She stuffed the rucksack into the cupboard and sat down on the edge of the bed. In any life, she supposed, there were times when events did not seem quite real and could not be thoroughly explained. Perhaps the trick was not to try?

She got up and went over to the window. Propped on the sill where the light was best was the hand mirror she had picked up at the State-sponsored market stall in the Old Town. Handbag sized, with stupid shells stuck onto the handle, it was the only one available outside the family bathroom. Its smallness meant that she had to scrutinize one feature at a time. She examined her nose, her mouth, the hair falling over her right shoulder.

Her experience with Rob Dance taught her that falling in love put you at a disadvantage. It destabilized sense and splintered sensibility. It provided no answers and had a big signpost with ‘Humiliation’ written on it. But, perhaps, Tomas had seen something behind her gooseberry-coloured eyes of which she was not yet aware? An intelligence? For sure, it wasn’t worldliness but, maybe, he had detected an instinct, growing stronger by the day, not to conform but to question.

Perhaps Tomas liked the fact that she was more-or-less a blank sheet, something that he would have spotted at once?

The questions went back and forth.

To be with Tomas was a risk that she would end up again under that signpost. She was not of his world. Other women were interested in him; a fact that made her feel sick. She needed to learn discretion and guile, not necessarily a given with a woman from Brympton.

By the time she had pursued those lines of thought to their logical conclusion, she was convinced that her time with Tomas had been quite lovely but that was it. It was unlikely to go further.

She flung herself down on the bed and buried her face in the pillow.

Please, please, she prayed, don’t let it be that Tomas was using me. Or, not entirely.

The not terribly pleasant smell of the soap with which the household linen was laundered was all pervasive and she grabbed the T-shirt she had worn with Tomas. To her starved senses, it smelt of sun, of sex, of pines and of… him.

She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. At the back of her mind lurked a warning. However hurt and ragged she had been left by Rob, it was nothing to the tumult that awaited her.

Twisting a lock of her hair between her fingers, she looked up at the window. How puzzling life could be – and how she loved it.

The apartment was stifling, especially at night.