Editing Under the Net (section)

===Chapters 17–20: The hospital===
Jake takes a job as an orderly at a hospital. When Hugo is admitted (he has been hit in the head with a brick at a political meeting), Jake sees his chance for a serious conversation with his old friend. But as an orderly he is strongly discouraged from talking to patients, and he decides to come back in the middle of the night. He leaves the window of a store-room open.

With an immensity of pains, Jake succeeds in reaching Hugo's room shortly after one in the morning. The conversation is not at all what he expected: Hugo is not at all angry with Jake, and it turns out that while Anna is indeed besotted with Hugo, Hugo himself is in love with Sadie, and Sadie with Jake—not a love triangle, but a one-way love diamond. Hugo demands that Jake help him escape. Jake does so, but they are seen by the hostile porter, Stitch, and Jake knows that he has lost his job.

When Jake next goes to Hugo's flat, he finds that Hugo has gone, leaving all he owns to Lefty and his political party. At Mrs Tinckham's, he reads letters from Finn and Sadie. Finn has gone back to Ireland, as he always said he would; Sadie is suggesting he buy Mr Mars for £700, and although this puts Jake back at square one financially, he decides it is the only possible course of action. With Mrs Tinckham, he listens to Anna singing on the radio, and having made his peace with Hugo and with ''The Silencer'' he realises that his literary career is just beginning.