Young people were at GUP. In fact, apart from a few mature students doing a degree in mid-career, everyone was young. But I had got into the habit of going in for a lecture or a seminar and, immediately it was over, setting off for a walk. I had never been to a tutorial. We were expected to take part in group marketing sessions but no one ever asked me to answer a questionnaire or write an essay. I went there less and less and when the term ended I barely noticed. It had been two weeks since GUP had seen me.

Days went by when I talked to no one. I looked forward to the days when Beryl came just for the sound of a human voice talking to me, not to someone else. As winter closed in I walked about less. It was always raining and it was cold outside. The flat, like the whole of 19 Russia Road, was very warm. It was dark long into the mornings and dark most of the afternoon. I talked to old Mrs. Fisherton, I asked her how she had borne it, living down here for years on end. She never replied, I’d have known I was going mad if she had, but I answered for her. I answered that she was old and tired, walking wasn’t easy and nor was climbing stairs, she liked the warmth and the quiet, the coziness of it. Besides, her beloved Max used to come down and talk to her, sit with her in the evenings sometimes and maybe they watched Streetwise together on the black-and-white television.

Weeks passed without my seeing him or Selina. When it wasn’t actually raining, and sometimes when it was, he would set off for his run round Regent’s Park at eight in the morning. I was hardly ever up but I was by the time he got back and once or twice, carrying my rubbish bag up the iron staircase, I’d catch a glimpse of him jogging down Russia Road and turning in at our gate. When Selina went off to a shoot, a hired car would come for her even earlier, so I only saw her on Sunday evenings when I went upstairs to phone my parents, and not always then. She’d smile her little tight smile at me, her mouth quickly returning to its heart-shaped pout, and say, “You won’t be too long on the phone, will you, darling?”

If I had done what I was supposed to be doing and concentrated on my studies and my course, made friends among my fellow students, I might have seen 19 Russia Road for what it was, a lodging, and Max and Selina my landlords. So it was all my own fault, but knowing that did nothing to help the loneliness. There was one person and only one who made contact with me and whom I sometimes saw. His name was Guy Wharton, he was a neighbor of ours in Suffolk. At any rate, he lived in a house just across the river from us, or his parents did, and when he wasn’t there he was in London in a flat he had in South Kensington. I had been at old Mrs. Fisherton’s for about two months when he wrote to me. Anyone who wanted to get in touch with me had to write since phoning was impossible.