As soon as the meal was over, she said she had to go. Some of the children in her department were coming round to her flat for a talk, she said, about their futures. They were really very good, and there were still some institutions in the country not seduced by the notion of the service industry. She hoped she might be able to help them.

He lingered in the restaurant over the coffee and recognised the voice of the young woman who had spoken to him on the phone as soon as she entered the restaurant. The place was quite quiet. As she walked through the swinging doors, she was laughing. It was good-humoured, innocent laughter. Her head was thrown back, and her mouth was open. She could still not have heard, George thought, that Greg was dead. She was almost certainly the woman Mrs. Franks had seen with her son, shopping in Bristol. She was blond, beautiful, and long-legged. Her clothes were obviously expensive. Yet she made no attempt at sophistication. These good times were a novelty to her; she knew enough about the world to think they would not last. She intended to enjoy every moment of them while she had the chance.

There were four of them, and they sat at the best table in the restaurant, by a window with a view down the garden to the lake. The woman’s companion, whom George took to be Barnes, was a square fat man built like a bull terrier. He seemed to say very little but ate with a ravenous intensity, as if he had known great hunger. They were entertaining another couple, who ate little but drank heavily throughout the meal. As the evening progressed, the couple, who were middle-aged, conventionally dressed, became more and more wrapped up in each other, sharing their own bottle of wine, their own domestic jokes, so Barnes and Franks’ girlfriend might have been strangers placed at the table by chance.

George called for more coffee and waited, listening as best he could, to what was being said at the table some distance from him. Once he looked up and caught Barnes’ eye. He wondered if he had caused the man to be suspicious of him, but that seemed ridiculous. Then he began to fear that it would be impossible for him to talk to the young woman on her own. He imagined them in some private room, drinking together until late that night or sweeping down the drive in one of the ostentatious cars parked outside. In the end Barnes made it easy for him. While she was still eating dessert, he pulled a twenty-pound note from his pocket and passed it across the table to her.

“Gus and I have some business to discuss,” he said. “Get yourself a taxi home. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow.”