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with amusement that it was wrapped in last week’s edition of Certainty. How pained Julian would be! Its use as insulating material for frozen food was only one step up the scale from wrapping it round fish and chips.
    â€˜What am I supposed to do with them?’
    â€˜Mrs O’Donnell said you was going in there for coffee. And could you take them in with you just in case that poor wretch she’s doing dirt to comes home for his lunch?’
    But Susan had begun to doubt whether she was expected to keep that appointment. By the time Mrs Dring had finished the living-room and moved into what used to be Julian’s study it was half past ten and the car was still outside. It looked as if Louise had forgotten. Love was generally supposed to conquer all and, although this was perhaps not what the adage meant, it certainly in Susan’s experience, banished from the lover’s mind firm promises and prior engagements. Curious, though. Louise had been so insistent.
    But between ten-thirty and eleven the time went slowly. There was no need to watch the window. The Airedale, now sheltering in Winters’ porch, would warn her of the man’s departure. Eleven struck and on the last stroke Susan’s oppression lifted. The rain was filling Monday’s ruts with yellow clayey water, making pools round the wheels of the green car. Its driver was still inside Braeside and Susan sighed with relief. She wouldn’t have to go now. There was no need for tact or kindness or firm advice because, by her own actions, Louise had cancelled the consultation.
    Mrs Dring wrapped herself in a cocoon of blue polythene and trotted off into the rain, pausing to glower at the car and the curtained windows. Susan tried to remember how many times and for how long each time the car had been there before. Surely not more than three times and the man had never stayed as long as this. Didn’t he have a job to go to? How could he afford to spend so much time—an entire morning—with Louise?
    She opened the refrigerator door to make sandwiches for her lunch. The fish finger packet lay slightly askew on the metal slats. Did Bob ever come home to lunch? Eileen O’Donnell had seemed to think he might and now, as Susan considered, she remembered how Bob himself had told her he might come home one lunchtime.
    Well, let him come home. Let him find them together. A show-down might be the best way out of this mess for all of them. But Susan took the packet from the refrigerator and went round to the front of the house from where she could see Braeside.
    There was no one sitting in the through-room or in the little room at the other side of the front door. They must be still in the bedroom behind those closed curtains. Susan glanced at her watch and saw that it was gone half past twelve. How would she have felt if she had walked into that hotel, or wherever they had met, and found Julian in bed with Elizabeth? It would almost have killed her. Julian had been far more discreet than Louise—he was far cleverer—but still the process of discovery had been dreadfully painful to his wife. If Bob North came now it would be a far worse pain than that which would meet him.
    That decided her. It was all very well deciding to have as little as possible to do with the Norths. Circumstances altered cases and this was a hard case with circumstances as different from those of everyday life as Susan’s present existence was from that of a year ago. She went back into the house and slipped her arms into the sleeves of her raincoat. Then she banged hard on Norths’ front door, banged and rang the bell, but no one came. They must be asleep.
    Reluctantly she went round to the side. What she was about to do would save Louise, at least for a time, from ignominy and possibly from violence, but Louise wouldn’t be grateful. What woman would ever again be able to bear the sight of a neighbour who had found her in what the lawyers