That last bit was in my imagination. I’m not saying they wish me dead. They have my welfare at heart, as my mother puts it. Which must be why they were so happy—happier than I’ve seen them since before the pylon day—when Max made his offer. The best they’d hoped for was a room in whatever accommodation the college had available or for me to be the fourth girl in a shared flat somewhere.

“A whole flat to yourself,” my mother said, “and in a lovely part of town.”

I had a picture in my mind then of rows and rows of mock-Tudor houses, striped black and white like zebras, with pampas grass in their front gardens and Audis outside their garages. Daniel and I had seen plenty of them, riding around the ring roads on his old Motoguzzi. Our London was the outer suburbs, Waltham Cross and Barnet, Colindale and Edgware, Uxbridge and Richmond and Purley. We counted the pylons and took photographs of the barbed-wire guards on their legs. We never penetrated as far as Maida Vale and we’d never heard of Little Venice. But still I thought “a nice part of town” must mean houses like our house. How Max could have a flat in it, I couldn’t imagine. Flats were in blocks, there had been plenty of those up along the North Circular Road too, great sprawling flat-roofed buildings painted custard color with their names in letters of black or silver: Ferndean Court and Summerhill and Brook House. So when I got here this afternoon I wasn’t prepared for what I found.