It was a mistake, this couldn’t happen to him, he was free, free, he had been free for a long time. He didn’t care about the handbag and whose handbag it was and who had had one just like that, God, they couldn’t be doing this to him. The pain was beyond anything he believed possible. He clung to the bar. Waves of agony radiated from the centre, somewhere about the solar plexus, and splashed down as far as his toes and finger-ends. No one could do this to him, not really, not if they knew what they were doing. All these people in this bar, everyone in the world, if they only knew they would help him, they would find Veronica and bring her to him. They would find her if they could only realize that a man was dying, a man who had not deserved to die and go down to Hell. If they could see inside him, for one second feel what he was feeling, they would seek her out. Messages would flash along wires, brr, brr, is that you, a very urgent call, hold everything, a man here’s in Hell. The message would be type­written, swiftly, on a sheet of paper, someone would knock on the door of the room where she was sitting, or run out to the meadow where she walked by herself. If you were drowning they threw a rope. This was worse than drowning, he was being broken to pieces, humanity would not let this happen to him.

No, no, no one will help you. Take your drink, move away from the bar. But the handbag! There could not be two like that. Had she stolen it? Perhaps this was Veronica’s way of coming to him: she might be inside the handbag, shrunk by magic to the size of a white mouse, waiting only till he opened it and took her out. Then put her in water and she would become her real size. Dehydrated. He was going mad, in earnest this time. He drank the whisky.

All at once he felt tired, tired and old. It was the girl’s own handbag, they sold them in shops, there must be plenty just like that. Serpent clip and all. Anyone could go into a shop and buy one. He could go and buy one himself, and give it to Rosa.