‘One does so repeat oneself.’

He sensed that she was laughing again, that she was a more interesting person than he gave her credit for and that he had missed the chance of knowing her. ‘You make me feel lonely,’ he shouted above the noise of the dishwasher.

‘Writers are solitary people,’ she said.

Lying in the bath waiting for his head to clear, Claud reviewed the events of the previous day. Memory was clear up to his arrival at the Old Rectory, after that confused. He remembered reaching the pub where he had asked for a double Scotch to revive his courage. (I really am the most frightful coward, he thought, leaning forward to adjust the hot tap.) Feeling better, he had perhaps unwisely ordered another. (I should have eaten some of that seed cake, he remembered Laura’s seed cake.) He heard his voice in the pub saying in confident tones, ‘The same again, please,’ yet stop, think, wasn’t the voice on the verge of being disembodied? Well? It was after that drink that he had glanced towards the door and seen Laura in triplicate. What had caused most alarm and instability was that this was no ordinary triplication—several times at university he had seen double and once in triplicate—what on this occasion terrified was that Laura in triplicate was no run-of-the-mill vision. One emanation, if this was the right word, was male, the other the female who had shut the door of the Old Rectory in his face. Claud’s brain, under the influence of his mother’s strong tea, aspirin and the fumes of ammonia, clicked into gear. At breakfast just now he had mentioned Nicholas Thornby ‘giving him a shock’ and now, he recollected, someone in the pub calling out ‘Hullo, Nicholas’ before the Laura in triplicate wheeled round and left the pub as fast and as silently as it had appeared.

How weird, thought Claud, how peculiar. What were they doing? There were three Lauras: one was her mother, the other this Nicholas. Was it then, he asked himself, that Brian and Susie had come into the bar and that had led to the other and fatal double Scotch? Must have been. Made one think. Claud reached for the soap and began to wash. As he soaped his armpits, he remembered that earlier in Laura’s part of the Old Rectory he had called Laura’s mother her doppelgänger, and Laura at some moment had made reference to what sounded like ‘haunts’.

Well, thought Claud, ducking underwater, that explains some of it. He let the water roar agreeably in his ears while he held his breath. I wish my mother had a shower, he thought, sitting up and turning on the cold tap, sponging himself with icy water. Finally he stood up, reached for his bath towel, pulled the plug and dried his torso and legs vigorously while his feet still indulged in the hot water. He then dried his feet one at a time before stepping out onto the bathmat, a slightly old-maidish but commendable habit since it did not leave the mat soggy for the next-comer.