Which is largely why she knelt, keeping her hands steady by pressing them to the fl oor as she gathered her pictures together, placing them back into the portfolio, tying its strings neatly, and then looking up to say, “You don’t look like a worm. Why is it you act like one?”

Which — the relative merit of her pictures aside — is even more largely why she hadn’t got the job.

“Wasn’t meant to be, Deb,” her father would have said. Of course, that was true. Lots of things in life are never meant to be.

She gathered up her shoulder bag, her portfolio, her umbrella, and made her way out to the hotel’s grand entry. A short walk past a line of waiting taxis and she was out on the pavement. The morning’s rain had abated for the moment, but the wind was fierce, one of those angry London winds that blow from the southeast, pick up speed on the slick surface of open water, and shoot down streets, tearing at both umbrellas and clothes. In combination with the traffic rumbling by, it created a whip-howl of noise in the Strand. Deborah squinted at the sky. Grey clouds roiled. It was a matter of minutes before the rain began again.

She’d thought about taking a walk before heading home. She wasn’t far from the river, and a stroll down the embankment sounded lovelier than did the prospect of entering a house made tenebrous by the weather and rebarbative by the memory of her last discussion with Simon. But with the wind dashing her hair into her eyes and the air smelling each moment heavier with rain, she thought better of the idea. The fortuitous approach of a number eleven bus seemed indication enough of what she ought to do.

She hurried to join the queue. A moment later, she was jostling among the crowd in the bus itself.