Her little slip of the tongue hadn’t been lost on Della. But she was too tired to make any rejoinder beyond saying that Mrs Swanson would be very annoyed if she knew, and would Rosamund give her fair warning next time she intended to be late? Rosamund said when they met again that evening that she couldn’t give her fair warning, as she could never be sure herself. Della said no more. What, anyway, would be the use of knowing what time Rosamund was coming in when she couldn’t bolt the gate?

Three mornings later her temper flared.

On two of the intervening nights Rosamund had missed the last bus. The funny thing was that she didn’t look at all tired or jaded, while Della was worn-out. For three hours on the previous night she had lain stiffly clutching the breadknife while the old house creaked about her and the side gate rattled in the wind.

‘I don’t know why you bother to come home at all.’

‘Won’t you mind if I don’t?’

‘Not a bit. Do as you like.’

Stealthily, before Rosamund left the flat by the front door, Della slipped out and bolted the gate. Rosamund, of course (being utterly imprudent), didn’t check the gate before she locked the back door. Della fell into a heavy sleep at ten o’clock to be awakened just after two by a thudding on the side gate followed by a frenzied ringing of the front door bell.

‘You locked me out!’ Rosamund sobbed. ‘Even my mother never did that. I was locked out in the street and I’m frozen. What have I done to you that you treat me like that?’

‘You said you weren’t coming home.’

‘I wasn’t going to, but we went out and Chris forgot his key. He’s had to sleep at a friend’s place. I wish I’d gone there too!’

They were evidently two of a kind. Well-suited, Della thought. Although it was nearly half-past two in the morning, this seemed the best moment to have things out. She addressed Rosamund in her precise schoolmistressy voice.

‘I think we’ll have to make other arrangements, Rosamund. Your ways aren’t my ways, and we don’t really get on, do we? You can stay here till you find somewhere else, but I’d like you to start looking round straightaway.’

‘But what have I done? I haven’t made a noise or had my friends here. I haven’t even used your phone, not once. Honestly, Della, I’ve done my best to keep the place clean and tidy, and it’s nearly killed me.’

‘I’ve explained what I mean. We’re not the same kind of people.’

‘I’ll go on Saturday. I’ll go to my mother – it won’t be any worse. God knows – and then maybe Chris and I . . .’

‘You’d better go to bed now,’ Della said coldly, but she couldn’t get any sleep herself. She was wondering how she had been such a bad judge of character, and wondering too what she was going to do about the rent. Find someone else, of course. An older woman perhaps, a widow or a middle-aged spinster . . .