I went back to the van and got my toolbag. On my way back in I glanced at myself in the enormous mirror with a steel frame and steel stars clustered about in the corners of it, which covered one wall of the hall. Who can tell if they look different from how they looked eleven years before? Everyone must do, I suppose. I saw a tall thin woman in the same gear as Darren wears, jeans and T-shirt and leather jacket, with very short black hair, nearly black eyes, and eyebrows that draw together all the time in a way that’s already giving her frown lines. The best thing about my face is my cheekbones, which in Silver’s words are sharp enough to cut cheese. The frown lines aged me, I supposed, not much caring, as did the crinkles round my eyes that come from enjoying life.

Liv looked older but she also looked better. She looked beautiful. The makeup she had on was the kind you can have done in the cosmetics department of big stores. It takes half an hour to get it right, longer if you do it yourself. Her fair hair, which was always very long, shaggy, and tangled before that look was fashionable, was now absolutely straight, cut just to cover her ears with a straight-across fringe, and bleached or dyed the color of unsalted butter. I’d seen her looking at my hands (rather than my face). All I can say about mine is that at least they’re clean. Hers were white as milk and the nails very long, square-trimmed, and painted a silvery ultramarine blue. They matched the sapphire in the ring on the third finger of her left hand. What fascinated me most about her was the thing she wore round her neck. I knew what it was, though I could hardly believe my eyes and my memory.

While I was outside she had disappeared. I found a door in the hall that looked as if a cupboard might be inside but in fact opened on to a wall of keypads and plateswitches as well as several fuse boxes, and set to work. The way the “original electricians” had wired it up was a mess and probably quite dangerous. I would have to turn the power off before I began and from then on it would be a simple job that didn’t take much thought. I called out to her that she’d be without electricity for the next half hour but there was no answer, so I cut the power to the circuit on this floor and maybe to the one below it too, it was hard to tell.