True, he was considerate – respectful, he would probably have said – but his scrupulous considerations always left her dissatisfied and slightly cross. It wasn’t that she expected him to be a Heathcliff or a Lord Byron, but all the same she wished he would on occasion drop the restraint and let himself go, even if only by a little. A show of heedless gaiety now and then would be nice. She wouldn’t have minded a bit of rough stuff, even, in bed, once in a way. But no. Where Paul Viertel was concerned, the traces would remain safely unkicked over.

When she arrived at the flat, the rain was still drifting down. It was so soft and fine it seemed no more than exploratory, the prototype of rain.

She paid off the taxi, and used her key to open the front door, and climbed the stairs, carrying Paul’s suitcase.

The inside of the flat felt as damp as outdoors. She struck a match and turned on the gas fire. She liked the little whoomp! the gas gave when it caught, and the feathery way it danced along the as yet unheated filaments. Strange, how companionable such ordinary things could be, in their humble, uninsistent way.

She heated some beef broth and poured it out and sat down by the big window in the kitchen, both of her hands wrapped tightly around the mug for warmth. She had tried to put out of her mind last night’s phone call from her father, but now, as she sat here alone, it pressed in upon her irresistibly.

Quirke hadn’t sounded drunk. Tipsy, maybe, but not drunk. He had sounded, in fact, like a little boy who had discovered a rare species of insect, or a particularly repellent bright-green toad, a prize he was eager to show to anyone prepared to look at it.

‘As soon as it occurred to me that it might be April, I knew it was her.’

He had pressed her to describe April to him in detail, but what good would a description be, no matter how detailed? ‘What about a photo, then?’ he urged. ‘Have you got one of her?’

She was sure she had, but even if she could find it, it would take a week for her to get it to him, even by airmail. He told her to send it anyway.

‘How did she seem, this woman?’ she had asked. ‘How did she behave? I mean, there must have been something, besides her initials, that made you think she was April. You only had a single glimpse of her, that night outside the Shelbourne, and even then, you were—’ She broke off.

‘I was drunk, yes, I know,’ he said, brushing the fact aside. ‘But I remember what she looked like then. The trouble is, I don’t know what she would look like now.’

‘Then what good would a photograph be? She would have changed.’