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dumped the hot-water bottle under the meagre blankets, plugged in the electric fire, and cowering close in front of it she began to undress. The fire glowed red: the growing warmth played on her bare shoulders, and then, with a sudden ‘phut!’ it spat at her like a furious cat. The brief warmth died, trickled away and became one with the icy draughts whistling in from every shadowy corner.
    Alice gave up. Huddling most of her clothes back on again, she crawled into the chilly bed, pulled the thin blankets over her, and her winter coat as well. She did not expect to sleep. She lay there clutching the hot-water bottle against her, waiting, with abject resignation, for it to start leaking.

Chapter 5
    Her eyes opened on the great red ball of the winter sun. Through the small high window it filled the room with rosy light, and she realised to her astonishment that she must have slept solidly the whole night through, a thing that hadn’t happened to her in weeks. And the hot-water bottle hadn’t leaked; it still lay faintly warm against her body where she had been clutching it last night. With a hot-water bottle that didn’t leak, and with the mighty crimson globe of the sun welcoming her back to consciousness, Alice felt herself momentarily filled with new strength, new hope.
    But strength to perform what task? Hope for what sort of a future? These weighty questions, like a pair of over-full suitcases , brought her brief optimism to a standstill. Before they could drag her all the way back into last night’s depression, she resolved to do, one by one, the things you can do anyway, whether you are depressed or not.
    Like getting out of bed. Like going down all those stairs to the bathroom, and then on to the kitchen in the basement.
    *
    The kitchen lay deserted now in the half-light of the winter dawn, and silent too until with a sudden peremptory rattle from the scullery, a large tabby cat appeared and planted itself, with stern expectancy, right in her path, fixing Alice with a gold, unblinking gaze. Evidently, the first person who came down in the morning was expected to do something about the animal.
    But what? There was no telling. “Sorry, Puss, you’ll have to wait for Hetty,” she apologised, and with a vague idea of making herself a cup of coffee, moved in the direction of the cooker.
    A small, agonised sound stopped her in her tracks. Not exactly a ‘miaow’, the situation was too desperate for that; more a sort oftortured hiccup, the last gasp of a soul in torment, and glancing down Alice was confronted by a look of such absolute outrage in those golden eyes that she almost shrank away. Obviously, she was doing the wrong thing. She tried moving in a new direction, and this time, it seemed, she was doing better … getting warmer … warmer, for the creature was now purring on a high, frantic note, coiling and weaving itself about her ankles as she moved.
    The refrigerator. Of course. Led there unerringly by her expert guide, Alice opened the door and peered inside. No fewer than nine bottles of milk confronted her, all of them opened, and most more than half empty. One carried round its neck a sort of paper collar bearing the message ‘ HANDS OFF !’ and another, very neat and black, the initials ‘ DD ’ — Miss Dorinda, presumably, who liked everything to be just so; certainly, she must leave that one alone. A third, looking as if it had seen better days, carried the initials ‘ WX ’; and the last in the line, more cryptically still, bore the inscription ‘ YESTERDAY ONLY ’.
    But she couldn’t puzzle over these symbols for long. The single-minded intensity of desire that radiated knee-high from where the cat coiled and writhed in serpentine rapture was too much for her, and grabbing the ‘ YESTERDAY ’ bottle she rapidly poured half of it into a pie-dish, set it on the floor, and then stood back, contemplating the full glory of her achievement; the creation, single-handed, of absolute