Mellor flinched as if the pale blue paper were red-hot, dropped it and backed away as it fluttered to the thread-bare carpet. The pale blue envelope, torn where he had ripped it open, quivered in his left hand. Except for this trembling he stood still, watching until the letter settled. Even then he could read the black, block capitals.

The best way to disappear is to die

Suddenly he screwed up the envelope and flung it across the tiny room. It hit the wall, dropped on to the unmade bed and rolled down the heap made by his red-and-white-striped pyjamas. It quivered on the edge, then fell to the floor.

“I can’t stand it, I just can’t stand it any longer.”

He read the message again; then stared at the gas fire where the broken white mantles looked like bleached bones.

He spoke again, as if someone had been arguing with him: “No, I just can’t stand it any longer.”

His trembling stopped, he picked up the letter and looked down at it. Something like calm settled on his haggard face and his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes.

He said: “I’d better get it over.”

He laughed; and he hadn’t laughed for days. Days? He hadn’t laughed for weeks—not since dread had first cast its shadow over him, not from the moment when he had decided that he must disappear.

It had seemed so easy and proved so great an ordeal; and he had failed because “they” knew he was here. He didn’t know who “they” were: not the police who would come and arrest him, giving no warning, if they knew where he was. He didn’t know who had plotted his death and driven him to desperation. “They” was a vague, nebulous word, describing the unknown. In less than a month they had turned him from a normal, cheerful, vigorous young man into a physical and nervous wreck.

He had fought them by himself because there was no one to help him; but he couldn’t fight any longer. Hunger had added the final touch of fear and that stark message gave him the simple answer to his problems.