East of Nowhere [antikvár]

When he looked back on that morning, as he did, time after time, he could never understand how he'd forgottén to be discreet. Adultery had become a discipline to Miller, in the pursuit of which he'd learned - like a seasoned assassin, or a bomb disposal expert - that brief moments of precious intensity were best secured through scrupulous attention to detail and diligent forward planning, and that impulse was his enemy. That Wednesday, though, somé new instinct settled on him. It happened abruptly, in the way that a man might walk along the same clifftop path every morning for twenty years then, one day, for no reason, glancé down into the void and step off. It happened - every time he thought of it, the memory horrified him more - in the office. And not just in the office, but in Bowker's Cupboard. He'd worked with Charlotte, his temporary assistant, for two weeks without really noticing her at all. But that morning, just before seven, as he settled behind his desk, sifting through a pile of irregular expenses claims, she was stretching up to reach somé box files on the far side of the room, with her back to him. He watched her. It was the first of May, and she was wearing a beige cotton jacket and a cornflower-blue skirt that finished just above her knee. He stopped scrutinizing journalists' invoices for first class flights, luxury hotels and other privileges he had prohibited on the morning he took over as editor, and instead found himself staring absentmindedly at her calves. He thought about the time, during the war, when British women used to paint a falsé seam on the back of their legs, to simulate the nylon stockings they didn't have. When the weather was warm and overcast, like today, he wondered, did they go out unpainted, on the grounds that it was too hot to wear real stockings? Could a woman paint those lines herself? If she was lefthanded, would the left leg be harder to do than the other? Would she use a mirror? If she didn't paint her legs herself, then who did? And if you were painting seams for someone else, would you use somé