‘He’s worse. I stopped at the Post Office and telephoned to Dr Macdonald. He said he’d be here by five, and since my husband was home and I’d said I would come, I did. But I think I ought to get back.’ She looked at her wrist watch, a large clear-faced one with a second hand, by which, Miss Mayfield knew, many a pulse had been checked. ‘But I did want to talk to you,’ she added. And then Miss Mayfield noticed her eyes. They were at odds with the rest of her. They were large and rather beautiful, like Sydney’s, and the same colour, but their expression was – Miss Mayfield sought for the right word – wild, distraught? No, those were temporary states, easily attributable to concern for Sydney’s health; it went deeper – unstable, that was the word. Across a wilderness of thirty-five years’ remembering, Miss Mayfield heard her father’s voice, speaking of a horse he had been offered. ‘It’s got an unreliable eye.’

She then heard her own voice saying soothingly:

‘Well, if you want to go straight back, Mrs Baines, please do. Don’t bother about me. Or if you have something on your mind, sit down and tell me about it. You say your husband is with Sydney and the doctor is coming at five . . . That leaves quite a bit of time.’

To her surprise, Mrs Baines, ignoring these reasonable remarks, said violently:

‘Oh, if only you’d let things be. If only you hadn’t gone and stirred it all up again.’ She dragged out a dazzling white handkerchief that reminded Miss Mayfield of Sydney’s and dabbed angrily at her eyes. ‘Wesley thinks I’m crazy. You’ll think I’m crazy. But twice couldn’t be accident. Saying things are crazy is the easy way out. I believe in looking things in the face. Sydney came home with some tale about Ethel Rigby’s granny scalding her – away back last October that was. I went round to see. Who wouldn’t? And I’m struck with the shingles. Then, there we are, day before yesterday, Ethel’s fingers in the mangle. You go round to see. And now Sydney’s struck with something I couldn’t name, no matter what depended on it. There’s something wrong. It may be crazy, but it’s wrong as well, and I wish to God I could get away from it all.’

In some obscure way something of what the woman was saying accorded with Miss Mayfield’s private thoughts. Something wrong. She had felt that since the moment she found the sheet of paper between the two books.

‘But by your reasoning, Mrs Baines, I am the one who should now be afflicted. You inquired and had shingles; I inquired . . . Nothing has happened to me.’