‘Monterrey, Miss Hahn,’ I croaked. ‘Montserrat is … is … is an island in the Caribbean.’

‘I know,’ she sighed.

Another creak. But was it from without, or … or – Oh God! – from within?

‘Do you hear that?’ I asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘A creaking sound?’

‘Uh’ – she cocked her head – ‘it’s probably only the gulls …’

She listened harder. ‘Or it could be the shed, creaking. The surveyor said it would probably come down at some point.’

‘It’s very … very hot,’ I noted.

‘There’s always a slight risk of more land slipping,’ she conceded, ‘but we generally find the biggest problems develop after heavy rain – sustained periods of wet – when the soil becomes saturated.’

Another creak. My hands gripped on to the bench.

‘I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it,’ she murmured, ‘but I once heard a recording of the noise glaciers make. It was such a strange, haunting, almost … almost intelligent sound. Huge chunks of ice just moving and shifting and freezing and melting. Lost in their own abstract conversations. Just giant slabs of inanimate matter but so … so … burdened somehow …’

‘To cut a long story short,’ I said, grabbing for my vest, ‘I’ve brought you back the rent money. I can’t possibly accept it. Thanks – and everything – but no thanks. That’s it. That’s all I wanted to say. Good. Great. So now I’d better …’

She grimaced. She was looking down at her arm.

‘Nearly gone,’ she mused. ‘See?’

She showed it to me.

‘I’m … What …?’

I wiped the sweat from my eyes.

‘The number. From my dream. It’s almost gone. I’ve sweated it out. How’s my cheek?’

She turned her cheek towards me.

‘Uh …’

‘She tells me the number,’ Miss Hahn patiently explained (each word sucking another ounce of precious calm away from me, each word splitting the wood inside me – my core – with the cruellest of linguistic axes), ‘she tells it to me in my dreams. Or maybe you’re right and I just tell it to myself. Sometimes I don’t even remember having dreamed it, but then, when I wake up, I’ve written the number down; on the back of a book, a piece of paper, on the wall next to my bed. Once in a pile of flour on the kitchen counter. On my hand, my arm …’

That creak again!

‘4.0.0.4,’ she murmured, ‘I suppose I …’

She passed her hand across her cheek.

‘I must’ve accidentally pressed my face against my arm while I was sleeping, and the ink got transferred …’

I nodded. But I wasn’t really focusing. I was listening out for the creak, and I was wondering how straight the floor was, and I was staring at Miss Hahn’s breasts which seemed perfectly uncontentious – in size and quality – for a woman of her age and physique. They were very well positioned on her … her ribs, her … her diaphragm. Either side of it. In the … in the manner of most woman … female … woman breasts, I suppose.