The video camera and interviewing equipment have been installed in the upstairs bedroom. Joan is sitting in bed, sipping water from a glass. Mr. Adams is leaning forward, tapping his pen against his knee as she speaks. ‘And what about William?’ he asks when she stops.
The mention of William causes her to look up suddenly, and she spills a small splash of water onto the duvet. ‘What about him?’
‘Did he try to persuade you?’
Joan’s glasses dangle from the shoelace around her neck but she will not put them on. She does not want to see properly, as she knows she wouldn’t have the courage to carry on if she could see the expression on Nick’s face. What would it be? Anger? Disappointment? Outrage? She shakes her head.
‘Please speak up for the camera.’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Did you see much of him?’
‘I told you, I didn’t know him well.’ She pauses. ‘I saw him now and again.’
‘And he made no mention of it?’
‘No.’
Mr. Adams frowns. ‘And did he tell you what he was doing? Did he allude to anything?’
Joan hesitates. ‘William was always alluding to things. That’s just how he spoke. He was full of hot air. I didn’t listen to half of what he said.’
‘I need examples.’
‘I don’t remember.’ She pauses. ‘It was seventy years ago.’
‘Then think.’
‘Now, hold on a minute,’ Nick interrupts, his voice sharp and suddenly officious. ‘She’s just had a stroke. You have to go easier on her.’
‘It wasn’t a proper stroke,’ Joan says, torn between her desire to reassure Nick that she is strong enough to cope with this on her own and her need to appear forgetful in the face of this questioning.
‘It was still a stroke.’
Mr. Adams takes a deep inhalation. ‘We’ve wasted enough time as it is. If your mother intends to enter a plea for leniency, then we need this information before we present her name to the House of Commons.’
‘She has to rest. Look at her. Can’t you see she’s exhausted?’
Joan shifts a little against the pillows, trying to find a more comfortable position. She puts the glass on the bedside table and pulls the duvet up around her shoulders. Her fingers lace together under the sheets.
‘Okay. Let’s take a break.’ Ms. Hart looks at her watch. ‘Twenty minutes.’
Joan closes her eyes. She can hear Nick talking on the phone to his wife outside her bedroom, his voice clipped and stilted. There is too much for him to explain, and she can hear him hesitating as he selects his words with care. How could she have done this to him? It is not what she ever wanted.
She is relieved to have been allowed the break. It is the lying that exhausts her most of all.
But, in any case, she will not give them what they want. She will not tell them that William did try to persuade her too, that he came to the laboratory not long after Sonya’s visit and waited for her outside, his grey woollen suit impenetrable and immaculate against the winter sun. She had not seen him since he started his job in the Foreign Office, and she remembers how she felt an unexpected rush of nostalgia at the sight of him, as if someone was pulling the concrete earth from beneath her.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Just passing,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘Can I walk with you?’
‘I can’t stop you.’
She remembers his habit of closing his fingers over hers and steering her along the pavement, his fingers light yet firm. ‘Sonya tells me you’ve lost interest in the cause.’ When she didn’t respond, William leant in closer. ‘Look, Jo-jo, I haven’t come here to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. You know you’re the best Moscow have got. I’m told that every message coming through from the Centre these days is asking about you, where you’ve gone, what you’re doing.’ He paused. ‘Do you realise that you’re giving up the chance to make the world a safer place? Do you understand what you’re doing?’
Joan had not known what to say to that, but she also remembered that she no longer knew what to believe. ‘But I’m tired, William. After Leo.’ She stops. ‘I want out.’
He looked at her and shook his head. ‘Don’t ruin it because of Leo. You didn’t start this because of him. You know it’s not right to allow one country, or one power system, to wield all that potential for destruction. It’s not safe. So forget Leo. It’s not about him.’
‘I know it’s not,’ she had whispered back and it was true, or at least it had been, at the beginning of it all. But she also found that she could no longer think of her actions in such a rational manner. Russia was no longer the distant, faraway place for which she once had such sympathy but could not really imagine. She felt the existence of it now inside her, gripping her stomach with its cold, steel claw, refusing to let her go. ‘Don’t you miss him, William? You always cared for him, didn’t you?’
William hesitates.
‘It’s okay. I don’t mind that you did.’
‘Of course I did. And of course I miss him now. But that’s why it’s so important to carry on. Besides, you’re just passing on things that were supposed to be passed on anyway. It’s not stealing. It’s just sharing.’ Leo’s words, spoken by William.
‘We’re not allies now. The war’s over. And what if I get caught?’
William continued to steer her forwards. ‘You won’t get caught. But if anything were to look like it might happen, I can help you. I’ll know in advance if you’re going to be under suspicion from MI5, and I can always get you out . . . ’ he waves his hand, ‘ . . . Canada, Australia, anywhere. You just have to ask.’
‘How on earth could you do that?’
He shrugged and gave a small, self-satisfied smile. ‘I’m quite high up in the Foreign Office these days. For some baffling reason they seem to rather like me. And counter-intelligence is my area. I’d be the first to know.’
Joan raised her eyebrows. Baffling indeed, although she kept this thought to herself. ‘Leo always said you were the bright young hope.’
William repositioned his hand on her arm. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ he said, although he looked pleased to hear this praise from Leo. ‘It certainly helps, having the—shall we say—interests that I do. We’re the most committed sort apparently.’ He paused while Joan took this in. ‘Although I haven’t mentioned this to my fiancée yet.’
‘Your fiancée? You’re getting married?’
William nodded. ‘She’s one of the secretaries. Lovely thing, my Alice. I rather adore her.’
‘But you’re—’
William put his finger to his lips to shush her.
‘It was suggested to me that I might need to take a wife to put paid to some of the rumours floating around.’
‘But what about Rupert? And Alice? Don’t you think it’s unfair on her?’
Joan remembers how William had tilted his head to the side while he considered this. ‘Rupert understands. And I’ve thought long and hard about Alice,’ he said at last, ‘and I’ve come to the conclusion that she must know. I think the old girl understands too. I think she just wants a companion to go walking with her in Scotland, setting traps for heffalumps and such like.’
Joan had shot him a sceptical look when he said this, but William only grinned and she had not known if he was teasing her or not.
‘So I’ll tell Sonya to expect you, shall I?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’
‘Come on, Jo-jo. Just a bit longer. Then we’re home and dry and you’ve done your bit. Saved the revolution. Saved the world from nuclear annihilation by America.’ He paused. ‘Just remember why you started in the first place. None of that has changed.’
True, Joan had thought. None of that has changed, nor will it ever change. The photographs of that terrible day will be impossible to forget, those images of dust sucking and swirling upwards, and the feel of her father’s hand clasped tightly in her own. But by then, something else had shifted inside her. Because she had also found out what happened to people who didn’t do as they were asked, and she felt the weight of this knowledge sitting on her chest at night, heavy as an owl.
Joan remembers that she did not answer William at first. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew when she was trapped.
‘Okay,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll do it.’