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speed things up at all?’
    I thought round this. ‘Honestly, David, you can swop drivers if there’s any lack of confidence in the man at the wheel, but you can’t go any faster for having two at the same time.’
    â€˜No, I know that. I’m only anxious that you should put this over in a big way. If you do you’ll be a favourite child so far as Harwell is concerned.’
    When he’d rung off I went into the lab and told Stella what Thurston had said. She pursed her lips in a soundless whistle.
    â€˜I’ll say goodbye to my bed for the next ten days.’
    â€˜No,’ I said. ‘Your part’s finished. If there’s any panic overtime I’ll do it alone – or with Dawson.’
    â€˜D’you mean you’re taking me off the job?’
    â€˜Heavens, no. I want you to keep hard at it till the whistle blows. And that won’t be on Friday week, believe me. I can picture myself spending quite a bit of August in Wales.’
    â€˜Then as to staying late …’
    Our eyes met. ‘As to staying late, that’s my affair. For – reasons that you know, I’ve no ties at present.’
    â€˜Whereas I have.’
    â€˜Whereas you have. Exacting ones, however pleasant.’
    Her blue eyes nickered away. ‘I don’t think you ought to hold my private life against me.’
    â€˜I don’t hold it against you, but you’re too valuable to be worked to death.’
    She took in a slow breath, embarrassed. ‘Thank you. I’m sure that justifies a rise.’
    â€˜I’ll give you one.’
    â€˜Make it guineas.’ She stopped and flushed. ‘ Sorry. But you do see, don’t you, that if I’m here as an employee – as I am – you can’t begin to take in all sorts of private pros and cons before you ask me to stay late or do extra work. Besides … I want to do it. I want to see it through.’
    I said: ‘It means we’ve simply got to throw the thing together. We must have a few days for testing here before it goes out.’
    â€˜They know that as well as you,’ she said. ‘ I shouldn’t worry.’
    â€˜No,’ I said. ‘I’ve given up worrying about that.’
    I decided to spend this last rush period at the Old Bull at Letherton. Kent, still staying with the Lloyds, seemed fairly quiet, and, although Mrs Lloyd peered at me through her microscopes when I said I hadn’t yet heard when Mrs Granville was coming back, she didn’t ask any questions. I thought of telling her of Lynn’s key under the geranium so that she could go in and clean up once in a while, but I thought Lynn might come for it sometime and prefer no one to know. The house wouldn’t go to pot in a week or so, and I could run over myself every day for the post.
    Before I left Greencroft I packed a few things. I had to open her wardrobe, which I’d not done since she left. The white evening frock she’d worn at Glyndebourne twisted slightly on its hanger and that perfume came from it. It gave me a nasty turn, a sort of nostalgia, and above all a need to see her and talk to her again. I felt as if I’d thrown away all the things that mattered in life for the sake of a certain amount of not very important prestige.
    On the Sunday, finding my own company suddenly just not to be lived with any longer, I rang Simon Heppelwhite and said could we meet for a drink somewhere. He said he was just leaving for the Criterion where his stage sets for Volpone were going up; but if I liked to meet him there he’d be delighted to see me.
    When I got in, Simon was sitting in the stalls dwarfing the producer beside him like a lion beside a badger, while spotlights were being switched on and off a bit of Venetian Gothic. One or two people whom I took to be actors were drifting about in the half-lit auditorium. I shouldn’t altogether have been surprised to find Joy Fraser with him,