“Splendid, Mrs. Langstone.” Mr. Shires took off his glasses and sat back in his chair. “I’m looking for a girl to do some of the donkey work for Mr. Smethwick and Miss Tuffley. Mr. Smethwick is our junior clerk. Miss Tuffley is our typist. They spend far too much of their valuable time filing or answering the telephone or making cups of tea for our clients. I can make more use of them than that. So if you are willing to do that sort of thing, I can give you a month’s trial on a part-time basis, and we’ll see how we go. Are you interested?”

“What do you mean by part-time, Mr. Shires?”

“If you come to work for me, Mrs. Langstone, you will have to get used to addressing me as sir. Let’s say three days a week. Our hours are eight thirty to five thirty. The precise days and hours may vary from week to week; you would have to fit in with us. Shall we say thirty shillings?”

“Thirty shillings a day?”

“No, no.” Mr. Shires belched unhurriedly. “Thirty shillings a week.”

“That’s ten shillings a day.”

“So it is. Will that suit, eh? Yes or no.”

“Yes,” Lydia said.

“Yes, what?” Mr. Shires said.

Lydia stared at him. “Yes, sir.”

Finding a job was proving harder than Rory had anticipated. On Tuesday he had lunch with a friend from university who now worked at an advertising agency in the Strand. When Rory had been in India, the friend had written enthusiastically about the opportunities awaiting him back in London. But now Rory was actually here, those opportunities seemed to have vanished. “Everyone’s tightening their belts, old chap,” the friend said as they drank their coffee after lunch. “And people want chaps with the right experience. There’s no getting round it, I’m afraid.”

By the time Rory got back to Bleeding Heart Square, the Crozier had opened for the evening. It was a cold night, and he went into the paneled saloon bar and ordered whisky. The place was crowded with people having a drink on their way home. Lucky people, he thought, people with jobs.

Rory found a seat in an alcove almost entirely filled with a large table, around which sat four law clerks engaged in a slanderous conversation about their employer. He slumped behind his newspaper in a chair at the end of the table and turned to the Situations Vacant. He was aware of the ebb and flow of voices around him. His attention wandered from the newsprint. He tuned in and out of conversations in the alcove and the bar beyond, as though he were twirling the dial on a wireless set.

“No change then?” said an educated man’s voice.

“Found herself a job, I understand. Extraordinary.”

“Good God. I’d have thought she was unemployable. Where?”

“Some lawyers at Rosington Place. Perfectly respectable billet, you needn’t worry about that.”

Rory recognized the voice of the second speaker: Captain Ingleby-Lewis, his neighbor on the first floor. He knew he ought to make his presence known or at least stop listening but his curiosity was stronger than his sense of propriety.

“She’s settled in much better than I thought she would,” Ingleby-Lewis said. “I mean, she’s not enjoying it, slumming it with her old father. But she’s putting a brave face on it. Plucky girl.”

“It can’t go on.”

“Of course not. But I can’t just throw her out.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t,” Ingleby-Lewis said, his voice suddenly sharp. “After all she is my daughter. Flesh and blood and all that. She is causing quite a stir in my place.”

“What do you mean?”

“Serridge-my landlord-he’s taken quite a shine to her. It’s he who found her the job. Even Mrs. Renton downstairs, who disapproves of most of the human race-I wouldn’t say she likes Lydia exactly, but she is being quite kind to her. As for that fellow Fimberry, he goes around with his tongue hanging out at the very thought of her.”

“Who’s this?” There was no mistaking the anger in the other man’s voice.

“Fimberry. Nervy chap. He’s got the room on the left of the front door, opposite Mrs. Renton’s. He’s meant to be writing a book. He’s always hanging round the chapel in Rosington Place.”

“He’s dangling after Lydia? Making a nuisance of himself?”

“Let’s say he’s getting rather fresh. Don’t worry, I’ll give the fellow his marching orders.”

“I must go. Would you give Lydia this for me?”

“Of course. You’re sure you haven’t time for another drink?”

The conversation continued but less audibly than before. Other voices drowned it out. When Rory left the Crozier ten minutes later, Ingleby-Lewis was no longer in the bar. He walked across the cobbles of Bleeding Heart Square and let himself into the house. Mrs. Renton was standing in the doorway of Fimberry’s room.

“Good evening,” he said.

“Settling in all right?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Could you do me a favor? I promised Mr. Fimberry I’d do his curtains. But he hasn’t taken them down. I need a longer pair of arms.”

Rory went into Fimberry’s room. The electric light was burning brightly. It was almost as cold in here as it was outside. The room was sparsely furnished and anonymous. The only touch of individuality were the books that filled almost the entire wall opposite the window from floor to ceiling. They were housed in two bookcases around which had grown a precarious network of shelves consisting of unpainted planks resting on bricks. It looked as if the slightest vibration would bring the entire erection crashing down.

Rory stood on a chair and unhooked the curtains from their rail. Afterward, while Mrs Renton was folding them, his eyes drifted over the spines of the books. Most of them were historical or topographical; almost all of them were old. They made the room smell like the seediest sort of second-hand bookshop, full of dead and decaying words that no one in his right mind would ever want to read.

He turned away and looked out of the uncurtained window. There was enough light to see a tall man in a dark overcoat standing on the corner by the Crozier. A cigarette glowed briefly as he inhaled. For an instant the skin of his face was as red as the devil’s.

When Lydia let herself into the house, Mr. Wentwood was climbing the stairs. He glanced back.

“Evening, Mrs. Langstone. You all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Lydia said, though in a sense she had seen a ghost: Marcus had been hovering in Bleeding Heart Square and had tried to speak to her. She had turned her face away and walked resolutely past him. She followed Mr. Wentwood up the stairs. “How’s the job-hunting?”

“No luck yet.” He paused on the landing, as if ready to talk. “Still, I’m having a day off tomorrow. I’ve got to run down to the country.”

“Lucky you.” Lydia nodded goodbye, wondering if he would be taking that girl with him tomorrow. She went into the flat’s sitting room. Her father was dozing in the armchair in front of the fire.

Without opening his eyes he said, “There’s something for you on the table. A parcel.”

Lydia’s stomach lurched. For a split second she glimpsed the possibility that someone might have sent her an uncooked heart. But this parcel looked very different from Serridge’s-it was about the shape and size of a brick and it hadn’t come in the post. She examined the superscription-only her name, no address-and recognized the large, square handwriting.

“Marcus,” she said. “Has he been in the house again? I saw him outside.”

“I happened to bump into him in the Crozier,” Captain Ingleby-Lewis said, his eyes still closed. “He asked me to give it to you.”

She stripped off her gloves and took off her hat. It was too cold to remove her coat. A car drew up outside the house.

The parcel had been professionally wrapped. Marcus could no more wrap a parcel than he could have performed an appendectomy. She undid the string and peeled back first the brown paper and then a second layer of tissue paper beneath. Finally she found what she was expecting, a box of chocolates from Charbonnel et Walker. Marcus was convinced that the road to a woman’s heart was paved with expensive chocolates. There was also an envelope with her name on it. Inside was a sheet of paper with the address of his club at the top.