She closed her legs, her expression unchanged.

Mark seemed to recover himself. “Steady on, old boy,” he said. “You mustn’t jump to conclusions. I’ve only just come in. The window-catch—”

“I’ve been here half an hour,” I said. “Get out.”

“It wouldn’t fasten . . .”

“Get out before I kill you.”

He looked uneasily at Susan. “I shouldn’t leave you with him,” he said. “If he has this stupid idea in his head—”

“You’d better go, Mark,” she said. “He really will kill you if you don’t. Look at his face.”

She spoke with no more emotion than if she were asking him to look at my tie or my shirt or my shoe.

I went up to him. Even as I did so I was aware that I had made a mistake: the desire to kill him had ceased to be hot and wild and now it was a cold and reasoned choice of methods which filled my thoughts.

“Don’t let me see you here again,” I said.

His eyes widened. They were a tawny colour, nearer gold than brown; I had never noticed their shade so exactly before.

I remembered a bar-room brawl between two G.I.s I had seen in Wapping during the war. It had turned me sick then, but it didn’t now; I smiled and clenched both my fists, leaving the thumbs to protrude. It seemed to me that no price was too high for the pleasure that was in a few seconds going to possess me, a pleasure more intense than ever I had known; I brought my hands up very slowly and then in the very moment of action he turned his head away.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, half-sobbing. “Jesus Christ,” and ran out of the room.

The front door slammed. I sat down feeling dizzy.

“Give me a drink,” I said to Susan.

She brought me over a glass of whisky then returned to her chair.

“I feel like a pimp,” I said. “I don’t know why I didn’t kill the filthy little bastard.”

“You were going to do worse than kill him,” she said in a flat voice. “Were you not?” She started to giggle hysterically.

“Stop it,” I said. “He was safe, and you’re safe, as long as my daughter’s in the house. But I still feel like a pimp.”

She continued to giggle. I went over and slapped her face.

The giggling stopped.

“Do you want a divorce?” she asked.

I sat down and took a drink of whisky. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know. How long has this been going on?”

“It wasn’t the first time tonight.”

“How long has it been going on?”

“Since May.”

“That fits,” I said. “I understand now why Gerda left. She guessed it, didn’t she?”

Susan nodded.