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not Eva? She supposed 'Eve' was more English and, in any event, Romer had not given her the option of christening herself.
    That evening, after Romer had left so peremptorily, she had gone through to the salon to talk to her father. A job for the British government, she told him, £500 a year, a British passport. He feigned surprise but it was obvious that Romer had briefed him to a certain extent.
    'You'd be a British citizen, with a passport,' her father said, his features incredulous, almost abjectly so – as if it were unthinkable that a nonentity such as he should have a daughter who was a British citizen. 'Do you know what I would give to be a British citizen?' he said, all the while with his left hand miming a sawing motion at his right elbow.
    'I don't trust him,' Eva said. 'And why should he be doing this for me?'
    'Not for you: for Kolia. Kolia worked for him. Kolia died working for him.'
    She poured herself a small glass of port, drank and held its sweetness in her mouth for a second or two before swallowing it.
    'Working for the British government,' she said, 'you know what that means.'
    He came over to her and took her hands. 'There are a thousand ways of working for the British government.'
    'I'm going to say no. I'm happy here in Paris, happy in my job.'
    Again her father's face registered an emotion so intense it was almost parodic: now it was a bafflement, an incomprehension so complete it made him dizzy. He sat down as if to prove the point.
    'Eva,' he said, seriously, weightily, 'think about it: you have to do it. But don't do it for the money, or the passport, or to be able to go and live in England. It's simple; you have to do it for Kolia – for your brother.' And he pointed at Kolia's smiling face in the photograph. 'Kolia's dead,' he went on, dumbly, almost idiotically, as if only now facing up to the reality of his dead son. 'Murdered. How can you not do it?'
    'All right, I'll give it some thought,' she said coolly, determined not to be affected by his emotion, and left the room. But she knew, whatever the rational side of her brain was telling her – weigh everything up, don't be hasty, this is your life you're dealing with – that her father had said all that mattered. In the end it was nothing to do with money, or a passport, or safety: Kolia was dead. Kolia had been killed. She had to do it for Kolia, it was as simple as that.
     
    She saw Romer two days later across the street as she left for lunch, standing under the awning of the epicene just as he had that first day. This time he waited for her to join him and, as she crossed the road, she felt a sense of profound unease afflict her, as if she were deeply superstitious and the most maleficent sign had just been made evident to her. She wondered, absurdly: is this what people feel when they agree to marry someone?
    They shook hands and Romer led her to their original cafe. They sat, ordered a drink and Romer handed her a buff envelope. It contained a passport, £50 in cash and a train ticket from the Gare du Nord, Paris, to Waverley Station, Edinburgh.
    'What if I say no?' she asked.
    'Just give it back to me. Nobody wants to force you.'
    'But you had the passport ready.'
    Romer smiled, showing his white teeth, and for once she thought it might be a genuine smile.
    'You've no idea how easy it is to have a passport made up. No, I thought…' he paused and frowned. 'I don't know you, Eva, in the way I knew Kolia – but I thought, because of him, and because you remind me of him, that there was a chance you might join us.'
    Eva smiled ruefully at the memory of this conversation – its mix of sincerity and vast duplicity – and leant forward as they steamed into Edinburgh and craned her head up to look at the castle on the rock, almost black, as if, made of coal, it sat on a crag of coal, as they slowed beneath it, slipping into the station. Now there were shreds of blue amongst the hurrying clouds – it was brighter, the sky no longer white