‘I am like one who died young. All my life might have been.' Cissy Kohler lay on a patchwork quilt and thought: The way I feel, this ought to make me invisible. Bits and pieces of past lives, some hers, some not, stitched together in a show of wholeness. Through the chintz curtains she could see the branches of a wych elm swaying in the wind. In the room below she could hear voices but she didn't strain her ears, for she knew they couldn't be saying anything that mattered. 'Charming place,' said the tall man in the dark suit whose impeccable cut was a foil to a stringy tie which looked as if it had been dropped in a bowl of Brown Windsor and wrung out by hand. 'Yeah, very quaint,' said Jay Waggs. 'How can I help you, Mr Sempernel?'

'Belongs to Jacklin, I gather? Decent of him to let you have it.' 'I figure it'll be on his bill.' 'What? Oh, quite. These solicitors. But it's ideal. Good security. Just the one track down. And that wall behind. Perfect.' He was looking out of the window into the small rear garden. The cottage stood in the U-shaped nook which some peasant who knew his rights had indented in the twelve-foot boundary wall of an extensive country estate. 'Perfect,' agreed Waggs. 'The wall and the guard, they make Cissy feel really at home.' 'Ha-ha. Droll. Though the guard, as you call him, is of course positioned here to keep the media hounds out, not to keep Miss Kohler in.' 'So she's free to come and go.' 'But naturally. Within the limits of our agreement, of course, which I do not doubt that Mr Jacklin has spelt out in tedious detail.