Eve, as well as being a gullible mug, was a dreadful housewife. Cynthia was a dreadful housewife and she clearly couldn’t cope with little Cain and Abel—or rather little Jennifer and Christopher. Their beastly, depressing small toys lay around everywhere, broken. There was mud in the garden and the children smelt. Cynthia was skinny and hairy and gummy. Much worse than Monica. Derek had married Eve twice, but Eve II was far worse than Eve I. Monica was dumb in many ways but she was moderately competent in the house, and she washed. Cynthia looked as though a good wash wouldn’t do her any harm. It was Monica who said this. She whispered it to me when Cynthia wasn’t listening. Mind you, she couldn’t have been sure Cynthia wasn’t listening since she’d only that second gone out of the door. Oh, I had to make such an effort to handle the children’s little frocks. Both the little children had necks like the necks of dead chickens—dirty dead chickens. Everything here was thin and dirty. How I began to appreciate Monica and her house. How I hated Cynthia’s food. I didn’t eat it. I sat there hating it and pushing it around the plate. The plate was greasy with old grease. The house was cold with a scum of greasy dust. It was like hell. Derek had married again and gone to hell. Good. I wondered if he abused his new little children and what progression of hells he would go through until he himself crumbled away into greasy dust. I thought that never, never again would I do an impure thing, for I must be different from Derek and free of all that dirt and dust. Once I had believed that transgression led to freedom but now I looked and I saw where it led. Oh no, the place wasn’t really as bad as that not in actuality. It was bad enough but something else gave it its atmosphere. Derek, I suppose. I could never be as bad as Derek if I lived for ever, but I wasn’t good enough to be comfortable. Oh damn.

Cynthia had put Peter Pan collars on the children’s frocks so I took them off again. I didn’t bother much with their clothes for there wasn’t any point. They would look like dressed-up dead chickens whatever I did. Cynthia gave them pickled red things for their lunch—cabbage and beetroot with bitter, dripping juices designed to ruin blue velvet. I had to be so careful to keep them apart. I wanted to go out and buy a clean towel to sit on. I wanted to get away.

I said, ‘Monica, we must go now, for we have things to do this evening.’

‘Yes,’ said Monica, who was quite good at this game. ‘We don’t want to keep everybody waiting.’ We had given the impression that away from here, in glorious Croydon full of light, there were fascinating and numerous people looking at their watches and wondering eagerly where we were. Cynthia looked wistful.