‘Is there a phone?’ I asked.

She didn’t reply. Her face was pimply; she was very young.

I repeated it. ‘Is there a phone?’

She gazed back at me. Was she the daughter of the house? I hadn’t seen her the day before. The baby started crying again and she heaved it over her shoulder, like luggage, and went into the next bedroom. Through the nightie I could see her narrow buttocks. She closed the door.

Then I realized it was only five in the morning, so I went back to bed.

The nearest CND office was in Kendal, ten miles away. I phoned several times but there was no reply. My landlady, a silent, stocky woman, stood behind me in the hall, polishing her pictures with Windolene. They were framed prints of British birds; I heard the puff-puff of her aerosol. I felt better this morning; what had happened to me yesterday? It seemed a week ago. I must have had what my mother would call a turn. What a twit I was, to feel it was all hopeless.

At 10.15 a man answered. He sounded friendly, but then he had a Scottish accent. I asked him if he could give me the address of somebody called Lesley Featherstone; who was, perhaps still, a member of CND and lived, perhaps still lived, in Windermere.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he said. ‘We don’t give out the addresses of our members.’

Half an hour later I was in Kendal, parking near the cattle market. I had no plan of attack; I just wanted to be busy. For a moment, in fact, I had forgotten all about my son. This was a challenge, like finding a missing electrical connection when you’re mending the stereo. Wholesome women in tweed coats strode by; everybody wore headscarves. The air cut my London lungs. I had to remind myself it was Wednesday; after my deep sleep I felt dislocated. A sweet-shop window was piled with fireworks and I realized it was still October 31; I had even got the month wrong.

I walked up a flight of stone steps to a first-floor office. The door was open. It was a cluttered room. There was nobody there except for a middle-aged woman with her arms full of flowers. I stopped in the doorway.

‘I’m not really here!’ she cried.

I stared at her. Perhaps she wasn’t. After all, I had never seen that girl in the nightie again. Sunlight slanted through the window onto her chrysanthemums.

‘This the CND?’ I asked.

She nodded; so did her flowers. She had a strong, leathery face and wore a Sherlock Holmes hat. ‘I’m supposed to be doing the flowers in church,’ she said. ‘It’s such a curse.’

‘What is?’

‘My son asked me to hold the fort.’ Behind her hung a poster of a mushroom cloud; it seemed to be rising from her head. ‘He’s taking his daughter to playgroup. Why his wife can’t do it, quite honestly, is beyond me.’

I paused. ‘I’m a mate of his,’ I said. ‘Leave it to me.’