opened the polished slit of the night safe and slid the bag into its mouth. She heard it bumping softly as it passed into the entrails of the bank, and the home-going crowds flowed reassuringly past her. Harriet went on with them, towards the tube station.
A few moments later she reached the street where Leo had his studio. Leo was a photographer, quite a successful one. His studio was on the first floor of a small warehouse building, with a garment manufacturer below him and a design company above. Harriet looked up at his windows. It was an automatic gesture, there was nothing to see, not even a light. It was a summer’s evening, there was no need for lights. She could see a drawing board angled at the window above.
Harriet would have pressed Leo’s entry-phone but the front door opened just as she reached it. Two smiling machinists in saris came out, and held it for her. Harriet slipped inside the building, and ran up the stone stairs to the first floor. She was cheerful with the idea of her surprise, picturing Leo at the light table, his back to her, examining transparencies. It was dark at the top of the stairs, there were no windows here.
Click. Harriet pressed the button of the timed switch beside the door and light washed over her.
She had the impression, in that fleeting second, that the click had sounded a warning. There was a scuffle on the other side of the door.
Harriet was holding the key to the door in her hand. She had hardly ever used her studio key; Leo must have forgotten that she had it. She fitted it deftly into the lock, and the door swung inwards.
Harriet looked straight ahead of her.
Across the studio and through another open door there was a black leather and chrome sofa. Harriet had helped Leo to choose it, from an Italian furniture catalogue. In front of the sofa was Leo, a lock of his dark hair falling boyishly over his eyes as he tried to pull up his 501s. They were too tight and he hopped, off balance and then – ludicrously – snatched up his shirt and held it in front of his collapsing erection. Clearly the girl was more used to exposing her body. She made no coy attempt to cover herself with her hands, and her composure made Leo look even more ridiculous. She simply stood, gracefully, her body composed of dark angles and smooth, colourless planes. She was taller and thinner than Harriet. Perhaps she was one of Leo’s models.
After the first current of shock, Harriet’s reaction was incredulous laughter. Leo saw it, and his embarrassment lit up into fury.
He dropped the shirt, took two strides and slammed the connecting door.
For a moment or two Harriet stood looking numbly at it. Leo would open the door again, of course, and he would be dressed and there would be no model and he would thank her for buying the cinema tickets, and they would go off for their evening together.
She waited, but there was only silence and the closed door. It was impossible to imagine what Leo and the tall, thin girl were doing on the other side of it.
Slowly, silently, Harriet closed the outer door too and stood in darkness again on the wrong side of it. She didn’t bother to press the switch for its premonitory click. She went quietly back down the stairs, with her hand pressed flat against the cold, shiny curve of the wall to guide her.
Harriet didn’t remember, afterwards, how she got home. She supposed that she must have followed the route mechanically, borne along by the homegoing tide.
When she reached the flat she found herself walking through the rooms, touching things, picking up vases and books and ornaments as if she had never seen them before. She went to each window and pressed her forehead against the glass, looking out at the familiar vistas. She found it hard to believe that she had lived in this place for four years, ever since her marriage. It seemed unfamiliar now, the house of strangers. She didn’t know what to do with herself in these rooms. There was no food to cook; usually one of them shopped on the way home. Tonight, there would have been the Thai dinner.
At last, she sat down in a Victorian chair that she had recovered herself. She ran the tips of her fingers over the smooth heads of the upholstery tacks, looked out of the window at the changing light. The day was ending and the sky was thinly clouded, suffused with pink.
Harriet felt the fingers of shock beginning to loosen their hold on her. She began to think, effortfully at first, as if she had forgotten how to do it. The flat was silent, even the road outside seemed unusually still.
She thought about her marriage to Leo. She wondered how long it was exactly since they had stopped making each other happy, and then found that she couldn’t recall the precise dimensions of happiness at all. She knew, in the same way that she knew the multiplication tables or the words of certain songs, that they must have been happy together once. Leo was Jewish and his prosperous parents had been opposed to their only son marrying out. Their opposition had only strengthened Harriet’s and Leo’s determination to marry at once. They had been happy then, in their blithe certainty. And afterwards? She could remember certain times, a holiday when it had rained and it hadn’t mattered at all, a long drive that they had made together, little domestic events that she could no longer recall, only the joy that went with them. That had gone. She wished she could at least remember when. They lived together now, but that was only living, the plain mechanics of it.
Harriet wondered how long her husband had had other women. How many, and how often? The memory of the tall girl with her planes of light and shadow came back to her.
Harriet thought about Leo himself. Leo was handsome, stubborn, amusing. Women were always drawn to him, as she had been herself. He was a man like others she had known, who found it difficult to put his feelings into words. Or perhaps not even difficult, but unnecessary.
The light was fading fast. Harriet had the sense of ordinary life fading with it, the edges of reality softly crumbling and falling away into fine dust. It made her feel sad, the more sad because it was irrevocable.
It was dark when she heard Leo’s key in the lock. She had sat on in the darkness without moving and now she felt stiff and cold. He came in, clicking the light on at the door so that she blinked in the blaze of it.
They looked at each other, trying to gauge the precise gradations of mutual hostility. Harriet knew Leo well enough not to have expected contrition. Like a small boy, Leo would cover his guilt with defiance. But now she couldn’t read him at all; his face was flat and cold. She heard the smallest noise, the ground around them softly crumbling into dust.
‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ Leo said stiffly. ‘You should have telephoned, or rung the bell.’
There was no tentative bridge in the words, if that was what she had hoped for. She knew, in any case, that there were no foundations for a bridge. Harriet said the first thing that came into her head.
‘You looked ridiculous.’
He stared at her. ‘You’re such a bitch, Harriet, do you know that? You’re cold-hearted and self-righteous. You operate like a machine.’
Probably he was right, Harriet thought. She didn’t believe that she was any of those things, but she was willing to accept that they might know each other better than they knew themselves.
‘Have there been other times, Leo? Before tonight? Could you tell me the truth, please?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, you’ll tell me the truth, or yes, there have been other girls?’
‘There have been other girls.’
‘How
