‘So I believe,’ said Willoughby. ‘Would you like another drink?’

Charlie shook his head. He was quite proud of how well he had conquered the booze habit. It had always been worse when he was bored: and he was very bored now. Sometimes he wondered if it were even necessary still to take precautions against detection. The doubt never lasted long. There was never a moment of his waking life when he could properly relax. His exposure of the incompetence of the British and American services had been too complete and the Soviet propaganda too embarrassing for him ever to believe himself safe.

‘Nice party,’ he said.

Willoughby smiled at the politeness. ‘Clarissa likes these sort of things,’ he said, his voice that of a man who knows he is criticised for allowing his wife’s indulgences but can’t stop permitting them.

As if on cue, the hostess of the party appeared through the crush of people, bright smile attached like a badge, head twisting from side to side in permanent greeting, and chirping cries of apparent delight and surprise at the people she saw. Frequently she stopped, offering her cheek to be kissed. She was not a particularly tall woman and her face was chiselled by perpetual diet. Her hair bubbled in a current style, which tended to accentuate the appearance of thinness and her dress, which Charlie assumed to come from the latest designer to be lionised by the society rich, was layered in tiers of brightly coloured chiffon, which bounced, feather-like, as she moved. She looked like a bird in search of a nest. A slim cuckoo, perhaps. No, more like a bird of paradise.

She greeted her husband as if he were standing alone and Charlie realised that like so many others, she believed him to be one of the extra staff brought in for the evening.

‘Millie says the Ambassador is coming. And that he’s trying to persuade the Princess, too.’

The scientist who perfected a cancer cure would probably have a matching note of triumph in his voice when he announced the discovery, decided Charlie. He wondered if Clarissa Willoughby would be a difficult person to like; he would try, for her husband’s sake.