I don’t know how long I was there before there was a pain that pulsed on the side of my head – a pain that told me I was waking up. Before I had memories again.

I let that pain pull me out of the darkness, and gradually my eyes opened. Little by little my vision focused to show me the smooth squares of the black-and-white floor. For a second, I had no idea where I was. I only felt my cheek against a floor that was awash with freezing water, and when I raised my head it throbbed. Then I glimpsed the door on the other side of the room and I knew where I was. As my mind cleared, I could just about remember coming in, something happening, and then hitting the floor, with my head feeling like it had split in two.

Now I ached all over, wincing as I prised my shoulders from the floor. A gilt full-length mirror on the wall filled my vision, reflecting nothing but the flowing water. And I heard Lorelei’s voice again.

‘Just for tonight, sweetheart,’ it whispered to me, soft and close. ‘That’s all.’

For a moment, all I could see were the mirror and the tide through the room, spilling from the edge of the copper bath, until I twisted to take in an empty bottle of Russian Champagne lying on the tiles. And high above it, unmoving, like an alabaster statue, Lorelei’s delicately manicured hand hung, with beads of moisture running slowly along her slim pale wrist. The droplets glistened as I dragged myself upright. I watched them slip down towards her curving shoulder, gathering others, down and down, until finally they melted into the surface of the water, where a dapple of sunlight through a window hit her skin, shining it bright silver. Under the rippling surface, the light fell on little white teeth, a narrow waist and long, pale, graceful limbs made for dancing, or to be seen draped over grass in the heat of summer. And then it touched green eyes open wide, ruby hair swimming like threads in the sea and a mouth frozen open as if it were silently crying out.

Under water, the dead look like the living. They have smiles on their lips, soft skin, hands that seem to reach out for you with feeling. And yet you know that you are looking at a hollow shell.

From the corner of the room her laughter shrieked out again, drawing my gaze to the radio set, its dial glowing orange. Then there was her voice. ‘I’ll dream of you tonight, darling, if you’ll dream of me. If you’ll only dream of me.’

I didn’t know which of her plays it was. One from before the War, probably.

3

‘Oops-a-daisy!’