Free Out of the Blackout by Robert Barnard Page A

her yet. More presentable than the others, and can affect the genteel when she feels like it. Unmarried, like me. We did get together and have a bit of a chat once—ten or twelve years ago, it must be—but we didn’t really click. You don’t click, with the Simmeters.’
    â€˜Is Len unmarried too?’
    â€˜Well, he is now. I think he has been married—yes, I remember: we were talking once about how unfair the tax system is to the single person—that’s Len Simmeter’s type of conversation, though it’s perfectly true as well—and he described himself as a widower. Though when people say that, they’re just as often divorced, and don’t want to admit it for some reason. It wouldn’t be surprising if he were, and I’d never blame the wife: he’s not someone most women would fancy.’
    Miss Cosgrove stood up.
    â€˜Aren’t we gossiping? Well, that was nice. I’d better get across the way before I start slandering anyone else. I’ve got tickets for Othello tomorrow night, and I really ought to get in a bit of homework.’
    Miss Cosgrove, Simon felt, had earned her conducted tour of the Zoo. The next day, when he saw a faded blonde head turn in the street below the house, he said to himself: ‘There’s Connie.’
    He had kicked himself after Miss Cosgrove left for not askingprecisely what Leonard Simmeter did on the railways. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could bring up casually when you met on the stairs. But, as it happened, he found out unexpectedly two days later.
    He was leaving the house, as usual, at about five to nine, and from the front door of No. 23 a young girl came out, and they banged doors together. Twenty, in a red, short skirt, bright as new paint, and glorying in being young in the era of the young. She was the sort of girl you had to smile at, and the smile she gave Simon back was brilliant, open, and frankly interested.
    â€˜Hello,’ she said chirpily, with a faint trace of cockney accent, and reminding Simon of a cock-a-hoop London sparrow. ‘Moved next door, have you?’
    That’s right. About a fortnight ago.’
    â€˜Room all right?’
    â€˜Not too bad,’ said Simon, as they began walking along Miswell Terrace together. ‘A bit dismal.’
    â€˜I know. They mostly are in this area. That’s why they’re cheap, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have expected that you’d get anything very cheery with that creepy lot.’
    â€˜The Simmeters? Do you know them?’
    â€˜No. Just seen them coming in and out now and again. They look a bit—you know—yukky.’
    â€˜Oh, they’re all right. I haven’t seen much of them.’
    â€˜I don’t suppose you will. My landlady says they keep themselves to themselves. Mind you, there was all that trouble last year, and that brought him out a bit.’
    â€˜Trouble?’
    â€˜At the tube, where he works. I wasn’t here then, but my landlady told me. He’s got a temper, has your Mr Simmeter. And he’s sort of Deputy Station Master, or whatever the pecking order is, down the road, at the Angel. Anyway, he got on his high horse, started giving someone a real dressing-down—one of the guards or something—and it was downright abuse, and there was practically a strike. There was a stoppage, and it went to arbitration, and he was censured—you know the kind of thing. It got in all the local papers, because of the inconvenience the stoppage caused. He was interviewed—imagine! My landlady said she learned more about the Simmeters that weekthan she’d learnt in the whole twenty years they’d lived next door.’
    â€˜So she doesn’t know them well?’
    â€˜Hardly at all. Well—this is me. ’Bye for now.’
    And giving him a smile that said she wouldn’t mind talking to him again if he was interested, she turned into a little