He seasoned the escalopes with salt and pepper and lemon juice. The big Creuset frying pan was on the gas. The butter, a creamy demi-sel from the butcher’s where he had bought the meat, was beginning to bubble. He fried the escalopes lightly on both sides then took them out and placed them on a side dish of thick white china that had fine blue lines like little veins running beneath the glaze. He took the chopping board from Laurence, kissing her hair lightly, then sautéed the shallots and mushrooms and threw in a handful of chopped parsley. Finally, he wrapped the veal, mushrooms, parsley and onions, together with slices of ham and thinly cut Parmesan, in heart-shaped pieces of greaseproof paper that he had carefully buttered with his fingertips. When he opened the oven door the heat broke over his face in a gentle wave. He placed the parcels on the middle shelf and shut the door, leaving butter prints on the steel handle.

‘Twenty minutes,’ he said.

‘I’m OK now,’ said Laurence, brushing a lock of hair from her brow with the heel of her palm.

‘Good,’ said László. ‘We’re too old to be miserable.’

Just then, the gun went off.

3

Alice lay with her head propped on a nest of pillows, dabbing at her eyes with a little ball of pink tissue paper. She did not know why she was crying, why now, specifically, though she had felt obscurely upset after her little conversation with Alec. He had been interfering, of course, standing at the end of her bed, peering through his glasses, his ‘specs’, pretending to be some kind of doctor perhaps. But she had been rude to him and now she was sorry. Unless the drugs were to blame. How could she tell? How could she know what was her, the old Alice, and what was some kind of toxic side effect? Is this me? she thought. What am I now?

She pushed the tissue into the sleeve of her nightgown and felt around on the eiderdown for her book, an old ‘Library of Classics’ edition of The Black Tulip. It was hard now to find something that didn’t immediately wear her out or just seem too frivolous to spend time on. Livre: quel qu’il soit, toujours trop long. And people were forever giving her books, as though cancer were a sort of dull cruise for which she needed some distraction. A pastime. She chose the short books and the books she knew from years ago, and they helped a bit, if only because they made her tired in a more interesting way than most things did.