I put on my coat and took an umbrella from the stand. “You’ll be here when I return?” I asked. “It’s only that I need to know what to buy.”

She looked at the window, listening to the cold rain pelting down. “I haven’t the courage to leave,” she said in a very small voice.

And so I went out to do my marketing, finding the shops dismally short of everything, but in the end I managed to find half a roast chicken for our dinner, a loaf of bread, and some dried apples as well as a little poppy seed cake for our tea. Walking back to the flat, I wondered if I would find it empty, after all. Without an umbrella, she would be wet to the skin in ten minutes. Even with one, I was hard-pressed to keep my skirts dry.

I came through the door, calling her name softly, but our kitchen cum sitting room was empty. Then the door to Diana’s room opened, and she came out to meet me, looking a little sheepish.

“I heard someone on the stairs,” she said, “and took fright.”

“You needn’t worry. No man-not even my father-escapes the sharp eye of Mrs. Hennessey, who lives on the ground floor.” I hung up my damp coat to dry, returned the umbrella to its stand, then began putting away my purchases. “Even if by some incredible bit of luck your husband discovered you were here, she wouldn’t let him trouble you if you didn’t wish it.”

I could see she didn’t quite believe me, and I wondered just how persuasive her husband might be. Not that it would matter to Mrs. Hennessey, who took pride in protecting the young women she’d accepted as lodgers. Neither cajoling nor bribes would get him anywhere.

A few minutes later, Lydia said out of the blue, as if it had been on her mind all morning and she couldn’t hold it in any longer, “I shouldn’t have brought up Juliana. It was wrong of me.”

Who was Juliana? A member of the family? Her husband’s former sweetheart? His mother? It could be anyone, of course, and yet I could tell from the way she spoke the name that this was someone who mattered a great deal.