Page 138 of The Last Kiss Goodbye

‘I was recruited into the Security Service at Cambridge,’ he said finally.

She nodded and smiled softly. ‘I know. Jonathon told me. He told me that he was British Intelligence too. Who’d have thought it?’

‘I always said Jonny had missed his calling. He would have been an incredible actor.’

‘And you liked the adventure,’ she said, trying not to sound bitter.

He was silent for a few seconds.

‘I was fifteen years old when my father returned from the war,’ he said eventually. ‘He was sick, injured, mentally traumatised from a six-month spell in a prisoner-of-war camp. But he used to tell me and my mother that everything he had been through was worth it in the fight against oppression, and that was something I took with me to university. I wanted to be part of the struggle against whoever it was – fascists, communists, anyone – who wanted to keep people down.’

She could imagine him – young, handsome and brave. She hadn’t known him then, and she sighed with regret, realising how much she wanted to.

‘I didn’t even think you cared,’ she said with a touch of humorous complicity, that familiar banter between them returning.

‘I cared very much,’ he nodded, not looking away from her for even a moment. ‘That was the first thing I loved about you, Ros. The first thing I loved when I heard you protesting under my office window. I loved the fact that you cared.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me about your other life?’ she whispered. ‘I often suspected that there was something going on behind the scenes, I just didn’t know what. For a long time I thought you were having an affair with Victoria. I don’t know why you couldn’t trust me.’

‘It was nothing to do with trust, Ros,’ he said, taking hold of her hand. ‘I was a double agent. That compromised me, and the people I loved. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about me working for the establishment and I didn’t want to jeopardise our relationship. And besides, I was desperate to leave.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘The Russians considered me useful. Leaving wasn’t that easy.’

‘But there were so many things we could have done. I could have helped you think of a way to get out.’

‘I didn’t want to involve you. I wanted to protect you. Especially when I found out that my KGB friend Eugene Zarkov had been killed, probably murdered. I knew it wasn’t safe to be around me.’

‘So you disappeared.’

‘Jonny had seen intelligence that I was in danger. At one of Victoria’s parties, just a few weeks before I met you, Zarkov told me about the Soviets’ true nuclear capabilities. Through his work, he’d been in a unique position to find out how many missiles the Russians really had. He was worried that America could blow his country to smithereens and they wouldn’t be able to retaliate. Despite Brezhnev’s rhetoric, they didn’t have the firepower.’

‘How many people knew about this?’

‘Hardly anyone. It made us vulnerable, a liability. It was information that put us at risk. Jonathon heard that Zarkov had been killed, and that there was going to be an attempt on my life. So I escaped through the jungle and ended up in Central America, where I stayed for twelve months, until Jonathon sorted me out with a new identity, a new life.’

‘Miguel, Willem,’ she said, thinking of the other men on the expedition. ‘Did any of them know?’

Dominic shook his head.

‘But I could have come with you,’ she croaked. ‘We could have disappeared together.’

‘How could I ask you to give up your whole life for me, leave your friends, family, everything you knew and cared about, to spend the next, what? Forty, fifty years looking over your shoulder? It was too much to ask.’

‘But at least you could have got in touch.’

He turned away and walked towards the edge of the garden, where a cliff overlooked the sea. He breathed in deeply, his eyes lost on a point on the horizon.

‘Looking back, there are things I would have done differently.’

Ros looked around: a herd of sheep bleating in a neighbouring field, the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, the sight of nothing but glorious nature for miles around.

‘It’s a long way from Tavistock Square,’ she smiled.

‘It’s a long way from you.’

Her eyelids fluttered shut with regret.