London is the setting for a carefully balanced episode in which Rika can rely on Creasy’s reassurance about Pinta while attending to the social work surrounding Ettore’s business. Shopping, dinner, gambling, and a promising order make the trip feel successful; the call from home is folded into that itinerary rather than bringing it to an end.

The Hotel and Reassurance

When Ettore returned to the Savoy, Rika told him about the phone call. He was hurrying to prepare for dinner with his agent and offered to take a night flight to Milan. Rika declined: Creasy had said Pinta was all right. Her response let the couple remain in London without rushing back, while establishing that Creasy’s presence at home gave them confidence about Pinta’s care.

Rika described the arrangement as a comfort. Without a man like Creasy in the house, Maria might have panicked and Rika would have felt obliged to return quickly. The call therefore reassured her while also making it possible to keep the evening’s business engagement. Ettore agreed that dinner mattered: Roy Haynes was enthusiastic about the new range, and a decision to promote it could make for a very good season.

Dinner and the Business Opportunity

The couple ate at Parkes in Beauchamp Place. Ettore refused to eat Italian food in London—not because good Italian restaurants were lacking, but because he liked to vary his diet when travelling. Parkes also suited Rika, who particularly liked its fresh flowers arranged on the large plates.

Roy Haynes was a familiar kind of company for Rika: bluff, well-travelled, and English. She brought her powers of persuasion to bear while he ate and smiled, conscious of her motives. His decision, however, was already made. He planned to give Balletto’s line a major promotion and, at the next day’s meeting, place an order almost twice the value of the previous season’s. He kept that news to himself through dinner, allowing Rika to flatter and charm him before taking the couple to an elegant London gambling club, where he expected to tell Ettore the good news before they returned to their hotel.

A Successful London Day

Looking back from bed in the early hours, Rika assembled the day as a sequence of pleasures and accomplishments: shopping at Harrod’s in the morning and on Bond Street in the afternoon, having her hair done at Sassoon’s, and taking tea with thin cucumber sandwiches at the hotel. Creasy’s reassuring call, dinner, and the company afterward all fitted into the same account of a day well spent. At roulette, her favorite numbers, 17 and 20, favored her in turn; Roy’s promise of a substantially larger order gave the evening a further commercial reward.

Rika felt useful and appreciated in this kind of social occasion. The success was not entirely uncomplicated: Ettore had drunk a little too much and had not been able to make love as she expected, though she thought that could be remedied in the morning. Just as she was settling into that thought, she remembered something she had forgotten and shook him awake. The episode thus ends on an interruption, leaving the forgotten matter unresolved in the scene while showing how readily Rika’s attention could shift from London’s pleasures and business gains back to an obligation she had overlooked.