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right.’
    What for?’
    ‘Breaking up our marriage.’
    But not even he could believe this. He hastily looked away, and said: ‘The lawyers will write to you. We must have no communication of any kind until the divorce is over.’
    ‘Of course.’
    He lingered by the door, again wistful. She thought: I’ve lived with this grown-up schoolboy for four years, and we’ve had a child together. I ought to feel something that I don’t: I ought to feel degraded or ashamed or regretful – something like that. Well, I don’t. It simply didn’t concern me. While this thought went through her mind she felt her knees shaking again, and she understood she was terrified. His sideways glances at her were full of an avid hate: it was ludicrous, the effect of the ugly eyes in the formally sentimental and appealing face. She thought: If I don’t say the right thing, he’ll embrace me or hit me – it will be horrible. There’ll be a horrible scene. She said, ‘I’ll ring you up in a day or two and ask what the lawyers said.’ Her voice was casual and friendly. His face changed and became stiff. He nodded, and went out, carefully closing the door after him as if locking her in. And when she tested it she found that he had turned the key in her lock.
    Now she wanted to cry. But she would not allow herself tears. Just as tenderness, moments of real emotion with William left her exposed to her need for Caroline, so did tears, even brief tears, open her to a feeling of deep, impersonal pain that seemed to be lying in wait for her moments of weakness like an enemy whose name she did not know, but whose shape and attributes she was learning because of its shadow, deepening steadily outside the bright shell she lived within.
    She went to sleep at once, without thinking of Douglas.
    These days she always woke early, and with delight, no matter how late she had been in getting to bed. For the first time in her life waking was not a painful process of adjustment. The shrilling and twittering of the birds who filled Mrs Carson’s garden every morning, or the roar of aircraft overhead, sank into her sleep like a premonition of the day’s excitements, and before she had opened her eyes she was already poised forward in spirit, thinking of the moment when she would rejoin the group and her friends.
    Before she could join them, of course, she had to put in an obligatory eight hours in the office. She had returned as junior typist to Robinson, Daniel and Cohen, now reduced because of the war to Mr Robinson. Mr Max Cohen was two years dead of a heart attack. Mr Jasper Cohen was helping to run the army in North Africa. Mr Daniel was fighting in it. Mr Robinson’s young, lean, tightly-sprung body must conceal some weakness, for it was known he had tried to reach the war and failed. When Martha had applied for a job in her old firm she had done so thinking of the gentle kindliness of Mr Max Cohen. There was such a shortage of women workers for the offices that Mr Robinson was pleased enough to see her. That Martha disliked him as much now as she had always done seemed irrelevant, when her working life was irrelevant to her real interests. There were two women in the office now, herself and Mrs Buss. That two women were enough was because of the efficiency of Mrs Buss, who never let Mr Robinson or Martha forget this truth, which led to her salary being increased almost monthly. Neither Mr Robinson nor Martha begrudged her this: in fact Martha imagined that when he signed the pay cheques and handed hers to Mrs Buss he must feel embarrassed because he was paying for her entire life: her devoted, jealous watchful interest was concentrated on Mr Robinson, not as a man, but as the unworthy representative of the absent senior partners. Sometimes he remarked, almost resentfully, that there was no need for her to work at nights, or arrive at the office so early in the mornings. Whereupon she faced herself at him like a quarrelling little bird, and said: