‘London. You were dreaming.’

‘Nightmare—my mother—then I thought I was in bed with Ann Kennedy.’

‘Oh dear!’

‘Is it really you?’ He was fully awake now.

‘Yes.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Try and guess.’

‘I often wake and you are not there.’

‘How is Amy? Amy with her Walkman?’

‘Changed, she’s quite a raver now, marvellous, kind—gentle too.’

‘On paper.’

‘Yes, on paper, of course she’s on paper.’

‘What power you have.’

‘On paper. How long have you been away?’

‘I don’t know. A few days.’

‘How long are you back for?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Laura.’

‘Yes.’

‘The people in my book are more real than you and me, Brian and Susie, my mother or the market people.’

‘So?’

‘D’you think I’m going mad?’ he whispered.

‘I think you are becoming a writer.’

‘You’re not joking?’

‘I’m not joking.’

‘My God.’ Claud lay back on the bed. ‘Gosh,’ he said. ‘Oh my goodness gracious me, oh my holy heavens.’

Laura sniffed.

‘You sniffed? Laura, what is it?’

‘If you’d leave your book for a moment or two I’d show you.’

In Claud’s arms Laura sensed a change; he had grown older, more certain, he had matured. It was not a simple matter of a better turn of love-making and good timing. There was a passion and tenderness he had not shown before. She was, while finding this matching delightful and enjoyable, also puzzled. Then she realised with shock what was happening: he was making love not to her, but to this girl he had invented. She gave Claud’s neck a sharp nip.

He cried out, ‘What’s that for?’ and sprang apart from her.

‘Isn’t it about time you let me read your manuscript?’

‘I am afraid to.’ He swung his legs off the bed and sat with his back turned to her.

‘You are presumably writing a book which you expect will eventually be published?’

‘Of course.’

‘And people will read it?’

‘Faceless people, people I do not know or care for.’

‘Your friends will read it, they too are the public.’

‘I had not thought. Do you want to read it?’

‘Yes.’

Claud stood up, picked his shirt off the floor, put it on and went to stand looking out across the roofs to the river. ‘People are right when they talk of the cold light of dawn. I am full of trepidation,’ he said. He took the manuscript from the table and laid it in Laura’s lap. ‘Nobody has seen this,’ he said as he switched on the bedside lamp so that she could see to read. ‘I suppose I can trust you to tell me the truth.’

‘Yes.’ How easily one said yes.

He tapped the typescript. ‘These are my guts.’

‘Oh,’ said Laura, ‘guts.’