Strange to relate, it was the signature that interested me far more than the message. Or perhaps that isn’t strange at all. Men who have supped full of horrors must end up losing interest in their own natures. One hears of mass murderers rushing back upstairs from the abattoirs at the bottom of their garden to engross themselves in television. First things first. I had supped full of revelation and coincidence. I suddenly couldn’t care less who I’d been. Instead of marvelling that I was now connected in some unfathomable way not just with a little English rustic novelist but with the Divine Marquis himself, I couldn’t get my mind off the problem of how Gertrude Bugler (I still didn’t know her real name) had discovered my date of birth. That seemed to me a profounder mystery and one susceptible of far more stimulating interpretations. It appeared to suggest, for one thing, that her apparent indifference to me at Fitz’s party had been either feigned or had undergone some startling transformation in the course of my regression. Perhaps she had been impressed by my French. It was even possible that my violence excited her. But whatever the reason, she had been making enquiries about me, finding out who I was and where I lived and when I was born. I would have found that thrilling no matter what she looked like, but when I recalled her marauding beauty I gave at the knees. Bugger de Sade, I had thoughts only for Miss Bugler.

Who said blood was thicker than water?

[4]

Events moved very quickly on the day of that postcard, and although its message therefore became forgotten and obscured, I have to admit that it must itself have been an active element in the precipitation of those events. Perhaps I’m still not being as truthful as I should be. Let me say it and have done then: I would probably not have left Sharon that very afternoon if I had not felt that I had established some tenuous connection with Gertrude Bugler that very morning. But then again – I’m damned if I’m going to martyr myself to truthfulness – I might have.

Because the unfamiliar garment that I found hanging in Sharon’s side of the wardrobe would have annoyed me whatever the circumstances.

‘What’s this?’ I asked her, holding it up so that she could see its reflection in the mirror before which she sat for long periods at a time now, trying to repair the damage I had done to her face at Fitz’s party.

‘What’s what?’ she asked. She was rubbing oils into the skin around her eyes and couldn’t see.