He raised a hand in agreement and went into the gallery. For a moment she stood by the table in the hall, snapped a yellowing frond from the fern in the Tuscan pot, crushed it in her hand. Sifting through the things which other people overlook. What an odd remark to make. I must watch my step. She went out into the late sun and walked slowly down the gravel path towards the point and the pool, past a sullen Tonnino replacing begonias with nicotianas.

She lay tightly curled up, completely covered by the thin, white sheet like one of the dead in Pompeii, of whom he had seen pictures. A tiny figure overtaken by the events of a hot summer morning. Only Leni wasn’t dead, thank God, even though she was hardly breathing. Just knocked out, that’s all. Overcome by the events of another summer day; out like a light. He kissed a spike of hair which was all that showed of her, slid into his own bed and put out the light between them. Stared up into the sudden dark, arms behind his head, too bemused to seek sleep. Amazed, serene. Peter Gabriel low on the pocket-transistor. A magic kind of day, you could say. Well, say it. Magic. They don’t come often. And a different night from last night up in the Bachelor’s Room sorting out the facts of a flash-back life. But I was different then.

The darkness faded in the light of the rising moon through the open windows. Across the bay the ragged hills were soft against the pale sky, lights sparkled, the sea lay silent, black oil marbled through with silver.

Wiped out tapes, I said. Stuffed birds in dusty cases, dinosaurs rattling about in a lost-time machine. What the hell was I thinking? I had no comparisons. It was a new world for me. It still is. But I was right about one thing. They know who they are, no confusion there. Not the very least particle of doubt. Secure, sure, belonging. That’s the whole crunch to life, I can see. And in knowing who they are they make you feel that you know who you are, confident, brave, alive and daring. It’s a bit like it must be when you do your first solo on the High Wire, flying through the air without a safety net, your heart in your mouth because you dared, and might not make it, and then you are caught on the other side in steady hands. The catchers. That’s Cuckoo and Archie Charlie, I’d say; the ‘steadies’, the ‘know-how-to-do-its’. I mean, this afternoon, Leni scared half to death, overcome by the car, the house, the whole bit: Cuckoo giving her a kiss, right off, thanking her for coming! As if she was doing them the favour and not the other way around. Now, I mean to say, honestly … that is something, that’s amazing! Could you see Decca doing that? Christ! You see? And because of that moment Leni was ‘secured’. She’d have gone right back and tried a bloody double somersault just to feel the safety in those hands again.