It was snowing in London and the wind was cold as ice. In Bellamina’s a girl with smooth blonde hair sat by the window and watched the driving snow, and scanned the faces of the passers-by as they hurried along Coventry Street with their heads down and their chins in their collars.
She was a pretty girl with the level eyebrows and wide mouth of the innately good-tempered, and in fact she was so good-tempered that no one ever minded keeping her waiting. “Oh, Deborah’ll be all right,” her friends said. “Nothing ever ruffles Deborah!”
There was a sherry on the table in front of her and so far she had made it last twenty minutes. She was beginning to wonder if anything serious could have happened and, for the third time, she wiped the mist from the window’s plate-glass with her glove. She wo
