Lindsay laughed, saying, “There’s worse to come. Let’s go.” She insisted on carrying all four poles, though it was an awkward struggle. She was determined to do it herself, to prove that one person could do it alone. When they reached the main building, she nearly came to grief several times on the fire escape that led up to the kitchen roof. Chris attempted to help, but when Lindsay explained the need for struggling on alone, she subsided. To Chris’s surprise, she finally managed it, and the two women ended up on the roof in a confused heap of poles, joints, spanners, arms, and legs.

The journalist lay breathing heavily and sweating. “Bloody hell,” she moaned. “That was a lot tougher than I anticipated.”

“That’s because you did it all wrong,” said Chris. “You should have roped the poles together, then they would have been a lot easier to carry. Then you could have fastened another rope to them and hauled them up to the roof. Much simpler.”

Lindsay looked at her with new respect. “Thank you, Chris,” she panted. “You have just resurrected my theory. Thank God for the practical mind. Now, onwards and upwards.”

After a few failures, they managed to bolt the poles together in a rectangular frame. Then Lindsay realized that the frame was too heavy and unwieldy for one person to place in position and bolt to the railings.

So painstakingly they took it apart again, and Lindsay prepared to clamber over the railings on to the narrow ledge to fit the poles together one by one to form the frame. Before she could go ahead, however, Chris stopped her.

“Wait there,” she commanded, all the authority of her position in her voice for the first time since the two had met. “Don’t you dare do anything till I tell you.” And she rushed off down the fire escape. Lindsay kicked her heels crossly for about five minutes till Chris returned, carrying two sets of yachting harness. “There,” she said, handing one of them to Lindsay. “You put that on and clip the hook to the railings. I’m not having you splattered on our drive if I can help it.”

Strapped in, Lindsay gingerly climbed over the railings and bolted one short strut to them vertically. Then, after a struggle with the heavy and unwieldy equipment, she added a long horizontal pole, to which Chris had previously bolted the other upright. That turned out to have been another mistake, since the extra weight was almost too much for Lindsay. Finally, with muscles that were beginning to tremble in protest, she managed to bolt on a second horizontal pole at a height that came just below the windowsill of the music room windows.