“Oh, so you’re back already, are you?” she said.

It seemed pretty obvious that I was back, and I didn’t answer. She didn’t make any move to kiss me.

“There’s nothing for your supper,” she went on promptly. That’s Hilda all over. Always manages to say something depressing the instant you set foot inside the house. “I wasn’t expecting you. You’ll just have to have bread and cheese—but I don’t think we’ve got any cheese.”

I followed her indoors, into the smell of mackintoshes. We went into the sitting-room. I shut the door and switched on the light. I meant to get my say in first, and I knew it would make things better if I took a strong line from the start.

“Now,” I said, “what the bloody hell do you mean by playing that trick on me?”

She’d just laid her bag down on top of the radio, and for a moment she looked genuinely surprised.

“What trick? What do you mean?”

“Sending out that SOS!”

“What S O S? What are you talking about, George?”

“Are you trying to tell me you didn’t get them to send out an S O S saying you were seriously ill?”

“Of course I didn’t! How could I? I wasn’t ill. What would I do a thing like that for?”

I began to explain, but almost before I began I saw what had happened. It was all a mistake. I’d only heard the last few words of the S O S and obviously it was some other Hilda Bowling. I suppose there’d be scores of Hilda Bowlings if you looked the name up in the directory. It just was the kind of dull stupid mistake that’s always happening. Hilda hadn’t even showed that little bit of imagination I’d credited her with. The sole interest in the whole affair had been the five minutes or so when I thought she was dead, and found that I cared after all. But that was over and done with. While I explained she was watching me, and I could see in her eye that there was trouble of some kind coming. And then she began questioning me in what I call her third-degree voice, which isn’t, as you might expect, angry and nagging, but quiet and kind of watchful.

“So you heard this S O S in the hotel at Birmingham?”

“Yes. Last night, on the National Broadcast.”

“When did you leave Birmingham, then?”

“This morning, of course.” (I’d planned out the journey in my mind, just in case there should be any need to lie my way out of it. Left at ten, lunch at Coventry, tea at Bedford—I’d got it all mapped out.)

“So you thought last night I was seriously ill, and you didn’t even leave till this morning?”

“But I tell you I didn’t think you were ill. Haven’t I explained? I thought it was just another of your tricks. It sounded a damn sight more likely.”

“Then I’m rather surprised you left at all!” she said with so much vinegar in her voice that I knew there was something more coming. But she went on more quietly: “So you left this morning, did you?”