"Yes. Gott knows where he got the strings. But in Petticoat Lane at that time you could buy all what you needed. When he was playing, it was like the angels in heaven. Sometimes I or Mutti Mutti accompanied mit the piano." accompanied mit the piano."

I remembered the music in the piano stool. Delius. 'Two Brown Eyes'. Ella Wechsler. Her name was written in the front of the songbook, but the brown eyes had belonged to somebody else.

"Do you still play the piano, Mrs Shapiro? Ella?" Somehow, the new name didn't seem to fit the old lady I'd grown fond of.

"Look at my hends, darlink."

She held them out in front of her, bony, with swollen joints and shrivelled brown-stained skin. I took them and warmed them in mine. They were so cold.

"And Naomi? Who was she?"

I had such a strong image from the photographs of the sweet heart-shaped face, the tumble of brown curls, the playful eyes. Mrs Shapiro didn't reply. She was gazing into a place beyond the dusky window. When at last she spoke, all she said was, "Naomi Lowentahl. She was rather tall."

Then she went quiet again. I didn't interrupt. I knew she'd tell me in her own time.

"Yes, nice looking. Always mit red lipstick, nice shmata. Who would heff thought she would be the type to go away digging in the ground in Israel?" Her mouth twitched. Another silence. She withdrew her hands from mine and started to fiddle with her rings. "Some people said she was beautiful. Eyes always blazing like a fire. Yes, she was like a person on fire. She was in loffwith Arti, of course."

"And he...?"

She sniffed. "Yes. And he."

Artem Shapiro and Naomi Lowentahl were married in the synagogue at Whitechapel in October 1945, after the end of the war. Ella, Hannah and Otto Wechsler went to the wedding. Lisabet was away in Dorset on her own honeymoon with a Polish Jewish airman. Martina had been killed by a V2 rocket raid in July 1944, on her way home from the Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green-one of the last air raids of the war. But Mr Gribb put on a good spread for the couple. People came from all over Stepney just to get a bit of chicken.

A sharp rap on the door made us both jump. Then without waiting for an answer, the woman in the pink uniform, the same one I'd met earlier, barged into the room.

"Tea time, Mrs Shapiro."

She caught sight of me.

"You'll have to leave," she said. "Mrs Shapiro in't allowed visitors."

"I'm not a visitor. I'm a..." I thought fast. "I'm an adhesion consultant."

"Oh." That stopped her in her tracks. She looked me up and down, trying to a.s.sess my status. "I thought you was Mrs Brown's niece. You'll 'ave to make an appointment through matron."

"Of course." I stood up and put on a Mrs Sinclair-ish voice. "If you could just leave us now. We've almost finished our consultation."

"I'll have to report it to matron." She shook her head. "We can't just 'ave people wandering in off the streets."

When we were alone again, Mrs Shapiro gripped my hands.

"You will keep my secret, Georgine?"

"Of course I will."

"What should I do?"

"Don't sign anything. Don't marry Nicky."

"But if I am married, they will heff to let me go home, isn't it?"

"I'll try to get you out."

"If I will say no to him, he will stop coming. Is better if I say maybe yes and maybe no." She winked.

"You're naughty, Mrs Shapiro," I laughed. "How does he manage to get in? Doesn't the matron stop him?"

"He told them he is my solicitor."

"Ah. Clever. But..."

Actually, I thought, what she needs is a proper solicitor.

There was a sudden rush of footsteps and voices in the corridor. I kissed Mrs Shapiro on the cheeks and quickly said goodbye, just as they reached the door. The pink-overalled lady was in front, followed by a big green-cardied woman and a security guard. Their faces were flushed with purpose. But before they could say anything they were distracted by a ghastly scream from down the corridor outside number twenty-three. I turned-we all turned-to see the honker lady waving her hands in the air and yelling, "'Elp! 'Elp! There's a dead body in 'ere!"

They forgot all about me in the ensuing chaos. I slipped out through the sliding door while someone else was rushing in, and kept my head down as I walked to the bus stop on the Lea Bridge Road. All the way home on the top deck of the bus, I was working out a plan to get Mrs Shapiro out.

37.

A trip to B&Q Next morning, I phoned Ms Baddiel. Amazingly, she answered on the first ring.

"Oh, thank goodness I've got hold of you. Something terrible's happened. Mrs Shapiro's been kidnapped," I gabbled. I didn't want to complicate things by mentioning the body.

"Sssh. Ca-alm down, Mrs Sinclair. Now, take a deep breath for me. Hold. Two-three-four. Breathe out with a sigh. Two-three-four, and rela-ax."

I did as she instructed. My stomach-knot eased and my fists turned back into hands.

"That's perfect. Now, you were saying...?"

I tried to explain that Mrs Shapiro had been kidnapped and held against her will until she agreed to sign away her house. I tried to avoid directly accusing Mrs Goodney of theft, but she was more concerned that Mrs Shapiro's lifestyle choices were being violated.

"There are a number of options open to her. If she is to live at home, the house needs to be made suitable. It's easy to move a bed downstairs and convert a living room into a bedroom. The problem is usually to create a downstairs bathroom. Alternatively, of course, she could install a lift. Even a stairlift."

"Mm. Yes. Good idea. I've got some men in there at the moment, fixing it up. I could ask..."

"Perfect."

I tried to picture Mr All and the Uselesses installing a stairlift. Mmm. No.

"There used to be grants available for that kind of work, but unfortunately now it usually has to be self-financed. Has she got any funds, do you know?"

I thought of the receipts from the secondhand traders I'd found in her bureau drawer.

"I'm not sure. I'll ask her." Though I knew as sure as h.e.l.l she wouldn't tell me. My heart sank. Then I imagined trying to persuade her to have a stairlift installed.

"And we could increase her care package. I take it that worked out all right?"

"Yes. Fine. Fantastic."

We arranged to meet at the house next week. I wanted time to be sure that the Uselesses had made some progress, and to check that the place was at least habitable. Ms Baddiel undertook to visit Northmere House in the meantime, and to challenge the terms of Mrs Shapiro's incarceration.

"It's a violation of human rights," she said confidently in her peachy voice.

On Wednesday afternoon I set out to visit Mrs Shapiro at Northmere House again. I walked down to the b.a.l.l.s Pond Road to get the Number 56, and I must have dozed off on the bus (or sunk into a reverie, as Ms Firestorm would put it) for when I looked out of the window we were already on the Lea Bridge Road, and I realised I'd missed my stop. I rang the bell hastily and raced down the stairs, and when the bus finally came to a halt I found myself standing near a familiar jolly orange-and-grey building. Another branch of B&Q! It must be destiny, I thought.

The B&Q store was tattier than the one at Tottenham and almost empty, silent with a hush of reverence-like a temple, I thought, dedicated to some peculiar male cult. The high ceilings and echoing aisles, the air of solemn devotion, the acolytes walking with bowed heads, the obscure objects of veneration, the mysteries. Apart from me, there was only one other woman in the place, a stunningly pretty Asian girl with a sparkling nose stud, on one of the checkouts. With the air of a slightly bored priestess, she pointed me in the direction of the adhesives on aisle twenty-nine.

Cyanoacrylate AXP-36C. I pulled the crumpled Mrs Brown envelope out of my pocket and started to look at the labels on the packaging. It was easy enough to distinguish between the PVAs, the epoxies and the acrylates, but there didn't seem to be one with that precise formulation. A number of them carried warnings about misuse. I browsed the packets, looking for the ones with the direst warnings.

After a while, a nice blokey type appeared and asked me if I needed any help. I showed him my paper. He studied it for a few moments with a puzzled frown, then asked, "What's it for, sweetheart?"

I noticed that he had a Kent NUM tattoo on his forearm. How strange, I thought; if I had met him instead of Mr. Ali when I was first looking for the lock, there would have been a different point of connection, and quite a different story.

"It's for...er...just, you know, general use." I smiled mysteriously, picked up a few superglues, and put them in my shopping basket with a nonchalant air.

Another discovery I made, by the way, at the end of the adhesives aisle, is that duck tape has nothing at all to do with ducks. No quacking or waddling involved. In fact it's duct tape. What a disappointment.

Out of interest, I pa.s.sed by to look at the toilet seats. Although they had exotic names-Chamonix, Valencia, Rossini-they weren't in fact very exciting. There were no musical ones or ones which lit up, as I'd seen advertised in the Sunday papers-seats designed to attract a curious bottom. I'd have to look on the internet. Ideally, I should get one that played a ridiculous but catchy tune like 'Jingle Bells' or 'The Birdie Song', that would keep going until the person got up-if they ever ever got up! got up!

By the time I remembered I'd meant to call at Northmere House on the way back, I'd already overshot the stop again. That would have to wait for another day. I was filled with a pleasant feeling of satisfaction on my way home, sitting in my favourite seat, upstairs at the front, with my purchases in a bag on my knee and enjoying the changing patterns of clouds and light as the bus lumbered down the Lea Bridge Road.

At Clapton a group of schoolboys got on, jostling and giggling. I didn't notice at first that they were wearing small skull caps. They crowded on to the top deck, and made a rush for the other front seat, all four of them, barging with their backpacks and trying to shove each other out of the way. Mrs Shapiro's story was still fresh in my mind, and I wanted to talk to them, to ask about their parents and grandparents-about the countries they'd left and the journeys they'd made. But why should they have to worry about any of that old painful stuff? These lads-they didn't have the air of exiles. They were gossiping about one of their teachers who, apparently, had been spotted at a Westlife concert wearing a dress that revealed too much. Let them be, I thought. Let them be happy. As we thundered along among the treetops, I closed my eyes and felt through my eyelids the brilliant spring light flicker over my face: dark-light-dark-light-dark-light. When I got off at the b.a.l.l.s Pond Road, a few stops later, I could still hear their peals of laughter as the bus pulled away. Let them be happy while they can.

As I turned the corner into my road, I saw there was a car parked outside my house. A black car. A Jaguar. I stopped. How long had he been waiting for me? Since the debacle with Nathan, I'd been feeling a sort of blank emptiness inside me. Now I felt my heart quicken, a beat between panic and pleasure. Or maybe I was just inexorably drawn. I carried on walking, wondering what I should say. As I got closer, the driver's-side door opened, and he stepped out on to the pavement, all lean and hungry six-feet-something of him, with a bunch of flowers in his hands-blue irises. My heart did a skip.

"Doing a spot of DIY, are you, Georgina?" He was looking at my B&Q carrier bag with interest. "Have you got time for a quick word? About Canaan House? There are some...er...developments you should know about."

"Developments?"

I glanced at my watch. It was Wednesday, just turned three o'clock.

"It'll have to be quick. Ben'll be back soon."

I noticed he had a fresh white handkerchief in his jacket pocket, and despite my resolution, a tremor like a Pavlovian response ran through me.

"I thought you should know...my colleague, Nick Wolfe. You were right. His intentions are not honourable. Very Very not honourable." not honourable."

"You'd better come in."

He followed me into the house. I shoved the B&Q bag in the bottom of a cupboard in the mezzanine study on my way down into the kitchen, and put the kettle on. While it boiled, I arranged the irises in a vase. They reminded me of Mrs Shapiro's toilet bowl. He stood very close beside me, watching. I could sense the heat of his body through the centimetre of air between us, and that pleasant pelvic glow-it was the shameless woman, putting in a surprise guest (gusset) appearance.

"Tell me," I said.

"Yes. Nick. He's-how can I put it?-he's got obsessed with Canaan House. He's commissioned an architect; had plans drawn up to turn it into a gated community. Luxury flats. Done out to the highest spec. Penthouse suite. Bas.e.m.e.nt gym. Enclosed j.a.panese-style garden with pebble and stone water-feature. The full monty. Plus six mews studios."

I took a deep breath. I could smell the expensive soap, and beneath it the chlorine.

"Okay. And so what's he planning to do with Mrs Shapiro?"

"He's planning to marry her."

He delivered his punchline with a slight lift of the eyebrows. I pretended to be shocked, but inside I was smiling.

"Apparently they struck up quite a friendship, and one day he asked her age. She had him on that she was sixty-one. Well, that roused his suspicions, so he sneaked a look at her medical records in the nursing home. They gave her age as ninety-six."

"No! Really?" I feigned surprise.

"He thought-well, at that age her life expectancy-how can I put it?-it left a lot to be desired. A couple of years, at most. He reckoned he was on to a good thing."

"Did he tell you she has a son?"

"He mentioned something along those lines. That's why he's in a hurry to tie the knot. If she's married to him, he gets the lot when she pops her clogs. Unless she's made a will, of course."

"The son's supposed to be coming all the way from Israel. He obviously thinks he's on to a good thing, too. But I don't know if he's really her son. Her husband was married before, you know."

Before what? That's what I couldn't work out. If Ella Wechsler had married Artem Shapiro, her name would have become Ella Shapiro. But why had she changed her first name from Ella to Naomi? Why would someone change their whole name?

"If she wasn't married to him," I was thinking aloud, "if she was just living with him..."

"Mm. Good point. Would she still have a claim on the house?" I could see his mind working in the gold flickering of his eyes.

"Does it make any difference, who was married to who? Surely, if she's lived there all these years, the house is hers?"

"It depends on how the deeds were drawn up." He was stirring the sugar into his coffee, tinkling the spoon against the china and looking at me with those vari-coloured eyes. I could feel myself melting inside. "It'd be interesting to sneak a look, Georgina. Do you know where they're kept by any chance?"

They were probably among the sheaves of paper up in the attic. "I haven't a clue," I said, squeezing my tea bag s.e.xily and fishing it out with a provocative little flick of the spoon.

"It might be possible to find out from the Land Registry," he murmured.

He finished his coffee and stood up, leaning in the doorway, smiling darkly. "Shall we...?"

He led, I followed.

"You said you were going to show me your poems," I said, teasing, but to my surprise he produced a slim cream envelope from the pocket of his jacket-not the handkerchief one, the one inside the lining.

"I've written one specially for you, Georgina."

The envelope was slightly warm and curved to the contours of his body. I opened it curiously as he undressed me.