How dearly Mrs Strunk would enjoy being sad about Jim! But, aha, she doesn’t know; none of them know. It happened in Ohio, and the L.A. papers didn’t carry the story. George has simply spread it around that Jim’s folks, who are getting along in years, have been trying to persuade him to come back home and live with them; and that now, as the result of his recent visit to them, he will be remaining in the East indefinitely. Which is the gospel truth. As for the animals, those devilish reminders, George had to get them out of his sight immediately; he couldn’t even bear to think of them being anywhere in the neighbourhood. So, when Mrs Garfein wanted to know if he would sell the mynah bird, he answered that he’d shipped them all back to Jim. A dealer from San Diego took them away.

And now, in reply to the questions of Mrs Strunk and the others, George answers that, yes indeed, he has just heard from Jim and that Jim is fine. They ask him less and less often. They are quite incurious, really.

But your book is wrong, Mrs Strunk, says George, when it tells you that Jim is the substitute I found for a real son, a real kid brother, a real husband, a real wife. Jim wasn’t a substitute for anything. And there is no substitute for Jim, if you’ll forgive my saying so, anywhere.

Your exorcism has failed, dear Mrs Strunk, says George, squatting on the toilet and peeping forth from his lair to watch her emptying the dustbag of her vacuum cleaner into the trash-can. The unspeakable is still here; right in your very midst.

Damnation. The phone.

Even with the longest cord the phone company will give you, it won’t reach into the bathroom. George gets himself off the seat and shuffles into the study, like a man in a sack-race. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello – is that – it is you, Geo?’

‘Hello, Charley.’

‘I say, I didn’t call too early, did I?’