Now there was only stillness. The door was a barrier he could have passed through; there was a key in Elspeth’s desk in addition to the one in the cemetery office. Elspeth’s body sat in a box a few feet away from him. He chose not to imagine what three months had done to it.

Robert was struck once again by the finality of it all, summed up and presented to him as the silence in the little room behind him. I have things to tell you. Are you listening? He had never realised, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.

Roche sent the letter to Julia and Valentina yesterday. Robert imagined the letter making its way from Roche’s office in Hampstead to Lake Forest, Illinois, U.S.A., being dropped through the letter box at 99 Pembridge Road, being picked up by one of the twins. It was a thick, creamy envelope with the return address of Roche, Elderidge, Potts & Lefley-Solicitors debossed in glossy black ink and the twins’ names and address written in the spidery handwriting of Roche’s ancient secretary, Constance. Robert imagined one of the twins holding the envelope, her curiosity. I’m nervous about this, Elspeth. I would feel better if you’d ever met these girls. You don’t have to live with them-they could be awful. Or what if they just sell the place to someone awful? But he was intrigued by the twins, and he had a certain irrational faith in Elspeth’s experiment. “I can leave it all to you,” she’d said. “Or I can leave it to the girls.”

“Let the girls have it,” he had replied. “I have more than enough.”

“Hmm. I will, then. But what can I give you?”

They were sitting on her hospital bed. She had a fever; it was after the splenectomy. Elspeth’s dinner sat untouched on the wheeled bedside table. He was massaging her feet, his hands slippery with the warm, fragrant oil. “I don’t know. Could you arrange to be reincarnated?”

“The twins are rumoured to be pretty close copies.” Elspeth smiled. “I’ll make them come and live in the flat if they want it. Shall I leave you the twins?”

Robert smiled back at her. “That could backfire. That could be quite-painful.”

“You’ll never know if you don’t give it a whirl. But I want to give you something.”

“A lock of hair?”

“Oh, but it’s bad hair now,” she said, fingering her downy silver fuzz. “We should have saved a bit when I still had my real hair.” Elspeth’s hair had been longish, wavy, the colour of winter butter.

Robert shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted something of you.”

“Like the Victorians? It’s a pity it isn’t longer. You could make earrings or a brooch or something.” She laughed. “You could clone me.”

He pretended to consider it. “But I don’t think they’ve worked all the bugs out of cloning. You might turn out morbidly obese, or flipper-limbed or whatnot. Plus I’d have to wait for you to grow up, by which time I’d be a pensioner and you’d want nothing to do with me.”

“The twins are a much better bet. They’re fifty per cent me and fifty per cent Jack. I’ve seen photos, you really can’t see him in them at all.”

“Where are you getting photos of the twins?”

Elspeth covered her mouth with her hand. “Edie, actually. But don’t tell anyone.”

Robert said, “Since when are you in touch with Edie? I thought you hated Edie.”

“Hated Edie?” Elspeth looked stricken. “No. I was very angry with Edie, and I still am. But I never hated Edie; that would be like hating myself. She just-she did something quite stupid that bollixed up our lives. But she’s still my twin.” Elspeth hesitated. “I wrote to her about a year ago-when I first got diagnosed. I thought she ought to know.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I know. It was private.”

Robert knew it was childish to feel hurt. He didn’t say anything.

She said, “Ah, come on. If your father got in touch would you tell me all about it?”

“I would, actually.”

Elspeth put her thumb in her mouth and bit gently. He had always found this highly sexual, a huge turn-on, but now it was somehow devoid of that power. She said, “Yes, of course you would.”

“And what do you mean they are half you? They’re Edie’s kids.”

“They are. They are her kids. But Edie and I are identical twins, so her kids equal my kids, genetically.”

“But you’ve never even met them.”

“Does it matter so much? All I can say is, you haven’t got a twin, so you can’t know how it is.” Robert continued to sulk. “Oh, don’t. Don’t be that way.” She tried to move towards him, but the tubes in her arms overruled her. Robert carefully set her feet on a towel, wiped his hands, got up and reseated himself on the arc of white sheet next to her waist. She took up almost no space at all. He placed one hand on her pillow, just beside her head, and leaned over her. Elspeth put her hand on his cheek. It was like being touched with sandpaper; her skin almost hurt him. He turned his head and kissed her palm. They had done all these things so many times before.

“Let me give you my diaries,” Elspeth said softly. “Then you’ll know all my secrets.”

He realised later that she had planned this all along. But then he had only said, “Tell me all your secrets now. Are they so very terrible?”

“Dreadful. But they’re all very old secrets. Since I met you I’ve lived a chaste and blameless life.”

“Chaste?”

“Well, monogamous, anyway.”

“That’ll do.” He kissed her, briefly. She was more feverish now. “You ought to sleep.”

“Do my feet more?” She was like a child asking for her favourite bedtime story. He resumed his place at her feet and squeezed more oil onto his hands, warmed it by rubbing it between his palms.

Elspeth sighed and closed her eyes. “Mmm,” she said after a while, arching her feet. “That’s bloody marvellous.” Then she had slept, and he’d sat there holding her slippery feet in his hands, thinking.

Robert opened his eyes. He wondered briefly if he had fallen asleep; the memory had been so vivid. Where are you, Elspeth? Perhaps you’re only living in my head now. Robert stared at the graves across the path, which were dangerously tilted. One had trees growing on both sides; they had lifted the monument slightly off its base so that it levitated an inch or so in the air. As Robert watched, a fox trotted through the ivy that choked the graves behind the ones on the main path. The fox saw him, paused for a moment and disappeared into the undergrowth. Robert heard other foxes howling to each other, some close by, some off in the deeper parts of the cemetery. It was the mating season. The daylight was going; Robert was chilled and wet. He roused himself.

“Goodnight, Elspeth.” He felt silly saying it. He got up and began to walk back to the office, feeling much the way he had as a teenager when he realised that he was no longer able to pray. Wherever Elspeth might be, she wasn’t here.