“I’ll call Mrs. Higgler tomorrow,” he said.

“Tell you what,” said Rosie, with an endearing wrinkle of her nose, “call her tonight. It’s not late in America, after all.”

Fat Charlie nodded. They walked out of the wine bar together, Rosie with a spring in her step, Fat Charlie like a man going to the gallows. He told himself not to be silly: After all, perhaps Mrs. Higgler had moved, or had her phone disconnected. It was possible. Anything was possible.

They went up to Fat Charlie’s place, the upstairs half of a smallish house in Maxwell Gardens, just off the Brixton Road.

“What time is it in Florida?” Rosie asked.

“Late afternoon,” said Fat Charlie.

“Well. Go on then.”

“Maybe we should wait a bit. In case she’s out.”

“And maybe we should call now, before she has her dinner.”

Fat Charlie found his old paper address book, and under H was a scrap of an envelope, in his mother’s handwriting, with a telephone number on it, and beneath that, Callyanne Higgler.

The phone rang and rang.

“She’s not there,” he said to Rosie, but at that moment the phone at the other end was answered, and a female voice said “Yes? Who is this?”

“Um. Is that Mrs. Higgler?”

“Who is this?” said Mrs. Higgler. “If you’re one of they damn telemarketers, you take me off your list right now or I sue. I know my rights.”

“No. It’s me. Charles Nancy. I used to live next door to you.”

“Fat Charlie? If that don’t beat all. I been looking for your number all this morning. I turn this place upside down, looking for it, and you think I could find it? What I think happen was I had it written in my old accounts book.