A length of stale baguette lay on the table. Nick tore off a piece and ate it, and then he ate another. I found a wedge of brie in the fridge and placed it before him with a knife. When I asked why it had taken him two days to tell me about Minna, he said, ‘I thought she’d be back. She hadn’t taken her clothes.’ In a different tone he added, ‘Her fucking clothes!’ He crammed in great chunks of cheese and bread, and between each mouthful his voice changed. The voice would accuse Minna of selfishness and lies, and then it would speak of loss. It was a striped voice. It said, ‘She’s nothing to me/She’s everything.’ Both declarations were true.

The voice talked about a man in Lyon. Pete was making a documentary about immigrant workers there. The voice believed that Minna had gone to him. ‘I’ve seen the way she looks at Pete. He’s the still-waters kind. Runs shallow. But handsome, I’ll give him that.’

How plainly did Minna have to speak before she was believed? ‘She’s told you she wants to be alone,’ I said. ‘Why imagine she’s with someone else? She’s not a parcel to be passed around.’ Before I’d finished I was yawning, and my words slurred. Minna and Nick – I was tired of them both. But Nick at least could be put to use. There was the same faint hum that I’d heard in Jamal’s room – it was the sound of my blood coursing. ‘You’d better come with me,’ I said and pushed back my chair. ‘I’m going to bed.’

There were no sheets on my bed. I’d returned them to Madame Bisset that morning. Before that, I’d taken them to a blanchisserie, where they were laundered, starched, ironed, folded and wrapped in snowy paper. ‘Forty-seven francs,’ announced the manager, placing the package on the counter. Forty-seven francs! How much had those sheets cost me over the year? ‘They’re magnificent, aren’t they?’ I said, trying to claw back some profit, if only a compliment about a dead woman’s taste.