After a depressing hospital breakfast of cold toast and margarine along with a bowl of watery porridge, Joan is informed that she is being discharged. Ms. Hart appears at the door when this news is delivered, and it is apparent that she has been there all night, dozing in the corridor outside Joan’s room after visiting hours had ended and keeping an eye on things. The nurse has evidently not been told the nature of their relationship, and is talking to Ms. Hart as though she is Joan’s daughter or some other close relative, explaining what Joan should eat, how many aspirin she should take, while all the time affirming that Joan will be absolutely fine as long as she is properly looked after.
Ms. Hart nods, her expression indicating that she is listening intently, but Joan knows that the cause for her concern is not, as the nurse believes, Joan’s welfare, but the fact that the announcement in the House of Commons is scheduled for just over twenty-four hours’ time and they still haven’t got anything on William. Joan asks the nurse to close the door while she gets dressed, and there is a brief moment of confusion before the nurse realises that Joan wants to be alone, and that she also wants the woman who sat up outside her room all night to be taken outside too.
Once Joan is ready to go, the doctor comes in to talk to her. She observes his eyes flick down to the electronic tag on her thin ankle, visible above the slippers she was wearing when the stroke occurred, and which nobody had thought to replace so that she might be more appropriately dressed when she left the hospital. He looks away again, his curiosity unsatisfied but hidden now beneath a veneer of professional calm. He seems to have an idea of who Ms. Hart is and why she is being so attentive, but Joan can see in his expression of pity and kindliness that he does not know any of the details. He would not smile at her like that if he knew what she’d done. She wonders if he would recognise her if he saw her picture on the evening news. Possibly. Probably. She feels a throbbing pain in her stomach.
‘Rest, rest and rest,’ he announces. ‘That’s all I’m going to prescribe. And aspirin.’
He looks at Ms. Hart as he says this, but she is preoccupied with removing the plastic lid from a huge coffee cup without spilling any of the contents, and doesn’t appear to be listening.
The doctor coughs and continues: ‘There should be no lasting symptoms, but you must come straight in again if you feel anything unusual. Anything at all.’ He pauses. ‘Are you sure you feel okay?’
Joan looks at him and she knows that she is being given a chance. If she claimed to feel dizzy or light-headed now, he would believe her. She would be allowed to stay here. She could delay the press conference, maybe even delay the statement in the House of Commons, at least until after William’s cremation.
But she also knows that there is no point in delaying. It will not go away now. And it is what she has always known. Badness deserves to be punished.
Her bones feel like chalk when she stands up, rubbing against each other as she walks to the door. ‘I’m fine,’ she whispers. ‘I’d like to go home now.’
Those first few months after Leo’s death pass in a blur for Joan; blank, sleepless passages of time through which she gropes her way, cycling to the laboratory every morning, forgetting her sandwiches, working so hard that she emerges from the building blinking like a new-born rabbit and then cycling home again. Getting out of bed every day feels like stepping into the North Sea on a chilly morning, but without the benefits of any bracing after-effects. She is thinner, smokes too much, drinks sherry on her own when she gets home. The invitations from the young men she used to date are no longer forthcoming. Most of them are now married or have moved away, but Joan is largely indifferent to this lack of romantic interest. She cannot be bothered to attend cinematic outings with men she cannot talk to. How could she possibly talk to anyone when there is nothing she can say? Or nothing true, at least.
There will be things she will later remember about that time. Sitting at the kitchen table and eating burnt toast. Listening to the phone ringing, ringing, and marvelling at how long some people (Sonya, her mum, Lally) will keep holding, still expecting an answer. Why don’t they realise I’m not here? she thinks. And she is momentarily irritated by this until she realises that she is there. She is always there. She puts a cigarette in her mouth but she does not light it. She simply holds it. Waiting.
At the laboratory, she continues to make copies of everything but she does not give them to Sonya. She feels Max’s eyes on her as she works, and he will occasionally ask her advice on something he is working on, how to phrase something or present it more clearly, but he does not pry. He simply watches.
‘Does it not hurt your neck, to type so bent over like that?’ he asks one afternoon, when it is just the two of them in the room.
She sits back and rubs her neck. Has she always sat like this, or just recently? ‘I suppose it does.’
‘Maybe you should get glasses.’
She doesn’t look at him. ‘They wouldn’t suit me. I’d look like a hedgehog.’
There is a pause. Rain falls quietly on the window. How she wishes she could tell him everything. What would he say then?
Probably not this: ‘Then get tortoiseshell frames. Hedgehogs always wear wire-rimmed ones.’
She almost laughs.
The copies she makes are filed in a separate folder in Max’s office, labelled and left neatly stacked on the shelves. It is habit, she supposes, which keeps her doing this, but she knows that is not the only reason. She does it because she is scared. She is scared they might come for her next. If Leo could be accused of treachery, so could she. So could anyone. She wants to be able to show that she intended to keep on giving the information but was just waiting until it was safe to smuggle it from the laboratory into Sonya’s hands.
But when the time comes for her next appointment with Sonya, she does not turn up. Nor does she call to say that she will not be coming. The same happens the next time, and the next. She receives a couple of letters from Sonya which she merely skims and then throws away, and then a card announcing the birth of her and Jamie’s baby. There is a photograph enclosed with the card. A baby girl with big round eyes and tiny dimples, named Katya after Sonya’s mother. Joan burns the card. She props the photograph up on the mantelpiece and then takes it down again. She puts it in a drawer.
And then there are the stories which appear in the newspapers almost daily, describing how Russia is consolidating its grip on Eastern Europe, buckling down its buffer zone over the war-ridden states, and crushing any glimmer of democratic opposition. The show trials that Joan remembers so vividly from Russia in the 1930s are being repeated in Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Sofia. Can it still be justified as Leo used to claim the first time it happened? She is no longer sure. Certainly the gleam of heroism attached to the Russian war effort is starting to lose its dazzle. It is becoming opaque and cloudy, and Joan finds these doubts inhibiting. Whereas before she had been comfortable in her belief that sharing these secrets, fulfilling Churchill’s promise to share, was the morally decent thing to do, she can no longer hold to this with such certainty.
Quite simply, she wants out. But what is the procedure for leaving? If she tries, will they send for her, just as they sent for Leo? She does not know. She can only withdraw quietly and hope that nobody notices.
Eventually Sonya comes to visit her one Sunday morning, waiting at the front door of the mansion block until one of the other inhabitants lets her in. She leaves her perambulator at the bottom of the staircase and puffs her way up to the fourth floor with Katya in her arms, knocking triumphantly on Joan’s door.
Joan is asleep when she arrives, having discovered that she sleeps more easily after dawn than before, and so she has fallen into the habit of making up for lost sleep at the weekends. On hearing the knock, she sits bolt upright. There are various people she thinks it could be, her mother, Lally, Karen, other friends she sees occasionally, but she does not think of any of these people. She cannot say exactly what it is she fears. Two men, dressed in black with low-brimmed hats. Large, physical men who could take her away, just as they took Leo. Or a policeman, short and amiable, with handcuffs clipped to his belt.
Sonya calls out to her. ‘It’s me, Jo-jo. Are you in?’
Joan breathes out. She pulls on a dressing gown, runs a brush through her hair, and takes the photograph of Katya out of the drawer and props it up once more on the mantelpiece. Then she runs to the door and flings it open. ‘How lovely to see you! And hello, Katya.’ She chucks the little girl’s chin. ‘We meet at last!’
The little girl in Sonya’s arms smiles, and Joan is astonished to see that she is no longer a baby but a small child, not quite a year old but nearly.
‘Jo-jo, you’re not dressed.’
‘I was asleep.’
‘But it’s past midday.’
Joan shrugs. ‘I was tired.’ She steps back so that Sonya and Katya can come in.
Sonya walks into the living room and surveys her surroundings. There is a sofa with a matching armchair, and a ramshackle bookcase along which she runs her finger and then frowns at the dust. She draws back the curtains while Joan goes to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. ‘You haven’t been coming to our appointments,’ Sonya calls out to her from the living room.
Joan does not reply at first. She pours hot water into the teapot and then swirls it slowly. She takes out a tray—mugs, sugar, milk—and carries it slowly into the living room. ‘It’s not safe,’ she says eventually.
‘It’s just as safe as it was before.’
‘But I don’t feel safe.’
‘You know Leo wouldn’t have wanted you to stop.’
Joan glances at her. ‘How can I know that? After what they did to him . . . ’ She stops, unwilling to let herself think of it while Sonya is here. She does not want a witness to her grief.
‘You told me he believed in the cause. If you believe that, then you must know he wouldn’t have wanted you to stop.’
There is something in the phrasing of this which causes Joan to frown. ‘Don’t you think he did?’
‘Of course,’ Sonya says, and her voice is high with enthusiasm. ‘Not that it matters what I think. It’s what you think that counts. And if you believe that, then you must continue.’
‘But I’m scared.’
‘Don’t be. There’s less to worry about now, you know.’
‘In what way?’
Sonya hesitates. ‘Now that Leo’s gone, I mean.’
Joan stares at her. ‘What?’
‘MI5 were on to him, Jo-jo. You know that. It was only a matter of time before they found you, especially if you got married.’
‘Married? Did he say that?’
Sonya’s eyes widen, and then she turns away so that Joan cannot see her face when she answers. ‘It’s just a figure of speech,’ she says lightly.
‘No, it’s not,’ Joan says, although she wonders what she would have said if he had asked. It would have depended, she supposes, on how he phrased the question.
Sonya bends down and picks up Katya. ‘But it’s irrelevant anyway because he didn’t ask, did he?’ Katya throws her arms around Sonya’s neck and grips her hair with her hands. ‘I’m sorry, Jo-jo, that was unkind.’ She shakes her head, trying to loosen her daughter’s hold. ‘All I mean is that you’re safer now than you were before. We all are. MI5 are off my back, which means that the KGB are too.’
Joan stares at her. It is the first time she has ever mentioned the KGB by name. ‘So you’re saying it’s all worked out for the best? That Leo’s dead so now we can all carry on as normal?’
Sonya puts Katya down again and walks over to Joan at the window. She puts her arms around her. ‘Of course that’s not what I’m saying. I loved him more than anyone in the whole world. Except Jamie, of course. And Katya. I’m just saying that you’re safe. I don’t want you to feel vulnerable. But they do ask about you. They want to know why you’ve stopped.’ There is a pause, and then she says: ‘You should try not to upset them too much.’
Joan stares at her. ‘Why? What would they do? Would they send someone to find me?’
‘Not yet, Jo-jo. I’m just warning you. All I’ve heard is that they’re so close to being finished, and the documents you send are so useful. You can leave, I promise, once the project is completed.’
‘What do you mean, leave?’
She shrugs. ‘I’ll make sure they know you’re no longer available.’
‘Can’t you do that now?’
Sonya looks at her and shakes her head. ‘Just a bit longer, Jo-jo.’
Joan hesitates.
‘Better to play by the rules,’ Sonya says, causing Joan to look up suddenly at this echo of Leo’s words.
But what are the rules exactly? And how far might they extend? To her? To her family? There is no way of knowing. She knows only that if she stops now they might send someone to find her, just as they sent someone for Leo.
Sonya steps away from Joan and bends down to take something out of her bag. It is a thick, brown envelope. ‘They gave me this to give to you.’
‘What is it?’
Sonya shrugs. ‘Open it and see.’
Joan takes it and puts it on the bookcase. Whatever it is, she does not want it. She does not want anything from them. She sits down on the sofa next to Katya and sees Katya’s expression of alarm at her sudden proximity, her big brown eyes turning to gaze imploringly at Sonya, following her every movement. There is something overwhelming about such adoration, something terrifying. Such a lot to live up to. ‘Motherhood suits you, you know,’ she says eventually, wanting to change the subject. ‘I didn’t think it would.’
Sonya grins. ‘I’m a chameleon. Surely you know that by now.’
Joan smiles. She remembers an earlier time, many years before, when Sonya came twirling into her room at Newnham dressed in a peach-coloured dress on her way to meet one of her young men in Cambridge. ‘We are both actresses, you and I,’ she had said, and Joan had laughed in surprise at the thought that anyone would ever consider her suited to something as glamorous as acting. But remembering this now, Joan wonders if perhaps Sonya had seen in her the capacity for betrayal even then, and the thought leaves her dizzy.
‘Anyway, what news have you got? Any excitement?’
‘What sort of excitement are you expecting me to be having?’ The tartness in Joan’s voice causes Sonya to look at her in surprise but she does not blush. There is something obstinate about her breeziness.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I thought maybe I hadn’t heard from you for so long because of some grand romance.’ She smiles, her mouth suddenly opening wide in mock astonishment. ‘In fact, maybe that’s the reason you’re still in bed at midday?’
Joan shakes her head. ‘Don’t,’ she says.
Sonya leans towards her. She lays a hand gently on Joan’s knee. ‘You have to forget him now, Jo-jo. He’s gone. It’s been over a year.’
‘Has it?’
Sonya nods. ‘And you’re no spring chicken.’