“You’re hot,” said Alf. “’M’I allowed to say that? I mean it in a fucking feminist way.”

He laughed.

“Thanks,” said Robin, succeeding on her second pass in dodging around him and getting back into the tiny hall, where the desperate girl was still pounding on the bathroom door. Alf caught Robin’s arm, bent down and said something incomprehensible in her ear. When he straightened up again, some of her hair chalk had left a black stain on the end of his sweaty nose.

“What?” said Robin.

“I said,” he shouted, “‘wanna find somewhere quieter so we can talk more?’”

But then Alf noticed somebody standing behind her.

“All right, Jimmy?”

Knight had arrived in the hall. He smiled at Robin, then leaned up against the wall, smoking and holding a can of lager. He was ten years older than most of the people there, and some of the girls cast him sideways looks, in his tight black T-shirt and jeans.

“Waiting for the bog as well?” he asked Robin.

“Yeah,” said Robin, because that seemed the simplest way to extricate herself from both Jimmy and Alf the anarchist, should she need to. Through the open door of Hayley’s room, she saw Flick dancing, now clearly delighted with life, laughing at whatever was said to her.

“Flick says your dad was a trade union man,” Jimmy said to Robin. “Miner, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Robin.

“Fuck’s SAKE,” said the girl who had been hammering on the bathroom door. She danced on the spot in desperation for a few more seconds, then pushed her way out of the flat.

“There are bins to the left!” called one of the other girls after her.

Jimmy leaned closer to Robin, so that she could hear him over the thumping bass. His expression was, as far as she could see, sympathetic, even gentle.

“Died, though, didn’t he?” he asked Robin. “Your dad. Lungs, Flick said?”

“Yeah,” said Robin.

“I’m sorry,” said Jimmy, quietly. “Been through something similar myself.”

“Really?” said Robin.

“Yeah, my mum. Lungs, as well.”

“Workplace related?”

“Asbestos,” said Jimmy, nodding as he dragged on his cigarette. “Wouldn’t happen now, they’ve brought in legislation. I was twelve. My brother was two, he can’t even remember her. My old man drank himself to death without her.”

“That’s really rough,” said Robin sincerely. “I’m sorry.”

Jimmy blew smoke away from her face and pulled a grimace.

“Two of a kind,” said Jimmy, clinking his can of lager against Robin’s. “Class war veterans.”

Alf the anarchist lurched away, swaying slightly, and disappeared into the dark room pierced with fairy lights.

“Family ever get compensation?” asked Jimmy.

“Tried,” said Robin. “Mum’s still pursuing it.”

“Good luck to her,” said Jimmy, raising his can and drinking. “Good bloody luck to her.”

He banged on the bathroom door.

“Fucking hurry up, people are waiting,” he shouted.

“Maybe someone’s ill?” Robin suggested.

“Nah, it’ll be someone having a quickie,” said Jimmy.

Digby emerged from Flick’s bedroom, looking disgruntled.

“I’m a tool of patriarchal oppression, apparently,” he announced loudly.

Nobody laughed. Digby scratched his belly under his T-shirt, which Robin now saw featured a picture of Groucho Marx, and ambled into the room where Flick was dancing.

“He’s a tool, all right,” Jimmy muttered to Robin. “Rudolf Steiner kid. Can’t get over the fact that nobody gives him stars for effort anymore.”

Robin laughed, but Jimmy didn’t. His eyes held hers just a fraction too long, until the bathroom door opened a crack and a plump, red-faced young girl peeked out. Behind her, Robin saw a man with a wispy gray beard replacing his Mao cap.

“Larry, you filthy old bastard,” said Jimmy, grinning as the red-faced girl scuttled past Robin and disappeared into the dark room after Digby.

“Evening, Jimmy,” said the elderly Trotskyist, with a prim smile, and he, too, left the bathroom to a couple of cheers from the young men outside.

“Go on,” Jimmy told Robin, holding open the door and blocking anyone else’s attempts to push past her.

“Thanks,” she said, as she slid into the bathroom.

The glare of the strip light was dazzling after the dinginess of the rest of the flat. The bathroom barely had standing room between the smallest shower Robin had ever seen, with a grimy transparent curtain hanging off half its hooks, a small toilet in which a large amount of sodden tissue and a cigarette end was floating. A used condom glistened in the wicker bin.

Above the sink were three rickety shelves crammed with half-used toiletries and general clutter, crammed together so that one touch seemed likely to dislodge everything.

Struck by a sudden idea, Robin moved closer to these shelves. She was remembering how she had relied on the squeamish ignorance and avoidance of most men towards matters pertaining to menstruation when she had hidden the listening devices in a box of Tampax. Her eyes ran swiftly over half-used bottles of supermarket-brand shampoo, an old tub of Vim, a dirty sponge, a pair of cheap deodorants and a few well-used toothbrushes in a chipped mug. Very carefully, because everything was so tightly packed together, Robin eased out a small box of Lil-Lets that proved to have only one sealed tampon inside it. As she reached up to replace the box, she spotted the corner of a small, squashy bundle, encased in a plastic wrapper and hidden behind the Vim and a bottle of fruity shower gel.

With a sudden stab of excitement, she reached up and wriggled the white polythene parcel carefully out of the place it had been wedged, trying not to knock everything over.

Somebody hammered on the door.

“I’m fucking bursting!” shouted a new girl.

“Won’t be long!” Robin shouted back.

Two bulky sanitary towels had been rolled up in their own unromantic wrapping (“for Very Heavy Flow”): the sort of thing a young woman was unlikely to steal, especially if wearing skimpy clothing. Robin extracted them. There was nothing odd about the first. The second, however, emitted a small, crisp cracking noise as Robin bent it. Her excitement mounting, Robin turned it sideways and saw that it had been slit with what had probably been a razor blade. Wriggling her fingers into the tissue-like foam within, she felt a thick, folded piece of paper, which she eased out and unfolded.

The writing paper was exactly the same as that on which Kinvara had written her farewell note, with the name “Chiswell” embossed across the top and a Tudor rose, like a drop of blood, beneath it. A few disjointed words and phrases were scrawled in the distinctive, cramped handwriting Robin had seen so often in Chiswell’s office, and in the middle of the page one word had been circled many times.

251 Ebury Street

London

SW1W

Blanc de blanc

Suzuki

Mother?

Odi et amo, quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

Hardly breathing in her excitement, Robin took out her mobile, took several pictures of the note, then refolded it, replaced it in the sanitary towel and returned the package to the place it had been on the shelf. She attempted to flush the toilet, but it was clogged and all she achieved was that the water rose ominously in the bowl, refusing to subside, the cigarette butt bobbing there in swirling tissue.