My bedroom was very cold; I got into bed quickly. I laid the paper on my pillow and propped myself on one elbow to read, but for several minutes all I could think of was Barbara, downstairs reading and soon to be in a bed only a few feet along the landing. I began to think my father had read the situation better than I had; I felt completely confused. With Barbara so close Caro seemed a distant, indistinct figure. Why did she have to kiss me again? Was it simply a moment of weakness, or a kind of subtle invitation? Did she know herself exactly what she was doing?

I tried to look at the words on the paper. It was no use. There was still Caro to think about – the problem with the group, and her own lack of real direction, which seemed to put rather a burden on me. I wondered how much the loss of her singing role would affect her. She had shrugged it off as unimportant, but was that just part of the front she was putting on? Should I have told her what was happening with the group? I had no real confidence that Dennis could persuade the others to make a stand against Rob; maybe it would have been better to prepare her for the worst.

I couldn’t clear my mind, and after a while I lay back. This had the odd effect of making me think about the paper lying next to me. I had been so keen to find out about this key encounter in Barbara’s life, and yet now I couldn’t still my thoughts enough to concentrate on reading it. Or was that really what was happening? I wondered if I was afraid; afraid to face the implications of what I was about to read, in the same way I had turned away from the ascetics in The Varieties of Religious Experience. Was I scared to risk my view of the world?

I hauled myself back up and pulled the papers closer.

A DAY WITH BHAGAVAN – SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI

Underneath the title she had written:

(Conrad: I’ve dramatised this to some extent, to try to capture the essence of what it was like to be there, but I haven’t changed any of the facts.)

It was early afternoon as we came out of the town of Tiruvannamalai. Luckily, it was quite a mild day; the Doctor had taken off his frock coat as we had walked around, but Ian and I were quite comfortable in shirt sleeves. I’m not certain what time of year it was; early spring, I think.

We were just about to head back to the TARDIS when we saw a small group of low buildings, with people sitting in a crowd outside them, clustered around something.

‘I wonder what that is?’ said Ian, although he didn’t actually sound terribly interested. I just stared; for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes from the centre of the crowd.

‘I think,’ said the Doctor, ‘that that is the Ashram we were told about – remember, in the town? All those people must be listening to the holy man.’

‘Bhagavan,’ I murmured, repeating the name the townspeople had given him.

Ian shaded his eyes and looked the place over. ‘They seemed very proud of him, didn’t they? I wonder what makes him so remarkable?’

‘Let’s find out,’ I said eagerly.

The Doctor looked uncertain. ‘Well, I don’t know…we’ve had quite a walk already, and I’m rather tired.’

‘It won’t take long.’ Somehow I knew I had to see this man. ‘Please, Doctor.’

He looked at me with some amusement. ‘Trying to find the God you think you’ve lost, eh?’ he said, reminding me of a conversation we’d had not long before. ‘Very well, I won’t stop you. But I shall go back to the ship.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ offered Ian, as I had known he would. ‘We’ll see you in a little while, Doctor.’

‘And don’t you go getting yourselves into trouble,’ warned the Doctor as he shuffled away. ‘This is meant to be a rest for us all.’

‘Don’t worry, Doctor,’ said Ian in that breezy way he had. ‘We won’t be imperilling anything but our souls.’

‘Don’t, Ian,’ I warned him as we set off. ‘Don’t make fun. There are things about the universe that even science doesn’t understand, after all.’

‘Sorry.’ But his eyes were bright and he was still smiling.

The odd thing was, as we approached I felt something like a rush of terror; I almost wanted to turn around and go after the Doctor. It was as if I knew how much I might lose in this encounter – that is, everything I cherished about myself.

I looked at Ian. He seemed to feel none of this. He noticed my stare and smiled again, in bland reassurance. ‘What do you hope to get out of this?’ he asked.

‘I…don’t know. I just have to see him. Don’t ask me why. There’s something…something incredibly still about this place. Can’t you feel it?’

He considered this. ‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘But I am curious. Let’s see what he has to say…’

We had reached the edge of the crowd. People began to move out of the way; although we were close the time when India would become independent, there was still a kind of instinctive deference amongst the native population. I found it rather unsettling, but I did want to get closer to the man in the centre.

He wasn’t speaking when I first saw him; he was sitting perfectly still, cross-legged, listening to a man asking a very involved question. I could understand the language, of course, but because of the technical Sanskrit terms the man was using, the translation in my head seemed rather confused, as if even the magic of the TARDIS had met a puzzle it couldn’t easily solve.

The man’s question ended. Bhagavan sat in silence. The whole crowd was totally still, waiting for his response. I looked at the sage; he seemed a living, breathing man…but there was something about him, something that made me certain I had never encountered anyone quite like him. I tugged at Ian’s arm and we sat down slowly.

Still Bhagavan was silent. The man facing him – I could only see his back – seemed to be getting a little impatient. ‘Do you have an answer to my question?’

Bhagavan spoke. I don’t remember now exactly what he said – no doubt it was a reply to the man’s enquiry and as such the answer probably also contained some technical terms. It was his voice, the quality of his speech, that struck me. Even now I find it difficult to describe; but I found myself hanging on every word as if simply listening would be enough to…

Here she had written something and then crossed it out. I could not make out the words; presumably she had found them inadequate to express what she felt. I recalled her constant harping on the insufficiency of words. I went on.

When Bhagavan had finished speaking there was silence. He did not invite further questions, or even look around the audience. He simply sat; and there was no sense of anticipation, no sense of waiting for the next person to speak. I felt he would have been perfectly content to sit like that forever.

Without him seeming to move his head at all, I suddenly felt his eyes were on me. His gaze was…all I can say is indescribably gentle – but then there was no weakness there. As he looked at me it was almost as if he could read my mind; I felt he could already see the question that was forming in my brain, and also…that the answer was contained in his eyes, if only I could read it there. I sensed that if I needed to put the question into words, it was only for my own benefit – and for the other people around me. I wasn’t sure if Bhagavan was encouraging me to speak, or not; his eyes seemed to say that whatever I decided would be the right thing.

Without really meaning to I found myself saying what was on my mind. ‘I’m…a traveller. I’ve been to many strange places, and everywhere there seems to be pain, suffering and injustice. I was brought up to believe in a loving God – but I see no evidence of His hand in the universe. Why must there be so much suffering?’

For a moment he didn’t respond – merely looked at me in a quizzical sort of way. ‘Your Tamil is excellent,’ he said quietly, with a strange smile, almost as if he could see that I had no actual control over the language I was speaking. This confused me for a moment, because of course I thought I’d spoken in English and as far as I could tell his reply was also in English. I had no idea what to say to him in reply; but after a moment he went on.

‘You see suffering,’ he said gently, ‘because you see division. All is happening as it should. Pain and injustice exist only as ideas, in contrast to justice and absence of pain. In Reality there is only the Self; all other things are appearances only, projections of the Self and have no substance apart from the Self.’

This time he used no technical terms – he was making concessions to my origins – but I could make no sense of what he said, and told him so. ‘What do you mean by Self? My own Self? Are you saying the whole world is just a projection I’ve conjured up?’

‘Where is this world, with all its suffering, when you are asleep?’

‘It goes on – things have happened when I wake up again. It’s a new day.’

‘And again you see suffering. But where was all the pain while you were asleep?’

I hesitated, feeling sure I was missing something.

He went on: ‘Why do you not feel the suffering of the world while asleep?’

‘B-because I’m unconscious.’

‘Are you? Do you not dream? Are you not conscious of your dreams? So where then is the suffering of the world? Where is the world?’

‘But that’s completely different,’ objected Ian. ‘Dreams aren’t real.’

‘This world is a dream of the Self. It has no more reality than a dream. While it happens, a dream is real to you – then you awake. Awake from this dream and see the Reality.’

Ian frowned. ‘I…know that Buddhists deny the reality of the world. I suppose you’re saying the same thing.’ He leaned forward and clutched the dry earth, scrabbling together a few dusty fragments and holding them up. ‘But I can feel this. It’s real.’

Bhagavan seemed to be considering. Then he nodded slightly. ‘It is – to you, in your dream.’

‘Then…’ I ventured, ‘where are you? Aren’t you part of this dream?’

He gave no answer. I think now it was because he knew there was no way he could answer and make himself understood.

‘How do you see the world?’ I persisted. ‘What is the difference between your Reality and our dream?’

‘There is none. It is all the Self. It is because you persist in seeing things as other than yourself that you see pain and misery.’

‘So,’ said Ian carefully, ‘you’re saying that everything, every tree, animal, person – is part of me?’ He shook his head. ‘How?’

‘If you attempt to grasp this with the mind you will fail.’

I could hear Ian about to explode so I interposed quickly: ‘But we know no other way.’

‘Ask yourself to whom all these things appear.’

‘What?’ snapped Ian.

A man sitting slightly behind Bhagavan leaned forward, cleared his throat and said: ‘Bhagavan means that you should investigate the source of your mind, of your thoughts. Continual self-enquiry will bring you to the conclusion that there is no mind.’

‘I doubt that,’ muttered Ian.

I was in two minds. (So to speak!) I could make very little sense of what we were being told, and I still felt I’d had no good answer to my original question, but there was something about this old man, sitting there so obviously certain of what he was saying…I tried one more time.

‘You say the suffering we see isn’t real. All right, if I accept that, for the sake of argument – what should we do? What is the purpose of our lives? We’ve tried to fight injustice wherever we’ve found it – was that wrong?’

‘If a man is starving in your dream, you give him food. While the pain around you appears to be real, you should work to bring about an end to it. But do not concern yourself about what should be done; whatever is yours to do, will be done by you.’

Ian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you talking about some kind of predestination?’

‘You are free to detach yourself from what is done, to remain untouched by the pain or joy, the consequences of what happens – but everything you will do is determined beforehand.’

‘That’s preposterous!’

‘You will show more respect,’ said the other man who had spoken earlier. ‘You come seeking Bhagavan’s help; you should listen to his words.’

‘We didn’t come for help,’ muttered Ian. I put a hand on his arm and spoke to Bhagavan. ‘I’ m sorry – the ideas we’ve heard are so new to us. You must forgive our ignorance.’

Bhagavan laughed softly.

‘Just tell me one thing,’ I said, ‘if you can, before we go. Will our travels continue much longer?’

I’m certain he could see how important the question was, but he simply said: ‘Why seek to know the future, when you do not know what you are now?’

There was silence. I stared at him, wishing I could find the right words, the key to unlocking what it was he had to give me. But Ian tugged on my arm. ‘Come on, Barbara; the Doctor will be getting impatient.’

I allowed him to pull me to my feet. I could not take my eyes from Bhagavan. He smiled at me. I felt certain he was going to say something, but his smile remained on his unmoving lips.

We made our way through the crowd. I felt somehow defeated, as if we had walked away from a challenge that we should have faced. Ian’s anger was already fading, and as we moved off he laughed. ‘Well! That was different.’

‘I wish we’d had more time.’

He looked at me. ‘There was no point listening to any more of that. He was obviously living in a world of his own.’

I pondered the phrase. ‘Yes,’ I said finally. ‘I wonder how we could reach that world?’

Ian stared at me as he did when he thought I was allowing sentiment to cloud my judgement. ‘Thank goodness we didn’t have time to find out.’

‘But…but didn’t you feel that there was something behind his words, something in his presence – something utterly...utterly real?’

‘He was very sure of himself, I’ll give him that.’

‘I think he was very sure of everything.’

Ian was silent a moment. ‘So,’ he said, ‘do you believe him, then? Suffering is unreal, he said; the world is unreal. You’re dreaming – wake up.’ He took my wrist and gave me a brisk Chinese burn. ‘Is that real?’

‘Oww!!’ I glared at him.

He lifted his eyebrows. ‘So – are you awake?’

He was like that, sometimes. We preserved an uneasy silence on the walk back to the TARDIS, and when the Doctor asked us what had happened I left it to Ian to give his version. I didn’t feel ready to talk about Bhagavan – not until I had thought over what had been said.

Here the account ended. I went back to the beginning and re-read it as carefully as I could. I was left feeling almost as baffled as Ian – I couldn’t see anything in this short conversation that could have meant so much to Barbara that it would reverberate for years afterwards.

I looked at the time; it was still only half past ten. I pulled the blankets around me for a moment, thinking. Would she have gone to bed? If she wasn’t downstairs, should I knock on her door? Bearing in mind what my father had said, what might Mrs Muller think if she heard?

I decided I didn’t care. With her interest in the subject, she should be able to understand the idea of Barbara’s account of the meeting keeping me awake. I threw back the covers and struggled into my jeans and sweater.

There were no lights downstairs when I poked my head out onto the landing. I hadn’t heard Barbara come to bed, but then I had been absorbed in reading. I was just creeping along towards her room when I heard a sound below and turned to see her coming up the stairs. She was loosening her dressing gown, but she retied the belt as she stopped on the top step.

‘I thought you’d gone to bed – to read the account.’

She spoke barely above a whisper and I matched her tone. ‘So did I – but once I’d read it I wanted to talk to you.’

‘That exciting, eh? Well…’ she glanced down the stairs, ‘I’ve just put out the fire, so it’ll be getting cold down there…’

‘Um…come into my room for a minute.’

She lifted her eyebrows slightly but said nothing. During the few steps to my door her feet seemed to find every creaky floorboard; I found myself holding my breath.

As I shut the door behind us she wrapped her arms around her. ‘Brr! We’d be better off down in the sitting room, I think.’

I managed to stop myself from inviting her into the bed. I went over and pulled off the top blanket. ‘Here.’ I pushed it into her arms and cleared my one comfortable chair of the several copies of Continental Film Review I’d picked up on one of my stall browses. ‘Sit down. I’ll get back into bed.’

Her eyes lingered on the magazines as I put them on my desk. The top cover was a picture of a Russian actress wearing nothing but a shirt, and for a second I felt tempted to turn it over. But Barbara started to look around the room as she shook the blanket out to its full length, so I stepped over to the bed and pulled the rest of the covers around me.

Barbara looked over the posters. Dylan and the Beatles produced no reaction, but my picture of Raquel Welch from One Million Years BC brought out a wide smile. Barbara turned her eyes to me. ‘I don’t remember seeing anyone like that when we helping that tribe re-discover fire.’

‘Well,’ I shrugged, ‘you reckoned you were still on the site of London; she came from a coastal tribe.’

Barbara turned back to the poster and stood for a moment. ‘She is very beautiful.’ She shook her head slightly. ‘Odd how certain conventions have such power. The idea of beauty…I’d defy anyone not to be struck by that picture, and yet…it’s only flesh and muscle and bone, like every other human form.’

‘I think it’s all in the arrangement.’

She looked at me. ‘Why is it up there?’

For a moment I was nonplussed. ‘Um…well, do I really have to answer that? I mean, is it necessary?’

‘I suppose not.’ She turned, swinging the blanket around her shoulders, and went to the chair. She sat down and curled her legs into the chair so she could tuck the blanket under them. Then she pulled the material up around her chin. ‘In my youth Yvonne de Carlo was considered the most beautiful woman in the world. It’s absurd, really, to compare beauty as if there’s some absolute standard.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I used to sit in front of the mirror and hope my nose would shorten.’

‘You’ve got a good face,’ I said quickly. ‘Even Caro thinks so.’

Her smile widened. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter to me now…but thank you, anyway. Now; we’re not supposed to be discussing my anatomical deficiencies. What was it about my meeting with Bhagavan that had you leaping back out of bed?’

As if for inspiration I reached out and picked up the papers. ‘It’s mainly…well, I have trouble understanding why this was so important to you. How did the other two react?’

‘Wiltrud was quietly impressed, I think. Caro’s reaction was much the same as yours.’

‘So what did you say to her?’

Her lips played with the edge of the blanket for a moment. ‘The problem is that the important thing about it – the encounter – was nothing to do with what was said. Well, not much, anyway. It was…it was Ramana Maharshi himself who made the impact on me. I hadn’t really understood much of what he’d told me, but his presence…’ A hand appeared briefly from inside the blanket, palm towards me. ‘How can I explain it?’ She smiled helplessly. ‘I told you words were inadequate. All I know is that the memory of that meeting stayed with me until one day in a bookshop I happened to come across a copy of volume one of Day By Day With Bhagavan – which covers the period we were actually there, although our conversation wasn’t recorded in it. The entries for some of the dates are not very detailed, and we never did establish exactly when we landed.

‘I saw that book,’ I said. ‘It was on your bedside table.’

Her eyes were bright. ‘The one you were pretending to read while you were waiting for me to get into bed.’

I felt my face grow hot. She laughed. ‘I’m sorry; there’s something in you that brings out the tease in me. Yes – that book is very important to me. It’s the only one I brought when we went back to the flat Saturday night.’

‘Would it…would it help to understand your account if I read it?’

‘It might do. I’d recommend it from any point of view, although a lot of it is anecdotal – just incidents in the life of the Ashram. It’s importance to me is more as a symbol, a reminder of something important.’ Something seemed to occur to her and she waved a hand towards the wall. ‘That was what I was getting at when I asked you about the poster. I know why men are supposed to frequent shops in Soho – but the image on that poster, and that girl on the front of your magazine over there – that seems to be about something else to me. Isn’t it a kind of symbol? And I don’t mean in the sense of "sex symbol", although I suppose that’s part of it. I used to idolise Marlon Brando and later on, Laurence Harvey – but I don’t think that had anything to do with sex. It was more a kind of yearning for something greater, more intense than the life I was living. Isn’t that what she represents?’

I turned my head and looked up at Raquel. ‘Maybe. I just saw it and knew I had to have it. I didn’t think too much about why.’

‘What does Caro think of it?’

‘She didn’t seem to notice it. You should see what she’s got on her walls.’ But even as I brushed off her lack of comment, it did seem to me that it was odd for someone with her kind of interest in me not to have even mentioned the poster. Especially since she had been worried about me comparing her to Catherine Deneuve. I made a mental note to try to bring up the subject with her sometime soon.

Then something else occurred to me. ‘You realise we’re back in Colin Wilson territory. Somewhere in the one I’ve just re-read – Ritual In The Dark – he makes the point that the desire for a woman is something more than just wanting to have— to go to bed with her. It’s a yearning for the unknown, for something to explore, or conquer – women have just become a symbol of everything desirable.’ I stopped, a little ashamed suddenly, and said: ‘I don’t know if that’s how it feels on the other side – whether men represent something similar for you.’

For a moment she was silent. ‘It’s all about the quest for happiness, isn’t it? Men are told that success equals happiness – and part of that is a beautiful girl by your side. Girls are given the idea that happiness consists in having a home, a family, a man to look after – at least that’s what my generation was told. And if you don’t get those things you feel a failure. But if I’ve managed to learn anything from my exploration of Advaita, it’s that you can’t depend on anything external for your happiness. Happiness – pure bliss – is available for everyone, no matter what kind of life they’re living – but it’s within. Do anything you want to with your life, but don’t expect the world to devote itself to making you happy. That’s not its function.’

‘So what is its function?’

‘To be exactly what it is at any given moment.’

I could find no response to this. We sat in silence for about half a minute. There was something on my mind but I wasn’t sure whether I had the courage to bring it up. I looked at Barbara and she seemed very relaxed; I decided to risk it.

‘You…talk about this independence, this…detachment I guess you’d call it – but…well, when you spoke to Ian that night you seemed—’

‘I did say I wasn’t a good advertisement for my beliefs.’ She let the blanket fall away and put a hand to her brow. ‘It’s not possible to just wish away a lifetime of conditioning. There are people who have been studying Advaita all their lives who’ll admit that they feel no closer to their goal than when they started. And even that’s part of the trouble – feeling you have a goal at all. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do, but the mind just can’t accept that, which is why all the effort is necessary.’ She took her hand away and looked at me. ‘So one day you’ll accept that you can do nothing, that there is nothing to be done – and then it happens.’

‘What – enlightenment, you mean?’

She nodded. ‘But then…that’s just a word. All words are misleading – dangerous, even – in this field.’ She laughed softly. ‘Listen to me. How many times have we had this conversation?’

‘One or two, I guess.’ I shifted forward slightly, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘But if all words are useless, you can hardly reproach yourself for failing to get the ideas across.’

She smiled. ‘You’re right, of course – and that helps a little. But what you’ve done over this last month has helped a lot more.’

‘I had an ulterior motive, remember. More than one, in fact.’

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve helped me to put things in perspective – you and Caro.’

For some reason I felt a tiny stab of something unpleasant. Barbara went on: ‘By listening to what I had to say, you’ve let me unburden myself. For the first time, I’m beginning to feel free of my past – to understand that here and now, it really doesn’t matter where I’ve been and what I’ve experienced. Now is the only thing that matters. The only thing that’s real, in fact – or have I said that before as well?’

‘It sounds familiar.’ But I hardly heard what she said. My mind was full of only one thought; I was jealous of Caro and Barbara. I’d wanted them to get on, but now I couldn’t quite cope with them becoming friends.

‘Anyway,’ Barbara was saying, ‘it only goes to prove that everything and everyone can be a teacher. Without intending to, both of you have shown me what I was doing to myself – allowing my obsession with the past to block me from…from opening to the present.’

Barbara was my friend, I couldn’t help thinking. My special friend. My unusual friend. My friend.

‘I’ve been searching so desperately for some significance in what happened, something to make it relevant to the life I’m living now, the world I’ve come back to – and I overlooked the most "relevant" thing of all. The teachings of Advaita say that everyone is given everything they need to reach realisation – and that is the only purpose of life, anyway. I’ve been given so much…and I was looking for something else in it. How stupid could I be?’

I stood up, letting the covers fall back.

‘I can’t tell you how much you’ve helped.’ She also stood. ‘Give me two or three days – I may even be ready to ring Ian.’

I reached out; my hand caressed her cheek and slid around her neck, under her hair.

‘Conrad..?’

I brought up my other hand and held her face. ‘I want to make love to you.’

Her lips moved but no sound came out.

‘I know what you’re thinking – Caro. But she’s not here now; you are. Whatever happens in the future, whether we stay friends or never see each other – we’ve shared something so unusual, these last three weeks…we’ve touched each other. Why can’t we, just once, extend that to something physical, tangible? It doesn’t have to happen again. It’s not about integrity or fidelity, or society’s rules – it’s just about you and me, here and now.’

‘I…I don’t think—’

‘I dunno if I’m in love with you, or what – probably not. It doesn’t matter. There’s enough between us, enough trust, enough shared…confidence, to know…to know this would be good.’

She was trembling beneath my hands. I reached down and pulled open her dressing gown belt. I peeled the gown off one side and bent my lips to her shoulder. Her flesh was warm; but she was shaking more violently.

Her hands came up to take hold of my head. Her fingers dug into my hair as she lifted my face up. She held me there; there was fear in her eyes but there was also something else. I reached up, took her hands away, and pushed my mouth onto hers.

For a moment she responded. Then she shoved me away with a desperate, urgent energy. She stumbled back until she stood against the door. Her rib-cage rose and fell in violent surges. She pulled her gown together and held it with both hands.

‘N-no,’ she said finally. ‘I’m going to stop it there…because in another minute, I won’t be able to.’

I stepped forward. ‘But why stop at—’

‘No!’ she lifted her hands, indicating I should stay back. Her breathing was a little more controlled now; she looked at me with a kind of anguish. ‘It would be so easy to lose myself in…in something like this. There are times when I’ve felt so distant from every other member of the human race…and I do trust you, Conrad. I know this comes from your heart now, and not from…I know it’s not just a physical thing. But even if you could do this and face Caro feeling you’ve done nothing wrong…I couldn’t. Not after today. I like her too much – and she really likes you. Remember what I told you about the honesty she sees in you. If we had got into your bed together, would you have told her?’

I just looked at her. I wasn’t sure what I thought, or felt. Eventually I managed to speak. ‘No. No – she wouldn’t understand.’

Barbara was retying her belt. ‘And she isn’t a girl who lacks the quality of understanding.’ Her voice was steadier now. She looked up. Something in my face must have alarmed her; she came up to me. Gingerly, she touched my cheek. ‘It’s all right, ‘she murmured. ‘Really – it is. Don’t worry. Just when I thought I was immune, you’ve managed to flatter me again.’ She stepped back. For a moment she continued to look at me; then she went to the door and opened it. ‘And if it’s any consolation,’ she called softly from the threshold, ‘I’m going to have a hell of a time getting to sleep tonight after this.’ She paused, and her head hung for a moment. ‘It’s probably all my fault anyway, for sending you up here with a kiss. Now go to bed, and try to get some sleep yourself.’ She managed a smile. ‘Merry Christmas.’

She pulled the door gently shut. I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed without any idea how I got there. I heard the door to her room shut.

I don’t know how long I sat there. I went over and over the scene in my mind, wondering if she might have succumbed had I acted just slightly differently. I tried to dismiss the thought, but it persisted; it felt like a wasted opportunity, never to come again. But what was worse was the nagging suspicion that my motives had been less pure than Barbara had supposed. Had I been trying to exclude Caro again, trying to make the friendship exclusive in a way she could not? Was that the final factor, the thing that had prompted me to act?

I didn’t like to think about it. I pulled off my sweater and wriggled out of my jeans. For a moment, stupidly, I considered just sitting in the middle of the floor and shivering, to punish myself, or cleanse myself – or something. But I lay back and pulled the covers into some semblance of order. Barbara’s blanket lay over the chair where she had dropped it.

I knew I would not be able to sleep, and it was no consolation at all to think of her just across the landing in the same state. Far from it. I lay with the bedside light switched on.

After about half an hour I heard the nearby church clock strike twelve. Christmas Day.

I sat up. I considered going across the Barbara’s room. I knew there was no lock on that door. I knew she didn’t want to resist me; she had said so herself. If I came in and just slowly, gently…

I got up and went to the door. There I stopped, my fingers curled around the doorknob. I knew she would not welcome me; even if I could overcome her objections, was it worth it? What did I really want from her?

I gripped the doorknob tightly. Perhaps I could just go and apologise. I realised I hadn’t actually said anything to her that would have indicated any regret. I couldn’t leave it like that. I had to do something.

But I would probably scare her. She would misunderstand if I suddenly appeared at the door. Or perhaps it wouldn’t be a misunderstanding – wasn’t part of me secretly hoping an apology might turn into an embrace, then into something else?

God, what would Caro think of me now? I remembered her facing me that day on the King’s Road, such a short time ago – telling me all she wanted was the truth. I could never tell her the truth about this. Was the impulse of a moment worth what it might cost me?

I let my hand fall. I made myself turn and walk back to the bed. Half-kneeling on the end of the mattress, I threw open the window. Cold air seemed to rush in, almost slapping my chest. I took a deep breath. Then I climbed back into the bed, leaving the window wide open.

I lay there trying not to think. I heard the clock strike one, then two. After that I must finally have fallen asleep.