‘I sincerely hope not. Who wants it to last?’

Not Gwendolen, certainly. When I told her she was incredulous, then aghast. And when I said I was sorry I’d told her since Reeve’s backsliding upset her so much, she snapped at me that she didn’t want to discuss him. She became even more snappy and nervous and depressed too. Whenever the phone rang she jumped. Once or twice I came home to find no wife, no dinner prepared; then she’d come in, looking haggard, to say she’d been out for a walk. I got her to see our doctor and he put her on tranquillizers which just made her more depressed.

I hadn’t seen Reeve for ages. Then, out of the blue he phoned me at work to say he was off to the South of France for three weeks.

‘In your state of financial health?’ I said. I’d had a struggle getting him to pay the January instalment of his twice-yearly income tax, and I knew he was practically broke till he got the advance on his new book in May. ‘The South of France is a bit pricey, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll manage,’ he said. ‘My bank manager’s one of my fans and he’s let me have an overdraft.’

Gwendolen didn’t seem very surprised to hear about Reeve’s holiday. He’d told me he was going on his own – the ‘marvellous chick’ had long disappeared – and she said she thought he needed the rest, especially as there wouldn’t be any of those girls to bother him, as she put it.

When I first met Reeve he’d been renting a flat but I persuaded him to buy one, for security and as an investment. The place was known euphemistically as a garden flat but it was in fact a basement, the lower ground floor of a big Victorian house in Bayswater. My usual route to work didn’t take me along his street, but sometimes when the traffic was heavy I’d go through the back doubles and past his house. After he’d been away for about two weeks I happened to do this one morning and, of course, I glanced at Reeve’s window. One always does glance at a friend’s house, I think, when one is passing even if one knows that friend isn’t at home. His bedroom was at the front, the top half of the window visible, the lower half concealed by the rise of lawn. I noticed that the curtains were drawn. Not particularly wise, I thought, an invitation to burglars, and then I forgot about it. But two mornings later I passed that way again, passed very slowly this time as there was a traffic hold-up, and again I glanced at Reeve’s window. The curtains were no longer quite drawn. There was a gap about six inches wide between them. Now whatever a burglar may do, it’s very unlikely he’ll pull back drawn curtains. I didn’t consider burglars this time. I thought Reeve must have come back early.