‘You might as well return me to sender. “Can do very well without, thank you.”’ I suspected that she was seeking reassurance that her input was a constructive contribution and that she wasn’t a passenger, kept on board purely for company and night-time entertainment. ‘We’re a team, a fifty-fifty partnership,’ I said, sincerely. ‘It’s impossible to forecast who will get the breaks.’‘So far they’ve all come your way,’ she said, not jealously, just concerned about being much more than a sleeping partner. The one thing you could always say about Sarah was that she continuously pulled way above her weight. ‘The important thing is that we both keep pitching. When the game’s over, we’ll have broken even, you see.’She thanked me with a reserved smile, not completely assuaged. But she was genuinely pleased with the progress made, albeit ponderously. Rather than an action thriller, this was a sedate drawing-room drama, characterized by subtle manoeuvring and delicate finessing, advancement by minimal increments and not with one gigantic leap.
