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you?’
    Miss Davis stared at her intensely, her face a couple of inches from Dorothy’s. She leaned forward suddenly and kissed her on the mouth. Dorothy gave a muffled cry. When Miss Davis drew back, there was blood on her lips.
    ‘Yes, you know,’ she said. ‘You’ve dreamed about it, more than once. Only this won’t be a dream, my poppet. This will be real.’
    She snatched Dorothy’s hand and led her to the door while Rosemary looked on in helpless anguish.

CHAPTER 4
    As dusk gathered beyond the plastic-shrouded windows, the light in the lounge imperceptibly faded, until the residents were no more than insubstantial shapes merging into the outlines of the furniture. For the most part they were silent, but from time to time one would suddenly burst into speech. This set others off, until soon the whole group was yattering inconsequentially away, all talking, none listening. Then as suddenly as it had begun it would stop, each speaker breaking off in mid-sentence until the final voice ceased and silence resumed once more.
    This time it was Samuel Rosenstein who started it. His name was actually Rossiter, but Rosemary and Dorothy had needed a Jew to complete their cast of suspects.
    ‘Hello? Hello?’ he shouted into the telephone. ‘Operator? Connect me to the police immediately!’
    Next Jack Weatherby chipped in with a few stray phrases from the news bulletins he had once read on the BBC World Service.
    ‘… on the clear understanding that the respect of such demagogues can only be won by a show of force, thus enabling any eventual negotiations to proceed from a position of …’
    ‘… turned my back for a single instant,’ cried Grace Lebon, whose real name was Higginbottom or something equally unthinkable, ‘to look at something which had caught my eye in a shop window, and when I looked round again the pram was empty!’
    ‘… can’t say when I’ve enjoyed myself so much,’ broke out Purvey, a retired accountant who had no more connection with the Church than Weatherby with the Army. ‘Unfortunately the last train seems to have gone, so if it wouldn’t inconvenience you too terribly I wonder if …’
    This brought Belinda Scott to her feet.
    ‘We’ve got to take under our wings, tra-la!’ she bawled at the top of her voice. ‘These perfectly loathsome old things, tra-la!’
    As the tumult rose about her, Rosemary gave a panicky glance at the clock, which of course still stood at ten past four. How long had Dorothy been gone? Rosemary had said she would wait for her, but how long would that be? Would she return at all? They might already have dragged her off to hospital, trussed and gagged on a stretcher like Channing on his bed.
    As the realization of what her friend’s absence was going to mean came home to Rosemary for the first time, she felt her control begin to slip away. For years now they had been at each other’s side night and day. It was always Rosemary who had taken the initiative. It was she who introduced new twists and turns in the story which they had elaborated together, she who kept all the strands of the plot in play while still managing to accommodate – and thus to some extent control – the real horrors which surrounded them.
    In contrast, Dorothy’s had been the subordinate role. Her task had been to fill in the gaps which Rosemary left blank for her, to spot the errors which Rosemary had deliberately planted for just that reason, to approve and criticize, suggest and reject. Thus when Rosemary had allowed herself to consider the possibility of Dorothy being sent away to hospital, she had seen it in terms of her friend being cut off from her , and hence from the source of the comforting narrative which had sustained them both for so long. Now she was forced to acknowledge that her own position would be little better, in that respect at least.
    The stories were a collaboration, she realized now, and although Rosemary had always been the dominant partner she could