He paused to look around the room, observing the known anonymity, the familiar strangeness. Here, too, there was a kind of recognition, but recognition without anxiety – the awareness of a new start in well-trodden...

‘Come back and have a meal with us. Hilda would like to see you again. I can telephone her from here.’ ‘Not tonight, I’m afraid. I’d be glad to, some other time.’ Tilling stared at...

‘Do you know Switzerland well?’ she asked. ‘No.’ She said complacently: ‘It is a most beautiful country. And the life here can be so good – skiing in winter, boating or climbing in summer. Are...

He led her from the gate, into the shadow of the hedge. She drew away slightly, pointing up to a square of light. ‘My parents are still awake, it seems.’ ‘Why shouldn’t they be? It’s...

The main road was empty; the tram-lines stretched for nearly half a mile in either direction, cold and bare in the fluorescent light. The nearest stop was on an island, less than twenty yards away....

Some yards away a solitary coot was paddling, with dogged persistence, against the flow. Its efforts appeared to match exactly the opposing pull of the water; in two or three minutes there was no sign...

Instead of going straight across, he detoured on to the Île Rousseau. On either side of the short connecting span, the ducks and geese and swans, in their separate pens, placidly scoured their soiled and...

‘Are you married?’ ‘Yes, I’m married.’ ‘It doesn’t seem to have put you off your game.’ Leverett finished his whisky and stared at the empty glass. The tall waitress was leaning against the wooden ledge,...

‘And your sister Angela?’ ‘She got married during the war. They have three children.’ ‘I remember her as the most beautiful person I have ever known.’ ‘She has a daughter,’ Hibson said, ‘very like her....

Tilling said quickly: ‘There were one or two quite good reviews. Of course, reviews don’t really mean much beyond a certain point.’ ‘They still sell all right?’ ‘On that one they increased the print order...