The notion of constant danger was a madness that men in his profession must both inhabit and put aside, and the truth was more complex: that the world could change in an instant from clear and kind to desperate and cold, and the trick to survival lay in knowing that instant before it happened, and not when. This was a skill he had once possessed, but could not guarantee until he tested it again. By the time he reached the Circus he was, as he had been for the three preceding decades of his life, afraid.

Smiley drove himself. As so often in his life, he was reluctant in that moment to share his space or his thoughts with anyone.

Susanna looked back at Smiley and wondered what he was thinking. His voice was still gentle and he was the same shy, kind and yet almost resentful tortoise of a man he had been when he brought her in, but now there was something else in his quiet: a watchfulness that touched everything, as if a fog were paying attention to the house it surrounded.

Literature tells us sorrow is more profound than joy – a very Russian perception, as it happens. As I live longer, I’m the more convinced that our valorisation of pain is what makes our world so bleak. We anticipate it, we approve of it, and in doing so we make it. We need a better way. So, as a matter of personal policy: Léo is alive.