Suddenly Helen jumped up. She couldn’t bear to sit here any longer. Someone to talk to, that was what she needed.

There was no response to her knocking at Chloe’s door. Along the panelled gallery at the head of the stairs, Pansy’s door was open. Helen looked in at the jungle of record sleeves, empty cups and discarded clothes and half smiled. Pansy was always out somewhere.

Helen leaned on the carved banister and looked down into the body of the hall. The panelling seemed to absorb the light. It was numbingly quiet. Then, astonishingly, Helen heard a babble of voices. Almost at once she realised that it was a radio play. Rose must be listening in the kitchen, probably squashed into her battered armchair beside the Aga. Helen was still a little afraid of Rose, but her need for human company now was so imperative that she didn’t hesitate.

‘Come in, love,’ Rose said easily. She was indeed in the armchair, with the massive shapeless tubes of her legs propped up on a stool. ‘Sit down somewhere. Move that pile of stuff off the chair.’

Helen tried not to look at the overflowing ashtrays and smeared plates on the table. Rose lived complacently in a ripe, untidy web like a fat spider. Helen came in here rarely, and mostly in the hope of seeing Oliver. When she did meet him, it always surprised her, because he looked bored and irritable and faintly disgusted by the mess.

As she sat down Helen saw Gerry leaning against the dusty dresser behind the door. He was unshaven and his clothes were filthy. He was clutching a teacup and, as he stared at her with unfocused eyes, he lifted it and took a gulp, smacking his lips. There was a strong smell of whisky.

Helen moved uncomfortably. When she met Gerry on the stairs or along the deserted gallery, his hands invariably reached out to touch her while he joked, disconcertingly, in his cultured voice.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Rose ordered. ‘He’s having one of his bad days.’

Pansy and Chloe had joked about that. Gerry’s ‘bad days’ were the ones when he got drunk. Good days were the ones when he stayed sober, despite his failure to write a word of the non-existent novel promised to follow his single, long-ago success.

‘Tea in the pot,’ Rose told her.

As she lifted the teapot, Helen noticed that there was a crusty dribble of dried egg yolk down the side of it. She poured dark brown tea into a mug, resisting the impulse to wipe the inside of it first with her handkerchief.

‘Well, it’s not often that we see you, dear. What is it, feel like a chat?’ There was an avidity in Rose’s eyes that Helen chose not to see. Instead she nodded, grateful for the sympathy.

‘It’s my work, I suppose. I have to …’