At the bottom of the sink he saw László’s plate, knife and coffee cup from lunch, the plate still with its debris of apple skin and olive stones and cheese rind. It was one of László’s habits – if something so casual, so unconsidered, could be called a habit – together with getting flecks of toothpaste on the bathroom mirror, and now and then forgetting to flush the toilet, that Kurt found mildly provoking, but which he never mentioned in the belief that László was operating a similar restraint in regard to the little blindnesses of his own.

He began to unpack the first bag, putting the vegetables on the wooden rack and arranging the fruit in the big glass bowl. Then he went into the passage and called a second and a third time. There were several reasons for László not to be there: he had stepped out with the mail, or had gone to the tabac for more cigarillos (though with his chest troubling him he had promised to leave them alone for a while); or he had simply gone down on to the boulevard to enjoy the warmth of the evening, buy a paper, chat to Madame Favier at the patisserie. He might even be taking the rubbish out, all credible explanations for his absence, so it seemed strange to Kurt, looking back on it later, strange and significant, that he should immediately have gone to the study with his heart thudding, and opened the door there with such a feeling of dread.

What had he expected to find? A smashed glass? An overturned chair? A body? But the room, quarter lit by the setting sun, was quite innocent. No sign of any haste or trouble. No air of menace. Yet far from reassuring him, this calmness, the sheer order of the place, convinced him that something had indeed occurred, and that his unease of the last week, the fear of some unspecified event, some violent alteration to the steady progress of their days together, had at last been realized. On László’s desk the papers of his manuscript were gathered into a neat pile, the pens lined up at the side, the little ashtray emptied and wiped. Even the chair had been slid under the desk, as though no one would ever need to sit there again, as though it were all done with and finished.