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before.’
    Belinda frowned. What did he mean, it happened to
him?
    They cornered with a squeal of rubber.
    ‘Let’s leave Maggie out of it. She’s got her own agenda.’
    Stefan slowed for some lights, and Belinda took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m not going loco, as you put it. It’s just that nobody understands me except Neville.’
    Stefan swung the car into Armadale Road, spotted a parking space and braked abruptly. It was an excellent spot, twenty yards from the house. He reversed the car into the space, turned off the engine, extinguished the lights. And putting his hand on Belinda’s arm, he pulled a solemn face.
    ‘Belinda, this isn’t like you. You are breaking up.’
    ‘For heaven’s sake, she’s only a cleaning lady.’
    She kissed him hard, running a hand round his collar, smelling his hair. She’d never been addicted to a person before Stefan.
    ‘You’ll like her,’ she said. ‘Once you’ve met her, I promise you. You won’t be able to help it. And Viv will get over it. The cow.’
    Back at Jago’s, at three a.m., Viv crept downstairs to check the burglar alarm and found Linda sitting in the dining room in the dark, a book of Viv’s old photos in front of her on the table.
    ‘Linda?’ But Linda did not look up.
    Viv switched on a table lamp and coughed.
    ‘Viv!’ Linda said pleasantly. ‘What a nice evening. Your friends are so interesting.’
    ‘Well, Leon was dreadful. Honestly, Jago is such a desperate judge of character. Do you know, after all that boring Brands Hatch nonsense, it turned out he doesn’t drive? Maggie had to give him a lift to Wandsworth Town. I don’t know why I try so hard for people, they never co-operate.’
    Viv tidied a few things while Linda watched. The light-bulbs hummed. She smoothed a curtain. She had something important to ask. Talking to the cleaning lady, she had none of the commanding manner she adopted with Belinda. She seemed almost deferential.
    ‘Linda?’
    ‘Mm?’
    ‘You know how I depend on you?’ Viv laughed nervously. ‘I had a scare this evening. Did Belinda speak to you? You wouldn’t leave us, not after everything?’
    But, as Linda turned a page and studied the pictures, Viv’s heart sank. She had hoped Linda would do the cleaning-ladyequivalent of running into her arms. Instead, it was like asking, ‘You do love me, don’t you?’ and knowing after a few, short, vertiginous seconds that an affair was all over. The longer you have to wait for an answer to that sort of question, the more certain you can be that the answer is not the one you want.
    ‘How old is Stefan?’ asked Linda.
    ‘What? Oh, fifty-one.’
    ‘And you introduced him to Belinda.’
    ‘Yes. My sister met him at Imperial.’
    Viv joined Linda to look at the album. It included fuzzy colour pictures from the old DramSoc days. Viv perused the page. Their faces were almost unrecognizable, but nothing had changed, really. At college, Maggie was disastrously involved with a succession of goaty lecturers. Belinda complained all the time about the timetable. And Viv organized an excellent summer outing, to which Jago brought along some useless dickhead they never saw again.
    ‘Are you going to Belinda?’
    ‘I thought I would, yes. Oh, Viv, don’t look like that. I’m so sorry. But at the end of the day, I’m only your cleaning lady!’
    ‘How can you say that?’ Viv gasped.
    Linda took Viv’s hand and squeezed it. It would have been clear to any onlooker that the usual relationship between employer and cleaning lady (‘How are the feet?’ ‘We need more Jif’) had been long since outgrown.
    ‘It’s gone a bit mad here,’ said Linda.
    Viv laughed. ‘You can say that again.’
    She thought about it, took a deep breath, and resolved to be brave. ‘So. How are we off for J-cloths?’ she asked.
    Linda smiled at her gratefully. ‘How the hell should I know?’ she retorted.
    At which the two of them laughed and laughed in the small hours until they had to