“Have a look inside the wardrobe,” the woman prompted. I walked over to the wardrobe and opened the double doors, as I was told. The inside was absolutely packed with hangers and hangers of clothes. Half dresses, the other half skirts and blouses and jackets, all of them summer clothes. Some things looked pretty old, others as if they’d scarcely even been tried on. All the skirts were minis. Everything was nice enough, I suppose. The taste, the material, nothing that would catch your eye, but not bad.

With this many clothes, a girl could wear a different outfit each date for an entire summer. I looked at the rack of clothes awhile longer, then shut the door.

“Nice stuff,” I said.

“Have a look in the drawers,” the woman said. I was hesitant, but what could I do? I gave in and pulled open the drawers in the bottom of the wardrobe one by one. Going into a girl’s room in her absence and turning it inside out—even with her mother’s permission—wasn’t my idea of the decent thing to do, but it would have been equally bothersome to refuse. Far be it from me to figure out what goes on in the mind of someone who starts hitting the bottle at eleven in the morning. In the first big drawer on top were sweaters, polo shirts, and T-shirts, washed and neatly folded without a wrinkle. In the second drawer were handbags, belts, handkerchiefs, bracelets, plus a few fabric hats. In the third drawer, underwear, socks, and stockings. Everything was clean and neat. Somehow, it made me just a little sad, as if something were weighing down on my chest. I shut the last drawer.

The woman was still sitting on the bed, staring out the window at the scenery. The vodka tonic in her right hand was almost empty.

I returned to the chair and lit up a brand-new cigarette. The window looked out on a gentle slope that ran down to where another slope picked up. Greenery as far as the eye could see, hill and dale, with tract-house streets pasted on as an afterthought. Each house having its own yard, each yard its lawn.

“What d’you think?” asked the woman, eyes still fixed on the window. “You know, about the girl …”

“How can I say without ever having met her?” I said.

“Most women, you look at their clothes, you know what they’re like,” she said.