I said ‘Did Marie Claire explain why she wouldn’t come to the wedding?’ Monica had been partly aggrieved at this refusal and partly relieved for she didn’t want her house overwhelmed with people. You can’t keep a house tidy when it’s full of people. I thought she daren’t come in case I know about her and Robert. She’s frightened I’ll kill her. Quite a lot of killing went on where we lived. Well, not a lot, but it tended to be more casual than English killing. People tended to disappear sometimes, or they got ill and died. Sometimes their families minded a great deal and sometimes they didn’t. I wouldn’t have killed Marie Claire. I wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction. Monica said Marie Claire was too busy, and then Margaret suddenly said, ‘I don’t want to marry Syl.’ Of course she didn’t. Nobody ever had—not for long anyway. For a second I felt sorry for Syl. He wasn’t all that bad. Not really. There was just something a bit wrong with him. Something a bit weird. He wasn’t a eunuch. No. But there was something smooth about him, something incomplete. He wasn’t really a proper human being, let alone a proper man. Oh, poor Syl. Then I looked at Margaret. Looked at her properly for the first time for days. Ever. And I thought—poor Margaret, and then I thought—poor me, and after a while I even thought—poor Robert. It must have been the gin. No. It wasn’t altogether the gin for I am not incapable of human sympathy. I only wish I was. This wouldn’t do. Lili was going soft.

I’d made Syl buy one of Robert’s paintings. Syl didn’t like parting with money. I’d told him it would make a superb wedding present for the bride, and I wouldn’t let him off the hook. ‘You buy that picture,’ I said, ‘and I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take you out to dinner in a little French restaurant I know.’ Syl couldn’t resist that—a free meal and with Lili. ‘Besides,’ I told him, ‘that picture is a bargain. You can make such a profit on it one day.’ It was getting very close to the time for this assignation and I suddenly rather lost my head. ‘Let us,’ I said, ‘go and have dinner in Soho. It will make a nice change for Margaret.’ As I spoke I thought to myself Lili, you’ve gone mad. What are you doing? What do you think you’re doing? I knew what I was doing. I was dicing with death. The reckless streak had overwhelmed me. Sometimes I had swum in crocodile-infested waters. Once I had overturned a stall in the souk. Oh yes, I had. I had been a good girl for days and when I saw the peasants quietly buying mangoes I had seized a support under the stall and pulled it away. There was nothing anyone could do about it. Not to me. The mangoes had rolled everywhere, and after that I had been good again for weeks.