Johanna burst out laughing. Her square, sallow face was transformed; suddenly she was beautiful. This woman was made for merriment. No doubt she’d had plenty of that, with Calvin.

At my car she shook my hand and said, gruffly: ‘I’m glad we met.’ She cocked her head, one eyebrow raised, and gave me one last look. Then she clicked down her visor and became a spaceman.

She roared off, and I never saw her again.

Two

Two

Calvin was sentenced to sixteen years. I read about it in the papers, though they seemed more interested in Angie. Posh totty always pulls in the punters, especially when they’ve dated rock royalty and had a history of mental illness. Angie’s beautiful face gazed at me from beyond the grave. There was even a photo of her horse, Conker, in the online Daily Mail, a website to which I’d become briefly and shamefully addicted. No photos of me, of course. I was a bystander in this soap opera, and felt more and more detached as the weeks passed. Briefly, on waking, I forgot that I’d had anything to do with it at all.

In November I put my house on the market. It was a sudden decision. I’d been walking to my car, which I’d had to park three streets away. This irritating situation had been happening more often. I realised, then, how my neighbourhood had changed. Many of my old friends had gone and the bankers had moved in. My familiar streets were now jammed with SUVs and Porsches. Half the parking spaces were blocked by skips and the houses sheathed in flapping plastic behind which thunderous renovations were being carried out—basements dug out for gyms and cinemas, roofs removed for penthouse extensions. Nobody knew anyone any more. And my old-established neighbours had given way to transients. Nights were punctuated by the trundle of luggage wheels as strangers sought out their Airbnbs. New people had bought the house next door and suffocated their garden with decking, silencing the birdsong. I’d seen no signs of life; like many of the houses theirs remained dark, its only illumination the security lights around the garden and the winking entry-phone set in the prison wall they’d erected at the front.

I hadn’t registered this. For the past fourteen months I hadn’t really noticed anything. Now I’d emerged like Rip Van Winkle from my long hibernation and found the world had changed. Pam had been bemoaning it, of course, but I’d been too distracted to listen. Besides, whenever she waylaid me I was itching to escape.