By then there was enough natural light in the bedroom, almost enough, to read by. It showed me the scorpions and snakes on top of the wardrobe for what they were: ivy tendrils and oak branches. I looked out of the window, I mean by this that I pressed my head against the glass and craned my neck to look upward, saw a brick wall with urns and stone animals on it, a segment of lawn, clusters of spindly tree trunks, and far, far up above, a pale blue sky crisscrossed with the white plumes of plane trails. Whether it was that morning or some other that the tortoiseshell cat came and stood on the wall and looked down at me with hopeful yellow eyes, I can’t remember. I know that I had only been a short time at old Mrs. Fisherton’s when she came. I went to get my breakfast, creeping warily again into the twilight zone, and found that Selina’s milk had gone sour. But among the ancient kitchen equipment was a toaster that worked. I experimented with it and after two attempts produced a burnt slice.

It was Saturday and on the following Tuesday the autumn term, the college year, was due to start. That was what I was doing there, that was why I had come, to begin and if possible (I doubted then if it was possible and I was right) see through to the bitter end the course I had been accepted for. I knew nothing of psychology but at least I could summon up a glimmer of interest in it. Business was another matter. Not only was I ignorant of business, I scarcely knew what was meant by the word, but I knew very decidedly that I wanted nothing to do with it. So why was I embarking on it? It’s easy to ask that now. The answer is weak and defeatist, I know. I had to do something, I had to train for something, I couldn’t be a recluse living with my parents in the country until they died and I got old, which was their way of putting it, and what at times I’d have liked to do. Brooding about Daniel’s death and my part in it, which they didn’t say but I thought, hiding myself, knowing no one, or best of all but impractical, going back in time and dying myself in Daniel’s place.