I could see, after a while, that he intended to hold out on me, and the thought of that cigarette grew therefore increasingly attractive. He could no longer look me in the eyes: he had dropped his gaze, forfeiting as little as possible, to my knees, which were as usual exposed. It was thus that we passed through London Bridge. As we moved off again into the night, I said:

“All right then, I did think you were good. I didn’t think you were bad, at any rate. I thought it was a rotten play, and I detest that girl, but I thought that you were quite good. You were the best thing in it, not that that is saying much. May I have my cigarette now, please?”

He got out his packet once more and handed me the cigarette. I was getting out a box of matches when he offered me a light. He held it so that I had to lean out to reach it: our knees met in the middle of the compartment, and he saw to it that our hands met, too. I could feel deep contractions of fright inside me.

We talked, for the rest of the journey, about this and that. We ascertained that I was getting off at the station before he was, though neither of us disclosed the cause of our journeys into unexpected Kent. He let me have the other Gauloise and smoked the tipped cigarettes himself. He said he did not like them; I asked him why he carried them around with him, and he said that he had got them for the woman he had taken out for the evening. As my station drew nearer and nearer and he still did not know my name or who I was or anything about me, I began to feel sick: waves of terror kept pouring through me. I shut my eyes and leaned back in the corner, with my hands folded on my lap. Through the cloth of my coat and skirt I could feel my guts heaving up and down. I said nothing.

“You’ve gone very quiet,” David said as we drew in to my station.

“I’m very tired,” I said as the train slowly, ominously ground itself to a halt. When it stopped, I died a small death; I could bear anything while that throbbing, rocking noise was going on, but the silence and the lack of movement were the end of me. Quite finished off, I opened the carriage door; he made no effort to help me, he was not that kind of person.