Last girl had been with him for four months, good kid and good looker and occasionally good in the back seat of his motor, till she'd upped and offed with a doctor to Canada.

She had looked him hard in the eye and said he was sweet and said her new fellow had more of a future with a medical degree than he had working at a nothing place like D amp; C

Ltd. It was a comfort to think that Janice and Lucille fancied him, but he wasn't doing anything about it.

"Please yourself… The pillbox on the Downs, they can't do that today. The blaster isn't free before tomorrow.

Too expensive keeping the plant hanging about. Going to go tomorrow afternoon. Does that mess you?"

"Not particularly. I've other places I can be." It wasn't a lie. "There's a line of elm stumps I'm chasing near Dorking.

A bit of chasing'll fix it."

"And afterwards try sleeping it off, eh?"

Jack smiled weakly. He was on his way back to the door.

Nicholas Villiers said, "Anything I can do to help, Jack?"

"No."

Janice watched through the window as Jack walked to his car. She typed two lines and looked up again. She saw the car turn in the road and drive away.

"He's not gone to Dorking," she announced, proud of her keen observation. "He's taken the London road."

* • •

He had the wipers on, shovelling the rain off the windscreen, for the drive into the city.

By luck he found a parking space near the street market behind Waterloo station.

He walked over the bridge with the rain lashing his face, soaking his trousers and his shoes, and he hadn't cared.

His father had never been mentioned since his mother's second marriage.