Dougal had taken Miss Merle Coverdale for a walk across the great sunny common of the Rye on a Saturday afternoon. Merle Coverdale was head of the typing pool at Meadows, Meade & Grindley. She was thirty-seven.

Dougal said, ‘My lonely heart is deluged by melancholy and it feels quite nice.’

‘Someone might hear you talking like that.’

‘You are a terror and a treat,’ Dougal said. ‘You look to me like an Okapi,’ he said.

‘An Okapi is a rare beast from the Congo. It looks a little like a deer, but it tries to be a giraffe. It has stripes and it stretches its neck as far as possible and its ears are like a donkey’s. It is a little bit of everything. There are only a few in captivity. It is very shy.’

‘Why do you say I’m like it?’

‘Because you’re so shy.’

‘Me shy?’

‘Yes. You haven’t told me about your love affair with Mr Druce. You’re too shy.’

‘Oh, that’s only a friendship. You’ve got it all wrong. What makes you think it’s a love affair? Who told you that?’

‘I have second sight.’