Gently, but firmly, I pushed Tarquin in the direction of the stairs.

I won’t go into the details of our negotiations. I would rather not remember my words, and apart from really and hassle and hey, I can’t remember his. The only thing I will mention is that when he was half-way up the staircase he stopped, looked down over his shoulder at me, smiled that stupid smile of universal solidarity in simple-mindedness, and said, ‘Wow!’

To this day I remain in ignorance of what, thereafter, took place. I had given Tarquin five minutes to disappear from sight and stop his head from shaking, before slipping out of the cottage myself. I had made a decision in favour of the ocular over the auricular, as Hardy might have said, and planned to sit on the garden gate and watch from there. In fact the cottage was so low that it was possible to see into the bedroom window just by standing on a small stone. But I wanted to be comfortable and I didn’t want to miss anything. The only trouble was that there was nothing to see. The curtains were closed (I’d forgotten that I’d drawn them myself when I got home, to spite Camilla who preferred them open), all the lights were off, and there was not a movement of a shadow or a silhouette to be discerned. Outside, the night was black and cold. The same hugely indifferent moon that had looked down on me when I hung out of the lavatory window at Finchley, straining for a view of Sharon and Fitzpiers, looked down on me again. From where she was – the moon was definitely a ‘she’ tonight, seductive behind wisps of gauze-like cloud – Finchley and Castle Boterel must have seemed quite close. In the distance the Lundy lighthouse winked at me at approximately seven second intervals. The insane sea boomed away, frightening no one. The great lyers-low and watchers-over – Oak and Winterbourne and the Reddleman – were out there somewhere, silently waiting their turn. Not a sound issued from Camilla’s bedroom. I decided to give up and go back inside, but when I came to try the door it was securely locked against me. So was the back entrance. So were all the windows. I thought about waking up the house – raising the alarm, as it’s called in adventure novels, where things are easier – then I thought better of it. If I hadn’t been afraid of bats and snakes I would have tried to get some rest in the outside toilet, where my friend who liked to adopt the prone position under the roofs of the eminently articulate had once spent the night. But he’d at least had a sleeping bag whereas mine – that’s to say Camilla’s – was locked inside the cottage along with Tarquin.