we don't get to see her again,

We agreed to this, but as we walked towards the low wall around the small car park Ruth had indicated, Chrissie said, perhaps a little too eagerly: "But even if we don't get to see her again, we're all agreed she's a possible. And it's a lovely office. It really is."
"Let's just wait a few minutes," Ruth said. "Then we'll go back."
I didn't sit on the wall myself because it was damp and crumbling, and because I thought someone might appear any minute and shout at us for sitting there. But Ruth did sit on it, knees on either side like she was astride a horse. And today I have these vivid images of the ten, fifteen minutes we waited there. No one's talking about the possible any more. We're pretending instead that we're just killing a bit of time, maybe at a scenic spot during a carefree day-trip. Rodney's doing a little dance to demonstrate what a good feeling there is. He gets up on the wall, balances along it then deliberately falls off. Tommy's making jokes about some passers-by, and though they're not very funny, we're all laughing. Just Ruth, in the middle, astride the wall, remains silent. She