Rachaela whirled into the fog, into the thick of the crowd, giving herself to its hasty rhythm.

The man did not call out after her. His hand did not clutch and grasp her arm.

She made towards the museum, where she spent her lunch hour among the blue and pink stone of god birds and smiling pharoahs, eventually eating two bananas bought from a stall as she walked to the shop, fog-bananas.

The man did not come into the shop, and the young one did not come back.

Mr Gerard said, ‘Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Silly. Silly, silly girl. Make us some tea.’

She stood on the bus home. The vehicle was full of excited escapees.

The shop shut half an hour earlier on Saturday in order to allow Mr Gerard, also, and his employee the chance to rush away to a bacchanal. But she doubted he had one any more than she did. Mr Gerard remained as thankful a mystery to her as she remained a provoking mystery to him. He lived with a wife near Kennington. She could only visualize a Mrs Gerard who was a female version of Mr, in a Fair Isle woolly or sweaty dress and cardigan, eating custard creams or reading pieces out of papers over the telephone.

The fog hung on the green as intensely as ever, but Rachaela did not anticipate the man. She did not know what she looked for. Something unpleasant.

In the flat as she drank a glass of wine, the other half of Friday’s bottle, the door sounded.

No one called on Rachaela.

She thought of some sort of emergency. Perhaps an accident had happened in the street. She might not have heard a squealing of brakes over the storm of Beethoven, not to mention the rock music from the flat below.

‘Hallo?’

‘Miss Day?’

She did not recognize the voice, isolated and tinny in the receiver.

‘What do you want?’

‘Miss Day, this is Mr Soames of Lane and Soames. I wonder if you would be good enough to let me in.’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘But Miss Day, I’ve come out of my way to see you on this very urgent matter. It is an urgent matter, Miss Day—’

‘No, Mr Soames, I’m not interested.’

‘My client, Mr Simon, has authorized—’

‘Good-bye, Mr Soames.’

The door sounded three more times after she had replaced the entry-phone.

Rachaela paced her tiny room. Upstairs a tinier bedchamber, and a cupboard converted to a bathroom—this minuscule, expensive flat that mostly her mother’s savings had enabled her to choose, and when they were gone, what?

Perhaps it was money Mr Soames offered.

Money was remote to Rachaela. She partly feared it, it carried responsibilities, it caused such trouble and damage. But then.

The phone no longer made noises.

Mr Soames had gone away.

On Sunday she had a long bath, in the afternoon, with a radio play on.