Free The Japanese Girl by Winston Graham Page B

about a third of it registered either way.
    Eventually, when she’d corkscrewed the stub of her cigarette in a British Railways ashtray, she said: ‘ Well, Bill, wasn’t that a mess last night!’
    I tutted in sympathetic agreement. She said: ‘I felt so sick . I could have been as sick as a dog. I got to sleep about five, but then only for a couple of hours.’
    I said: ‘ You haven’t heard anything from Peter?’
    She shook her head. ‘Nor will, if I know him. It’s the end between us. And all because of a filthy little ear-ring that couldn’t have mattered less!’
    I looked at her cautiously. ‘ In a way, it had to matter. Because it worked out as a question of trust, didn’t it?’
    â€˜But why should he take the ear-ring in the first place? He’s not a thief – never could be! The money he lost was an awful lot, I know, but it wasn’t that important. Good Heavens, I would have advanced it him out of my quarterly allowance if he had wanted it!’
    â€˜He didn’t want it,’ I said. ‘He wanted trust, didn’t he? And he didn’t get it.’
    â€˜Should he have? With the thing in his pocket? Should we all have said absolutely nothing and let him take the ear-ring away? It’s just past my comprehension! Why he should ever have done it!’
    â€˜You don’t think there was any truth in his story?’
    She blinked at me with her cloudy eyes and lit another cigarette. ‘No. How could there be? It was such a feeble excuse. Nobody’s born as young as that, Bill; not any more.’
    I liked her every way. Even in her wooden-headed approach to this problem of Peter, which was so much like her father. I liked the look of her brassiere strap showing through the shoulder of her thin blouse. I liked her ankles and legs. I coveted them. I coveted her. I knew I could teach her so much about life without harming or altering the essential, obstinate but charming female who answered to the name of Lucille Loveridge.
    And at that very moment I was very much tempted, because I knew just how she felt and how easy that spirit-level bubble of love could be given a tilt in my direction. ‘Look, my sweet,’ I’d say, and put my arm round her, ‘ forget it for a day or so. Have lunch with me and then come back here and we can make plans for the evening. I’m free as air, and the only way to face life when it kicks you in the face is to grin and kick back. Can’t I help you to kick back?’
    Something like that but a little less obvious. Maybe words wouldn’t be necessary at all, once one had made the right gestures …
    She was looking at me. Well, I was tempted like Hell. But what’s always been wrong with me in my life is that I’m not a big-timer.
    I said: ‘Should I go and see Peter?’
    No great smoker at normal times, she drew at this second cigarette as if she had a real grudge against it. ‘It wouldn’t do any good , would it? I mean, what good would it do? What could you say? What could he say?’
    â€˜I don’t know. That’s what we’d have to find out.’
    â€˜ You don’t think there’s anything in his fantastic story, do you?’
    â€˜Seems very doubtful. But if we both agree that he’s not the natural thieving type, I think we ought to try and find what the true explanation is.’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. If we only had something to go on.’
    When Peter Stevenson came out of the school gates at Beckenham I fell into step beside him. He looked startled, and then hitched up his collar and walked on.
    â€˜I want a word with you,’ I said casually.
    â€˜Go to Hell!’
    It wasn’t good advice considering how I’d felt a few hours ago, but I put it down to ignorance.
    â€˜Was that story you told last night the truth?’
    â€˜What does it matter!’
    â€˜I thought it