"Always better, Mr. Perry, not to sink into sentimentality."

"I had damn good friends there, never said goodbye, not to any of them, just walked away… "I don't recall from the file that you were under duress."

"It was a good company I worked for, but I wasn't allowed to clear my desk. The raincoats did that."

Fenton sneered, "The directors of that company were lucky, from what I've read, not to face a Customs and Excise prosecution, as you were lucky."

"You bastard!"

"Obscenities, Mr. Perry, in my experience are seldom substitutes for common sense."

"I gave up everything!"

"Life, my friend, is not merely a photograph album to be pulled out each Christmas Day for the relations to gawp at. Little to be gained from wallowing in the past. Life is for living. Your choice -move on and live or stay and write your own funeral service. That's the truth, Mr. Perry, and the truth should be faced."

The rain was heavier outside, beating a drum roll on the window-panes. The darkening cloud came out of the east, off the sea. Geoff Markham stayed by the door. He could have reached beside him to switch on the lights to break the gloom, but he did not.

Markham knew his superior's performance was a disaster. He doubted Fenton had the sensitivity to appreciate the castration of a life Perry had run away from a wife who no longer loved him, a son, friends and neighbours, even his office, the banter and excitement of the sales section, everything that was past. Frank Perry was a damned ordinary name. If there had been six hours for him to quit his house, then the time allotted to choosing a new name would have been about three short minutes. Maybe the raincoats had saddled him with it.

Perry had turned back to the window, and Fenton paced as if he did not know what else to say… Markham wondered whether Perry had gone, a year or two later, to watch a school gate, from the far side of the street, to see the boy come out from school, a leggy youth, with his shirt hanging out, his tie loosened.