“I can’t live without you. If we couldn’t meet, if we couldn’t see each other, I’d go mad. That night I came to your flat I’d nearly reached the end of my tether. And then it all became different.”

“It became different for me too,” she said. She shivered.

I put my arm round her. “You’re cold, darling.”

“I’m not,” she said.

I looked at the little pile of clothes on the seat beside me; suddenly I didn’t want her breasts to be uncovered any longer.

“Hadn’t you better put some clothes on, Norah?”

She moved away from me.

“Why are you always making me get dressed, Joe? Don’t you like looking at me?”

“You know I do. It’s not often I get the chance, is it?”

“Four times. Four times since August and it’s nearly the end of October now. And I didn’t count that damned party either, watching you with your arm round your wife’s waist, making polite conversation to her boy friend. I don’t think much of her taste, by the way.”

“It hardly matters now,” I said.

“No, it doesn’t. Because you’ve got a nice mistress to console you.”

“Ah God,” I said. “How often do I have to tell you? I love you. Why do you have to go on about being my mistress!”

“I love you, too,” she said. “I loved you from that night.” She put my hands to her breasts. “You made everything different for me, too. You were like a big animal bellowing in a trap.”

“It’s sweet of you to say so. I wouldn’t like to have any illu­sions about myself.”

She kissed me. “But you are like that, Joe. You think you’re aw­fully subtle and cunning, but any woman can see right through you. But you’re dangerous just the same. You’ve messed up all my plans without even trying.”

I took my hands away from her.

“I don’t seem to be making you very happy, do I?”

“Baby,” she said. “Big fat baby. Of course you make me happy. But I’m not very good at being a mistress—”

She screamed. There was a face at the window. For a second it seemed to fill the window, grinning toothily, then disappeared. I pushed past Norah and opened the door.

A man in a dark coloured raincoat was running towards the woods. He was already out of my reach: this stretch of Gilden Woods ran for more than two miles uninterrupted. He stopped at the entrance to the woods, waist high in white mist.

“Filth!” he shouted. “I saw you, filth.”

As he was telling us exactly what he saw, I picked up a stone. It thudded against a tree a hundred yards away from where he was standing; he flung up his arms as if to guard his face and disappeared into the woods.