“Before he told me about London.”

“Eleven weeks before.” Her mouth went hard. “So you’ve done the arithmetic. Congratulations.”

“Did you want to sell it?”

And Shirley Whitlock — who had screamed at me across my own kitchen about home-cooked meals, who had told me catering to her was my only duty — said:

“I lived in that house for forty-one years.”

Walter turned the television off.