Summary

Serena second-guessed herself on her trip back to London. Had she screwed it up? Should she had been more aggressive and make him commit right then and there? She thought about his lingering handshake.

Back home, Serena read another of Haley’s stories. It was about Sebastian Morel, a French teacher, who lived with his wife and two children in north London. Sebastian teaches poor children who are insolent and unruly. His job is thankless and his pay unsatisfactory. He and his wife argue about money. Sebastian withdraws seventy pounds to buy Christmas gifts for the children. He is accosted by a young man with a knife who takes his money. What strikes Sebastian isn’t the robber but what he had read about crime – that the main cause for crime is social injustice. To maintain his own self-respect, he concludes that he should...