They doped the girls because it worked. East German swimmers won gold medals everywhere, the women especially. Not that Andrea had got to that level. When the Berlin Wall came down and the scandal broke, when they put the trainers, doctors, bureaucrats — the poisoners — on trial, her name wasn’t even mentioned. In spite of the pills, she hadn’t made the national team. The others, the ones who went public about what had been done to their bodies and their minds, at least had gold medals and a few years of fame to show for it. Andrea had come out with nothing more than a relay medal at some forgotten championship in a country that no longer existed.

Vernon looked out at the concrete strip and the shingle beach, at the gray sea and the gray sky beyond. The view was pretending that it had always been the same, for as long as people had sat at this café window. Except that there used to be a row of beach huts blocking the view. Then someone had burned them down.