When I got into the car Norah was putting on her brassière.

“You might have killed him,” she said.

“He wouldn’t be much loss.”

She pulled her sweater over her head.

“It was a silly thing for you to do, just the same,” she said as she emerged from it.

“Don’t nag me.”

She took a packet of cigarettes from my jacket pocket.

“Mistresses mustn’t nag,” she said. “That’s a wife’s preroga­tive, isn’t it? Mistresses are humble creatures, grateful for what they can get, aren’t they? Once a week, in the back of your car, with a lunatic goggling at us—”

“Steady on,” I said. “That’s the first time.”

“And the last.” She lit two cigarettes and handed me one.

“We’ll go somewhere else,” I said. “I’ll find somewhere.”

“Not with me, you won’t.”

For a moment I couldn’t speak; there was a dry sensation in my throat, gritty and choking as if I were swallowing sand.

“You’re tired of me,” I managed to say. “You want to finish it, don’t you?”

“No. Oh God, you are a fool. I wouldn’t be here with you now if I wanted to finish it, would I? I’m going away, that’s all.”

“To London?”

“That’s where I’ve been intending to go all along. I’ve just been marking time here.”

“Do you have to go?”

“Don’t you understand?” There was irritation in her voice. “The job’s fallen vacant that I’ve been wanting for years. I turned it down once because my husband didn’t want to leave Led­dersford. I won’t get the chance again.”

“When are you going?”

“Next Friday.”

“You mean, they’ve only just told you? It’s short notice, isn’t it?”

“I’ve known since September.”

“You might have told me,” I said. I looked out at the woods. A breeze was pushing the mist away; far away on the left I could see the outline of Gilden Hill. The breeze strengthened and a flurry of leaves struck the window; I could smell them now, damp yet acrid, faintly smoulderingly metallic. I had liked this kind of landscape once, even down to the bare trees and the smell of the dead leaves: I was not going to like it any more.

Norah kissed me. “You’d have only tried to stop me,” she said.

“I couldn’t,” I said. “Of course you must go to London if that’s what you want. Why are you crying?”

“You’ve messed everything up,” she said. “You’re making me feel absolutely wretched. I knew you would, I knew you would from the first moment I saw you.”

I gave her my handkerchief. “You’ll forget me,” I said. “You’ll find someone else and you’ll forget me.”

“That depends on you, doesn’t it?”