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Isabel frowned. “Meaning?”

Jamie’s eyes met hers. “I think that she’s like a piece of unfinished music. It wants to resolve, but the notes aren’t there. So it goes round and round in your head until you work out an ending for it.”

She fumbled with the cord of her dressing gown. It was frayed and she would need to replace it. The dressing gown was beginning to look shabby, but she still loved it. She looked up. Jamie’s words hung in the air between them; one of those observations that on occasion comes out as an accusation.

“You think I should do something?” It was not what she expected; whenever Jamie offered her advice in this sort of situation, he usually told her to do nothing, to avoid further involvement.

“Normally …”

“Normally you wouldn’t.”

“No. I mean, yes, you’re right, I wouldn’t. But it seems to me now that this Minty person has really got under your skin.”

It was a good way of describing it. Minty had indeed got under her skin, like one of those little jigger creatures that one found in the American South; her aunt, the one she had dreamed of, had complained about those in the grass of her lawn. “Like a jigger,” said Isabel.

“Those parasite things?”

“Yes. My mother used to talk about how she took them out from under her skin as a child. With a pin.”

Jamie shuddered. “Maybe. But you need to sort out what you think of her. You can’t leave things up in the air, as they are. Many people could—but you can’t. You’re too much of a worrier.” He paused. “Use a pin.”

Isabel listened carefully. Why should she be surprised that Jamie thought of her as a worrier? Was she really?

“Do you think that I should …?”

“Have it out with her again?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated before replying. “Maybe. Just tell her what you think of her. Tell her that you don’t believe a word she says, and leave it at that. If you don’t do anything, she’s likely to draw you into something again. You don’t want that, do you?”

She thought about this. Charlie, who was in his playpen downstairs, had begun to cry. He would have thrown one of his soft toys out of the playpen confines, like one prisoner helping another to escape over the prison fence, and now he was regretting it.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

She thought: he’s right. And he often is.

He seemed pleased with her response. “Do you want me to come with you?”

She did not. He had done enough: he had pushed her in a direction that she might have gone in anyway, and she was confident that she could manage by herself. And she did not want to expose Jamie to Minty; she was not sure why, but she felt somehow that Minty was a threat to him, and that he was vulnerable.

AFTER BREAKFAST, Isabel went to her study. There were letters that she had to write, some personal and some connected with the Review. Edward Mendelson had written from New York, and her reply to him was late. As Auden’s literary executor, he had been trying to trace a school magazine in which Auden had written an article when he taught at a small private school in the west of Scotland. A woman on the Isle of Mull, hearing about this, had written to say that they had no knowledge of the magazine, but had a typescript which they thought was Auden’s original draft. “My grandfather,” wrote this woman, “was on the staff of the school when Auden was there. He was friendly with him and he gave him a box of papers to look after, which he forgot about and never claimed.” The woman was happy for them to be looked at, but would not allow them out of the house, even on a promise of return.

“I don’t like to impose,” wrote Edward, “but could you possibly go and take a look at them? Perhaps she’ll allow you to photograph them. And, as for the typescript, you can tell straight away whether Auden typed it. He never put a space after a comma—it’s as if it’s a signature. If you see that, then that’s almost certainly by him.”

Isabel wrote back and said she would do this. They would all go—Jamie and Charlie too—and look for crowded commas.

Then there was a letter from Steven Barclay, a friend who had a flat