John Braine - Room at the Top

"Time for you to come home, Joe." I turned. It was Bob Storr.

"I have no home."

"Yes, you have. We've all been worrying about you." He took my arm. Eva came out of the car and took my other arm; as soon as she came, I let myself be taken quietly, but I still insisted that I had no home. I sat in the back with her; I was trembling with cold, and she put a rug over my knees.

"My God," she said, "what have you been up to? There've been search parties out all over Yorkshire for you. The Thompsons are nearly off their heads with worry .

"Susan," I said. "What about Susan?"

"You are pie-eyed, aren't you?" Eva said. "She went to London for a wedding dress this morning. Had you forgotten?"

"Leave him alone," Bob said. "He's had enough for one day."

"I murdered Alice," I said, and began to cry.

"Don't talk rubbish," Bob said.

"Everyone knows that I killed her. The Thompsons too."

"The Thompsons knew that she was your mistress," Bob said. "They had a son themselves and they know what young men are like. They don't blame you. Nobody does."

The car was climbing the eastern heights of the city now, away from the smoke and the dirt and the black fingernails scrabbling the pavement and the sad, lost faces that had tried to keep up with me; the engine purred smoothly, as it would have done if Alice had been beside me instead of Eva, as it would have done if Bob had suddenly grown talons and horns, as it would have done if the world were due to end in five minutes.

I went on crying, as if the tears would blur the image of Alice crawling round Corby Road on her hands and knees, as if they would drown her first shrill screams and her last delirious moans. "Oh God," I said, "I did kill her. I wasn't there, but I killed her."

Eva drew my head on to her breast. "Poor darling, you mustn't take on so. You don't see it now, but it was all for the best. She'd have ruined your whole life. Nobody blames you, love. Nobody blames you."

I pulled myself away from her abruptly. "Oh my God," I said, "that's the trouble."