He didn’t answer but turned away and went into the kitchen. I saw then, I don’t know how, that he had taken those steps weeks before. He had prepared for this rescue, laying his plans in advance. I went to the Houghtons’ and while I worked on building a structure with wooden uprights and chicken wire to house a compost heap, I thought about Silver and me and wondered if we were coming to the end of the road, our road. If what had been so lovely, a real passion and joy in each other’s company, had worn itself out because we were so young and perhaps hadn’t worked at our relationship. And perhaps too because I had said things that implied Silver had too much money, couldn’t handle money, and failed to understand what the lack of it meant to others. So I was sad and maybe seemed sullen. I kept thinking that the time was coming when I’d have to leave this place and live alone once more. Yet life was unthinkable without him. I wondered how I had existed before I met him, all those lonely months at old Mrs. Fisherton’s. I see I’ve written in my diary for that day that only the job we had to do together, our rescue mission, kept me there with him. We had to see that through, but when it was done I’d go. Unless things changed, unless he came back to me.

Another sad thing was that we seemed to go on the roofs less and less. There was no real need to approach 4E along the balcony and enter through the window. It was quicker and simpler to walk to the end of Torrington Gardens, go up the steps to the front door and let ourselves in with the key. The roofs were just for the fun of it and we no longer had fun together.