He got up and paid the bill and out they went into the street. Baines said, ‘I don’t ask you to say what isn’t true. But you needn’t mention to Mrs Baines you met us here.’

‘Of course not,’ Philip said, catching something of Sir Hubert Reed’s manner, ‘I understand, Baines.’ But he didn’t understand a thing; he was caught up in other people’s darkness.

‘It was stupid,’ Baines said. ‘So near home, but I hadn’t got time to think, you see. I’d got to see her.’

‘Of course, Baines.’

‘I haven’t time to spare,’ Baines said. ‘I’m not young. I’ve got to see that she’s all right.’

‘Of course you have, Baines.’

‘Mrs Baines will get it out of you if she can.’

‘You can trust me, Baines,’ Philip said in a dry important Reed voice; and then, ‘Look out. She’s at the window watching.’ And there indeed she was, looking up at them, between the lace curtains, from the basement room, speculating. ‘Need we go in, Baines?’ Philip asked, cold lying heavy on his stomach like too much pudding; he clutched Baines’s arm.

‘Careful,’ Baines said softly, ‘careful.’

‘But need we go in, Baines? It’s early. Take me for a walk in the park.’

‘Better not.’

‘But I’m frightened, Baines.’

‘You haven’t any cause,’ Baines said. ‘Nothing’s going to hurt you. You just run along upstairs to the nursery. I’ll go down by the area and talk to Mrs Baines.’ But even he stood hesitating at the top of the stone steps pretending not to see her, where she watched between the curtains. ‘In at the front door, Phil, and up the stairs.’

Philip didn’t linger in the hall; he ran, slithering on the parquet Mrs Baines had polished, to the stairs. Through the drawing-room doorway on the first floor he saw the draped chairs; even the china clock on the mantel was covered like a canary’s cage; as he passed it, it chimed the hour, muffled and secret under the duster. On the nursery table he found his supper laid out: a glass of milk and a piece of bread and butter, a sweet biscuit, and a little cold Queen’s pudding without the meringue. He had no appetite; he strained his ears for Mrs Baines’s coming, for the sound of voices, but the basement held its secrets; the green baize door shut off that world. He drank the milk and ate the biscuit, but he didn’t touch the rest, and presently he could hear the soft precise footfalls of Mrs Baines on the stairs: she was a good servant, she walked softly; she was a determined woman, she walked precisely.