I walked towards my usual seat below a window, at the end of the gardening section. Selecting Roses – an Expert’s Guide by Geoffrey Smith, I sat down. I’d seen him on the television, and didn’t quite trust his easy manner. The book left a grubby film on my fingertips. Every book in the library seemed to smell of other people’s hands. The flyleaf had a photograph of Geoffrey holding a rose in his red scrubbed fingers, a fine layer of dirt beneath his nails. I supposed that I was meant to find that comforting. I wondered if Kathryn would like to see a layer of dirt beneath my fingernails, if that would convince her I was a man worth taking a chance on. A capable, outdoors sort of a man.

The pages of the book were thick and soft. The spine creaked as I balanced it on one knee and turned each page. Burning dust from the overhead fan heater hung in the air; a warm blast agitated the hair on the back of my head. It was going a bit, even then. Mum pointed it out to me soon after my twenty-fifth birthday. ‘Your grandfather was bald at thirty, Howard,’ she said. ‘Mind you, you’ve got your father’s hair. Thick and sandy. He had it all over. And I mean everywhere.’

I turned a page.

‘Good evening, ladies!’

The voice of the man with the four carrier bags travelled across the library. Every Thursday evening he was there. Usually he was the only other man in the place. He wore a flat cap and a raincoat, buttoned right to the top, and a long blue scarf. Once I followed him as he stormed upstairs to the reference section. He dumped his carrier bags in the middle of the room and began spinning through the catalogue, the cards thudding against his fingers.

Kathryn was never upstairs. She wasn’t a reference librarian. Nevertheless, he seemed to know her.

‘Ah, the lovely Kathryn! When are you going to stop shelving and let me read you the first volume of my memoirs?’ His voice boomed out over the shelves, and I heard her high-pitched laugh.

So she was here.

I turned another page.

Then there was a squealing sound. I leant forward, the back of my neck taking the blast from the fan heater. Yes, there it was, a squeal followed by a series of clicks, surprisingly definite. Click-clack, click-clack, squeal. Click-clack, click-clack, squeal. Kathryn was wheeling the shelving trolley in my direction, her heels tapping on the wooden floor.

The squeals stopped and I knew she was in the aisle next to mine. I turned my head and glanced through the space between the shelves. The fabric of her red blouse bulged slightly as she reached for a book. She made a sighing sound, and I knew she would be blowing a rush of air up towards her fringe. I’d watched her do it while she was on the phone. A difficult caller, probably. Her jaw would stick out and she’d blow up. Maybe roll her eyes.