Olivia cried out. Her voice was nervous, but not convincing.

She said: ‘What touched me? Someone touched me.’

Piers’s tittering laugh answered her. ‘We didn’t. I didn’t.’

She said, hopelessly: ‘Perhaps it was nothing.’

Something or nothing? Touched or not touched? I reflected, aware of my own large flesh exposed and alive to ambiguous stimuli, crawling with minute and imprecise sensations. We sat, all four of us, our imaginations drawn taut by darkness and evocative music, waiting for mystery to tap our expectant nerve-ends. But there were stimuli at nerve’s beginning as well. A vast complexity of motive and counter-motive. ‘These Wednesday do’s are degenerating. We want something for our money.’ And quick despair, reacting response, leaving their snail trails of confusion and uncertainty. It wasn’t only Olivia who was open to that charge.

The table began jumping again with a startling spontaneity that might have been ironical comment on my self-doubts and hesitations. In this there was no unsureness. The table thudded heavily on the bare boards. I was aware of my own innocence at least. There were external stimuli here all right, and not of my causing.