I pulled her arms away and looked towards the closet door. Suddenly she began to pant excitedly as she backed to the door, standing against it, her arms spread to protect it. ‘Don’t open it, Arturo,’ she pleaded. ‘Please!’

‘What the hell is all this?’ I said.

She shivered. She wet her lips and swallowed, her eyes filled with tears and she both smiled and wept. ‘I’ll tell you sometime,’ she said. ‘But please don’t go in there now, Arturo. You mustn’t. Oh, you mustn’t. Please!’

‘Who’s in there?’

‘Nobody,’ she almost shouted. ‘Not a soul. That isn’t it, Arturo. Nobody’s been here. But please! Please don’t open it now. Oh please!’

She came towards me, almost stalking, her arms out in an embrace that was yet a protection against my attack on the closet door. She opened her lips and kissed me with peculiar fervour, a passionate coldness, a voluptuous indifference. I didn’t like it. Some part of her was betraying some other part, but I could not find it. I sat on the bed and watched her as she stood between me and that closet door. She was trying so hard to conceal a cynical elation. She was like one who is forced to hide his drunkenness, but the elation was there, impossible to conceal.

‘You’re drunk, Camilla. You shouldn’t drink so much.’

The eagerness with which she acknowledged that indeed she was drunk made me immediately suspicious. There she stood, nodding her head like a spoiled child, a coy smiling admission, the pouted lips, the look out of downcast eyes. I got up and kissed her. She was drunk, but she was not drunk on whiskey or alcohol because her breath was too sweet for that. I pulled her down on the bed beside me. Her ecstasy swept across her eyes, wave after wave of it, the passionate languor of her arms and fingers searched my throat. She crooned into my hair, her lips against my head.

‘If you were only him,’ she whispered. Suddenly she screamed, a piercing shriek that clawed the walls of the room. ‘Why can’t you be him! Oh Jesus Christ, why can’t you?’ She began to beat me with her fists, pounding my head with rights and lefts, screaming and scratching in an outburst of madness against the destiny that did not make me her Sammy. I grabbed her wrists, yelled at her to be quiet. I pinned her arms and clamped my hand over her shrieking mouth. She looked out at me with bloated, protruding eyes, struggling for breath.

‘Not until you promise to keep quiet,’ I said. She nodded and I let go. I went to the door and listened for footsteps. She lay on the bed, face down, weeping. I tiptoed towards the closet door. Instinct must have warned her. She swung around on the bed, her face soggy with tears, her eyes like crushed grapes.

‘You open that door and I’ll scream,’ she said. ‘I’ll scream and scream.’