got up slowly, his gabardine dangling by one sleeve, and Molly made to step between them just as the barmaid got there. “I’ll not have language like that in my place,” she told Martin. “Get out and take your friends with you or I’ll call the police.”
She blocked the doorway of the snug when the workman tried to get past her. “They’re not worth dirtying your hands on, Bobby. Go and sit down quietly now and there’ll be a drink on the house.”
A chill wind that tasted of fog blustered along Waterloo Road, jingling the streetlamps. Molly and Leon linked arms with Martin as they strode into the gusts, and after a while he stopped trembling. “You see what I mean about getting out of hand,” he muttered. “I get people thrown out of pubs.”
“I’m surprised you kept your temper as long as you did,” Molly protested.
“Sometimes I don’t. Anyway, now you’ve some idea of what you’ll have to put up with if you work with me.”
She took time to think what to say; she had already distressed him enough. “I do appreciate being asked, and I do think I could be some use. It’s just that I didn’t know Leon was going to suggest me. Would you mind if I thought about it for a day or two?”
Leon stared at her. “What’s there to think about?”
“Call it female indecision.”
“Christ preserve us from stereotypes.”
“All right, it was a stupid thing to say.”
Leon rushed them into the wind and it snatched at her breath. She had to slow down, she couldn’t think. “All the same, I need time to decide,” she said.
“What’s the problem? You aren’t sure if you want to leave Ben Eccles?” Leon was growing angry. “This is your big chance, Molly. You don’t want to work for this outfit for the rest of your life.”
“You ought to take your time, Molly,” Martin said. “I don’t want to feel you were forced into anything.”
She felt so grateful that she almost blurted out that she would work with him. She headed for the Underground instead, before she could. Trains squealed in their burrows, and at last one emerged. She had to change at the next station, and so she was on the Circle line, in an empty carriage lit like a hospital corridor, before she was able to think.
Perhaps she could work with Martin. He would be the perfect reason to leave Ben, since it would be clear that she was moving on to better things rather than away from Ben. Yet the idea made her nervous, perhaps because she already seemed so much in tune with Martin, almost as if she had met him before—as if she had dreamed of him. If she had, she didn’t want to know. Surely the explanation was that she’d sensed what Leon had in mind. A good night’s sleep would cure her nervousness.
She came out onto Bayswater Road a couple of miles west of MTV. A sodden oak leaf flapped on the railing above the steps. She turned left at the estate agent’s and up the hill. A minute’s climb past the white four-story Victorian terraces brought her home. She closed the gate in the railings and went down the glassy steps. She found her key in the dark niche that the pavement walled in. A car door slammed farther up the hill, a disco light pulsed red and green at a fourth-floor party across the street. She slipped the key into the lock and then hesitated. For a moment she had expected someone to open the door from within.
She switched on the light in the hall. Nobody there, nobody in the mirrors that faced each other across the hall but her own twin image striding forward: wide mouth, high cheekbones, bright greenish eyes, clipped blond hair. Wind chimes tinkled as she entered her flat. Nobody in the living room with its thick rugs, its plump seats snug in the corners of the room, the shelves and table she had built from kits with incomprehensible instructions; nobody had stolen her video recorder. Nobody in the compact kitchen with its serving hatch, nobody in the bathroom that smelled of Sea Jade talcum powder, nobody in