In the spaces in her days – Wednesday midday, for instance, when she had over two hours free, or Friday mornings, often an extended Tuesday lunchtime – she would frequently go to the cinema three minutes’ walk from her work. It wasn’t a gleaming multiplex with blank external walls and, inside, dozens of screens and automated ticket machines and self-service buckets of popcorn, but an independent cinema that had seen better days, with little choice of movies. Its furry red seats were balding at the edges, there were stains on the carpet, and the woman behind the glass screen near the entrance was old and scruffy as well, with sagging breasts, a faint moustache on her upper lip and bleached hair framing a creased, pouchy face. Her name was Elspeth; she chewed gum incessantly and sometimes she let Irene in free, especially when she arrived halfway through the show, which she regularly did, or when she knew that Irene had seen the film before, maybe several times – like Sixth Sense (four times), City of Gods and About Schmidt (three), Catch Me If You Can (two). Irene never told anyone about these outings; she even sometimes went to see the same films with Adrian or friends and didn’t mention she’d seen them before. She got a strange thrill, an illicit tingle, from knowing that, for a few hours, nobody had the slightest idea where she was.