“Of course it is. But we’re not going there. And we’re not going into town either. In one second, when we cross the bridge into Forest Road, a pad will drop over your face and the next thing you know—”

“I’ll wake up in Buenos Aires.” She laughed. “I must say you’re much more cheerful than when we last met.”

“I’m never very cheerful at Council meetings.”

“Or anywhere else,” she said.

“I didn’t know it showed.”

“It does, Councillor Lampton, it does. I’m sure you’d love to be able to conceal your thoughts, but you’ve the wrong face for it.”

“Don’t you like my face?”

“Not very much,” she said. “I don’t really like anything about you.”

“That’s a shame. What especially don’t you like?”

“You stared at me all through the Council meeting. Everyone must have noticed. And then you spoke to me as if Peter weren’t there at all.”

“He wasn’t there,” I said. “I could only see a notebook and a pair of spectacles. Are you angry with me?”

“Why should I be angry?”

“I showed that I wanted you. I didn’t behave very well, did I?”

“I don’t suppose you ever have behaved very well.”

I glanced at her; she was smiling. I looked back at the road.

“You didn’t mind my not behaving very well?”

“Don’t be so bloody arch,” she said, sharply. “And give me a cigarette.”

“In my right hand pocket,” I said. “And light me one, please.”

I felt her hand in my pocket.

“You always make me want to smoke,” she said, putting the cigarette in my mouth.

There was no lipstick mark on the cigarette but it seemed already to taste of her scent. I remembered a story in one of my Latin textbooks; there had been a treasure chamber, and a cunning thief. The treasure chamber was dug deep and lined with lead but the cunning thief broke through in the end. In the story he was punished; but after all, it had been a story for children, not for grown-ups.

We were out of the forest now and travelling down the hill into Harcombe village. Soon, at the sign, just beyond the parish church, we’d pass from Warley into Leddersford, soon the air would lose its freshness, the high wind would be lost in the sodden fields, the ruler-straight Ring Road would change the journey into the wrong journey, the journey I had been resigned to before I met Norah. And soon the chimneys of Leddersford would remind me that responsibilities were beginning again, that common sense would rule my actions; but now, still in Warley, still in my own country, was the only time to speak.

“Do I make you nervous?” I asked. It wasn’t what I wanted to say; but suddenly I was overcome by a kind of pity for her.