“Our strategy?”

“Yes, our overall strategy. Of course, you’ve realised, this isn’t the time for little tweakings of the truth to show yourself in a better light. Absolutely not the time for the small self-aggrandising white lie. No, no. You’re remembering, aren’t you, why you were given this job in the first place. Ray, I’m depending on you to present yourself to Emily just as you are. So long as you do that, our strategy stays on course.”

“Well, look, I’m hardly on course here to come over like Emily’s greatest hero…”

“Yes, you appreciate the situation and I’m grateful. But something’s just occurred to me. There’s just one thing, one little thing in your repertoire that won’t quite do here. You see, Ray, she’s got this idea that you have good musical taste.”

“Ah…”

“Just about the only time she ever uses you to belittle me is in this area of musical taste. It’s the one respect in which you aren’t absolutely perfect for your current assignment. So Ray, you’ve got to promise not to talk about this topic.”

“Oh, for God’s sake…”

“Just do it for me, Ray. It’s not much to ask. Just don’t start going on about that… that croony nostalgia music she likes. And if she brings it up, then you just play it dumb. That’s all I’m asking. Otherwise, you just be your natural self. Ray, I can count on you about this, can’t I?”

“Well, I suppose so. This is all pretty theoretical anyway. I don’t see us chatting about anything this evening.”

“Good! So that’s settled. Now, let’s move to your little problem. You’ll be glad to hear I’ve been giving it some thought. And I’ve come up with a solution. Are you listening?”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“There’s this couple who keep coming round. Angela and Solly. They’re okay, but if they weren’t neighbours we wouldn’t have much to do with them. Anyway they often come round. You know, dropping in without warning, expecting a cup of tea. Now here’s the point. They turn up at various times in the day when they’ve been taking Hendrix out.”

“Hendrix?”

“Hendrix is a smelly, uncontrollable, possibly homicidal Labrador. For Angela and Solly, of course, the foul creature’s the child they never had. Or the one they haven’t had yet, they’re probably still young enough for real children. But no, they prefer darling, darling Hendrix. And when they call round, darling Hendrix routinely goes about demolishing the place as determinedly as any disaffected burglar. Down goes the standard lamp. Oh dear, never mind, darling, did you have a fright? You get the picture. Now listen. About a year ago, we had this coffee-table book, cost a fortune, full of arty pictures of young gay men posing in North African casbahs. Emily liked to keep it open at this particular page, she thought it went with the sofa. She’d go mad if you turned over the page. Anyway, about a year ago, Hendrix came in and chewed it all up. That’s right, sank his teeth into all that glossy photography, went on to chew up about twenty pages in all before Mummy could persuade him to desist. You see why I’m telling you this, don’t you?”

“Yes. That is, I see a hint of an escape route, but…”

“All right, I’ll spell it out. This is what you tell Emily. The door went, you answered it, this couple are there with Hendrix tugging at the leash. They tell you they’re Angela and Solly, good friends needing their cup of tea. You let them in, Hendrix runs wild, chews up the diary. It’s utterly plausible. What’s the matter? Why aren’t you thanking me? Won’t quite do for you, sir?”

“I’m very grateful, Charlie. I’m just thinking it through, that’s all. Look, for one thing, what if these people really turn up? After Emily’s home, I mean.”

“That’s possible, I suppose. All I can say is you’d be very, very unlucky if such a thing happened. When I said they came round a lot, I meant maybe once a month at most. So stop picking holes and be grateful.”

“But Charlie, isn’t it a little far-fetched that this dog would chew just the diary, and exactly those pages?”

I heard him sigh. “I assumed you didn’t need the rest of it spelt out. Naturally, you have to do the place over a bit. Knock over the standard lamp, spill sugar over the kitchen floor. You have to make it like Hendrix did this whirlwind job on the place. Look, they’re calling the flight. I’ve got to go. I’ll check in with you once I’m in Germany.”

While listening to Charlie, I’d had a feeling come over me similar to the one I get when someone starts on about a dream they had, or the circumstances that led to the little bump on their car door. His plan was all very well-ingenious, even-but I couldn’t see how it had to do with anything I was really likely to say or do when Emily got home, and I’d found myself getting more and more impatient. But once Charlie had gone, I found his call had had a kind of hypnotic effect on me. Even as my head was dismissing his idea as idiotic, my arms and legs were setting out to put his “solution” into action.

I began by putting the standard lamp down on its side. I was careful not to bump anything with it, and I removed the shade first, putting it back on at a cocked angle only once the whole thing was arranged on the floor. Then I took down a vase from a bookshelf and laid it down on the rug, spreading around it the dried grasses that had been inside. Next I selected a good spot near the coffee table to “knock over” the wastepaper basket. I went about my work in a strange, disembodied mode. I didn’t believe any of it would achieve anything, but I was finding the whole procedure rather soothing. Then I remembered all this vandalism was supposed to relate to the diary, and went through into the kitchen.

After a little think, I took a bowl of sugar from a cupboard, placed it on the table not far from the purple notebook, and slowly tilted it until the sugar slid out. I had a bit of a job preventing the bowl rolling off the edge of the table, but in the end got it to stay put. By this time, the gnawing panic I’d been feeling had evaporated. I wasn’t tranquil, exactly, but it now seemed silly to have got myself in the state I had.

I went back to the living room, lay down on the sofa and picked up the Jane Austen book. After a few lines, I felt a huge tiredness coming over me and before I knew it, I was slipping into sleep once more.

I WAS WOKEN UP by the phone. When Emily’s voice came on the machine, I sat up and answered it.

“Oh goody, Raymond, you are there. How are you, darling? How are you feeling now? Have you managed to relax?”

I assured her I had, that in fact I’d been sleeping.

“Oh what a pity! You probably haven’t been sleeping properly for weeks, and now just when you finally get a moment’s escape, I go and disturb you! I’m so sorry! And I’m sorry too, Ray, I’m going to have to disappoint you. There’s an absolute crisis on here and I won’t be able to get home quite as quickly as I’d hoped. In fact, I’m going to be another hour at least. You’ll be able to hold out, won’t you?”

I reiterated how relaxed and happy I was feeling.

“Yes, you do sound really stable now. I’m so sorry, Raymond, but I’ve got to go and sort this out. Help yourself to anything and everything. Goodbye, darling.”

I put down the phone and stretched my arms. The light was starting to fade now, so I went about the apartment switching on lights. Then I contemplated my “wrecked” living room, and the more I looked at it, the more it seemed overwhelmingly contrived. The sense of panic began to grow once more in my stomach.

The phone went again, and this time it was Charlie. He was, he told me, beside the luggage carousel at Frankfurt airport.

“They’re taking bloody ages. We haven’t had a single bag come down yet. How are you making out over there? Madam not home yet?”

“No, not yet. Look, Charlie, that plan of yours. It’s not going to work.”