‘You know,’ she mused, ‘in the fantasies he seduces her on satin sheets. She’s wearing diaphanous lingerie and he draws it slowly away, piece by piece. Then she does the same for him, overwhelmed by his perfect taste in clothes.’

‘That’s true,’ he said gravely. ‘Yanking off three layers of flannel and a pair of long woollen underpants doesn’t quite do it.’

‘It did it for me,’ she said contentedly, snuggling against him.

Mandy nodded off almost at once and slept without nightmares, only peace.

In the morning they took some breakfast from the fast declining food stock and ate it the forbidden room where they could watch the falling snow. There was a little light, so that they didn’t have to waste the torch batteries.

‘The snow’s hypnotic, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘It almost sends you back to sleep.’

Dreamily she began to recite a few lines from a poem about snow.

‘Did you write that?’ Renzo asked.

‘No, I learned it at school when I was ten.’

‘And you still know it? What a memory. I can’t get over you being an academic.’

‘Because I don’t look like one? Don’t you know by now not to judge by appearances?’

‘Are you going to throw “delicate” at me again?’ he asked warily.

‘No, I promise. Actually, at one time I wanted to be a dancer. I took lessons, but I wasn’t good enough to make a career of it, so I found something else.’

‘So that’s why you move as you do, like a pretty little cat?’

She smiled. ‘That’s what you say now, but the first time you called me a cat it wasn’t a compliment.’

‘Not entirely, but I’ve always been fascinated by your movements, and I don’t just mean when you were dancing. Everything you do is graceful, like an elegant feline, insinuating herself wherever she wants to be. You insinuated yourself into my mind. At first I didn’t want you there, but you wouldn’t go away.’