Marina is sorry the project is over and considers what to do next. Realising the state of her bank account isn’t great, despite her cheap rent, she looks more earnestly for work. Since she has no definite idea, she applies for a variety of jobs – a position in an art gallery, a museum, a publishing house. She buys a TES and leafs through the newspaper. A French teacher is required at a large comprehensive school in Tower Hamlets. Another is wanted in Hackney. She draws a circle around each advert. There’s no harm in enquiring about both. She spots another job at her old school in Bristol. She hesitates then circles that one too.

She returns the design book. While Selena is in the kitchen making tea, and the baby sleeps in the cradle, Marina slots the book back in its place. Absent-mindedly, she takes out the dusty book of poetry she saw before. Carefully, she turns the brittle pages and thinks again of the lines she remembers from school.

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

A fine brown dust has settled on her hands. It tickles her nose and she sneezes. Instantly, the baby stirs and gives a cry. Selena appears with the tea.

‘Sorry,’ says Marina, closing the book. ‘My sneeze must have woken her.’

Selena sets down the tray and picks up the baby lovingly. ‘No worries. It’s feeding time anyway.’ Settling in the armchair, she glances at the book in Marina’s hands. ‘I don’t know why I kept it.’

‘Where did it come from?’ asks Marina curiously.

Selena sits in the armchair. ‘Pete found it underneath a loose floorboard in the small bedroom.’ She nuzzles the top of the baby’s head, and adds, ‘He was sanding them.’ She pushes up her top and the baby feeds. ‘There was money too, inside the book, a bundle of pound notes.’

‘Interesting. Anything else?’

‘A collection of shells in a box, a fossil, an exercise book with scribbled stories inside.’

‘Sounds like a child’s treasure trove.’

‘Yes, although the book’s a bit adult, don’t you think? Do you want it?’

‘I’d love to borrow it.’

‘Keep it. Poetry’s not my thing.’ Selena soothes the baby and changes the subject, drawing Marina’s attention to an abstract painting on the wall. ‘Local artist,’ Selena says. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

Marina agrees, but is only half listening. When she was small, she used to put her treasures in a tin for safekeeping, which she hid in the wardrobe. She kept special stones, pictures of animals she cut out from magazines, gonks with different coloured crazy hair.

‘How long did you say you’ve lived here?’ asks Marina when the subject of the painting is exhausted.

‘About ten years,’ says Selena. ‘Can you believe that? I came first actually and when I met Bill, he moved in.’