Nobbi sometimes jokingly objected to the boy doll. Another man in his bedroom. He did not mind the little girl.

Marilyn had done the bathroom in piercing primrose yellow, to be cheerful. Tray's bathroom, around the turn of the corridor, was done in salmon. Marilyn had insisted. "You can spoil your bedroom if you want, but I want you to have a proper bathroom."

On the washbasin, next to the oyster-colored bar of unused soap, stood the half-empty abandoned bottle of Tray's nail varnish, black with gold specks. The cleaning woman always carefully replaced it when she had mopped the basin. The nail varnish was dried up. It had been there three months.

Nobbi tried not to, but he could not help it. He went into Tray's bedroom.

It was done in black crushed satin, with bands of gold-scrolled black dado. Black lace hung over the lamp. Before the windows were suspended sheets of smoked glass with skulls on them, and on the walls were posters of long-haired, bare-chested young males, and one of a decomposing skeleton creature with white hair and a sword. Tray had told him this was called Eddie.

The bed had four black posts, and here sat another doll. It had once been quite sweet, but Tray had awarded it spiked orange hair and black lipstick, chains and a nose stud.

There was also the stuffed lion.

He had given her that when she was six.

"Lovely animals," he said, "lions."

"It'll frighten her," said Marilyn.

But the lion did not frighten Tray because Nobbi told her about lions, how noble they were, and how the lion would look after her when he was not there.

He picked up the lion now, and gave it a gentle shake. "Bloody useless, ain't you, mate."

On the dressing table were other things she had left behind. Some beads, a string of real pearls he had bought her on her fifteenth birthday. A little bone ring. Her fingers were so slender.

Christ, she was tiny, and the world out there was full of shit.

Nobbi squeezed the lion.

On the surface of the built-in wardrobe hung a miniature dress in coral and black, and a big black velvet hat. The cleaner always carefully replaced them.

It was like one of those bedrooms you kept for someone dead. A shrine.

Nobbi went out quickly and shut the door. He had the lion under his arm.

He walked down through the large house, and went out of the side door and over the garden, behind the grape pergola to the built-on annexe, his office.

A kind of relief laved over him when he came here. It was furnished with stuff from the Old Girl's house at Clapham, the big creaky chairs, the ancient sideboard.