‘Because, as I’ve said, he’s away on business and his girlfriend who’s my friend and who has a key, her mother’s just been taken ill and she’s got to go to King’s Lynn, but she’ll leave her key with Christina, the neighbour downstairs who’s only going to be there during the middle part of today because she’s doing up a cottage in Wales and she’s expecting you to call. At the flat, that is, not in Wales, and no one’s asking you to go to King’s Lynn. Honestly, Charles, you seem rather dense this morning and not at all grateful for everyone running around on your behalf.’ Charles, summoned naked from his bed by her early call, clung to the phone as if it were a rope on a rock face. ‘No, I am, very grateful, just not quite with it when I answered.’ ‘Only if you don’t decide today he’s going to put it with the agents and it’ll probably go like a shot and even if you did buy it it would be more because of their commission. Did you talk to the building society, as you’d said you were going to?’ ‘I’m waiting to hear from them.’ ‘So you’ll go today, then?’ ‘Could you give me the address again?
