“Well, not instantly to old fogies like Mr. Middridge and me. But a bright young man like you can see it a mile off. Or Ralph Hethersett.”

“Ralph Hethersett? He doesn’t work for us—”

Brown burst out laughing. “He does, Joe. There’s going to be changes here. Hadn’t you guessed?”

“What was I supposed to guess?”

“There’s going to be a merger with Hethersett’s. We’re moving with the times, Joe.”

I threw down the pencil I had in my hand. “You always said you’d never do that. You’ve deliberately made a bloody fool of me. Hethersett. That cunning scheming sod. And you let me go on all these months, hoping you’d do something about the report . . . Well, you have, haven’t you?”

“Hoity, toity, what a tizzy we’re in,” he said. “We shall be crying in a moment if we don’t take care. Now, get the muck out of your ears and listen. As you’ve noticed – and I’m well aware with just what satisfaction you’ve noticed – my health’s not been too good lately. I’ve been ordered to take it easy. I can’t run the whole show any more. And apart from that, a firm of our size isn’t what they call a viable unit any more. It used to be before the bloody taxman got the bit between his teeth, but it’s not now. Anyway, you have a nice long talk about it with Mr. Middridge some time. You’ll explain it to him, won’t you, Donald?”

“It will be a pleasure,” Middridge said.

“Don’t feel too badly about your report,” Brown said. “Parts of it are useful even now.”

“The merger makes most of it waste paper,” Middridge said.

“Don’t discourage the lad too much, Donald. I’m just making it plain that there’s going to be big changes here.”

“New faces,” I said. “And they won’t be junior to me, will they?”

“The old faces’ll still be there,” he said soothingly. “There’ll always be a place for a sound reliable man like you, Joe. There’ll always be a job for you, I promise you that.”

I reminded myself that Tiffield’s offer of a job still stood; at first the thought had no reality, but then it began to assert itself more and more strongly. Later it would restore my self-esteem, later it would make me free; but now I knew that I had reached rock-bottom. I couldn’t take any more. I stood up. “Have you finished?”

“I think we have,” he said. “You and Mr. Middridge can take the report away with you now.”

I put my hands on the back of the chair.

“Hethersett’s definitely going down to see the Flamville people then?”

“It was his idea,” he said. “Fair’s fair.”