The truth, if not the whole truth, you’ll agree. She said, “Your reactions may be slow, darling, but there’s nothing wrong with your memory. In response she favoured him with the gently mocking smile that he remembered so well from their time together. ” The croakiness of his voice was embarrassing. She scarcely glanced at him as she murmured her greeting she was captivated by Diane Keaton, turning Woody down. On the table by her side stood a tumbler and a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker. She had tossed her jersey and boots on to the floor. All she wore was a pair of Levis and a tee shirt of his that she must have found in the bedroom. Nothing else about her had changed: not the lavish use of mascara, nor the mischief lurking in her dark green eyes. The black hair - in the past never less than shoulder-length - was now cut fashionably short. Curled up in his armchair, she was watching television: Woody Allen’s Love and Death. She spoke as though resuming a conversation and the lazy tone was as familiar as if he had last heard it yesterday. He realised that the door was ajar and, taking breath in a deep draught, strode through to the living room. A wave of delight swept over him, succeeded after a moment by puzzlement. He would have recognised that sound of careless pleasure after an eternity, let alone a lapse of two years. She laughed again and this time he knew he was not dreaming. It was midnight and he was too cold and weary for make-believe. But a long evening in Liverpool’s Bridewell, trying to persuade grizzled detectives that two and two did not make four and that his latest client was innocent, had drained his imagination. In the silence that followed he glanced up and down the third floor corridor, sure he must have been mistaken. For a moment he paused, as if frozen by the February chill. Yet when the police had called him out on duty four hours earlier, he had left the place in darkness, empty and locked. Your mind’s playing tricks, Harry Devlin said to himself.Īs he reached for the front door key, he could hear a woman laughing inside his flat.