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do died on my lips. The man was very, very still. I felt him watching me creep down the staircase, reading my body rather than my face. My mother took my arm and led me down to him as if I was a virgin bride. Then he reached out, one huge white hand, and took mine in his. His hand felt like that of a reptile, cool, smooth, dry. I returned the handshake, transfixed with curiosity, fascination and alarm. He was wearing at least three gold rings. I said, ‘You’re the scientist.’
    The man dropped his hand and flicked the ash on his cigarette into her brass umbrella stand.
    ‘That’s right,’ he said.
    I felt like a justified spy. It was the same slow, firm voice that I had heard on the tape. I tried to take him in at once. I couldn’t. There was too much of him there. He had already occupied too much of me. I gaze into this man’s hooded eyes. His gaze is steady, pale and grey. He has the eyes of a wolf. The curtain has gone up on the action. The play can begin.
    But what was my role? My lines? Who was waiting in the wings, following the text, ready to prompt me now? I stood tongue-tied, gazing at the Minotaur, who returned my stare in the shadow of the dim staircase, unhurried, amused. I perceived the compliment, and blushed. He thinks I’m like her. He thinks that I too am beautiful. I drew myself up straighter. I know who you are. I have seen you before. But this is the first time that you see me. This man does not care. I watch the great hand rising, the cigarette gently clenched. This is how a man looks at a girl he owns, her face, her thighs, her throat. His gaze is slow, obscene.
    But the moment passed. My mother is talking. She is bored, wants to go out. She is utterly unworried by our first charged glares at one another.
    ‘We’re going out, sweetheart. Do you mind? There’s still some chicken from last night in the fridge. Just heat it up. Nothing but yoghurt for pudding.’
    She is grappling with her coat. He doesn’t help her.
    ‘I haven’t even introduced you. This is Roehm. We’ve known each other since God knows when. How did you find out that he was a scientist? Did I tell you? I don’t think I did tell you. Can you answer the phone? Your aunt might be back. She left a message yesterday. I rang from work but she was out and Liberty had no idea. If she does ring tell her that tomorrow is fine . . .’
    She is combing her hair. She is the Lorelei, her siren power bobbed. She is diminished beside this man.
    ‘You’d like to go, wouldn’t you? It won’t interfere with your homework. You’ve got bags of time over the weekend and anyway you don’t go out enough. Sometimes I wonder what on earth you do up there.’
    She flashed her smile of intimate complicity at my reflection in the mirror, littered with shadows.
    ‘Luce is off to New York in November and won’t be back until a bit before Christmas. Did I tell you? She’s got a new contract. It’s wonderful news . . .’
    Now she is leaning up the stairs to kiss me. I bend down towards her. The huge man she has called Roehm stands absolutely still, sinister, unhurried. I feel compromised and angered by his size, his gaze. It is as if he absorbs all the light around him. Sweat gathers in my armpits, my fingers are chilly. In the empty spaces of the darkening house the central heating clicks on, the gas thuds alight. In this man’s presence nothing seems natural between my mother and myself.
    I formulated a curious sentence in my mind, each word carved and precise. This man is my mother’s lover. And then there it was, engraved on the murky wallpaper behind his dense black presence, at once so enthralling and so monstrous. This man is my mother’s lover. I tried to make sense of the triangle we formed in the hallway. There she stands, combing her hair and watching me, not herself, in the mirror. Roehm stands before the sentence I have written on the wall. The sentence remains, fixed, accusatory, but without concrete meaning and suddenly