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Disgusted, he threw the bag at the girl, hitting her in the face.
    He turned back to the window, satisfied that he had shown her he was hard and ruthless. The sooner she realised that the better. At the end of the street he saw a yellow newspaper van arrive and he watched a bundle of evening papers being snatched from the van by the news-seller who had been waiting for the Final Night Edition.
    He wanted to rush out and buy a paper, but he was afraid to show himself a second time in the street. He watched the news- seller hurrying along, tossing papers into doorways as he came. He crossed the street, and the girl who had served Ellis in the café came to the door and took a paper from him. She said something that made him laugh, and he was still grinning as he tossed a newspaper on to the steps of the little grey house.
    Ellis turned quickly to the door, then paused. The girl was trying to eat the mess of jam and crumbs that stuck to the inside of the bag. She looked up, her face half-hidden by the sticky bag and her eyes cringed when they met his.
    He walked past her to the door, opened it and went into the passage. As he was about to descend the stairs he saw Mrs Wheeler standing in the hall, the newspaper in her hand. Cursing her under his breath, he stepped back so she couldn’t see him and watched her.
    Mrs Wheeler was a tall, gaunt woman with tired eyes and thin, greying hair. She held one spectacle lens between finger and thumb and peered through it at the print.
    Ellis gave up. He returned to his room, kicked open the door, entered.
    The girl had got to her feet and was now sitting on the edge of the bed. They looked at each other.
    “Who are you?” he demanded roughly. “What’s your name?”
    “Grace Clark,” she said, frightened. “Thank you for . . .”
    “Oh shut up,” he said viciously. “I wouldn’t give you anything. Nothing! Only you were making a damned nuisance of yourself. What do you think you’re going to do now?”
    Her face creased tearfully. “I don’t know.”
    “Where do you live?”
    “Camden Town.”
    “You’ve just come out of prison, haven’t you?”
    She nodded miserably.
    “Well, you better go back there.” He walked over to the window, raging, then turned, met her eyes. “I was a fool to have helped you. Why did they send you to prison?”
    “I had nothing. My father was killed . . .”
    “Don’t tell me a lot of slop. They put you away because you’re a thief, didn’t they?”
    “I couldn’t help it,” she said, showing spirit. “I tried to get a job, but no one wants anyone deaf.” She clenched her hands into fists. “I tried and tried, but it wasn’t any use. I had to live.”
    “You’re lying,” he said. “You’d have got something . . . a pension or something. You can’t fool me.”
    “I had run away from the W.A.A.F. They were after me. It was my father. He was ill. There was no one to look after him . . . so I deserted. Then the bomb fell . . .”
    “All right, all right,” Ellis broke in impatiently. “I told you I didn’t want to listen to any hard-luck story. I have enough hard luck myself. So you’re a thief, that’s it, isn’t it? A thief.”
    She got slowly and shakily to her feet.
    “I’m going,” she said, her lips trembling. “You can call me what you like . . .”
    A tap sounded on the door.
    Ellis sprang across the room, pushed the girl away from the door, motioning her to keep quiet. He opened the door a few inches.
    Mrs Wheeler was standing in the passage:
    “Good evening,” she said.
    “What is it?” Ellis asked in the disgusted voice he assumed when they talked together.
    She smiled. Her eyes were bright and hard. “Seen the evening paper?”
    He shook his head.
    “Then you’d better,” she said and pushed the newspaper at him. “It’s in the stop press.”
    Ellis read the small paragraph, his heart thudding against his side. “This is it,” he thought, “now what am I going to do?”
    There were only a few