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"Helen, I’ you off like that What must you think? I just can’t bear overcrowded bars, but oing to meet you for the first time in full view of them"

"No, it’s fine Fine"

The car see Her lanced at hiood He was not as tall as she’d iined, but he was not a small man either She had a phobia about s today?" he asked "Tell "

To her surprise, she did They sped through the darkness, away fro familiar, away fro, and so, to quell the anxiety she felt riding at night in a fast car with a stranger, she talked through every detail of her day

The Croxley Oak had the tawny atood country pubs acquire, melloith the pleasant hulass of white wine; Phil had a single half of bitter and then went on to ginger beer And they talked After almost an hour, they ordered home-baked ham with chips and salad, and the chips came thick and handcut, the ha about some difficulties with one of his school’s department heads, how everyone had to handle her tactfully, how she upset students It had arisen because Helen had told hiue who had always been exceptionally conscientious and had recently beco everyone because it was so out of character She told Phil she couldn’t take an interest in cricket, though she had tried hard for Tom’s sake when he had been in the school teanorance of choral music when he learned she was a ers

Now, as he shook his head over a remark the department head had made that day to a pupil, Helen looked across the table at Philip Russell and felt an extraordinary sense of having known hih he had been there, familiar, trusted, even while she had beenup their children, so a parallel life which was interwoven with hers The feeling startled her and in a second it had gone, to be replaced by the knowledge that she was si and his company

"Would you like a pudding? Coffee?"

"I’d like soreat that you can actually get tea in pubs now and no one thinks it odd?" He et up, then said, "Helen, do your fa you"

She felt e at ho for a call to tell hihed, looking embarrassed hi before they paused in talk about their fa to find aand a spiritual dimension in his life, and how she worried that h was spending a year teaching in Africa and the younger, also Toement "But I’ll support him all the same I have to You have to ap in their lives" His wife had been killed in an appalling electrical accident in the house He had stated the fact in a way that forbade further enquiry

"It’s rather late," Helen said

"I know, but we’re grown-ups Nobody’s going to tell us off"

"Oh yes they are!"

He held open his car door I aain I haven’t enjoyed

At her car, in the now deserted yard of the Old Ship, he said, "Thank you, Helen I’ll phone you if I lancing in her rear-view mirror as she drove away, she saw that he waited and watched

Five

Melanie Dreas so happy It was very quiet, very peaceful, and the early autuh theonto the table at which she sat with a packet of thank-you notes She had written two and had worked out that she still had forty-two to go

The previous day, a delivery van had arrived frocom, hich they had had their list and it had taken twoall the parcels and boxes out and up the two flights of stairs to the flat They had been perfectly cheerful about it, though, and after it was all done Melanie hadcake and they had toasted her in the new blue s hite stars

Now, she took an envelope and wrote on it--but not the address of the aunt who had sent them a hundred pounds

She wrote:

Melanie Drew

Melanie Drew

Melanie Drew

Mr and Mrs Craig Drew