I thought of Jean. She’d seemed disappointed when I’d told her I was going home, but far from heartbroken. There’d be other men to share the big sofa with, there’d be other men who’d share the trip to the last stop before the terminus. Or to the ter­minus itself. I didn’t care; I had been far enough, I had fed my curiosity, I had fed my pride. They had both been on short commons for long enough; now they wouldn’t bother me again. And no harm had been done, no lawyer would ever earn a fat fee out of it. I wasn’t out of place in the first class, I was where I belonged with the sensible ones. I rose and took down my briefcase and pulled out the Tiffield file. I started to make notes but the train was going too fast, seeming actually to roll from side to side. But I kept my pen in my hand like a staff of office.

There wasn’t a taxi in sight at Leddersford Victoria; I waited for a moment then walked across to the Central Station. The wind struck cold through my thin suit and my briefcase seemed very heavy. I was the commercial traveller coming home, the tired bag­man; it struck me as typical of my father-in-law that he hadn’t sent anyone to meet me.

I took the short cut through Ingerton Close. Ingerton Close began as a narrow alleyway, broadened out into a little square and then narrowed again; it was, now that I came to think of it, a dingy parody of the mews where Jean lived. Once it had been a residential quarter, Leddersford’s answer to the Albany; now it was mainly populated by West Indians and Pakistanis. And they wouldn’t be there much longer; soon it was all coming down. There wasn’t really anything else to be done with Leddersford; everything had gone too far for repair, everything was too black, too dirty, too old, too badly planned; there had to be a new city, but who would live in it when they’d built it?