Ruth was draped in the blue and green shawl, leaving her legs, her snow-white shoulders bare. Through eyelets of the shawl, white flesh stared. Beneath this thin covering she was naked. Her hair poured round her, strands sticky with electricity.

Her face was made-up, not inexpertly as one would expect, but like a painted doll. Coal-black lids, mascara sooty-thick, the Ups exactly shaped and red as holly berries.

She looked drowsy, as if she had been asleep. Yet a kind of current emanated from her, she was like a live wire. She had not been sleeping.

Rachaela found her voice. ‘Is that the make-up from Woolworth’s?’

‘Yes.’ Ruth’s own voice was mild. She was neither embarrassed nor uneasy.

‘You’ve done it very carefully.’

‘Yes.’

‘What were you doing?’

‘Waiting,’ said Ruth.

Of course she had been waiting, Rachaela delayed at the shop, later than she had intended.

But did Ruth mean that? Waiting for her mother?

‘Why was the window open?’

Ruth said, To let in the night.’

Perhaps it was a line from a book. Ruth did not lie to Rachaela, neither was she speaking all the truth. Yet the truth was somehow self-evident.

Vampire. Ruth had made herself up like a vampire from a horror film she had perhaps contrived to see, or some illustration in a library book. She looked the part.

And then she had lain down in the dark, naked but for her flimsy shawl, the window open to let in the night, and waited.

Rachaela had, again, the image of a man in a black cloak walking up the house wall. This time no sexual clenching moved in her loins, she went cold.

Was this Ruth’s fantasy? Dracula walking up the brickwork to claim her?

She switched on the electric fire, the room was freezing as if hung with icicles. She went into the kitchen, washed her hands, and began to put bacon on to the grill.

Ruth went silently back behind her screen.

When she emerged she was wearing her nightdress and dressing-gown. She walked into the bathroom and Rachaela heard the clink of the pot of cold cream.

When Ruth came out, she was wiped clean of all colours but her own black and white.

‘You could have kept it on,’ Rachaela said.

‘I was finished with it.’

Rachaela fried an egg for Ruth.

‘I’m home from the bookshop now,’ said Rachaela.

‘Can I have a day off tomorrow?’

‘Yes, if you want. You can have another bilious attack.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ruth.

She sat at the table, eating bread and butter.

Rachaela served the food and they ate it.

Outside snow began to fall in large fat flakes.

When they had finished, Rachaela got up and walked to one of the windows. She drew back the curtain with her hand and looked both ways along the deserted street.