‘Thank you,’ I said, and sat down in an armchair. ‘Thank you.’

Fiona was left standing by the door. ‘I’ll go then, shall I?’

‘No – please – if you could just bear with me a little longer. We might get somewhere. Please, sit down.’

Fiona hesitated, and before coming to sit down on the sofa opposite me, she opened the door to the landing outside and left it ajar. I pretended not to have noticed this. She perched on the edge of the sofa, her back arched and her hands folded unhappily in her lap.

‘What were you saying just now?’ I asked.

‘You want me to go through all that again?’

‘Just briefly. In a couple of words.’

‘I was asking you to sponsor me. I’m doing a sponsored bike ride, for the hospital.’ She passed me the sheet of A4 paper, roughly half of which was covered with signatures.

A few lines at the top of the paper explained the nature of the event, and what the money was being raised for. I read them quickly and said, ‘Forty miles sounds an awful long way. You must be very fit.’

‘Well, I’ve never done anything quite like this before. I thought it would get me out and about.’

I folded the paper in two, laid it aside and thought for a moment. I could feel a new energy rising in me and the temptation to laugh, odd though it would have seemed, was quite powerful. ‘Do you know what the funny thing is?’ I said. ‘Shall I tell you the really funny thing?’

‘Please do.’

‘This is the longest conversation I’ve had – the most I’ve talked to someone – for something like two years. More than two years, I think. The longest.’

Fiona laughed in disbelief. ‘But we’ve barely spoken.’

‘None the less.’

She laughed again. ‘But that’s ridiculous. Have you been on a desert island or something?’

‘No. I’ve been right here.’

A confused shake of the head. ‘Well how come?’

‘I don’t know: I just didn’t want to. It hasn’t been a conscious decision or anything, it’s just that the occasion’s never arisen. It’s easy, you’d be surprised. I suppose in the old days you’d have to have talked to someone: going into shops and things. But now you can do all your shopping in the supermarket, and you can do all your banking by machine, and that’s about it.’

A thought occurred to me, and I got up to lift the receiver on the telephone. It was still connected.

‘Does my voice sound strange to you? How does it sound?’

‘It sounds fine. Quite normal.’

‘What about this flat? Does it smell?’

‘It’s a bit … close, yes.’

I picked up the remote control for the television and was about to switch off. The young boy with the locked, expressionless eyes, his back as tense and rigid as Fiona’s when she had sat down on my sofa, was no longer on the screen: but the avuncular man with the big grin and the heavy black moustache was still stomping around, this time in full military uniform and surrounded by men of the same age and nationality and bearing. I watched him for a few seconds and felt another memory beginning to recover its shape.

‘I know who that is,’ I said, pointing and clicking my finger. ‘It’s – whatsisname – President of Iraq …’

‘Michael, everyone knows who that is. It’s Saddam Hussein.’

‘That’s right. Saddam.’ Then, before turning the television off, I asked: ‘Who was that boy with him? The one he was trying to put his arms around?’

‘Haven’t you been watching the news? That was one of the hostages. He’s been parading them on television, as if they were cattle or something.’

This made little sense to me, but I could tell it was not the moment for elaborate explanations. I switched the television off and said – listening with interest to my own voice – ‘I’m sorry, you must think I’m being very rude. Would you like a drink? I’ve got wine and orange juice and beer and lemonade, and even a bit of whisky, I think.’

Fiona hesitated.

‘We can leave the door open if you like. I don’t mind about that at all.’

And then she smiled, and sat back on the sofa, and crossed her legs, saying, ‘Well, why not. That would be very nice.’

‘Wine?’

‘I think orange juice, please. I can’t seem to shake off this dreadful sore throat.’

∗

My little kitchen had always been the cleanest room in the flat. I never dusted or used a vacuum cleaner because dust is not easily visible to the casual observer, it’s possible to turn a blind eye to it, yet I could not tolerate the sight of smudges and splashes of dried food caked to my brilliant white surfaces. When I withdrew into the kitchen, therefore, and turned on the two 100-watt spotlights which sent their beams of pure brightness fearlessly exploring every gleaming angle and corner, it restored my self-confidence. The night was slowly darkening, and from the kitchen sink the first thing I could see was my own reflected face, hovering like a spectre outside my fifth-floor window. This was the face that Fiona had been addressing for the last few minutes. I took a good look at it and tried to imagine how it would have appeared to her. The eyes were puffy from lack of sleep and bloodshot from too much glassy staring at the television screen; deeply scored lines were beginning to appear around the corners of the mouth, although these were partially obscured by two days’ worth of stubble; the jaw-line was still reasonably firm, but another three or four years would probably see the onset of a double chin; the hair, once tawny, was now streaked with grey and stood desperately in need of cutting and re-styling; there were the shreds of a parting, so tentative and wasted that the onlooker might easily have been forgiven for not noticing that it was there at all. It wasn’t a friendly face: the eyes, a deep, velvety blue, might once have suggested wells of possibility but now seemed guarded, fenced off. But at the same time it was honest. It was a face you could trust.

And if you looked beyond the face, what did you see? I peered out into the twilight. Nothing much. A few scattered lights had been turned on across the courtyard, and the gentle babble of televisions and stereo systems drifted over from open windows. It was a muggy August evening, entirely typical of a summer which seemed to be taking a malicious pleasure in testing Londoners to the limit, drenching them day and night in dense city heat. Looking down, I noticed the movement of a shadow in the gardens. Two shadows, one very small. An old woman walking her dog, probably struggling to keep up as it zig-zagged from bush to bush, its nerves stretched and tingling with the excitement of secret, nocturnal pleasures. I listened to its intermittent rustles and scuffles, the only distinct sounds to be made out, apart from the occasional siren, above London’s buried monotonous hum.

Turning away from the window, I fetched a carton of orange juice from the fridge and cracked three or four ice cubes into a tumbler. I poured the juice over the blocks of ice, enjoying their dull music as they clinked together and rose to the top of the glass. Then I poured myself a glass of beer and took the drinks into the sitting room.

As I paused on the threshold, I tried to look at the room with the same objectivity I had brought to the reflection of my own face: wanting to imagine the impression it would have made on Fiona. She was watching me, now, so I didn’t have as much time, but some quick observations presented themselves: the fact that the curtains, which had come with the flat, and the pictures, which had been bought many years ago, reflected nothing of my present taste; the fact that so many of the surfaces – the table, the window-sills, the top of the television, the mantelpiece – were stacked with papers and magazines and videotapes rather than the few well-chosen ornaments which might have given the room form and personality; the fact that the bookshelves, which I had put up myself, also many years ago, had been largely cleared of books (now jumbled into a tower of cardboard boxes in the spare bedroom) and were scattered, instead, with still more videotapes, piled both horizontally and vertically, some pre-recorded and some filled with scraps of films and programmes taped off the television. It was a room, I thought, which presented an aspect not dissimilar to the face reflected in the kitchen window: it had the potential to be welcoming but for the moment seemed to have transformed itself, through a mixture of carelessness and disuse, into something ungainly and almost eerily neutral.