"No, well, he wouldn't have. I'm afraid Mr. Ives died about three weeks ago."

Stella held the phone in her hand. She had one of those moments granted to human things of feeling the utter absurdity of the physical body, all physical objects, senses, space, time, everything.

She heard the words in her head in a sort of verbal slow motion. Mr. Ives died.

Who was this Mr. Ives? Not Nobbi. Nobbi had not died. It was Mr. Ives.

Stella did not speak.

"His wife's very shocked. You can imagine. I think she's going to close the business. So—there's not much chance of your work getting done. I should try someone else."

Stella said, "Yes. Oh, I will. Thank you. Good-bye."

Then she put the phone down.

She stood in the middle of the physical insanity of flesh and things, and she thought, But it isn't Nobbi.

Then she started to cry bitterly and violently.

And she listened to herself and she thought, Then why am I crying?

Two days later, Stella had a call from the library. They wanted to know why she had not come in.

Stella said that she had a bug. Her throat had been so sore she had lost her voice. The doctor said she would need at least a week off work.

They said she had caused them a lot of trouble. No one said they hoped she would getter.

Which was logical, because she never would.

She could not envisage ever going back to work. She could not picture herself ever doing anything at all.

She had felt appalling grief when her mother died, but somehow she had coped. She had gone on. Something in her had always grasped that mothers and cats perished. But obviously something in her had never understood that lovers, too, might die.

She did not dream about him. When she slept for a few hours in the early morning, her sleep was black. It was a death, and she was glad.

It did present itself to her that she could kill herself, but even that seemed too much of an effort.

She seemed to be dying anyway. Living on tea alone now and water from Evian bottles. She had stopped feeling sick.

There was a kind of pain all through her. Indescribable, unshiftable.

Sometimes she visualized the heart attack and then she would start up in panic.

But these mirages grew less and less.

She did not believe in the heart attack.

She had the radio on a lot, although she did not listen to it. The human voice was a weird unconsoling consolation, like a bandage on a cut that would never heal.

Sometimes she heard a London voice that reminded her of Nobbi's. Her tears were soft then, nearly kind.

The following week Mr. Rollinson phoned her from the library.

"This really is too bad, Miss Atkins."

"Go and fuck yourself," said Stella, "if it will reach."