The night was still warm. We went down into the street and walked home in an ecstasy of love and triumph. Upstairs, in the flat, all was still and silent, the living room empty, the windows wide open. Silver smiled at me, his face a mask of bruises, his cheeks skinned and scraped and his left eye like a boxer’s after a fight when the other man gets disqualified. In spite of always saying not to worry, he was concerned about Liv and he opened her bedroom door very quietly to check she was all right. She and Wim lay side by side on the bed, the covers on the floor, their bodies gleaming with sweat in the half-dark.

We went back onto the roofs. It must have been by common consent, for no word was spoken. We took blankets with us and the pillows from our bed and slept up there under the stars. The blurred, vapor-cloaked stars. But first we made love and in spite of what Silver had said about limits, there were no limits. It was the one and only time on the roofs. We were awakened terribly early by the singing of birds that has become so much louder and richer in town gardens than in the sterile countryside. I watched the dawn come, but poor Silver could hardly see out of his swollen eye.

We had nothing else to talk about. To Wim, to an uncaring, uninterested Liv, we poured out our news and our discoveries the next morning.

“I might come with you this evening,” Wim said.

Liv looked up. “I can never come. I have my problem.”

“So you do,” said Silver. “Time for therapy.”

And he took her downstairs and outside once more. I followed and together we walked her down two steps before she stopped, dug in her heels, and refused to move. Curing her of her phobia, if that’s what we were doing, was a slow process.

Her mother hadn’t called her back and when she’d tried again, as soon as she’d got up, the answering machine was still on.

“Doesn’t your mother work?” Silver asked her.

“She is still on her holidays. Remember she and my papa are going to Gotland, was going to Gotland, I am meaning, but he is coming here instead. Where is he? What shall I do?”