Beneath the story of the lost steamer the paper reported an outbreak of plague at Alexandria. The rain beat at the window and she thought of infested rats in some far-off land and primitive people crowded together in makeshift dwellings. It was not Egypt, of course, to which the news item referred; it was a suburb of the same name here in this very city, a place perhaps two or three miles to the south-west. A poor place. A part of the city she had never visited.

She put the newspaper to one side and picked up her pen once more.

How proud I was then of my husband, the statesman—

Eleanor raised her pen to strike out the words but then could not do so. To strike out something one had written in one’s journal, was that not censorship of the most insidious sort, censorship of one’s own thoughts? But they were not her own thoughts. Whose thoughts were they? How proud I was— She hated those words! They contaminated her journal. But she could not strike them out. She closed the book and placed it in her desk drawer and turned the key in the lock.

Did Alasdair have a duplicate key? she wondered. She unlocked the drawer. Beneath the journal was a note, a single page—two or three lines, no more—on unheaded notepaper folded inside a plain cream-coloured envelope. The note had arrived with the first post a few days earlier. It was a note she was reasonably certain had not been intended for her eyes but that had, somehow, found its way to her. She had read the note just the once and put it away. She had told no one about it.

She slowly turned towards her dressing table, a fussily ornate mid-century piece of polished walnut topped by a large bevelled mirror, and regarded herself. She had dressed, had skilfully arranged her own hair, without studying herself at all, but now she made herself look. Her eyes filled her face. It was an illusion, but she could not shake it off. The pleasing regularity of her features, a strong nose and chin, a prominent brow, a clear complexion, all these things eluded her gaze. She turned to see her profile but could not quite catch herself. Were her features too regular? Did one tire of them over time? Did they hint at a conventionality, an absence of some kind? She had fought long and hard to hide the most secret parts of herself, but was it possible she had succeeded too well? She had turned men’s heads once and sometimes did so now, though she had accepted the first proposal she had received and had not regretted it. But did one tire, eventually, of pleasing regularity?

She locked the desk drawer a second time and stood up.