Having finished the beer and sympathised with Tappy over his fears that his glamorous girlfriend might have given him the go-by in his absence, Snowy leaned back in his seat and began to think seriously of his homecoming. His parents would be over the moon, his friends would greet him raucously and drag him over to the nearest pub for a celebratory drink, and Tess, he supposed, would start talking about engagement rings and marriage plans. That would please his parents, who thought her a real little lady, intelligent, bright and humorous. But hard though he might try to dismiss Marilyn from his mind she would keep pushing in, all blonde curls, enticing bosom and pink and white complexion. Not a bit like Tess, who was skinny, sallow and far too ladylike to leap into his arms and take him home to bed, he thought, horrified, but also thrilled. In his mind his hand plunged down the front of Marilyn’s showy white blouse and felt the satisfying weight of her rounded, pink-tipped breast in his palm. The slow burn in his stomach made him gasp with remembered pleasure – and pleasure anticipated. He realised, ruefully, that he was haunted by a deep inner conviction that he and Marilyn were somehow linked, as a couple. It was madness, of course. She had written to him, and though the letters were not illiterate, exactly, they did not compare with Tess’s lively epistles. Yet he kept each one, and threw Tess’s missives away once they were answered. His mother referred to Marilyn as ‘that little blonde shop girl’ and made no secret of the fact that she was glad Snowy’s fancy for her had not stood the test of time, that their schoolday friendship had been just that, something unfortunate which he had ‘got over’, as though it had been a bad head cold or an attack of measles.

The train jerked to a stop once more and Tappy got to his feet and let down the window. The rain had become first sleet and now snow, and the unheated train felt freezing to men newly returned from the tropics. Snowy jerked Tappy’s elbow. ‘Where are we?’ he said. ‘This isn’t a station, judging by what I can see of it. Shove over, Tappy, and let the dog see the rabbit.’

He had barely stopped speaking when a porter came along the corridor, announcing that due to unforeseen circumstances the train would have to pause for a while and would therefore be late in arriving at its ultimate destination, Liverpool Lime Street.

Tappy and Snowy groaned in unison, put up the window and returned to their seats. ‘I thought it were unusually slow and awful jerky when we stopped at the last station,’ Tappy said, staring out miserably at the whirling snow. ‘Oh, Gawd, I wish I’d not told Angie that I’d be on this train. She’ll be mad as fire, blame me for what I couldn’t possibly help and very likely storm off home, leavin’ me to foller like a pet dog.’