Don't think, ask him

Time has rushed by, and as Lee’s had tutorials and appointments to keep all week, the onus has been thrust on me to make a decision about the money we took out of the bank.

I’ve been in a daze of indecision and, at two this afternoon, I stood on the steps outside the Art College in the sun, desperately trying to make up my mind what to do. As the world passed me by, its preoccupations seemed remote, as though I had the mark of Cain.

I went up Gaunt’s Hill Rd still in a daze, not knowing what to do. Alex was (irritatingly) certain that we were safe and was a bit contemptuous of what he saw as my moral wobbling. Mo thought the opposite, Pete kept changing his mind, and Lee seemed diffident, arguing for keeping the cash more through a wish to avoid any effort than from any real conviction either way—or so it felt to me.

I wandered up to the abattoir—no blood, “come back on Monday”—and so found myself back on Wickbourne Road & in my bank, drawing out £97.50. I hurried sweating into town, running the last few yards to William and Glyn’s as three thirty and closing time approached. I filled in a deposit slip, paid in the money, and came out as though a weight had been lifted from the world and from me.

Lee seemed glad that a decision had at last been made and said it was for the better, and later came back from College with scare stories from George Spallinger about Watermouth police’s thoroughness in pursuing such offences. I was thankful I’d made up my mind. No doubt Carl Cotton and the RCP would regard my moral qualms as weakness. Barry felt that taking the money back was necessary to avoid detection but sided with Alex on the moral question.

I suppose it was a bit hypocritical. We did the fraud more for the thrill of getting something for nothing rather than from a desire for money.

“Don’t think, ask him.”