Free Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart by Stephen Benatar Page A

increasingly as though you came to London on your own.”
    â€œNo loving wife? No family?”
    â€œNot here at all events.”
    â€œOr anywhere, I guess. A married man doesn’t vacation without his wife. And I was hardly dressed for business.”
    â€œPerhaps you were taking the day off.”
    â€œOn a Monday?”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI can’t continue to impose on you like this.”
    â€œThat’s a dazzlingly logical progression!” He grins that grin of his—the one that had stopped me leaving his office within the first fifteen minutes.
    This time it doesn’t work so well.
    â€œHaving everything bought for me: T-shirts, socks, shorts. Even having to take pocket money, for God’s sake! Couldn’t I find a job someplace; someplace I wouldn’t need a permit? Get myself a room?”
    â€œIf that’s what you want. It’s not what I want.”
    â€œI don’t know.” I’m spooning coffee into the filter.
    â€œWhat don’t you know?”
    â€œYour friend said amnesia could sometimes last for years.”
    â€œHe thought it more likely to last a week.”
    â€œBut you don’t, do you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be working so hard to try to trace this woman? And supposing you’re right and he’s wrong? If I had a job I could at least be starting to pay you back.”
    â€œRanjit said you needed rest. Not that I think your shopping—cleaning—cooking—are really what he had in mind. Frankly, I’m not all that worried about your paying me back. The thing that does worry me…”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou sound so negative.”
    â€œNegative? Because I feel you’re wasting your time looking for some woman who…well, even if she turns out still to be alive…?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI don’t see the point, that’s all. Because, in this instance, I’m inclined to side with the experts. If medical opinion truly leans towards a week…”
    He looks at the two pieces of cheesecake he’s now transferring from their box. I expect some comment on my change of tune. I reckon I should have known better.
    â€œWhen you put it that way I’m not honestly sure I see the point myself.”
    Possibly I now wear a slightly sheepish look. I shrug. “I guess you want to make me feel we’re making progress.”
    â€œNo. I think you’ll have to put it down to more than that. Let’s call it instinct.”
    â€œInstinct?”
    â€œGut feeling. Something that’s hounding me on. I just believe we’ve got to find this woman.”

10
    And then the lights come on!
    The lights come on! And some of London’s most historic buildings are seen floodlit for the first time since the coronation.
    St Paul’s…
    Two sections of the A.T.S have brought their mobile searchlights, have turned their beams on the cathedral. A third picks out the dome and its surmounting cross from a bombsite lower down the hill.
    In the precincts, people either sit on the protective coverings to the cellars or—like us—they stand in groups around the searchlights, watching the girls in charge.
    One of the girls talks to Matt and me. She’s blonde and pretty and wears a lot of shiny scarlet lipstick. “They never could get it, could they? Don’t you think that’s sort of symbolic?”
    Sort of miraculous, too. This splendid old structure stands triumphant in the midst of devastation, having watched over London through all the fires and explosions of many hundreds of air raids. Inspirational in its isolation. Surely as imposing now as it must have been at the time of its completed resurrection.
    Plenty of other buildings are adding to the glow that hangs above the city. From the top of the hill we can see the brightly lit newspaper offices in Fleet Street, also the lofty tower of the Shell-Mex edifice, illuminated by flares which