Theatre and concert tickets pinned to the noticeboard had been bought in pairs months ago, when Christine and Alex’s married life had seemed to stretch harmlessly ahead of them without interruption. Doggedly, Christine insisted on using up all these tickets. She went alone if Isobel couldn’t go with her, nor any of her friends. Wasn’t everyone telling her that she should get out, get a life of her own? Sometimes she didn’t even ask her friends. These solitary expeditions must look as though she were making an embittered point, but the truth was that she struggled with the problem of how to pass the long hours of her days, and – worse – her evenings. The nights were all right; she slept deeply, without dreaming. Alex had always been so restless beside her, twitching and turning.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment were playing Lully and Rameau and Handel at the Barbican. In Christine’s past life she’d have run upstairs ten minutes before they left, to change her blouse; now she took her time washing and dressing, as if she were going to be exposed on stage herself instead of watching – brushing her hair slowly in front of the mirror, braiding it on her shoulder. Her hair was growing too long because she couldn’t face the hairdresser, who would ask how Alex was. She wasn’t trying to make herself alluring, she only wanted her outfit to keep her safe, like a nun’s habit – black crêpe skirt and cream silk shirt, with a black jacket she’d found among Lydia’s things. She still had all those bags of Lydia’s possessions. Whenever Alex was coming to the house Christine imagined thrusting them at him, humiliating him by loading him up with women’s dresses; then in his actual presence she would change her mind. Sometimes she wanted to violently destroy the clothes, sometimes she fantasised that she could hurt Lydia more by wearing and flaunting them. She had picked out a few treasures: a bronze silk shirt patterned with mauve flowers, a green velvet dress. Once she even got out her sewing machine, altered a skirt to make it fit. The skirts and dresses were mostly too short for her; the shoes fitted but Christine couldn’t manage on high heels.