I was six feet and he was five feet six. I was clothed and he was naked. I knew he was there and he thought I was two hundred miles away. It was almost too easy, too delightfully easy. And I wouldn’t kill Susan either. There are worse things to do to a pretty woman than to kill her.

I was on my feet and halfway up the stairs before I remem­bered Barbara. There would be a scream, at least one scream; she would wake up and run into her parents’ bedroom, holding the panda tightly to her. And what she would see in her parents’ bed­room would crack her world from side to side. That was it pre­cisely; the mirror would crack, there would be no repairing it. I had her life in my hands.

Slowly I made my way downstairs, the long way down stairs, sixteen dark grey carpeted steps downstairs past the Dufy sea­side scene, past the Douanier Rousseau jungle scene, into the hall where dark grey carpet gave way to dark red carpet, back into the drawing-room.

I sat down again in the armchair at the far end of the room. I took a sip of whisky but it seemed to have no taste. There was no way of easing the blow. There was nothing to do but wait. I con­templated having a cigarette; but the effort involved in tak­ing out the packet and striking a match seemed frighteningly enor­mous. I needed all my strength to wait. They wouldn’t be long now; he wouldn’t dare stay out too long after closing time.

I looked up, fancying I heard footsteps overhead. But there was no sound. Suddenly I became aware of something soft and slippery on my left hand. It was as if someone had put it there. I had within the last five minutes, unwrapped the negligée and crumpled it into a blue ball. I let it fall to the ground to lie with its torn blue candy striped wrapping.

When they came hand-in-hand into the room I felt nothing but a curious shyness. I didn’t want to look at them and, idio­tically, I didn’t want them to look at me. But I looked at them long enough to appraise their blatant physical delight with each other; enviously, hopelessly, I almost felt an intruder.

Mark was the first to see me. He dropped Susan’s hand; she gave him a puzzled stare.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

Then she saw me. Her mouth opened as if to scream but there was no sound. She fell rather than walked into a chair and sat with her legs apart, a hand on each arm of the chair. But there was no tension in her arms, everything about her seemed slackly askew. I went over to her.

“Don’t sit there like a whore,” I said, “even if you are one.”