Closing the door Margaret smiled grimly. ‘I am doing what is best for me,’ she said out loud, ‘as I intended before she interrupted me.’ I am not letting Claud down, she told herself; I shall be on the telephone, should he want me.

Margaret snatched up the mug Laura had used and smashed it onto the floor, where it broke. Then, slightly shamefaced, she fetched a dustpan and brush and swept up the pieces and tipped them into the dustbin. Washing her hands under the tap, she found herself feeling grateful to Laura for inspiring this small rush of adrenalin.

Laura eased up the trap-door and moved a step higher up the ladder. From this position she could see Claud sitting stooped at the table, one hand clutching a piece of crushed typing paper, the other on his knee, fingers drumming. He did not notice her. He stared up through the attic window. She knew that all he could see from there was the sky, perhaps a gull wheeling past or a rapid flight of starlings; if he wished for a more interesting view, he would have to stand up (or look at me, she thought).

Claud dropped the crushed paper onto the floor, straightened his back, put a fresh sheet of paper in the machine and began to tap; she was interested to see that he appeared confident and resolute. She kept quiet while he chuntered along to the end of a paragraph, stopped, leaned forward to read what he had written, hissed through his teeth and resumed typing. The paper finished, he released it from the machine and, laying it on a pile of manuscript, inserted a fresh sheet and carried on. He kept this up for three more pages before coming to a halt. Then he whistled a shrill note of satisfaction and stood up, rubbing his hands together. As he pushed his chair back he caught sight of her head poking up through the trap-door level with the floor. He stared. Laura did not move.

‘You look like someone in a Beckett play,’ he said.

Laura smiled.

He thought perhaps her eyes were so bright because of the bluish tint of the whites, that he was pleased to see her, that he liked her pointed nose and the way her hair sprang back from her forehead. He thought she looked strange and exciting, that he was pleased, glad, he liked the way she was there not speaking.

He crossed the loft to the trap-door, knelt, then lay, his face on a level with hers. He said, ‘I thought you had disappeared for good.’

‘You did?’

‘Where have you been?’

‘London.’

‘With that musician, the chap I saw you with at the concert? Is he your lover?’

‘No.’ (Not any more.)

‘Ah.’

‘Ah.’

‘I have been thinking of you so much.’ (That isn’t true, but I should have been thinking of her, my word yes, I certainly should.) ‘Missing you,’ he said. Of course he’d missed her.