I tried to continue working or, rather, to make it look as if I was working. I bent over some papers as if I was scrutinizing them with particular attention. Other people had come and gone without paying me any heed. If I could just sit tight, maybe he’d go away. I tried to make out what he was after, but he was speaking in a mumble from which I could only hear the occasional word. There was no such problem with Frances. I heard murmurs of sympathy and talk about the chaos she was in, and then I knew what was coming.

“Oh, that’s Gwen,” she said. “She’s been an absolute treasure. She came from nowhere and she’s sorting things out. Gwen?”

Frozen in panic, I grasped for something, anything, that could prevent me having to turn around. There was no trapdoor, no rope to climb, but my mobile phone was on the desk. Switched off, so nobody could ring me. I picked it up.

“That’s right,” I said into it. “Could you check it? Yes, it is urgent. Yes.”

I turned my head about half a degree and raised my free hand in a gesture much like the one I’d seen from Frances earlier. I hoped it meant, “Sorry, I’d love to be introduced, but I’m caught up in this absolutely crucial phone call and can’t possibly be disturbed.” I decided I was talking to a builder who was doing some emergency work on my bedroom. I tried to picture him at the other end of the line so that I would seem more convincing. I continued to say yes and no, to murmur half-sentences. Even though I was becoming more and more used to living in a fantasy world, and now a fantasy world within a fantasy world, it still sounded pathetic and unconvincing to me.

In the gaps between my fatuous outpourings, I tried to listen to what Frances was saying. My fear was that she would tell him I had been a friend of Milena’s and then he really might stay, however long I remained on the disconnected phone, to find out how I knew her. But then Frances started talking about people I had never heard of, and after a few minutes more I heard footsteps, then the front door opening and closing. I made myself continue the conversation for a bit longer. “So we’ll talk about the colors when we meet?” I said brightly, loudly. “That’s great. Maybe I’ll see you when I get back . . . Oh, you’ll be gone, then? All right, tomorrow. “Bye.”

“Everything okay?” Frances said sympathetically.

“It’s my so-called builder,” I said. “You know how it is.”