I’d been sorting out the various connections and thinking about Liv and her dizzy ascent to where she now was, twelve years later, wondering of course how she’d done it, when a woman holding the hand of a child on either side of her came down the wide staircase. I’m not good at children’s ages but I would think the boy was about four and the girl three. The woman, the girl, was obviously an au pair–cum–nanny. There’s a look that identifies them, you can always tell. Invariably they have puzzled, anxious expressions, pink noses, chapped lips, long hair, and they are always dressed the same, in jeans and big sweaters and lace-up boots, as if they’re off hill-walking in the Cairngorms rather than taking the kids on a trip to South End Green. I exaggerate, but they often do look like that and this one was more like that than usual. She passed me on her way to the front door and to my “Good morning” returned a shy smile. So, exactly, had Liv looked when she had just such a job with just such children. Just such a house as this, only no doubt more traditional in its design and its furnishing, and in Maida Vale not Hampstead, had she run away from and joined us in our refuge on top of the world.

It was seeing the au pair–nanny and the children that were undoubtedly Liv’s and “Mr. Clarkson’s” that decided me. Having found being in her presence a mite awkward, I now wanted her to come back. I switched the power on. I tested the lights, going through the thirty-two permutations I’d achieved. In fact, it was thirty-six, which made me feel quite pleased with myself. Whether she was upstairs or downstairs I’d no idea, but I went to the gallery rail and the widely curving wrought-iron staircase that led into another vast chamber below and called out what I always call out when I don’t know the customer’s name or, as in this case, don’t want to use it.

“Are you there?”

No answer. I called again. She appeared behind me, materializing from some room whose existence I hadn’t suspected. “Liv,” I said.

Again the fear flashed in her well-painted, black-outlined blue eyes. I saw I must be gentle. What was curious and funny to me was a threat to her. I forced myself to take my eyes off that lump of ivory, that tooth she wore mounted in gold on a chain round her neck.

“Liv, I knew you at once,” I said. “Please don’t be anxious. You do know me, don’t you?”

She shook her head, then nodded. “Chloe,” she said.

It was just possible she had forgotten my true name. “Clodagh,” I said, “Clodagh Brown.”