It's her pet name for you. How sweet." He took a step closer and grabbed her elbow, squeezing it between his fingers. Margaret could smell her soap on his skin, and the herbal shampoo he used on his hair, and see the light glinting off the red-brown patch of stubble he'd missed on his jaw. "Tell me why I should stick around, Margaret," he spoke softly now, almost whispering, "when you haven't any time for me, and she could hang on for months?"

Margaret jerked her arm free. "Why don't you go, then," she hissed at him, and she felt a distant surprise, as if the words came from somewhere outside herself. "Just bloody well bugger off, all right?"

They faced each other in silence for a long moment, the sound of their breathing audible over the background noise of Radio Four, and then Roger laughed. He lifted his hand and cupped it under Margaret's chin, tilting her head back. "Is that what you want, love?" Roger leaned closer, his mouth inches from hers. "Because you won't get it. I'll leave when I'm good and ready, not before, and don't you even think about clearing out on me."

The number eighty-nine bus bounced and rattled its way up the hill through Camden Town. Margaret Bellamy sat in the forward seat on the upper deck, her bulging shopping bag placed beside her as a bastion against intruders.

She needn't have worried. The only other occupant to venture climbing the stairs was a toothless old man absorbed in a racing paper. The seat's cracked upholstery stank of cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes, but Margaret found the familiar odor comforting. She gnawed her knuckle, the latest in a series of displacement behaviors designed to prevent her from biting her nails. An infantile habit, Jasmine called it. Jasmine…

Margaret's thoughts veered away, jumping to another track like a needle skipping on an old phonograph. She'd had to get out of the office, even if Mrs. Washburn had given her that fishy-eyed stare and said, "Dentist again?"