She does not know what the next step should be. For so long she held onto the fact that Stefan said he would bring her over. But gradually the promise faded. She has built a life now, a life without Edward. Is the old dream strong enough to bring her back? How can she know? The brandy should be comforting, but the doubts about Edward that have been growing are unfolding in her mind again. Why was he silent for so long? It could not have been impossible for him to communicate. There are always channels, she knows that as well as anyone – letters, whispers, codes, telegrams. Why was there that monumental silence? What did it mean? What would she be going to if she went over? What sort of life would she be giving Rosa?
She remembers how they used to imagine the Soviet Union: the visions that Florence and Edward held out to her. For Florence, although she may have talked about it intellectually, it was something emotional, the possibility of an authentic, fully lived life. For Edward, it was also something almost spiritual; it was the way, he believed, that the great guilt of the upper class could be absolved, so that he would no longer have to drag around the burden of being the one who had benefited from the toil of the working class, from the colonial oppressed, their broken, miserable lives; that he could be their servant rather than them his servants. Servants. It was funny – not funny, but ironic – that all those years she had been the one who had had to deal with the servants – Mrs Venn, Edna, Ann, Kathy, Helen, now Aurore – all the women who had cooked for her and cleaned for her and looked after her child. She would like to be in a society where she no longer had to look back into their questioning and judgemental eyes. Or would she? Laura flicks, out of her thoughts, back into the café and her situation. Why is she thinking about Ann and Helen and Aurore rather than about herself and Edward and Rosa, and what she will do now?
As she finishes her drink, she is thrown back to the past. Thrown back to the dark times in Washington. It is nonsense, surely, to think that she was in any way responsible for Joe’s death. It came hot on the heels of her meeting with Alex, yes, but it is the stuff of a cheap thriller, a fast movie, to think that the two were connected. It makes no sense. Why did Alex not bring them out then? Why did she not talk to Edward about what it all meant? She and Edward were so schooled into secrecy by those instructions, she thinks sadly, and then she begins to wonder. Was it really the orders of their handlers that made them so silent even with one another, or was it simply his character, his desire to live without revelation, keeping himself to himself, even when he was naked with her? Whatever the reason, she can see clearly now that they never had the conversations they should have had.
Even if she is not guilty of that horror, what was she really doing all those years? She thought she was on the straight path to justice, but it all faded and snarled. Is that why Edward found it all unbearable, she wonders? Was it just the threat of exposure that unhinged him – or was it the nature of their work? They were passing the secrets of death, the ways to kill, from one empire to another. No, she stops herself. There is still the hope, everything Florence and Edward believed, the authentic life, equality, freedom – the hope is not dead. But how tinny those slogans sound now, after all she has read, all she has heard, over these years. She thought she was on a path to truth, but it led her to a world where every step, every word, is false.
If she goes, maybe she will be safe at last. She will be able to relax, finally, for once. And Rosa will no longer be the daughter of the traitor; she will be the daughter of a hero. She at least might be able to live a life free of secrecy. Surely Laura owes her that. Laura remembers the trial of Hiss, the imprisonment of Fuchs, the death of the Rosenbergs. She does not have to think of them directly; they are always with her. In Geneva, in London, in Boston, she and Rosa will never be safe. But she has been cleverer than all of them, she thinks to herself. No one suspects her. Valance even thinks that she will work for him, if he needs her. Even Mother, even Ellen, even Winifred; nobody thinks that she was anything but an innocent wife. Her mask has been a good one. Has her face stayed intact behind it?