She flicked him a look, and he grinned. They went in and picked a couple of scoops each from a huge range of flavours displayed in a glass freezer cabinet, and then ran to the car and the cool of its air-conditioning before the ice cream melted.

III

Something happened on the drive back. Something beyond touch, or reason. Something very tiny in the great complexity of human relations. Like a radio whose tuning has slipped fractionally off-station, turning fine music into something scratchy and irritating. They had finished the ice cream long before they reached Section One, and the chill of it seemed to cool the warmth there had been over lunch. Margaret began to wonder if she had imagined that warmth. Perhaps it had been the heat of the food. For now Li seemed aloof, disinclined to talk. On those few occasions he met her eye, his eyes were cold, his demeanour polite, but formal. Where was the man she had listened to speaking fondly of his uncle, of Sunday mornings in the park at the “English Corner,” of the one ambition he had ever had to be a policeman? The transformation during that short drive from the restaurant to the office was both extraordinary and complete. Back again was the surly, resentful, ugly police officer she had encountered the previous day, and again this morning. Margaret’s few attempts at conversation elicited little more than a monosyllabic response. Was it something she’d said or done? She found herself growing frustrated and angry.