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.

‘And you? How goes the book? It’s new, isn’t it? You scrapped the two paras and sixteen sentences?’

‘How did you guess? They were rubbish.’

‘So this is about?’

Claud told her the schema, the character who might be his mother, her peculiar relationship with household machinery, lying on the floor propped on his elbows, his face level with hers. Her hair smelled exciting. It smelled of pepper. ‘Shall you come up?’ he asked.

‘If you insist. I am quite comfortable here standing on the ladder, getting a mouse’s eye view of your loft.’

‘It is your loft. I am only here on sufferance.’

‘Oh, no.’ She stepped up the ladder. There had been a warm flow of air from the house below fanning up her skirt; she was reluctant to leave it for the austerity of the loft. ‘Oh, you have a stove. What luxury.’ She strolled about looking at Claud’s things, his clothes hanging limp on nails, his books, the bed which had been hers many years ago. She looked out of the window and was reassured by the unchanged view; she touched the table, let a finger rest for a second on the manuscript, sat down on the bed. ‘And who else? Who else is in your book?’

‘Oh—I—er—’

‘Well?’ She was sharp.

Claud answered with a rush of words spewed out, speeded by emotion. ‘There’s a girl, she bloody intrudes, she’s not supposed to be in it but she keeps bobbing up and I do-not-want-her.’

‘Someone you were—or are—in love with?’ Laura spoke lightly, looking away from him, giving him the chance to rat on the bitch. (In what way had she hurt him?)

‘Well,’ said Claud, off-hand, ‘you know how it is, adolescent love, first love I suppose, the usual sort of nonsense. She recurs, that’s all, a sort of emotional burp.’

‘Much in love? It was heavy?’

‘Oh God, yes, but I wouldn’t give her a second thought now. She doesn’t fit the scenario, that’s what is so aggravating.’

‘Sit here.’ Laura patted the bed beside her.

‘I mean,’ said Claud, obeying, ‘she played a small and unimportant role in my life, it was quite brief.’ He spoke protestingly, wishing Amy had been small, unimportant.