She touched a hand to her cheek.

‘Have the cracks running across the lawn been there long?’ I wondered.

‘About as long as I can remember,’ she snorted, ‘but if you’re too scared to risk it, Mr Huff, then by all means …’

Scared? Scared?!

Typical of our Miss Hahn to cleave so quickly, so readily, to the lingo of the schoolyard!

‘I’m not remotely “scared”, Miss Hahn!’ I snapped.

Oh but I was! I was! I kept stopping myself from looking up. Into the dark rafters above. I’m not sure why I felt this sudden urge, or the corresponding need to counter it. But if I gave in to it and looked up I was convinced I might scream. Like a girl. Or that I might simply collapse. In a heap.

‘Then just too bashful, perhaps?’ She smirked, pityingly.

‘You should probably know that one of my first jobs as a rookie reporter was covering the Ancash earthquake in Yungay Province, Peru,’ I tartly informed her (focus, Franklin, focus man!), ‘where an entire town was decimated by a giant landslide of mud and ice and glacial rock …’

As I continued to speak Miss Hahn calmly placed the flats of her hands over both her ears. Interestingly, she performed this manoeuvre without fully uncovering her breasts (by leaning forward slightly, and compressing them between her elbows).

‘Miss Hahn?’

The hands remained in place.

After a minute or so – she’s impossible! Quite impossible! – I removed my vest.

(Can’t breathe! Can’t … Can’t breathe!)

‘Happy? See? I’m not remotely scared – or bashful! It’s simply that I … I … I have an important meeting which I’m supposed to be at … at … a … a phone call! Yes! An important, international phone call. About the will. And the book deal. From my lawyer. So I need to …’

The hands remained in situ.

After another minute I removed my underpants.

Hands shaking, uncontrollably.

‘I’ve removed my underpants.’

No change.

‘I can’t remove my socks, Miss Hahn,’ I hissed, ‘I’m storing my glasses—’

‘Then remove one sock,’ she interrupted (thereby proving that she could actually hear me, all along). I removed one sock. It was soaking wet.

Miss Hahn promptly took her hands away from her ears.

‘You were saying?’ she asked, perfectly civil, now.

‘Sorry?’

(Need to look up! Want to look up! Must look up!)

‘The Peruvian earthquake?’

(And I do know why! I do! To see those strange, black birds circling, high above … remember?)

‘The Peruvian earthquake, Mr Huff?’

‘Oh. Oh. Yes. The entire town was decimated,’ I panted, ‘there were casualties totalling over …’

While I was speaking Miss Hahn leaned forward, dipped a tiny, handle-less china cup into a small, dented enamel bucket of water and then tossed this liquid on to some hot coals which were suspended in a little grate directly to the right of her.

The coals hissed furiously, and a cloud of scalding steam billowed up, enveloping us both. I instantly began to cough (to be asphyxiated in a sauna! How ignoble an end!) and it was as much as I could manage not to slam my way out of there in sheer panic. Miss Hahn, on the other hand, seemed to find the billowing steam deeply therapeutic. She pulled up her legs, wrapped her arms around her knees and threw back her head. It was a curiously closed-up and yet deeply expansive pose, putting me in mind of a figure – perhaps a nymph or an angel (real or possibly imagined) – from a William Blake watercolour.