I fluttered my hands. ‘I don’t have a job right now.’ I didn’t want to explain that for the half-year since I had married Nick I had been writing to education boards hoping for a position in one of the new schools opened by the Republic and hadn’t been offered one. But I realized that it wasn’t just my hands that were fluttering – my whole body was shaking. I stared at my limbs.

‘It’s the shock,’ he said. ‘It’s normal. You’ll be all right.’

The bedroom door opened and a well-built man in his thirties with an aquiline nose and a bald head entered, looking around the room in a methodical way. He didn’t wear a uniform and the old policeman seemed annoyed at the man’s presence, smacking his notepad against his hip in irritation. The newcomer leaned against the wall and waved his hand in a manner that said we should continue. ‘When did you get married?’ the white-haired policeman asked.

‘May the twelfth.’

‘This year?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Lambeth Records Office.’

He wrote it down. For another ten minutes we went through what I had seen and not seen, heard and not heard. There wasn’t much. I kept looking at the other man, bemused by whom he could be. He said nothing and yet somehow had an air of authority. I can’t properly explain it – it was just something about the way he held himself. ‘Was there anyone else here?’ the policeman asked. I was about to say no, but hesitated. He noticed. ‘Think very carefully.’

I put my hands to my temples. And, as I concentrated, I saw those flickers of memory from just before I fell. I closed my eyes.

I had climbed the stairs; thrown open the bathroom door. And then, in the light, there was Lorelei. I saw her again now, red hair, pale skin. Her beauty unmistakable. But was she alive or dead? Ready to cry out or past caring about this world? I couldn’t be certain. After seeing her, my feet had moved over the wet tiles; and as I looked up, there had been something reflected in the gilt mirror above the bath. Something dark – a figure. I tried to make it out now but it was too obscure, too shifting.

After that, I had fallen, cascading on to the solid metal of the bath, down into the black. And I had woken to find her drifting under the water. I ran then for the police.

I dropped my hands and looked at the officer. ‘What is it?’ he said.

‘There might have been someone behind me.’

‘Who?’ He spoke urgently.

‘I don’t know. There’s a mirror there. I think I saw someone in it.’

‘Man or woman?’