At five that afternoon Catesby summoned him to the wireless and the BBC news. Woodbridge had written to the Prime Minister, owned up to everything he had not long since denied, apologised and resigned.
In the morning the Herald led with Tereshkov’s return home – ‘Where is Tereshkov?’ asked the headline, and then answered itself with the Soviet Embassy’s statement that they would not say where he was, except that he was no longer in England – whisked away under notion of the diplomatic bag.
‘D’ye suppose they really put them in bags?’ asked Catesby.
‘Nothing would surprise me, bags, boxes or posted home airmail,’ Troy replied.
He’d no idea what the Russians had done with him, welcomed him back as a hero who’d embarrassed the British or as a candidate for the salt mines who’d embarrassed them – all he was certain of was that he’d seen the last of Tereshkov.
For days afterwards – or was it weeks, surely it was weeks? – the same half-dozen photographs of the Ffitch girls were to be found in a hundred newspapers, hawked like dirty postcards, again and again and again: Caro caught leaving her hairdresser’s; a little black dress flash photo of the two of them accompanied by Hooray Henries reprinted from an old Tatler; a blurry grey snapshot of Tara topless on a Greek island (‘topless’ was a new world neologism – inseparable in Troy’s mind from the idea of dismemberment). He could not make out whether they were regarded as national heroines or national villains. All he was certain of was the adjective: national, national whatever they were, the women now – indisputably – public property.