‘Look, Helen.’ Christopher raised his voice, shouting above the noise of a lorry Helen was overtaking. ‘Laura never wanted to marry me, she—’

‘Of course she did. Obviously she wanted your money and the house. God knows what she would have done with the garden if she’d got her hands on it.’

‘She did not want to marry me!’ Christopher shouted, and a hitherto somnolent old labrador raised its head from among the parcels and packages on the back seat and barked. ‘When will you get it into your stupid head that there was never any question of marriage between Laura and me? The moment she was old enough, she upsticked and beat it to London. She made a career for herself, she has her own business—’

‘A pretty small one—’

‘—I don’t see why you should be so upset and—’

‘It’s you who seem to be upset.’ Helen paused by the traffic lights on the edge of the town.

‘Oh, God,’ said Christopher.

‘Actually,’ said Helen as the lights turned to green, ‘if you hadn’t flown into this silly temper, I was leading up to the fact that I have a small job—’

‘For her small business?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why—’

‘I thought you could persuade her to do it for me at cost price or something.’

‘I could?’

‘Yes, you know her better than I, as you’ve just indicated.’

‘So—’

‘And I don’t want to know her better than I do already.’

‘That makes two of you,’ Christopher muttered. ‘What’s the job?’ he asked. ‘I don’t see why she should do it at cost price, she has her living to make.’

‘It was just a thought, since you are such old buddies.’

Disliking the word buddy Christopher thought, If I told Helen that if it were not for her I would seldom think of Laura, she wouldn’t believe me. He watched the road ahead. Perhaps, he thought, I should be grateful to Helen. Glancing at his wife’s profile he smiled, then patting her corduroy thigh he said loudly: ‘You silly old thing, what’s the job?’

Helen proceeded to tell him.

Laura, walking slowly in spite of the cold, watched Christopher and Helen’s car disappear and thought, Poor old, boring old Christopher. She wrapped her scarf close, pushing it up over her jaw. She dawdled, looking into a bookshop window, keeping her eyes down, not wishing to enter into chat with the bookseller, who was in his way a friend. She counted the titles: love, crime, travel, history. By dawdling it was her intention to give Nicholas time to make a scene with the traffic warden, who was lurking within insult distance of Nicholas’ car. Either the man had more courage than was good for him or he was new to the town. Only a few years ago Nicholas had tripped a warden so that, lurching against a bollard on the quay, he had fallen into the river. I cannot but admire, thought Laura, watching. The old devil does not resist his impulses; he has a dreadful, endearing, childlike quality.