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Greg’s vinyl collection, as I stand up to leave.
    ‘Sonia,’ he says as I reach the door, and I turn to look at him. ‘Thanks,’ he says. We smile at each other.
    I go out. Stand for a few seconds staring at the door before making up my mind. Then I pull it shut and turn the key in the lock before I start down the stairs.

 
CHAPTER FOUR
Saturday night
    Sonia
    One disadvantage of the River House, one that Kit complained bitterly about when we first came back, is that there is no garden. The courtyard between the kitchen door and the
wall on the alley side is paved and too small to warrant such a name. I’ve grown a few things in pots out there, but fight a losing battle against the lack of light. My mother nurtured her
climbers, in the beds she made from discarded bricks. Many of those bricks are now broken by frost into jagged pieces. In addition to the wisteria, her Virginia creeper and a
Hydrangea petiolaris
compete with threat of takeover by a persistent dark-leaved ivy. In fact, the whole house suffers for most of the day from a lack of light, with the exception of the music room where the high
windows are permanently illuminated by the sky.
    We never use the door at the front of the house that faces the street. It is blocked these days anyway by Greg’s desk and his old computer. Instead, we come and go through the door in the
wall that opens onto the alley on the riverside.
    When we moved back to the River House, Kit took the big bedroom at the front, overlooking the street, while Greg and I shared the slightly smaller one at the back that does catch the light from
the river in the mornings. This was my room when I was a child. There’s another bedroom but we don’t use that. One more flight of stairs and you come to the music room. My parents
wanted a whole loft conversion but the low pitch of the roof did not allow it. The attic space, whose entrance is in my bedroom, is so low you cannot enter it. So they built the odd square tower
with its high windows that give a bird’s-eye view of the river, if you stand up on a chair, across to the Isle of Dogs and what is now Canary Wharf. The new room had to be wedged onto one
side of the roof, a funny overhang from the outside. Extra windows were put in that let light into the stairwell, which otherwise would be pitch dark. It means I’m able, from the landing, to
look in and see Jez without him seeing me.
    I watch him. I’m overcome by the way he moves. He noticed the door was locked some time ago. Banged on it. Rattled it. Shouted for me. I was tempted to go to him straight away, to calm
him. The last thing I want is to frighten him.
    After a while he gives up shouting and walks round the room picking things up, looking for something with which to undo the lock. He finds a hair grip and I watch him inexpertly pushing it into
the keyhole. His efforts are heartbreakingly pointless.
    When he’s given up on this, he goes over to the wall, holds onto the ledge of one of the high windows and pulls himself up with his powerful arms. I love to watch the way his biceps flex
as he does this. The way his T-shirt rides up, revealing the golden dips at the base of his spine. He sees that escape through those narrow slits is impossible. They are also locked shut.
    He returns to the door, bangs, calls my name. It’s painful to resist now, but I’m afraid that if I enter without being fully prepared, he might make a run for it. That I’ll
lose him.
    He sits for a while on the bed, his head in his hands. Then he picks up the guitar – Greg’s acoustic, the one he bought while we were on holiday in Spain. The year of the grand
silence; the year we almost split up. But I don’t want to think about that now. Jez has started to play. This time he plays with a kind of manic ferocity. I can see him strum frantically and
slap the body of the guitar. I cannot, of course, hear the music very well because of Greg’s soundproofing, but I do not need to hear every