Troy walked home. Clover was upside down on the floor, her legs on the chaise longue, her feet in the air, as though she had dropped clumsily from heaven and was waiting for mortal man to right her again. She was reading a magazine, held over her head and lit by the reflected glow of the gas fire.
‘How can you see to read in this light?’
‘That’s wot Grandad would say.’
Which ended that conversation. It was marginally less insulting than ‘That’s what my Mum would say.’
She had not one magazine but half a dozen, ranging from the solidity of Woman’s Realm to the teen zeens of Marilyn and Romeo. He wondered how careful she was when she went out. He wondered who she had phoned. He did not ask. He went up to his bedroom and lay down for an hour with the Home Service news on low, listened to the chimes of Big Ben, and mustered enough energy to cope with a Fitz evening.