‘O God,’ she said, ‘you’re sweet to me. Pinkie. I love you.’

‘You wouldn’t give me away – to her?‘

Somebody in the passage shouted ‘Rose,’: a door slammed.

‘I’ll have to go,’ she said. ‘What do you mean – give you away?’

‘What I said. Talk. Tell her who left that ticket. That it wasn’t you know who. ’

‘I won’t tell her.’ A bus went by in West Street. The lights came through a little barred window straight on to her white determined face: she was like a child who crosses her fingers and swears her private oath. She said gently, ‘I don’t care what you’ve done’ as she might have denied interest in a broken window-pane or a smutty word chalked on someone else’s door. He was speechless ; and some knowledge of the astuteness of her simplicity, the long experience of her sixteen years, the possible depths of her fidelity touched him like cheap music, as the light shifted from cheek-bone to cheek-bone and across the wall, as the gears ground outside.

He said, ‘What do you mean? I’ve done nothing.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t care.’

‘Rose,’ a voice cried, ‘Rose.’

‘It’s her,’ she said, ‘I’m sure it’s Her. Asking questions. Soft as butter. What does she know about us?’ She came closer. She said, ‘I did something once too. A mortal sin. When I was twelve. But she – she doesn’t  know what a mortal sin is.’

‘Rose. Where are you? Rose.’

The shadow of her sixteen-year-old face shifted in the  moonlight on the wall. ‘Right and wrong. That’s what she talks about. I’ve heard her at the table. Right and  wrong. As if she knew. ’ She whispered with contempt, ‘Oh, she won’t burn. She couldn’t burn if she tried.’ She might have been discussing a damp Catherine wheel.

‘Molly Carthew burnt. She was lovely. She killed herself.  Despair. That’s mortal sin. It’s unforgivable. Unless – what is it you said about the stirrup?’

He told her unwillingly. ‘The stirrup and the ground. That doesn’t work. ’

‘What you did,’ she persisted, ‘did you confess it?’

He said evasively, a dark stubborn figure resting his bandaged hand on the Australian hock, ‘ I haven’t been to Mass for years.’

‘I don’t care,’ she repeated. ‘I’d rather burn with you than be like Her. ’ Her immature voice stumbled on the word, ‘She’s ignorant.’