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couldn’t afford to pay anyone else. He sat in his flat, which was his office, too, scouring foreign newspapers, listening to foreign radio stations, picking up stories he could translate into English and sell to Czech newspapers, radio, TV. He’d spent most of his career working for the state press agency; he always says he doesn’t know how he stayed sane, writing lies, knowing the truth but never being able to print it or talk about it on the air. During the time Dubcek was First Secretary and everyone began to feel free to talk openly things got much better, but then . . .’ She stopped, shrugging, because even now it felt odd to say the truth out loud, to say what you really thought or felt.
    ‘Then the Russians invaded, in 1968,’ Steve prompted, watching her.
    ‘The year I was born,’ she said, smiling.
    ‘Really?’ He sounded incredulous. ‘Not good timing.’
    ‘That’s exactly what Vlad said when he first saw my date of birth. My God, he said, what a year to pick to be born!’ Vlad had given a roar of laughter then, adding, ‘I have to be worried about your timing, darling.’ Then he had sobered and told her how he had felt the night the Russians invaded; the first disbelief, because none of them had believed the Russians would do it, then the panic and chaos, and then the clampdown which muzzled the press throughout the country. Everything was shut down, press, radio stations and TV, so that Vlad and his colleagues had sat there all night, helpless and gagged, while Russian tanks rolled inexorably towards Prague.
    ‘I’m always grateful I never had to live under Communism,’ Steve said, frowning into his drink. ‘How do people cope with all that tension?’
    ‘Fear becomes a way of life,’ she said soberly. They were only now slowly beginning to trust in freedom, to believe they were safe in saying what they really thought.
    ‘I guess,’ Steve nodded, watching her face and fascinated by the expressions passing over it. The more he looked at her the less he could believe she had ever been Gowrie’s mistress. ‘So when did you join this agency?’
    ‘I worked for Vlad part-time, doing translation, while I was at college. I did a modern languages degree and Vlad was always short of people who could read French and Italian – a lot of people in our country speak German and Russian, we’ve been forced to learn both, in the past, for obvious reasons. When your country is occupied by foreigners you soon realise you have to learn their language; they won’t learn yours.’
    Steve watched her face; not cool now, no, pulsing with feeling, her blue eyes dark with it, so that he knew what she must look like when she made love, the real woman under the ice. Ah, but how thick was the ice? How long would it take to break through the frozen surface – obviously tapping her anger about her country’s history would not be the way!
    ‘By the time I got involved with it the agency was very successful. Even Vlad was surprised by the way it took off. He couldn’t go on running it alone; he needed to find staff to help him, but he couldn’t pay much so he looked for students. My tutor was an old friend of his, and told me about the job. I was lucky to get it, lots of others were after it, but Vlad had known my father so he hired me. I had to comb foreign newspapers for stories he could use – it was good practice for me, helped me improve my fluency. He didn’t pay much, but even so that money made my life a lot easier. Student grants are barely big enough to survive on back home. We all had to get part-time jobs. When I got my degree, I became a teacher, but I discovered I wasn’t a natural teacher, I didn’t enjoy the job, and the pay was poor, but then most jobs pay very low wages back home. I had to save up for weeks just to buy myself shoes.’
    ‘I had no idea it was that bad in the Czech Republic,’ Steve said, frowning.
    ‘These days, some people do quite well, those in business, but on a