‘You typed them out again?’

‘Yes. And put them side by side. They might have been written by the same person. Don’t you see?’

‘No. What are you trying to prove?’

‘Well, surely the thought follows — what stereotype am I? What anonymous whole am I part of?’

‘Does it? It doesn’t for me.’ Molly was saying: If you choose to make a nonentity of yourself, do, but don’t stick that label on me.

Disappointed, because this discovery and the ideas that had followed from it were what she had been most looking forward to talking over with Molly, Anna said quickly: ‘Oh all right. It struck me as interesting. And that’s about all — there was a period of what may be described as confusion, and some left the Party. Or everyone left the Party — meaning those whose psychological time was up. Then suddenly, and in the same week — and that’s what’s so extraordinary, Molly …’ In spite of herself, Anna was appealing to Molly again — ‘In the same week, I got three more letters. Purged of doubt, stern and full of purpose. It was the week after Hungary. In other words, the whip had been cracked, and the waverers jumped to heel. Those three letters were identical too — I’m not talking about the actual words, of course,’ said Anna impatiently, as Molly looked deliberately sceptical. ‘I mean the style, the phrases, the way words were linked together. And those intermediary letters, the hysterical self-abasing letters, might never have been written. In fact I’m sure Tom, Len and Bob have suppressed the memory that they ever wrote them.’

‘But you kept them?’

‘Well I’m not going to use them in a court of law, if that’s what you mean.’

Molly stood slowly wiping glasses on a pink and mauve striped cloth, and holding each one up to the light before setting it down. ‘Well I’m so sick of it all I don’t think I want ever to bother with it again.’

‘But Molly, we can’t do that, surely? We were communists or near-communists or whatever you like for years and years. We can’t suddenly say, Oh well, I’m bored.’

‘The funny thing is I’m bored. Yes, I know it’s odd. Two or three years ago I felt guilty if I didn’t spend all my free time organizing something or other. Now I don’t feel at all guilty if I simply do my job and laze around for the rest. I don’t care any more, Anna. I simply don’t.’

‘It’s not a question of feeling guilty. It’s a question of thinking out what it all means.’