‘My clients, the Simon family, have asked me to locate you on a matter that may prove mutually beneficial.’

That name isn’t real either.

Unless—something else—

What else could it be?

The easy answer was to ignore the solicitor’s letter. But then again, they had come so near.

Lane and Soames, a few yards away through the wall.

Rachaela saw in memory her mother’s tired and embittered face. ‘Have nothing to do with them.’

She could hear her heart. A drum in the fog.

‘Oh come on, come on!’ roared Mr Gerard to the phone far off over the hills.

At six o’clock Rachaela went out into the street. Mr Gerard locked the shop in a flurry of ancient duffel coat and scarf.

‘Filthy night.’

It was growing dark, the fog shadowing, and many bright lights shining through it, smeared and dangerous.

‘You mind how you go, Rachaela.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘good night.’

‘Probably you just dissolve,’ Mr Gerard said audibly and angrily to the stiff lock.

Rachaela crossed over from Lane and Soames. The great lions crouched wetly black, but did not spring. No one could make her enter between their paws.

She walked east and came among the vast animal of the evening crowd, bumping and pushing along. At a bus-stop she waited, silent, as people swore and raved at the bus’s delay. ‘You don’t live in the real world with the rest of us.’ It had been a blinding accusation. Her mother had furiously believed Rachaela was not hurt by the world.

The bus came.

Men and women thrust in front of her. She let them. The world to Rachaela was mostly horrible and she expected nothing good of it. For this reason she had refused friendships and lovers, although once she had been raped by an acquaintance after a dull party. She only expected onslaughts, upon her privacy, her person. The rape had not shocked Rachaela. She sloughed it.

After half an hour she got off the bus, and stepped back into the belly of the fog. She had now to walk across the wide green in front of the flats. She knew its perils, she did not fear those, they were facts. It was something else she feared.

The fog brought it. It had brought the letter, too. Sitting in the snack bar at lunch time she had thought of absenting herself this afternoon from the shop. But so far she had never done that, not even when she had caught flu, and foolishly she did not want to spoil her record. She was saving her truancy for some perfect day when she would abscond to picturesque gardens or to see a film.

Besides, the letter would have been left for her. She could not have escaped.

Trees passed her, swathed and dripping.

A lit streetlight shone ahead like a living livid moon.