‘He asked me to marry him,’ I said at last, ‘so I said I would.’

‘Why?’ asked Lili.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, because of course I hadn’t agreed at all. Simply I had known that I couldn’t go on living with my mother. I had nowhere else to go and now I was being carried along—that ship bound for wrecking.

‘I wonder if he’s queer,’ mused Lili aloud. ‘I always used to wonder if he might be. And now he’s forty, unmarried and still living with that old termagant he calls Mother.’

‘He’s had girlfriends,’ I protested, just to be fair.

‘I know that,’ said Lili, ‘but he was always a bit strange with them. Too helpful, if you see what I mean.’

I did. Syl would have liked to take my shoes off for me, brush my hair, and once he had muttered that he would gladly wash my clothes.

‘Tell you what I think,’ said Lili cheerfully. ‘He’s either a masochist or, in view of your age, a paedophile.’

I thought that this was a most extraordinary conversation to be having about one’s intended groom, but I was feeling lighter. Lili, I thought, would be ruthless with cobwebs, dauntless in darkened rooms, relentless with dust accumulated in hidden corners. I wanted her to go on talking, but she lost interest, turned into the butcher’s and struck up a conversation about meat.

This was the first time I had seen her exercise her charm. After two minutes I believe the butcher would have followed her out of the shop had she beckoned him. With talk of sweet breads and liver and fillet she captivated him—I couldn’t quite see how she did it. She would look at him sideways, smile at unexpected moments, and while she was never coarse there was the vaguest suggestion of the gentlest possible obscenity as she spoke of the bodies of animals. However, she did it well, and I shouldn’t think the butcher ever quite forgot the lady with the red hair.

I felt inclined to congratulate her on her performance as we left with our solitary chop, but her interest had turned again and she was speaking of Egypt. I tensed myself, but Lili’s Egypt wasn’t mine. She spoke of painting and antiquities while I thought of rivers, dark faces and the shadowed cloisters of the convent.

We stopped again to buy olive oil and garlic, for Lili said that although she had vowed not to interfere she was going to cook dinner and, while my mother would complain, she would be grateful in the end.

‘I shall cook an Egyptian meal,’ said Lili.

She put her arm around me briefly.

‘Make you feel at home,’ she added.

I wondered if she could see into my mind, and I didn’t care, for during that one short walk I had come to believe that Lili would not harm me.

Robert, unlike Lili, had changed considerably. He wasn’t the bulky, bearded man of my memory but thin, clean-shaven, dark and angry.