‘But it’s Janet’s room,’ I said. I couldn’t understand what he was really saying.

‘But you could move her out - but it doesn’t matter. Any room. Upstairs. I’ll bring her this evening about ten o’clock.’

‘You want to bring a woman friend to my flat to stay the night?’ I was so stupid that I didn’t know what he meant. But I was angry, so I should have understood.

‘Yes,’ he said, detached. Then in the abstracted cool voice: ‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway.’ And he rang off.

I stood thinking. Then I understood, because of my anger, so I rang him back. I said: ‘Do you mean that you want to bring a woman into my flat so that you can sleep with her?’

‘Yes. Not a friend of mine. I was going to take a prostitute off the station and bring her. I wanted to sleep with her just above your room so that you could hear us.’

I couldn’t say anything. Then he asked: ‘Anna, are you angry?’

I said: ‘You wouldn’t have thought of it at all if you hadn’t wanted to make me angry.’

And then he let out a cry like a child, ‘Anna, Anna, I’m sorry, forgive me.’ He began wailing and crying. I believe he was standing there beating his chest with the hand that did not hold the receiver, or banging his head against the wall - at any rate, I could hear irregular thumps that might have been either. And I knew quite well that he had planned all this from the beginning, right from the moment when he telephoned me about bringing the woman to my flat, so that he could end by beating his breast or thumping his head against the wall, and that was the point of it all. So I rang off.

Then I got two letters. The first one cool, malicious, impertinent - but above all, irrelevant, it was off the point, a letter that might have been written after a dozen different situations, each of them quite unlike. And that was the point of the letter - its inconsequence. And then another letter, two days later, the hysterical wail of a child. The second letter upset me more than the first.

I have dreamed of De Silva twice. He is, incarnate, the principle of joy-in-giving-pain. He was in my dream without disguise, just as he is in life, smiling, malicious, detached, interested.