There was a boy there of my own age and we got drunk together at the far end of a room with a bottle of Martini. He put his head on my shoulder and undid the buttons of my blouse. As fast as he undid them I did them up again, so that when he got to my waist and sighed he recoiled with indignation and astonishment to find that his labour had been in vain. I was too drunk to wonder whether we had been observed and too remote to care. I had no fear of him and was pleased with my own ingenuity.

My head spun that night, and all next day I felt weak and disordered. The boy in the daylight reminded me of a bird, a bold curious bird. He asked me questions about Syl and about myself without any pretence at politeness. I felt even more fearful than usual faced with this clever inquisitive boy who showed no further desire to undo my blouse and who was only interested in the incongruity of my relationship with Syl. I wanted to tell him calmly that I knew perfectly well that it was absurd and quite understood the point of his questions. Clever as he was, he wasn’t sufficiently clever to see this, and his assumption that I was halfwitted made me stubbornly worse.

Syl was away all day with our host, shooting something, and I was too shy to say I was tired and would like to go and sleep in my room. I spent hours with that wretched boy evading his questions and seeming more stupid by the minute. I never did discover who he was, the son of the house or just another guest, and my own obtuseness and incuriosity now appear to me more revealing than anything else of my state at the time. Healthy creatures do not behave so in strange surroundings.

Our hostess scarcely showed herself at all. I suppose she was in the kitchen, perhaps avoiding me, and perhaps the boy had been instructed to entertain me. I didn’t wonder about it then. I was no more alert to my environment than a sick animal and I must have somehow been aware of that, because it was then that I remembered the starveling cat.

When we got home my mother asked if we had had a good time and Syl said with great enthusiasm that we had.

Perhaps he had. I never knew him.

When Lili came to stay the emphasis shifted slightly, away from me and on to the strange woman.