"Francis walked by the railings of Green Park, not taking a taxi, still practising the frugality he had developed after his failure to appropriate the dressmaker's money. It wasn't important that the idyll changed again; what mattered was he had no friend. He'd gone on holidays with friends, but always there'd been sulkiness and tears. 'You're Francis,' a girl he'd thought to be sympathetic had pronounced six months ago in Cleethorpes . . .

His melancholy deepened as he progressed through the London night. People left a gambling club near Hyde Park Corner, young men in evening dress shouting and laughing, girls laughing also, all of them tumbling into taxis, going on to somewhere else. For a moment Francis hated them. He stopped in his walk, indulging his dislike, listening to the shrill voices, the late-night cries of people determinedly having a good time. He wouldn't have cared if all of them had been shot down dead, if gunmen had appeared from the May fair doorways and opened fire in the orange street light."

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