty,' said Billy, as if that was a recommendation. 'It's all sauce and pasta.' He pushed a spoon into the remains to show her.

'It's very salty,' said Sally. 'I don't like it.'

The nanny took the spoon away from Billy and then went to get a cup and saucer for Fiona to have tea with them.

Fiona took off her coat and hat. Then she grabbed a piece of kitchen paper in order to see what could be done to remove the sauce from the silk cushion. She knew that in doing so she would be spoiling the gemütlich atmosphere into which she had intruded but she simply could not sit down and laugh and talk and forget it. She couldn't. Perhaps that was what was wrong with her and with her marriage.

Before she could get started, Nanny poured tea for her and then began clearing the table. Bernard leaned over and said to the children. 'Now who's my first passenger on the slow train to Dreamland?'

'Me, Daddy, me!' They both yelled together.

Soon Fiona was left alone, dabbing at the stain on the cushion. From somewhere above she could hear the excited calls of the children as Bernard carried them up to bed. 'Choo-choo! Choo-choo!'

Darling, darling, Bernard. How she wished he could be a wonderful father without making her feel like an inadequate mother.

London. September 1978.

Sylvester Bernstein was a fifty-year-old American. Together with his wife he lived in a Victorian red brick terrace house in Battersea. One small room on each of three floors with a kitchen and bathroom that had been added at the back by a previous owner in the early Seventies. Now that this south side of the river had been invaded by affluent young couples – who'd discovered how close it was to central London – the whole street was undergoing a transformation. There were yellow coloured front doors, and even pink ones with brass knockers, and nowadays more and more of the cars parked nose to tail along the street were without rust. The local 'planning department' regulations prohibited the use of these houses as offices but Bernstein was confident that no one would complain about the way he'd made his garret room into an office with a typewriter, a couple of desks, two phone lines and a telex machine. Private investigators didn't spend much time in offices: at least Sylvester Bernstein didn't.

Bernstein had been a CIA man for twenty-one years. He took retirement after the wounds in his leg refused to heal. He'd married a girl he'd met in Saigon, an English nurse working for Christian Aid, and she suddenly decided that they must live in England. At that time the dollar was high against sterling, so his retirement pay gave him enough to live well in London. When the dollar weakened, Bernstein was forced to go back to work. His contacts in Grosvenor Square helped him to get that elusive work permit and he set up in business as Sylvester Bernstein, private investigator. But truth to tell, most of his clients came to him because of his long career as a CIA man. Some of those clients were still in the twilight world of 'security'; people who wanted a job done while they remained at arm's length from it. The job Bernstein was doing for Bret Rensselaer was typical of the work he did, and because he'd known Bret a long time, and because Bret was a demanding client, Bernstein did not have one of his sub-contractors do the job for him. He did most of it personally.

They were sitting in the downstairs room. On the walls hung cheap Victorian prints of scenes from Walter Scott novels. The elaborate fireplace was complete with lily-patterned tiles and polished brass fender and all the fire-irons. The iron grate however held not coal but an arrangement of dried flowers. Virtually everything, even the furniture, had come with the house. Only his wife's china collection, the beige wall-to-wall carpet, the American-style bathroom and such things as the large-screen TV on a smart trolley were new. It was a diminutive room, but panelled wooden connecting doors were open to reveal an even smaller dining room, and through its window a view of the tiny back garden. Bret lounged on the sofa, the papers Bernstein had prepared for him fanned out so that he could refer to them.