She stood on the opposite side of the road, looking up at the first-floor windows, her back to the Thames, her bag at her feet, her cello case propped up against the embankment wall. She had persistently refused Viktor’s suggestions that he should meet her at Victoria Station. She hated railway stations. She had hated them since the day she’d been boarded up in a train at Vienna Nordbahnhof—and the difference between arrival and departure, greeting and abandonment, had long since elided.
She stood much as she had that day twelve years ago when she had arrived early at the apartment in the Berggasse—waiting simply for the time to be right.
A young man came out of the building. Short, dark—as dark as Serge. He was clutching a music case and she felt certain he had come from Viktor. He failed to notice her, glanced at the sky, glanced at his wrist-watch, and set off along the embankment towards Westminster.
She crossed over, tapping at the door of the gingerbread house once more.