It went down so far that Robert put in his pennyworth and accused me of talking tripe. That did it. I had been as good as gold in Scotland. I had been as good as gold for several days. I had talked about bloody old art and sat with my ankles crossed and crooked my little finger when drinking tea. Tea. I hadn’t even made any crumbs. Everyone we’d met had fallen in love with me and I’d been gracious to them. No more. Just gracious. And what thanks did I get? I got told I talked tripe. OK, Robert, that was enough of little goody-two-shoes. I wondered where I should go that night. I’d think of somewhere—and I’d think of someone to be there with me. Nobody important, nobody dangerous—just somebody Robert wouldn’t approve of. I’d probably settle for Celestine in the end. We could go dancing. I was knitting together this small and none too sinister plot when Monica made one of her daft remarks.

‘I’m sure Cynthia will never get the children’s clothes right,’ she said. Don’t ask me why she said it then. Her mind worked that way. It sort of got in and out of the water like a frog on a lily pad and you never knew what it was going to do next.

‘Let us go and see,’ I said. ‘Let us go to Cynthia’s house and have a look.’ And in case you’re wondering I don’t know why I said that. Partly boredom, partly curiosity, I suppose. I rather enjoy observing strange creatures in their natural habitat and it would be interesting to see how Monica carried herself. ‘Go and ring her,’ I said. ‘See what she says.’

Monica was very funny on the phone. Not intentionally of course. No, she was polite and condescending. I was surprised she’d agreed so quickly. Perhaps she was curious about Derek’s new home too, and nobody had ever been sufficiently considerate to give her the chance of visiting it. She was probably grateful to me.

‘We’ll go down on Thursday,’ she said, ‘and have lunch there.’

Came a point when I had to get out of the house again or murder Monica. She wouldn’t stop talking about clothes and weddings. I wouldn’t have minded if she’d had anything interesting to say, but she hadn’t. Not a thing. White satin, smoked salmon—oh Yuk. Besides, getting married meant you had to live together and at the moment I thought living together was a lousy idea. For better for worse—and worse. If it had been accepted that we should live apart then Robert, when we met, would have no idea that I’d been up to anything. He would love pure Lili, the angel. On the other hand, I would have no idea what Robert had been up to. This could be a good thing since it would mean less anxiety for me—in a way. I would, perhaps, always be suspicious, and that is so exhausting. Oh, it was all too exhausting. All this running around. It made me think of Syl when I didn’t really want to. Syl ran around like a puppy dog; like the worst sort of puppy dog you can’t take out without trouble. At the sight of a female he’d dash off, tail wagging. Any female would get him running around going ‘Bark, bark’ and scrabbling with his little paws for attention. You’d call ‘To heel’ and there he’d be dancing round, twirling his moustaches. What I mean is—if he hadn’t been a dog he’d have been a moustache-twirler, a Ladies’ Man. Oh God. He’d been doing it at the exhibition until Margaret fell over. I was getting madder with Robert by the minute for forcing me into the arms of Syl. Oh, damn and blast. I didn’t scrabble with my paws for attention.