“It’s not necessary, sir. I’ll join you outside shortly,” I said, and shut the door behind him.

Nal had been a flutter, but what I was about to get myself into couldn’t possibly end up a friendly, short-term indulgence. That wasn’t in Duncan Forsythe’s nature, I could see that without needing to consult Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. Oh, bugger! What drives us on to make potential messes of our lives? I should have politely sent him packing, I knew it. But I just didn’t have the strength of character. No Matron, I. So I put on my new winter suit of pink knobbly tweed, slid my feet into the highest heels I own—no risk of towering over him—and hunted for my only pair of gloves. White cotton numbers, not matching kid. Hats I cannot abide, they’re so utterly useless, especially on epileptic hair.

We ate Russian Egg and Rostbraten Esterhazy at the Bohemian, hardly said a word to each other. But he did insist upon a bottle of sparkling burgundy, which almost doubled the cost of the meal. Mr. Czerny waited on us himself, and when Duncan Forsythe bunged a crisp blue five-pound note on the table and told him to keep the change, Mr. Czerny nearly swooned.

We’d walked up, and we walked back. When the bulk of St. Vincent’s girls’ school loomed, I plunged diagonally across the road without stopping to think about traffic, and he reached to grab my arm, deter me. The touch made me panic, I blundered into a plane tree and found myself backed against it with him in front of me. I heard him gasp, then felt his mouth slide across my cheek, and I closed my eyes, found his lips and clung to them with a fierce joy heightened by my fears for the future.

After that I persuaded him by look and touch to come inside. The lights were on against our return, and there was Marceline looking up from her chair, yawning pinkly.

His head was thrown back, the pupils of his eyes still widely dilated from the night, and he breathed as if he’d been running. Oh, he looked so alive! And I knew that he was going to pay for this so dearly that I had to do everything in my power to make it worth the price.

So I loved him with skin and mouth and fingertips, delicately and smoothly, strongly and passionately. It was beautiful to be with a man again, especially this man. Nal had been a learning experience, heartfree and carefree, a means and an end combined. But Duncan Forsythe mattered. There could be no divorcing him from my life. The emotion! I kissed his hands and feet, rode him until his back arched between my slippery thighs, wrapped him within my arms and legs and fought him, muscles against muscles, until his greater strength bore me down and away.

He stayed until a little after eleven, I thought, completely lost to awareness of passing time, then suddenly he was out of my bed and looking down at me.

“I have to go,” he said, nothing more, but when he’d dressed and used his comb at my mirror, he came back to me, leaned over and touched his cheek against mine. “May I come tomorrow about four?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

Oh, yes. I think I must be in love. Otherwise, why would I have let this happen?

Sunday,

May 29th, 1960

By the time I went upstairs at one for my session with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, I’d already encountered Toby. I have no idea how news gets around so fast, because Toby knew, yet how could he?

“You’re a fool,” he snapped, eyes more red than brown. “If it’s possible, a bigger fool than Pappy.”

I didn’t bother to reply, just pushed past him and went into Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s living room.

“The King of Pentacles is here,” she said as I sat down and reached for my Kraft cheese spread glass of brandy.

“I don’t believe this place,” I said, sipping abstemiously—best go easy, with Mr. Forsythe returning in a couple of hours. “How does the news get around?”

“Flo,” she said simply, jigging our angel up and down on her knee. Flo smiled at me, but sadly, then got off her mother’s lap and went to scribble on the wall.

“It don’t worry you none that he’s married?” my landlady asked, doling out smoked eel and bread-and-butter.

I thought about that, then shrugged. “Actually, I think I’m glad that he’s married. I’m not sure I know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.”

“And what don’t youse want?”

“To settle down in a posh house and play Missus Doctor.”

“Just as well,” she said with a grin. “The cards don’t hold out much hope of a life in the suburbs for you, Harriet Purcell.”

“Do I have a life at Kings Cross?” I asked.

But she went vague on me, wouldn’t commit herself. “All depends on what happens to that.” And she pointed to the crystal ball.

I studied it curiously and with closer attention than I’d ever done before. It wasn’t flawless, though it contained no cracks or bubbles. Just wisps of cloud as thin as the nebulae of stars in our southern skies. It sat on a black ebony base that must have been concave to hold the huge ball—it was at least eight inches in diameter—so firmly, and I noticed that a little fold of black fabric overlapped the rim of the base. Yes, she’d have to cushion it against the ebony wood in case it scratched. I’d looked up quartz crystal in the Queens library Merck, to find that it had a “soft” hardness. Unsuitable for gemstones but able to be carved and highly polished. Why did she say that? Significant, but how?

“It all depends what happens to the Glass,” I said.

“S’right.” So she intended to remain cryptic.

I probed by asking casually, “I wonder who first thought of rounding rock crystal into a ball and using it to see the future?”

“Oh, mightn’t be the future. Might be the past. I dunno, but they was old when Merlin was a boy,” she said, refusing to be drawn.

I left a little early so I’d be downstairs when Mr. Forsythe arrived, but some things weren’t going to change just because he existed. Flo would come for her two hours with me, and he could either like it or lump it. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz demurred, but I won. When Harold arrived, angel would come down to me.

He was there outside, in the darkness, Harold. Waiting. Eyes filled with hate. I ignored him, started down the stairs.

“Whore!” he whispered. “Whore!”

Mr. Forsythe turned up on time. I was down on the floor with Flo and the crayons because she refuses to play with anything else. I’d brought some of my old toys from Bronte, a doll with a wardrobe of clothes, a weeny trike, building blocks with a letter of the alphabet on each side. But she wouldn’t even look at them. It was always the crayons.

“Door’s open!” I called.

So the first thing the poor man saw was his girlfriend down on the braided rug playing crayons with a four-year-old child. His face was a study, I couldn’t help laughing.

“No, she’s not mine,” I said, getting up and going to him to put my hands on either side of his neck, pull his head down until I could put my lips and nose against the snow-white hair of his temple. He smelled delicious, of expensive soap, and he didn’t muck up that wonderful hair with oil. Then I took him by the hand and brought him over to Flo, who stared up at him without a trace of fear and smiled immediately.

“This is Flo, my landlady’s daughter. I mind her every Sunday from four to six, so if you’re in a hurry, I’m afraid all you can do with me is talk.”

He squatted down and stroked Flo’s hair, smiling at her. “How do you do, Flo?” Orthopods were always good with children because a good proportion of their patients were children, but try though he would, he couldn’t get Flo to talk.

“She appears to be mute,” I said, “though her mother says she talks. You may be sceptical about it, but a friend of mine and I believe that she communicates with her mother without words, by a sort of telepathy.”