Della wasn’t going to advertise for a flatmate. You couldn’t be too careful. Yet she had to find someone if she was going to afford any new winter clothes, not to mention heating the place. It would have to be the right person, someone to fill all her own exacting requirements as well as satisfy Mrs Swanson . . .

‘Ooh, it’s lovely!’ said Rosamund Vine. ‘It’s so quiet and clean. And you’ve got a garden! You should see the dump I’ve been living in. It was over-run with mice.’

‘You don’t get mice,’ said Della repressively, ‘unless you leave food about.’

‘I won’t do that. I’ll be ever so careful. I’ll go halves with the rent and I’ll have the key to the back door, shall I? That way I won’t disturb you if I come in late at night.’

‘I hope you won’t come in late at night,’ said Della. ‘Mrs Swanson’s very particular about that sort of thing.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Rosamund sounded rather bitter. ‘I’ve nothing and no one to keep me out late. Anyway, the last bus passes the end of the road at a quarter to twelve.’

Della pushed aside her misgivings, and Mrs Swanson, interviewing Rosamund, appeared to have none. She made a point of explaining the safety precautions, to which Rosamund listened meekly and with earnest nods of her head. Della was glad this duty hadn’t fallen to her, as she didn’t want Rosamund to tell exaggerated tales about her at work. So much the better if she could put it all on Mrs Swanson.

Rosamund Vine had been chosen with the care Della devoted to every choice she made. It had taken three weeks of observation and keeping her ears open to select her. It wouldn’t do to find someone on too low a salary or, on the other hand, someone with too lofty a position in the company. She didn’t like the idea of a spectacularly good-looking girl, for such led hectic lives, or too clever a girl, for such might involve her in tiresome arguments. An elegant girl would fill the cupboards with clothes and the bathroom with cosmetics. A gifted girl would bring in musical instruments or looms or paints or trunks full of books. Only Rosamund, of all the candidates, qualified. She was small and quiet and prettyish, a secretary (though not Della’s secretary), the daughter of a clergyman who, by coincidence, had been at the same university at the same time as Della’s father. Della, who had much the same attitude as Victorian employers had to their maids’ ‘followers’, noted that she had never heard her speak of a boy friend or overheard any cloakroom gossip as to Rosamund’s love life.

The two girls settled down happily together. They seldom went out in the evenings. Della always went to bed at eleven sharp and would have relegated Rosamund to her own room at this point but for one small difficulty. With Rosamund in the garden room – necessarily sitting on her bed as there was nowhere else to sit – it wasn’t possible for Della to make her security rounds. Only once had she tried doing it with Rosamund looking on.