Rachel opened her handbag, and peeped in.149

‘You needn’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the return halves. No sensible husband trusts his wife with the tickets.’

She laughed, and pulled something out of the bag. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Look what I’ve got!’

What she held out towards him was a knife.

It was a common kitchen knife, and not even a new one. The bone handle, yellowed and battered, seemed disproportionately long for the blade, which had been worn down to a couple of inches by long use and countless sharpenings.

‘What a curious thing for Celia to give you.’

‘She didn’t give it to me. I stole it.’

‘Rachel! You can’t mean that! You don’t mean that you actually—stole it?’

‘I stole it, all right. I saw it the moment we went into the kitchen, and waited till neither of you were looking. A real old-fashioned kitchen knife! … Look, Trevor!’

She pressed down the thin blade with her thumb and released it again.

‘There! D’you see? It’s as supple as an eel. I expect it belonged to that aunt. I tell you, this knife is going to make the whole difference to me.’

‘But how? What do you want it for? You’ve got a set of cook’s knives, and a potato peeler, and the curly knife for grapefruit, and a bean-slicer, and I don’t know what beside. Everything—and all new, and stainless steel.’

‘Yes, and all fit for nothing but a doll’s house. This is a real knife. It will cut!’

Dodging the affront to his feelings as a giver, he concentrated on the issue of theft.150

‘Really, Ray, I cannot make you out. I don’t think you know what you are doing.’

‘I know a good knife when I see one.’

‘But you’ve stolen it.’

‘Of course I’ve stolen it. How would I have got it otherwise? No woman who does her own cooking is going to part with a knife like this.’

‘If you really wanted it so badly, why didn’t you ask her?’

‘Because I wouldn’t have got it. She’d have made some excuse, and fobbed me off with a silver toastrack. I know my Celia.’

‘But now, if she misses it—’

‘She’ll miss it all right!’

‘She’ll blame some innocent person. Her charwoman, or the gardener, or some one of that sort.’

‘No, she won’t. She’ll know I took it.’

‘Well, that’s quite as bad. I don’t know that it isn’t worse, really. How can you ask her to be godmother now?’

‘Oh, Trevor, do leave off making mountains out of molehills. You don’t understand these things.’

‘I understand the difference between right and wrong.’

She threw the knife in the air, caught it, and put it back in her bag. The action, so light, carefree and flirtatious, was at variance with her encumbered body. The discrepancy alarmed him. He said, and his voice was stiff with anger, ‘I’m sorry, Rachel, but this can’t be allowed. Give me that knife, and I’ll run back with it, and explain. I can say it was a joke.’