I congratulated her on her fortitude in being able to stand there at ground level and contemplate the street. She nodded, her expression still dismal.

“I am a brave woman. Perhaps you did not know this. I am working to overcome my handicap.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“But always I am thinking, Clodagh, what will I do now if Claudia and James come and ask for their money? Now my papa, my daddy, has it. This is not easy.”

Back at Silver’s I phoned my parents, then Guy Wharton. It was weeks since I had spoken to him or heard from him, not surprising since I had moved out of 19 Russia Road and left no forwarding address. There was no reply and he had switched off his answering machine.

This wasn’t one of my days at the Houghtons’. When the rain had lifted and a weak sun come out, Silver and I did something very unusual for us. We went down to the pub, the Prince Alfred, and had beer and sandwiches, and then we walked along the canal from the St. John’s Wood side of the Maida Hill Tunnel. Passing through Regent’s Park, we saw a zookeeper with a lynx on a lead. It was more like a dog than a cat, trotting along and sniffing at every tree trunk. I recorded its appearance in my diary that evening along with all the experiences of the day and the day before, because it was once more too wet for roof climbing. Rain descended in torrents, streaming down the windows and rattling on the slates. I wrote and read what I had written and asked Silver for a history of the canal and he told me how the coming of the railways had made this once busy commercial waterway into no more than a route for pleasure traffic. Then we talked about the denizens of 4E. They would never let us in, Silver said. We must enter the room by the window and sit there quietly, waiting for them to come in, and then assure them of our good intentions. But I said they would be too frightened and there must be another way.

All the time I had been writing, Silver had been reading and, while we talked, Liv had been going into our bedroom to use the phone and call the hotel where her father was staying. She must have done it five times and by then it was past eleven at night. Wim came in at the window off the wet roof and sat with us, drinking wine, a rare departure for him. I could see a lot of her weight of care fall from Liv’s shoulders at the sight of him. She was suddenly lighter and prettier and much happier. If he drank wine, he must intend not to go back on the roofs. Therefore he’d stay here and sleep with her.