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ordered came to clear out every last thing and take it to a lock-up. I scribbled one more note: ‘
As I told Martin, I decided to sell after all . . . family illness in South Africa . . . stuff in storage . . . send you a proper address . . . feel free to keep the ladder
.’ I knew poor Martin would get a proper ticking-off. ‘She says she
told
you. Honestly!’ And yet the note would satisfy their curiosity enough to stop them asking questions. They would have something to tell the other neighbours and, if I knew the world, all but my menacing telephone callers would soon forget me.
    I dropped the envelope through the Tallentires’ letter box and left a collection of my least favourite plants on their back step to add a touch of verisimilitude to my claim to be leaving the country. And then I scarpered. I said goodbye to no one. I said nothing at work. I simply slid into the delicious anonymity of 14F Forum Buildings, and used the long light summer evenings to look for somewhere permanent to live.
    In the end I chose Pickstone, a not-frightfully-attractive dormer village eight miles the other side of the city. I dropped the idea of a flat and chose instead a little terraced house. It looked like nothing from the outside, but whoever had owned it had made the most of space and light and colour. The pocket-handkerchief garden was enchanting and the place so cheap that all my outlays would be more than covered by my new salary.
    And that was furnished by a job I came to love. Even the biliously lit workplace became a pleasure. One morning Trevor Hanley and his father both came in beaming. ‘Right, ladies. We want all of you to work at home next week from Monday till Friday.’
    Audrey and Dana wheedled and probed. But the Hanleys were adamant. ‘No explanations.’ ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
    It was a soothing few days. I worked in the early mornings and the evenings and took the chance to use the rest of the time to shop for all those fiddly things you find you need after a move. Without the office chatter, I finished everything in half the time. On Thursday I even considered calling in for yet another batch of clients’ files to tide me over. But in the end I spent the time in my garden. From the sheer stillness around me I could tell that soon the summer would be drawing to an end. I sat in the tinyarbour and wondered how I could be so happy after so many wasted years. It seemed to me that most other women who were in my position could tell themselves they’d salvaged something: ‘But then again I got two lovely daughters out of it’, ‘Mind you, we had some good times’, ‘I’d have to admit I saw a bit of the world.’ As for myself, sitting there in thickening dusk, I supposed that at least I had learned the value of absence. To have the two people in the world who had so thoroughly drained my crystals well and truly gone was, it seemed, pretty much all it took to make me happy. Had I been
born
wanting so little? Or had I learned the hard way that you can do without anything in life except for simple peace of mind?
    On Monday I found Audrey and Dana waiting for me on the office steps. ‘They’ve locked us out.’
    Even as Audrey made the complaint, the door swung open and Trevor Hanley flung his arms wide to greet us. ‘Surprise!’
    A giant picture window had appeared. It ran the length of the office. Those horrid lights had been switched off and daylight flooded in. I was astonished. I hadn’t realized up till then that the ugly and featureless room in which we’d been working was directly above the canal path. Birches and willows. Reed-warblers. Even goldfinches. From thatday on my workplace was a double joy, for I have always been content dealing with numbers. Numbers do as they’re told. They are predictable. No half-tones in accounts. Add up the figures. You are either right or you are wrong. The