It worked, just as of old.

‘I very much hope that this, our first talk, will not be the last.’

‘I hope that perhaps one day you will come and see Walwyk for yourself. You really should, you know. It would give me great pleasure to make you some coffee, or tea. Or to offer you,’ she gave him her full smile, ‘a glass of the Tío Pepe, or is it Amontillado?’

‘Tío Pepe. And you may be absolutely certain that I shall take you at your word.’

Hurrying away to do the rest of her shopping, the bottle of sherry lying modestly at the bottom of a brown paper carrier bag which did not invariably accompany single-bottle purchases, Miss Mayfield thought that Mr Freeman was a kind and sympathetic man, but he was not what she was looking for.

What am I looking for, then? Someone to share my fancies, suspicions, fears?

The answer to that was Yes!

10

THERE WAS A STRETCH OF UNEVENTFUL DAYS. MAY ended and June began, and when the month was eleven days old Miss Mayfield was in her garden, removing some quick-growing suckers from her rose bushes, when Wesley Baines opened her gate. In one hand he carried a pair of shoes which she had left with him to have rubber tips put on their heels

‘Oh, Mr Baines,’ she exclaimed, ‘you shouldn’t have bothered to bring them. I could have come, or Sydney could have brought them.’

‘I know,’ he said in his slow deliberate way. ‘They’re the excuse, like. I wanted to have a word with you, if you can spare the time.’

‘I’ve plenty of time. Do come in.’ She imagined that perhaps he had seen the papers concerning the Bogey scholarship and had come to talk to her about it.

Even at that minute Wesley’s concern with a well-done job took precedence of his immediate worry.

‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ he said, pausing and looking at the rose bed, ‘just clipping them off like that don’t do no good. It just make them stronger. You want to haul it out, like this, see. . . .’ He hauled out almost a foot of underground growth. ‘Then you got it right near the root.’

For a moment it looked as though he were about to tackle the job himself; but he pulled himself away and entered the house. The ceiling of her sitting room was at least three feet higher than that of his workroom, yet he seemed larger than ever against the new background. She took the shoes from him and asked him to sit down. He did so, on the very edge of one of her armchairs, so that his knees stuck out far over the hearthrug. He dropped his hands between them and began pulling at his fingers.

‘Well,’ she said, in as cheerful a manner as she could assume, ‘and what can I do for you, Mr Baines?’