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Marigold had found the flat.
    Nadia was mentioned, a little. There were references to Nadia’s room and Nadia’s clock, which was the big one that chimed, and some chat about the time they had made the curry for Nadia’s dinner party and everyone had gone on fire from it.
    Resolutely Pat stood up and said that her little hotel closed at midnight and she had better get back, as they didn’t have a night porter.
    “Well, when shall we expect you?” asked Marigold.
    Pat, who hadn’t even been shown her room, hadn’t been informed about how much rent, what kind of life-style was to be expected, was stunned.
    “What about the five other people, and the lady with the cats?” she asked desperately.
    “Oh no,” said Marigold.
    “No indeed,” said Joy.
    “Well, can I think about it?” Pat asked, trying to buy time. “I don’t know whether I could afford to live here, and you mightn’t like my friends, and we haven’t really sorted anything out.”
    Marigold looked like an old trusted friend who has suddenly and unexpectedly been rebuffed.
    “Of course you must decide for yourself, and perhaps you have somewhere else in mind. We are terrible, Joy, not to give Pat details of rent and things. We’re simply hopeless.”
    “The rent is £20, and we usually spend about £10 a week each on food, and flowers and wine,” said Joy.
    That was expensive, but not for what you got. You got a magnificent home, you got lovely meals, you got two very bright nice women to live with.
    Pat heard her own voice saying, “Fine. Yes, if you think I’d fit in here with you, that’s fine. Can I come at the weekend?”
    That night she wondered what she had done. Next morning she wondered whether she had been insane.
    “I don’t know,” said tough little Terry. “If the food’s as good as all that, if the one in the wheelchair does all the work, if the place is like something out of
Home and Garden
, I think you’re laughing. If you don’t like it you can always move out.”
    “I didn’t even look at my bedroom,” said Pat with a wail.
    “They’ll hardly give you a coal bin hole,” said Terry practically.
    Joy rang her breathlessly that day.
    “It’s super that you’re coming. Marigold’s so pleased. She asked me to tell you that there’s plenty of room in your bed-sitting room for anything you want to bring, so don’t worry about space. Any pictures or furniture you like.”
    Pat wondered why Marigold didn’t ring herself. She was at home, she didn’t have to avoid a spying boss. Pat also wondered whether this was a polite way of telling her that there were four walls and nothing else in her room.
    On Saturday she arrived with two students who ran a flat-moving service. They carried up her little tables, her rocking chair, and her suitcases. They had cluttered up her hotel bedroom ridiculously, and she wondered whether there would be any more room for them where she was going. As they all puffed up the eighty-three steps, Pat felt very foolish indeed.
    Joy let them in, with little cries of excitement. They paraded through the bedecked hall to a huge sunny room, which had recesses for cupboards, a big bed, and a washbasin. Compared to the rest of the flat, it looked like an empty warehouse.
    Joy fussed along behind them. “Marigold said we should empty it so that you wouldn’t feel restricted. But there’s lots of furniture available. There are curtains and shelves for these”—she waved at the recesses. “Marigold thought you might want your own things.”
    Pat paid the students, and sat down in the warehouse. Even her rocking chair looked lost. When she unpacked it wouldn’t be much better. Auntie Delia’s things would look lovely here. All those monstrous vases, even that beaded curtain. Maybe she should send for them. They were all in the little house in Leicester. They would be hers when Auntie Delia died. Strictly speaking they were hers already, since she had rented the house out just to get money to