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Sylvie, ‘What do you make of this?’ He hands her a lilac letter. ‘Just these lines.’ He taps the paper.
    ‘I feel so low and miss not seeing you. I feel like a prisoner up here and don’t know how much longer I could have done this …’
    As Sylvie reads aloud, he closes his eyes and drinks her voice, like a digestif . But she falters and when he opens his eyes, her face has turned sad. Her eyebrows pinch together.
    ‘She knew an end was coming,’ she says.

‘Really?’ Staffe knew he had missed a nuance, first time round. He wonders what else might have stared him in the face, only to be missed.
    Sylvie says, ‘… could have done this …’
    ‘It might just be that she’s going to have the baby?’ says Staffe.
    ‘She doesn’t mention a baby,’ says Sylvie, ‘and this is a letter to her boyfriend, right?’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘It means, she didn’t know about the baby when she wrote the letter …’
    ‘In which case she is giving up on something else.’
    ‘… Or, she knew about the baby and had decided she wasn’t going to have it,’ says Sylvie.
    Staffe sighs.
    ‘Is it getting to you?’ Sylvie runs her fingers through his hair. ‘Lovely paper, though.’
    Staffe recalls the lilac correspondence on Tchancov’s secretaire, puts the letter away and his fingers linger on the box in his jacket pocket. If Pulford wasn’t the other side of the wall, he might offer the ring up. He looks into her emerald eyes and can’t remember the last time he read a book, had an early night, woke up fresh as a daisy. He stretches out, flat, between her legs, his head resting on her tummy.
    Sylvie reaches for the TV remote and flicks through the channels, finally resting on University Challenge. Staffe can’t see the screen but he surrenders to the cadence of questions and answers, the starters and bonuses. He says, in a low voice, ‘You never talk about your university days. I bet you had a ball.’
    ‘You mean boyfriends? Well you didn’t go short.’ She pokes him on the shoulder. ‘I know that for sure.’
    ‘You can tell me,’ he says.
    ‘I only had one, really.’
    Staffe tries to remember if they have had this conversation before.
    She says, ‘I was a bit of a mess back then, what with my mum and everything.’
    He is jealous, that she had only one. And before he can help himself, he has said it. The idiot. ‘Is that where you met Ollie?’
    ‘Ollie?’
    ‘From the Randolph.’
    ‘Don’t be an idiot, Will.’
    *
    Rebeccah slides out of bed and feels the nip of the evening, cold as mountain water. She has slept too long, after a midnight-’til-six shift in Omega. She throws on Mitch’s parka, the fur of the hood warm on her face, and she goes through his pockets. It’s her money, for God’s sake, but once she hands it across, it’s his: ‘to see the both of us right, and save you from yourself’.
    But she’s already planning to save herself and tomorrow is her secret day. Her once a week. Like Elena says, it’s her money, and she dares anticipate that one day soon she will be more like Elena. Her plans are grand, for sure.
    She feeds a pound coin to the meter, and switches on the immersion, then boils a kettle for good measure. While she waits for the water to heat, Becx goes into the bathroom and pulls up the sealant strip, hooks her fingers round the bath panel and tugs it away. She reaches in for the plastic bag, having to get her head right in. The damp clags her nose.
    Cross-legged on the floor, she empties the contents of the bag into her lap. She has £ 4,280 in the Post Office book with another hundred from Frank tomorrow and some interest to be tagged on. It’s not enough. She doesn’t just want a beach and a few spliffs a day; her designs are on a brand-new business and she reckons she can do it for ten grand. Clippers and brushes and a crisp white uniform with royal blue piping and a little car. And some working capital – that’s what Elena said, and Arra