Frances looked at me appraisingly, as if I was a pig she was considering buying. “Oh, yes, you have,” she said. “How do you do it? Exercise and good living?”

Not eating, not sleeping, constant anxiety, I thought, but just smiled with what I hoped was rueful modesty. We leafed through the gorgeous catalogue, pausing over men in doublets and ruffs, stockings and breeches; women in cloaks and petticoats, corsets and farthingales.

“If we can dress some of our young actors in these,” said Frances, “and get them to learn a few lines, it should be magnificent. If we want to be really authentic, we should probably have the women played by men as well.”

“I don’t think the lawyers would like that,” I said. “When they asked for Elizabethan they were probably thinking of wenches dispensing flagons of ale and behaving bawdily. It might be a grueling evening for some of them.”

Frances grunted. “The drama-school girls we employ are pretty unshockable,” she said. “You know, if they were laid end to end in the garden, et cetera et cetera.”

I heard another ping from the computer and got distracted again. “Et cetera what?” I said.

“I wouldn’t be the least surprised.”

“What?”

“It’s an old joke. I’ve ruined it now. If the girls were laid end to end in the garden. You know. I wouldn’t be in the least surprised.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I think I’ve heard it.”

“Dorothy Parker, I think.”

“Yes,” I said. “Excuse me a moment. Someone’s sent me a message.” I couldn’t pretend to continue a conversation. I walked over to the computer and clicked on the new message.

“Sorry for being paranoid,” the message read. “It’s a security issue. Just give me your phone number and I’ll give you a ring and tell you my name.”

As I read the message, I felt as if I had immediately, and without warning, become immensely more stupid. I was like a person in a foreign country who just about understood what basic words meant but couldn’t make out what lay behind them, what was implied, what were the customs everybody took for granted. I found it impossibly difficult to assess what the message meant, its implications. Was there any possible way I could give some phone number or other to this person? Was it conceivable that they would ring and tell me who they were and I would know who this lover of Milena’s was?

Suddenly everything was made up of puzzles I wasn’t equipped to solve.