I wondered, but didn’t ask, why quite so early, but maybe it was simply a sign of her apparent maturity and independence. She really didn’t look as if she needed the small sum we’d agreed: she was still tanned from a long summer at the house by the sea that her parents owned in Villa Gesell, and her tiny handbag alone must have cost more than my old computer on the desk in front of her.

She took dictation for a couple of hours more and only once did she show any sign of tiredness: during a pause she bent her head to one side, then the other, and her neck, her pretty neck, made a sharp crack. When her time was up, she stood, collected the coffee cups, washed them up and left them to drain by the sink. She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and left.

And this was the pattern from then on: a kiss on arrival, her little bag dropped, almost thrown, beside the sofa, two hours of dictation, coffee and a brief, smiling conversation in the narrow kitchen, two more hours’ work, and at a certain point, unfailingly, the bending of her head to one side then the other, half painfully, half seductively, and the sharp crack of her vertebrae. I got to know her clothes, the changes in her face-sometimes more sleepy than others-the variations in hairstyle, the coded signals of her make-up. At one point I did ask about Kloster, but by that time I was much more interested in her than in him. She had indeed started to seem to me perfect in every way, and I was dreaming up improbable scenarios in which I kept her working for me. But Kloster, apparently, was perfect in every way as a boss. He was considerate, giving her time off for exams, and she let me know, tactfully, that he paid her almost double what she’d agreed with me. But what was the man like, the mysterious Mr K, I insisted. What did I want to know? she asked, disconcerted. Everything, of course.