“I don’t want anything. Not unless you’ve got some arsenic.” She laughed a peal of theatrical laughter. “When you think, I could have bought myself a delightful little house in Chelsea, with a wisteria growing over it and windowboxes. I could have been in the middle of things. Instead I spent everything I had on this barrack, up here, practically in Kilburn. For him. But he can go too far, he thinks I don’t know what he’s up to but I know only too well. I wasn’t in repertory all those appalling bloody years for nothing. I’ve seen life, darling, and God knows it holds no surprises for me.” She seemed to realize quite suddenly that I was there, a flesh and blood creature standing before her, and that she hadn’t been talking to herself and replying to herself but had had an audience. “Oh dear, oh God, did you say you wanted to make an appointment with Max? He’s very busy, you know. He’s got the copy editor’s emendations to his book to go through and there are zillions of them.”

“I’d really like to see him today, Selina.”

Suddenly weary, she passed a hand across her forehead. “Oh, I expect we can manage something. Why don’t you come up about lunchtime? When he’s having his coffee? He’s always better, isn’t he, when he’s got some food inside him? Well, I think so, and God knows, I should know.”

Once she had gone I opened Guy’s letter. He wrote that he was sorry to have missed me when I was home at Easter. He’d be in London on a certain date in early July and would I have dinner with him? It was another world he lived in, quite different from mine. Did I want that world, even occasionally? I’d have to borrow Beryl’s daughter’s black skirt again. Dinner would be in some other fine restaurant and I’m afraid all I wondered about was what kind of roof it had and how accessible that roof would be.

I took my washing to the launderette and found Morna there, reading Harpers & Queen and watching a couple of T-shirts and a lot of men’s underwear spinning around in the dryer. I asked her what she was doing in Maida Vale at this hour, for no one ever called at Silver’s before noon, and she said her brother lived in Elgin Avenue. He had sprained his ankle and couldn’t walk so she was doing his washing for him.

“I think I’ve just seen Andrew Lane,” she said.

“Who?” I said, which was inexcusable, since Beryl had been talking about him only the day before.

“That guy who took away the little boy when the social services told him not to. Him and his wife did.”