Helen remembers an evening when she received a visit from her friend Tom, upset because he'd believed he'd seen a friend in the métro who shouldn't have been there. Helen listened to him, but upon hearing the rain, she thought of Maud who perhaps would not return to Carteret that night, of Alice, who never came back. Their conversation had led them to evoke two events from the past that they'd forgotten, which had locked off something of their lives.