The ankle is quite swollen now, or so Lily swears. Though it looks much like his other ankle, both to Jarvis and to Margot. Margot, bending over Jonathon’s foot, brushes against Jarvis by mistake. And a kind of electric shock runs through her from her head to her toe. Does he really not remember her? No. And she has so patiently worked here and waited, hardly knowing what she was doing. Plump Margot, the doctor’s wife, bearing secret grudges? Oh, spite. Jarvis walks his house and thinks of Madeleine. Here she sat, and there she talked, and now she’s gone. Death makes a firm dividing line between the present and the past. Then they were, and now they aren’t. And the knife slides firmly into the home-baked cake, dividing. This side, that side, then and now. There, see—isn’t that real enough for you? And you were beginning to think, weren’t you, that experience slipped along in some kind of continual stream, more or less under your control, at your behest. That’ll teach you.
