They should not have gathered in a group at all, just as they shouldn’t have left Charlie’s apartment block until the arrival of the relief team, but they had been doing it for so long, on monthly rotating shifts, that most of the usual rules were being ignored. Tonight it was the pub on the corner of Bessborough Place. The supposed whore was first; the ridiculous shoes had made her feet hurt and she had managed to get a taxi. The two who had pretended to be lovers arrived as she was ordering the drinks. They went straight to a vacant table, waiting for her to carry the glasses across.

‘Good health,’ said the man, lifting the beer mug. His fingernails were bitten and he had chipped teeth; his breath smelled and the girl in the exaggerated high heels was glad she hadn’t been selected to be his partner.

‘Cheers,’ she said. Beneath the table she slipped off the shoes and began kneading her feet. ‘I actually thought he was going to approach me tonight.’

‘What would you have done?’ asked the man.

Knowing the answer would upset him, she said, ‘Gone with him, of course.’

‘It’s been a year,’ protested the other woman. ‘It’s stupid.’ Crossing the bridge, her partner had touched her breast, twice, pretending it was an accident but she knew it hadn’t been. She knew there was no objection she could make either. Dirty bastard.

‘Difficult to imagine that he was once so good, isn’t it?’ said the man reflectively.

‘I don’t think he ever was,’ said the girl in the prostitute’s disguise. ‘I think it’s some typical bureaucratic mistake in Moscow; the sort of thing they do all the time.’

The man shook his head positively. ‘Not this one. Charlie Muffin is important, for some reason.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’d better get back to the embassy.’

The two women looked at each other, irritated. It was the third night in succession he’d avoided buying any drinks and they were sure he was charging more on his expenses than they were.