Sally had taken charge. As always, I watched her with unstinted admiration as she rolled her skirt around her thighs, exposing her long white legs. She squatted, scowling, in front of the open refrigerator. Out came salami, brie, two bottles of white Burgundy.

“Right. That’s us. Now, what do you feed the monsters?”

“Beans on toast and all that jazz.”

“Too much of a fiddle. They can have salami.”

“They hate salami.”

“They’ll love it! Washed down with a glass of wine? It’s their first pop concert.”

“And mine.”

“Good. I’m going to get you out of here more often.” Sally licked and dabbed, making a quick survey of the refrigerator. She waved a cheese-tipped forefinger at me, flecks of cole slaw on her brightly painted mouth. “Jim, you’re spending too much time in Shepperton. It’s like living on a small planet miles from anywhere. I’m moving you back to Earth.”

I loved to watch her, whether she was fuelled by amphetamines or plain American sass. She and Peter Lykiard had arranged to call for me, but Lykiard had left separately for the open-air concert, near Brighton on the south coast. The Arts Laboratory, of which Lykiard was now exhibitions director, was to stage a number of prose and poetry readings during the intermissions and Sally had persuaded me to take part, against my better judgement. I found it impossible to resist her swerves of enthusiasm and good cheer.

“You’ll enjoy it—Burroughs will be there.”

“The great man. But what do I read?”

“Anything. One of your sadomasochistic romps should go down a treat. The audiences are very conventional.”

“So am I. Sally…”

But nothing could stop her. As we drove away from Shepperton towards the southeast I felt my usual pang of uneasiness at leaving the Thames-side town. Sally was right—in the two years since Miriam’s death the familiar gardens and water meadows had come to my rescue, but at something of a price. I went up to London more often, but the quiet streets with their bricky villas, presided over by the film studios, formed the reassuring centre of my mind. Through the tranquil TV suburbs moved a light as serene as any Stanley Spencer had seen at Cookham.

At the same time, I was grateful to people who lured me away from it. Lykiard and Sally had arrived unexpectedly on the doorstep six weeks earlier. They carried presents and a cheery welcome for the children, who had almost forgotten them, and a bottle of Japanese whisky for me which Sally was opening as she stepped through the door. Lykiard wanted me to write the catalogue notes to an exhibition of Kennedy assassination photographs, but this was little more than the pretext for their visit.