They were going to have to go over it all again. Of course they were. It wouldn’t stop until he’d got the things out and himself out, away from London and her for good. And he wasn’t going to argue or make long defensive speeches. He lit a cigarette and waited for her to begin, thinking that the pubs would be opening in an hour’s time and he could go out then and get a drink.

‘I don’t understand why you came here at all,’ she said.

He didn’t answer. He was still holding the cigarette box, and now he closed its lid, feeling the coolness of the onyx on his fingertips.

She had gone white. ‘Just to get your things? Maurice, did you come back just for that?’

‘They are my things,’ he said evenly.

‘You could have sent someone else. Even if you’d written to me and asked me to do it –’

‘I never write letters,’ he said.

She moved then. She made a little fluttering with her hand in front of her mouth. ‘As if I didn’t know!’ She gasped, and making a great effort she steadied her voice. ‘You were in Australia for a year, a whole year, and you never wrote to me once.’

‘I phoned.’

‘Yes, twice. The first time to say you loved me and missed me and were longing to come back to me and would I wait for you and there wasn’t anyone else was there? And the second time, a week ago, to say you’d be here by Saturday and could I – could I put you up. My God, I’d lived with you for two years, we were practically married, and then you phone and ask if I could put you up!’

‘Words,’ he said. ‘How would you have put it?’

‘For one thing, I’d have mentioned Patricia. Oh, yes, I’d have mentioned her. I’d have had the decency, the common humanity, for that. D’you know what I thought when you said you were coming? I ought to know by now how peculiar he is, I thought, how detached, not writing or phoning or anything. But that’s Maurice, that’s the man I love, and he’s coming back to me and we’ll get married and I’m so happy!’

‘I did tell you about Patricia.’

‘Not until after you’d made love to me first.’

He winced. It had been a mistake, that. Of course he hadn’t meant to touch her beyond the requisite greeting kiss. But she was very attractive and he was used to her and she seemed to expect it – and oh, what the hell. Women never could understand about men and sex. And there was only one bed, wasn’t there? A hell of a scene there’d have been that first night if he’d suggested sleeping on the sofa in here.

‘You made love to me,’ she said. ‘You were so passionate, it was just like it used to be, and then the next morning you told me. You’d got a resident’s permit to stay in Australia, you’d got a job all fixed up, you’d met a girl you wanted to marry. Just like that you told me, over breakfast. Have you ever been smashed in the face, Maurice? Have you ever had your dreams trodden on?’