If I had asked, as many would have, “What for?” I don’t think I’d have been received back there again. That would have been the last I’d have seen of Silver or any of them. It didn’t cross my mind to ask. I knew immediately what it was for and why anyone would want to do it. Like Everest, like Annapurna and K2, the roofs were there and that was enough. They seemed to me as legitimate a place to be, to walk on, to explore, as any street or high road or country village. And in that moment, in the silence that followed Silver’s words, I wondered why roofs should be closed to us, forbidden ground, empty, neglected but lovely spaces.

“I’d like to go out there,” I said and, crossing to that open window, I looked out and up. To get up onto the roof would be easy for any reasonably athletic young person, certainly for the one Daniel had called Spiderwoman. “When can we?”

“Tomorrow,” Silver said, and he laughed, but from delight, not at me.

Wim said nothing. He fetched himself a mug of tea and one for Liv when she woke, as she did within a minute or two. Silver performed more introductions. Liv said, “Hi,” looking at me warily. The truth is that I didn’t see her expression as wary at the time. It’s hindsight which tells me it was. She was already painfully conscious that any girl who came to 15 Russia Road might attract Wim’s eye, might be the one for whom his defenses would go down, the girl he might love. That one, of course, must be herself, and she seemed to feel that if she could somehow convince him of this, show him that she was the woman for him, she would anchor him and the peril of possible rivals be lessened. What she failed to understand, could hardly have been expected to understand, what none of us understood then, was that Wim had only one passion, obsessed man that he was, and that had nothing to do with women or love.

At this time she had been at Silver’s for no more than three weeks. She was Jonny’s. Beyond prodding her with his foot to wake her—she slept for long hours—Wim had never touched her, perhaps never thought of touching her, though her yearning gaze so often leveled at him gave her away to the rest of us. At Silver’s instigation, she told her story to me that evening, and that wasn’t to be the only time. The two men had heard it before but they listened without protest, Silver with enthusiasm and Wim with no sign of impatience. Perhaps his thoughts were elsewhere.