It was at this point that fate intervened: the notebook fell from her lap to the ground and opened to a blank white page, almost as if waiting for a sign. While picking up the notebook, the fountain pen slipped from her hand and the top fell off; she didn’t put it back on, holding the pen instead for an instant over the paper. The midday sun peeping through the leaves highlighted their sinuous profiles with such grace that her hand, almost moving by itself, traced the leaves’ outlines weaving a lofty tapestry of pearly shadows. The page was entirely covered and all she could do was turn it over and give herself up to the game. A lively breeze had ruffled the foliage, but hadn’t dried the ink still flowing from the sharp golden pen point. Temptation triumphed and her tenuous scribbles became words: it was as if the pen were an invisible arrow aimed at the centre of the page, its purpose unclear, controlled by an external, benign force akin to the gentle deceptions that cause young children to obey. Words, words, words: now her agile hand was moving at the same rhythm as the stories she often told her ‘friends’ with whom she played bridge. She was living the story of her first encounter with death, the death of an amiable old woman who was courageous and Voltairian, and on to the piece of paper she crammed her spiky, hasty handwriting, the very same handwriting the ‘Miss’ had once used to take notes on venerable and difficult texts, an entirely different handwriting from the rounded letters used by Mrs X for the frivolous communications of a socialite.

It started to rain and a thick drop spread on the page, diluting a ‘forever’ to the point of vanishing. The word was crossed out and written again where the page was dry, and the notebook was closed.

Tucking the notebook and her book under her arm, she headed back inside, making her way slowly up the veranda steps, paying no attention to the rain as it drenched her hair and wrapped the silent stillness of the suddenly grey air in a silken rustle. Even once inside, the house was silent. Everyone had gone out. The study appeared abandoned, frozen in time. As on that singular day in the distant past, Mrs X rested her forehead against a windowpane and, her eyes closed, imagined a dusty classroom behind her. The present vanished. All that was left for her, or in her, was the act she had just carried out – tracing words she hadn’t summoned, unnecessary words but still urgent, almost pleading with her to write them down, to give voice to images on the brink of disappearing.

Embarrassed, she realized that this was the secret of her anxieties – the dangerous conversation between the paper and the pen that promised a second life, and during her late years, if indeed they came, the only true peace. Her breath clouded the windowpanes streaming with rain. She blew on the ageing face of the neglected ‘Miss’.