With a considerable effort, he brought himself to look the suède shoe man straight in the eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said soothingly, ‘we’ll go to your place and have a nice long talk, and we’ll be such good friends, and exchange photographs, and tell each other what we dream in the night, and when you go away for your holidays I’ll have a key and call in every day and feed your canary, but for the next ten minutes I want to talk to somebody else, so just take your God-damned dirty hand off my wrist if you want to keep your front teeth.’

The man in grey suède shoes let go his wrist and said, ‘At least give me your telephone number.’

Without hesitation Charles gave him a number. It was the number of the laundry to which he sent his clothes. The suède shoe man wrote it down in a small book, giving it a page to itself.

That left nothing except the smoke-filled air between him and the girl. All at once he had drawn a chair up next to hers and they were talking. And there was no stuttering shyness, no inhibition, now. It seemed, at last, so natural and right.

‘Hello,’ he said.

She replied, ‘Hello.’

‘Will this number find you during the day, or only in the evenings?’ asked the man in grey suède shoes, who had followed him over.

Charles rose to his feet, and turned to Veronica with a courteous half-bow.

‘Will you excuse me while I take this gentleman outside and throw him down the lift shaft?’

‘Yes,’ she said gravely.

‘I’ll ring you one week-end,’ said the man in grey suède shoes, and left them. Charles sat down again.

Then they were talking once more, and again, in spite of the interruption, it seemed all so easy, so natural. Time was terribly limited—it could only be a matter of minutes before Mr. Blearney finished his story and came across to jolly them along—and there seemed so little point in beating about the bush. He had done with evasion.

‘I have done with evasion,’ he said out loud.

‘And what does that mean exactly?’

‘Just this.’ He looked at her. ‘Sooner or later I’d have to confess this, so I’ll confess it now. When we met the other night in the Grand at Stotwell, that wasn’t a coincidence. I’d been hanging about, in that very room, ever since I saw you in there for the first time. I wasn’t sure what good it would do me if you did come in, but I—well, I just hung about.’

She had lowered her head, and remained silent for a moment, then said, ‘Why would you have had to confess that sooner or later?’

‘Because I love you,’ he said.