Jerry Packham lingered over his work, pleased at last with the result. His bags were ready and subconsciously he listened for Pam’s car, for the change of gears on the steep lane. He knew that she would be late. She always was. It was one of her ways of stressing the nature of the relationship between them. She would be expecting him to be waiting at the gate for her as usual. But today he was reluctant to leave. He wondered for one mad moment if he should tell her that he did not want to come, that he was too busy, that he wanted to finish the series of paintings, but he knew that he did not have the courage. He would finish the affair, but not yet. She had dominated the partnership so completely that he hesitated to take the lead even in separating. Besides, he wanted to see Charlie.

He had first illustrated Charlie’s stories for a joke, before they were published. Charlie had lived in his village then, and they had shared the same local. Charlie had been convinced even then that the stories would make his fortune. Jerry had never been to art college. He had left school at fifteen and become apprenticed to a sign writer. When the man retired he had taken over the business and expanded it. He had begun to design menus, posters, had even tried a set of postcards and found that they had been easy to sell. The sign writing became less important. In his spare time he enjoyed sketching and had been persuaded to sell the results through the numerous gift shops in Gillicombe. The illustrations had been fun to do; he had let himself go. There had never been any formal arrangement between himself and Charlie. He had never really believed that the books would be accepted for publication, and when they were, it seemed right that they should come under Charlie’s name, that Charlie should get all the publicity and most of the money. The television serial had made the stories famous, and Jerry had taken no part in that.

It had been one of Jerry’s birdwatching friends, George, who had suggested that Jerry should get an agent to negotiate a better contract with the publisher.

“Those books are made by the illustrations,” George had said. “They’re superb. Without them, I doubt if Charlie would have been published at all.”

So he had received a more generous proportion of the royalties in the most recent series of books. He had become used to seeing his drawings reproduced in comics, on children’s sketch pads, on sweet packets. He was comfortably off, but he was bored by the characters in Charlie’s books. Each story seemed the same as the last. It was time to try something new. He had been offered other commissions and had decided that he should tell Charlie that he would not be available to work for him, at least for a while.

Now he was working on a children’s encyclopedia of the countryside. It was very different from the illustration of Charlie’s fantasies, but he was enjoying the precision and the subtlety of it. He was looking at a recently completed colour plate of leaves and trees when he realized that the doorbell was ringing, and he hurried, rather pleased with himself, to meet Pamela.