“You do look a little fragile,” Hethersett said. “Mind you it was quite a party. It was jolly nice of you to have me. I kept the eve­ning free to do my packing and then discovered I’d got it all done at eight. Leddersford’s damned dreary on a Sunday evening.”

“We enjoyed having you. You must come again now you know your way . . .”

The party hadn’t ended until three in the morning: I ran my tongue over my dry lips and wished that Susan and I had chosen some other way of celebrating the first week of our reconciliation.

“I think I’ll look around for a flat in Warley,” he said. “My part of Leddersford seems to be full of whores and West Indians . . .”

He looked at the clock.

“What does the Z stand for? I’ve often wondered.”

“Zachariah,” I said. “He doesn’t use it.”

He smiled. “It suits him.”

He opened the door of the car. “I must away. Be good, as they say in these parts.”

“Enjoy yourself,” I said.

The Porsche’s engine gave a complacent well-fed cough; I turned away so that I should not watch – or be seen to watch – him going.

As I walked up the steps into the entrance hall I thought of the Tiffield Products house magazine which I’d received that morn­ing. It was the first communication I’d had from him since I’d written him a week ago. The magazine itself was of no great interest; like all magazines of its kind the picture it painted was a little too rosy. What had interested me more was the page describing future developments. On the compliments slip accom­panying the magazine Tiffield had put the page number followed by three exclamation marks and his signature. Not con­tent with that he’d written at the top and bottom of the section MORE TO COME!!! There was no other message, but he had made the only possible answer to my letter. Tiffield Products was growing, building new factories, rebuilding old ones: A. Z. Brown and Co. was ossifying, and the computer muddle was only one of the things which proved it. For which firm should a bright young man be expending his energies? I toyed briefly with the notion of a new life in a new place, knowing as I did so that it was im­possible. There were too many things holding me to Warley and to A. Z. Brown and Co. Susan would never, I was well aware, leave Warley; consequently Barbara couldn’t. That was that; I didn’t need to enumerate any other reasons for not accepting Tif­field’s offer.