Of Miss Clerricot, Mr Bird had written in Notes on Residents:

Little Miss Clerricot (39), known to me, I fear, by no other name, came to this boarding-house in 1956. How she heard of the place or why she sought it out remains a mystery. There was no room vacant at the time, but I turned out a man called Fortune who had been getting above himself and seemed a bit of a fraud. From the very first I found Miss Clerricot adorable. I repeat a few lines from the poet Pope when I encounter her throughout the house; it is more interesting than remarking on the weather and so much more rewarding. Miss Clerricot blushes most charmingly and raises a hand to cover a portion of her countenance. It is a shame, this ill-feeling that exists between Miss Clerricot and her face.

She drew the curtains in her room and put on the light. She looked at herself in her dressing-table mirror and saw the face referred to by Mr Bird, the same face that Mr Sellwood had taken out to lunch, and she saw once again that it was plain, too red about the cheeks, too hopelessly unmanageable. It was her mouth, she supposed, shifting her lips about, twisting them and making them go sideways, pouting them, and finally placing the tips of two fingers over the corners where the two lips met. Her mouth was too wide: her mouth cut right up into her face, chopping the whole thing in half. Miss Clerricot sighed before the mirror, watching herself sigh and reminding herself that she must not do that too often in public.