He still had a slight lifting of the heart when he thought of that summer. It had the light perfection, the iridescence, of a bubble. And because no word had been said the bubble would never now be broken. It stayed light and perfect and iridescent and poised, where they had left it. They had both gone on to other things; to other people. Laura indeed had skipped from one person to the next one with the bright indifference of a child playing hop-scotch. And then he had taken her to that Old Boys’ dance. And she had met Tommy Rankin. And that had been that.

‘What’s the fuss at the station?’ Tommy asked. ‘Ambulances and things.’

‘A man died on the train. I expect it is that.’

‘Oh,’ said Tommy, dismissing it. ‘Not your funeral this time,’ he added in a congratulatory way.

‘No. Not my funeral, thank Heaven.’

‘They’ll miss you on the Embankment.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Mary,’ said Tommy, ‘I could do with a pot of good strong tea.’ He flicked the plate that held the baps with a contemptuous forefinger. ‘And another couple of these poor bargains.’ He turned his serious childlike gaze on Grant and said: ‘They’ll have to miss you. They’ll be one short, won’t they?’

Grant expelled his breath in the nearest he had come to a laugh for months. Tommy had been commiserating with Headquarters, not on the loss of his genius, but on the lack of his presence. His ‘family’ attitude had been almost identical with the professional reaction of his Chief. ‘Sick leave!’ Bryce had said, his little elephant eyes running over Grant’s healthy-looking frame and coming back to his face with disgust. ‘Well, well! What is the Force coming to! In my young days you stayed on duty until you fell over. And you went on writing up your notes until the ambulance carted you away off the floor.’ It had not been easy to tell Bryce what the doctor had said, and Bryce had not made it any easier.