This was the firm her aunt had told her was looking for her sister. This was the firm she was going to have to deliver her papers to. It was now not so much a question of feeling guilty about what she had been doing as it was a question of wondering what he had been doing. Did he know something? Had he overheard a conversation she’d had with Doris? Had he found the note she’d scribbled about where to take the papers Glossop was going to deliver? Had he, in fact, already started to check up on her?

In the Dog and Duck the bartender was calling time. Peacham tottered towards the door trying desperately to remember something that had happened earlier and that at the time had suggested the idea of a good dinner. Had someone invited him? Told him to go somewhere? Meet someone? No, it was useless, it had all vanished like a dream. Perhaps it had been a dream. Tightening his filthy old greatcoat with the bit of rope that served as its belt he headed off towards the park to find a comfortable bench until the pub opened again later that evening. Good job the sun was shining and it wasn’t too cold today.

~~~

Chapter Four

Love or Money?

(S)he Loves Me, (S)he Loves Me Not

When Derek got home on tuesday evening he was all agog to tell Iris the news. The news about his going to New York, that was, not the news from Bowles, Bowles, and Biddlington. He felt that it would be better to keep quiet about the mysterious Judith Callaghan for the moment But this shouldn’t be taken as an indication of selfish self-absorption on Derek’s part. Despite Derek’s dissatisfaction with his job he is at the same time aware of the fact that life could be a good deal worse. It’s just that he has a certain ambition. He believes not so much that he deserves something better as that there is something better that he ought to be attaining, and that it is essentially his fault that it is still missing from his life. In the meantime he does care about things outside himself; he cares about Iris, in fact, more than he admits. What had begun as a gay and easy adventure has become — dare he admit it — a trifle more serious. But he sees Iris as more independent than himself and resents this. He feels that if he could achieve something more important (by his lights) than the kind of job and position that he thinks (mistakenly) she respects, he could allow himself to accept the relationship as a more equal proposition. As it is he suspects Iris has but little real regard for him and consequently works hard at denying his own feelings for her.