She had lied to Carter Price about a dinner date. In fact her flatmate Tess had promised to cook supper. But she would, she thought, as she strap-hung on the Bakerloo line, call Harry Barnard later and give him the gist of what Price had talked about in the pub. It was obvious that the reporter was picking up a lot of confidential information, probably from Scotland Yard itself, and she guessed that Harry would be very interested in a lot of what he had said. She had not seen the sergeant for a couple of weeks and she had come away from the last visit to his smart but curiously sterile flat with a feeling that perhaps his interest in her was waning. And the longer she waited for him to ring, the more uncertain she became that she actually wanted him to. He was not the type to settle down, she was sure, and she herself didn’t long for domesticity. In her experience of teeming Catholic Liverpool around Scotland Road, babies followed marriage with an inevitability and frequency which alarmed her.
