‘I’ll get dressed,’ Maudie said, ‘and then we’d better go out and get some air. We’ll go to the theatre and see if there are any letters. That’s a dirty book, isn’t it?’

‘Bits of it are all right,’ I said.

Maudie said, ‘I know; it’s about a tart. I think it’s disgusting. I bet you a man writing a book about a tart tells a lot of lies one way and another. Besides, all books are like that – just somebody stuffing you up.’

Maudie was tall and thin, and her nose made a straight line with her forehead. She had pale yellow hair and a very white, smooth skin. When she smiled a tooth was missing on one side. She was twenty-eight years old and all sorts of things had happened to her. She used to tell me about them when we came back from the theatre at night. ‘You’ve only got to learn how to swank a bit, then you’re all right,’ she would say. Lying in bed with her, her hair in two long yellow plaits on either side of her long white face.

‘Swank’s the word,’ she would say.