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professionals, they have to if they’ve got other work on that involves daytime shooting.”
    “Well, I don’t know whether I could . . .” she’d said, and that had been that. Except for one thing.
    “There’s only one thing,” I’d said. “I do quite a bit of work for your agency, and the point is, I don’t think Mr. Farlcrest would like it if he knew I’d been offering what he’d consider to be another job to one of his staff, so I wonder if you’d mind not mentioning it to anyone at Priestley and Squires. Word could get back to him.”
    Her name was Eileen Yarwood.
    We’d arranged to meet at lunchtime the next day. She’d been all done up in gear appropriate to her new role as a famous model. She’d been full of excitement which she’d done her best to try and hide.
    I discovered that she was from Leeds. She’d left school a year ago and home three months previously. Her father had died the day after she’d left school. Since then the dislike she and her mother had always felt for each other had come out into the open; her mother was only thirty-six and she’d liked the gay life but she hadn’t liked the looks the fellers she’d brought home had given Eileen. So Eileen had packed up and come here. Here because a girlfriend of hers from school had moved to the district a couple of years ago; but when Eileen’d turned up on the doorstep her friend’s parents hadn’t been too pleased to see her, so she’d spent the following day flat-hunting. She’d got what she’d called a nice place on Hebden Road where she’d lived on her own ever since. I’d asked her if she didn’t find it lonely. She’d given me a look and said that after living with her mother’s routine she’d never feel lonely again. And besides, the agency had a thriving social life. She’d implied she was never short of boyfriends.
    I’d let her know just enough; that business was good, that I’d lived in London before coming back up north, that I’d been brought up in a small town on the other side of the river and gone to Art School here, that I wasn’t short of a few bob, and that I was happily married. And I’d done right to tell her judging by the flicker on her face and the friendly relaxing after I’d mentioned it; another little girl with a conquest complex excited by the prospect of scoring by seducing a married man. And by laying it on about my house and the things I had in it, it made the contemplation of her victory even sweeter. After all, I had so much to lose.
    And, of course, she’d thought she’d known what was on from the start. Her reasoning must have gone like this—he finds me attractive enough to photograph for his catalogue, so if he finds me attractive he must want to make a pass at me and if he makes a pass at me he must want to carry on with me but he might pretend he doesn’t because he’s married so I’ll do my best to make it easy for him or difficult whichever way you care to look at it.
    Which was exactly the way I wanted her to behave. Let her think she was steering things along her way. So that she’d behave with the kind of confidence she’d got tonight, feeling sure that she knew the way things were going to go. So that when they didn’t she’d be confused. And her confusion would lead her where I wanted her led.
    I walked over to the booth and put the drinks down on the table. I spilt a little of her tonic as I set the bottle down.
    “I always like a drink before I work,” I said, sitting down. “It relaxes me. Makes the ideas flow easier.”
    I poured the tonic into the gin and rattled the bottle on the edge of her glass.
    “Looks as though you need it,” she said.
    “I beg your pardon?” I said.
    “Relaxing,” she said. “You seem all tensed up.”
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    I plugged in the percolator and walked over to the filing system and took out the file that contained the latest correspondence to the magazine. I’d had a busy week. I hadn’t had time to sort through the