

INSPECTIONS OF THE WOUNDED

TOM LOCKINGTON

Copyright. David Mathew

SATURDAY

At midday, when the doorbell rings, I know I'm going to regret agreeing to this. It's all going to come crashing down around me, unless I maintain an air of exceptional tranquility. But maybe I'm too old for exceptional tranquility. I'm certainly too old to feel up to snoopers.

- Hugh Bargeld

1

Pornography or the phone bill?

It was a difficult decision for Sarah to make: which to open first? The small cardboard offering with the black masking tape (a video from her usual supplier near Euston Station) . . . or the replacement bill for this quarter, which she'd brought here to the workplace from the flat, smuggling it out?

Ordinarily, no contest. Not much got in the way of Sarah's pursuit of porn – especially bills, which were Alan's responsibility. But this phone bill was special. Once she'd discovered that Alan had destroyed the original, she'd phoned British Telecom to request a copy. She wanted to know what numbers Alan had called.

If Holly's number was there, God help them both.

The affair had finished three months ago. That's what Alan claimed – although at no point had he admitted that the other party was Holly, Sarah's half-sister. On the rare occasions that Sarah spoke about the incident, Alan lied and said that the other woman was Liz, who worked as a secretary.

Sarah knew the truth.

When the previous phone bill vanished, Sarah had also requested a replacement. Alan was too organised to lose bills; he filed them neatly as soon as they'd been paid. On the itemized listing Sarah had discovered twenty-two long calls to Holly's number in Yorkshire – and a couple of inexplicable calls to a number in Buxton, Derbyshire. The first time Sarah dialled the Buxton number, she put the phone down when the lady answered, 'Palace Hotel. Can I help you?' The second time she did something more practical. She had a few drinks and called again . . . to ask if she could be sent a copy of the bill for Alan Chandler, for tax purposes.

How could a husband know so little about his wife? He'd refused to assume that she had the barest hint of interest in his movements, despite his half-hearted confessions of a few months ago. Was it possible that he assumed the discovery of the affair had hurt no more than the sting of a nettle? Alan hadn't even bothered to change his name for the hotel records. And they'd checked in together as Mr and Mrs . . .

Sighing, Sarah put the most recent phone bill on the counter, still unopened. She would see what the film was first: this was meant to be her quality time, after all; her thinking time. It was ten a.m. on a Saturday morning, and Sarah always tried to have five minutes with a cup of tea before she opened the shop - HandyFilms - to the public.

Anyway, the bill would solve nothing. It would prove that Alan was still calling Holly, or would suggest that he'd at least started taking precautions - by phoning her on his mobile, or from his office at work. His most recent Vodafone bills were also suspiciously absent from the filing cabinet in the hall of their Islington flat.

Ripping open the cardboard box, Sarah said to herself: Doesn't matter. If he was still engaged in the affair, or if he wasn't: it didn't matter.

The two of them were going to pay, either way.

It was too late to stop that . . .

There remained a sloughed skin of unopened post at the bottom of the chute that people also used to deposit their tapes after business hours. (Rarely did Sarah go to the trouble of fining for tardiness. Life's too short.) Envelopes, mainly brown; mainly windowed. Bills and promotions; the stuff that any independent video supplier might receive. Having picked up this catch, Sarah sided off to the kitchen to fill a kettle. While she was waiting for the water to boil, she opened up the shop. Needs must.

Behind her counter, five minutes later, Sarah pushed into the video slot a tape called The Lesbionic Woman. There was no need to press PLAY: it was a pre-recorded tape - no pirate, this - and the protection tabs had been removed. It played on its own, just as its viewer would shortly be doing. Sarah Chandler came alive . . .

She was pleased that the place in Euston had sent her the tape. The owner had sounded suspicious on the phone, although he'd been her sole supplier of porn for the last eighteen months. A recent request had consternated the man, despite Sarah's assurances that the material was not for her. She'd obtained a tape for somebody else entirely. Not child porn; but something as bad as child porn, in the eyes of many . . .

But The Lesbionic Woman was regular hardcore, and Sarah loved pornography: the harder the better. The TV screen rolled and flickered, like the eyes of someone rapidly losing consciousness. Picture's a bit grainy, Sarah thought. Ah! but here it was. The blue background, the white writing: in Dutch. The picture settled. So it should, too - for twenty quid. That's better . . .

The opening credits consisted of stills, or two-second bursts of action, from the film that was to follow. Sarah had encountered this approach before: quite often, in fact. Only in the genre of pornography, she'd thought on such occasions, would such a giveaway of what was coming next be seen as an advantage. So this guy would be ejaculating into the face of this woman. Fine. But if the credits of a detective drama gave away the confession scene you'd want your money back, wouldn't you?

Sarah smiled.

As she sat down, she heard the tinkle of the front door hitting its warning bell. She looked up. That lad - Daz - who came in every weekend with the oil on his jeans; a packet of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. Benson and Hedges: the same as she smoked. However, Sarah liked Daz for reasons other than brand name compatibility; they'd been half-heartedly flirting with one another for a few weeks now - playing a game of mental footsie. As soon as he stepped into the shop, Sarah lost track of any thoughts to do with Alan or any phone calls he might have made lately.

The tape kept rolling. The film had started. Sarah flashed Daz a quick smile and watched what was going on. Most of what she saw of pornography was similarly viewed: in the shop, with the sound off . . . Daz was browsing in the Thrillers section. From where he was standing she knew which boxes he was looking at: the Steamies. The 18-rated homicide pieces with the femme fatale, or the stripclub massacre. Sarah smiled again.

'What's this one like?' Daz asked across the shop. 'A Spanish Tragedy.'

'Very violent,' Sarah replied.

'Not foreign is it?'

'It's set in Seville.'

'But with Americans, yeah?'

This seemed important. 'That's right.'

'That'll do then.' Daz walked over to the counter with the box, his denims perfumed by a thousand cigarettes. Surreptitiously Sarah turned off the TV and stood up.

'Thanks. Three pounds.' Using the handheld scanner Sarah joined the information on his membership card's barcode to the electronic details on the cassette box.

Daz regarded her in an embarrassed manner. 'I wanna ask you summing,' he said. 'Will you go out with me . . . for a drink or whatever?'

'I'm a married woman, Daz. That's not so easy.'

But events had been leading here. Sarah felt the pang of unacceptable acceptability. She was seriously considering the unforgivable . . . as she had been for some weeks. With him. Not because he amounted to anything, or was worth anything; but simply because he had shown an obvious interest.

'I'm going to the gym tonight,' Sarah added. 'Meet me there.'

2

Alone in the flat, mid-morning, Alan wondered how best to spend his Saturday. Usually, on weekends when it was Sarah's turn to do the dreaded shopping (before she drove on to HandyFilms), he watched children's television until noon: he was infatuated with one of the female presenters, an Amero-Oriental goddess. He then drove to The Green Man pub, where he drank Guinness and met up with two friends who were part of the furniture there, especially at the weekend.

In the kitchen, Alan puckered his lips and depressed the detonator of the cafetiere. Spooned honey into his favourite coffee mug (YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE MAD . . . ), and then, when the drink had been prepared, he sat down in front of the television, and watched cartoons with a smile on his face . . . He was not, however, entirely at ease. Alan's brain automatically laboured for excuses: for his idling, for his leching. Which was one of the things about Alan: never comfortable.

Watching kids' TV, of course, was good for reasons other than titillation. Firstly, it was a therapeutic diversion from the real world: the sweet candle incense of banality. And secondly - paradoxically - kids' TV was connected to what Alan did (unsuccessfully) for a living. Bargeld Trading was a company that secured the rights to manufacture fictional characters on incongruous products. For example, a Finnish cartoon called Shangri-La-La had been bought by the BBC. As yet, nobody in England had seen it, but it was due to be overdubbed and broadcasted two nights a week. If it became as popular as it was in Finland, the following months - leading up to next year's Christmas - would see a marketing campaign of eerie concentration. As a Purchaser, Alan was among the team that phoned up and wrote to the Shangri-La-La people and proposed buying the rights to manufacture Shangri-La-La bubble bath, or lunch boxes, or duvet covers. Then, the rights secured, Alan's company paid third parties to handle the manufacturing. So, in a sense, by watching children's TV, Alan was keeping a fingertip on the pulse - doing his market research.

That was his excuse and he was sticking to it.

By common consensus, any extra that Alan was prepared to put into his work could only be to the good. It'd been a miracle that he'd got the job; a curse that he had to stay. Nobody respected him. Even the team's secretary, Liz, had stopped flirting. Alan was an example of what used to be called middle management. Above him at Bargeld Trading was Hugh Bargeld himself - a stately fusspot who on occasion wore cream suits, and was rumoured to be gay - and a subordinate gang of lightly-bearded bullies.

Alan was on the third rung: for now. He had no ambition to climb up to the level of Hugh's immediate understudies. But he might be pushed down. Alan felt (correctly) that he was just about being tolerated. Every Monday morning he half expected the courtly summons to the top floor and the corresponding invitation to leave the company.

But to hell with it: that was Monday. Two glorious days of R and R were to be savoured like steak and wine before then. Starting now.

Sod the coffee. Midday had been and gone, and therefore it was time for a pint. Alan got dressed and contemplated calling a cab for the half-mile journey. The Omega was playing up and he didn't want to make himself upset trying to get it to start and fire over properly. No. He'd walk. The exercise would do him good.

The Green Man (at the doors of which he arrived, very thirsty, shortly afterwards) was not his favourite pub. His favourite pub was Filthy McNasty's, an Irish place, where he drank alone from time to time, glad of the solitude. But The Green Man contained two of his favourite people. Not so much Dave the barman, for every pub in the English-speaking world has employed, at one time or another, a barman named Dave; nor even Janeece, who, with her metallic helixes of bangs and dreadlocks, and her blimpesque inflatable raft of a jacket, was a def, young and kind kid who sure played a mean pinball. Or 'pimball', as she would have it. Neither of those. Alan talked to Janeece now, briefly, but she wasn't who he had come in to see.

Lance and Billy arrived fifteen minutes later, when Alan was frowning at the quiz machine. 'Who captained England to victory in the 1966 World Cup?' The clock was ticking. A, B or C. It had to be a trick: they were never this easy. Who captained England . . . Who captained England . . . Alan continued frowning. The clock continued ticking. Option C was somebody called Eddie Huddleston: not a name that Alan knew. Was it possible that England had won the 1966 World Cup in a second sport - in hockey, in darts, in tiddlywinks, in Connect 4? Alan pressed C: Eddie Huddleston.

The quiz machine burped at him disdainfully.

'Twat,' said Lance, to Alan's left.

Alan turned. 'Oh, hello, boys. Thought it was a fucking trick, didn't I.'

The next question arrived on the screen. Billy read, 'Who directed the movie Eraserhead?'

'David Lynch, David Cronenburg or David Copperfield,' Lance continued.

Sarah would know, thought Alan. 'Go for Lynch,' he said.

Lance, Billy and Alan, some expensive ten minutes later, sat down, having ordered pub lunch. They talked calmly; they had known each other for years. They'd met at teacher training college, and had remained in touch even though Alan had abandoned the educational faith to go into something more profitable: gambling. No, no, purchasing. Spending money on behalf of companies to make even more money for those companies . . . Lance and Billy lived together, and showed their solidarity at the annual Gay Pride march through London. And it had occurred to Alan in the past to query why it was that he couldn't keep straight male friends. The answer was: because he always felt he had to compete with heterosexual men. He felt comfortable with Lance and Billy, although they teased him, often, about Sarah.

'So what did you buy the mantis this week?' Lance asked.

'Earrings,' said Alan. 'Next week I'm being more original. After we're finished in here I'm going to the travel agent. I'm taking her to Dublin next weekend.'

But he didn't go to the travel agent at all. He was scared to.

3

Making one of his rare, disconcerting, appearances in the kitchen, Hugh Bargeld sat at the solid table from eleven o'clock, waiting.

For fifteen minutes or so, he pretended to read the papers. The Times to begin with, the unlocking of whose interconnected sections Hugh normally found a mildly taxing task. Today, however, the bulk and complexity of the package simply annoyed him. To grunts of displeasure (Mrs Eggleton, at the sink, restrained herself from glancing over her shoulder), Hugh casually tossed aside supplements; they floated across the surface of the table as if on a cushion of air . . .

It was too big. Hugh opened instead The Sun: after all, an intellectual he might be, but a man of the people he definitely was. And briefly the nudity and simple prose refreshed him; but soon enough he had laid that aside as well, and was regarding the wreckage - half a tonne of dead paper, unusable, unwanted - while his fingers traced the knots and nodes in the wood as though expecting the table to communicate with him in Braille.

'Cup of tea, Mr B?' said Mrs Eggleton.

Hugh had already drunk four. 'Yes, please,' he said, sighing and stretching.

Hugh wondered, as was his wont on such occasions as Mrs Eggleton had cause to speak to him, if he should reciprocate the presumed and undesired intimacy by referring to her as Mrs E. He'd tried in the past (and he tried now as well) to remember a time when she had used his full, unabbreviated surname; but he'd been unable to. 'Mr B' he'd always been to her; 'Mrs Eggleton' she to him. With his other staff (Hayley, who cleaned upstairs twice a week, and Marcus, the gardener and handyman) it was a case of first names, both ways.

The steaming tea arrived. As dark as ebony it was, just the way he liked it, and sweeter than candyfloss. Yum. (It was a wonder, given his sugar intake, that he was wiry of build.) Staring into space, he sipped the drink and let his thoughts chatter away, wondering how different this very room would be if the visitor had her way. What would she suggest?

'You look troubled, Mr B. Everything all right?'

There were plenty of things on Hugh's mind, of course. This was perfectly standard. He ran Bargeld Trading, and only yesterday had felt obliged to discipline an employee. Well, not so much 'discipline' him, perhaps, as rip a hole in his chest, figuratively speaking. There'd been the compulsory warnings, the meetings . . . but when it came to it, the guy was not performing with the company in mind. And that could not be tolerated. So Hugh had spent an entire thirty minutes on one speech \- uninterrupted and without a pause - on the subject of how poor the employee's work had become of late.

And that guy was nowhere near as incompetent as Alan Chandler.

But a different fate was in store for Alan. A dressing-down was insufficient.

Mrs Eggleton was still waiting for an answer, Hugh realised, so he said, 'I'm fine. She'll be here soon.' The tone was wearied. To Hugh it also sounded as though the second of the two sentences was a non-sequitur in relation to the first: he'd implied that his guest's arrival - or the imminence of it - was making him feel all right. Being honest with himself, Hugh knew that when Holly arrived would be when the troubles really began. Too late to worry about everything being ready for Holly's week-long lesson; preparations were now ancient history.

This was real. This was happening.

When Holly arrived the situation might just become horrible.

4

Driving south from Yorkshire (where she'd attended university and where she now lived) - to Buckinghamshire (where she would be working for a week, thank God), Holly's mind was not on the road before her. Notwithstanding the itchy trouble that her contact lenses were causing her, Holly's mind was up in the occident. Not even on the car and its heavy sighs (which it should be, because there was a legitimate cause for concern), or the shudders it writhed through every time it drew to a partial halt. The car meant nothing. She'd walk there if necessary . . . And besides, Holly had good company on the journey to Aylesbury. Accompanying every stop, start, or bounce through a mine-crater, a kaftanned Christ wriggled on the end of a short chain dangling from her rear-view mirror. Bearded and barefoot, Christ was a smooth mover and then an acrobatic trampolinist. He also resembled a suicide, Holly thought.

Dangling Jesus brought Holly luck, or so she believed. So she'd believed for some time. And so she wanted to believe, not having anything else to trust.

But Holly was thinking of the week's work ahead, still nervous about the project. And a little bit stunned. While setting up her business a year ago she had scarcely dared dream that something so big would happen so soon. Okay, so Alan had put in a good word for her, but that was how people in Holly's line got big: by word of mouth. Reputations were like bouts of influenza: easily transmittable, and swift to spread. Because she did good work and her rates were reasonable, her name had been passed to Hugh Bargeld. Even so, she thanked her lucky stars . . .

Thank you, Alan.

What a dream gig! Not just a bedroom or a kitchen or a lounge (the solitary room being what she was used to), but the whole house. Holly needed to twit herself regularly - in order to refuse the pull of complacency. This was the real world, no matter how it felt from time to time. Customers like Bargeld were the reason that Holly had spent all those years at university in Yorkshire, and then on various courses in night-schools, learning her trade. Hugh Bargeld was her justification. Holly had paid her dues; now it was her turn to smile and rake in the rewards.

As she changed gears, Holly noted the fingernails on her left hand. She tutted to herself in a schoolmarm fashion. She might as well have been painting double-yellow lines by the side of the road for all the care and attention she'd put into this decorative job. However, that was easily fixable: two minutes in a rest-stop Ladies. What mattered for the next five days was her mind, not her appearance. She hoped.

Having little choice in the matter, Holly paused in traffic. Quite aside from the fact that she wanted something sweet to nibble, she didn't care about this or any other delay; her journey south was well ahead of schedule. She was cool. She had plenty of time. The car's engine panted and gulped like a dog after exercise. Holly quickly reached into her handbag, which was on the passenger seat. She pulled out a packet of custard cream biscuits and her small tube of hair spray. While the light was still against her, she aimed the latter's nozzle at her head like a gung-ho Russian roulette player. Inside the car the smell was immediately saccharine - like a concentration of decaying flowers, like a funeral parlour. With a little bit of peach perfume in there too. Just great. Peach perfume: the smell of the execution chamber's final gases.

With a biscuit in her mouth, Holly used the floor of the vehicle, beneath the pedals, to push down with her feet and raise her body in the sticky chair. Sighing at the sound of various clicks and pops along her spine - like a complicated set of signals from animals to one another at various points of the riverside - Holly watched the pedestrians cross in front of her. Not for the first time she questioned their blind faith in the power of the lights. The green man on the rectangular panel said to walk, and so they were walking; but none of them was even looking Holly's way to check if she looked impatient to be waiting. She could release the handbrake and mow these sheep down . . . if she'd been at all that way inclined.

A skinny woman with glasses and dark hair pulled her children across the break in the mumbling traffic as though she were hauling items of heavy luggage. One of the girls was dressed in the no-nonsense togs of a Brownie pack. Holly herself had gone to Brownies, and had assumed that the practice died out long ago, modern youth demanding ever more dangerous thrills. The mother's walk was harried but confident, with her upper body leaning into the stride. Holly was quite the self-taught student of people's walking styles, and she examined people whenever she could. The young girls walked better than their mother: straight-backed, with their weight more evenly distributed into a more compact space.

The lights said Holly could progress onwards. She did so, more nervous than ever. There soon, she thought. She hoped she'd dressed okay: she'd certainly put on her finest working clothes, but would they be good enough for an entrepreneur like Bargeld?

No, that was paranoia talking. Holly chided herself; she already had the job, albeit without a formal written contract, which she'd secure soon enough. Just relax. Calm down. She wasn't going for an interview.

She carried on driving. Fifteen minutes later she was at the front of Bargeld's property, in Aylesbury . . . During their numerous telephone conversations Bargeld had instructed her as to the procedure for getting through the gate. Leaving the engine running, Holly got out of the car and took three steps to the console set into the brickwork of the gate's right-side turret. An intercom system. Holly pressed the button and bent her face to the cross-hatchings of the grille.

'Hello?' a female voice said through a background of crackling crisp packets.

'I'm Holly Paver? I've a meeting with Mr Bargeld at twelve. I'm early.' Quietly confident that her message had sounded professional, Holly was nevertheless distracted by the thought that so much information had surely been unnecessary. The name should have been enough. Bargeld would have informed his staff that she was coming.

'Drive up to the front door.'

Holly stepped back to her car. While her right hand took the wheel, her left went up to the dangling Jesus. 'Wish me luck,' she whispered, rubbing the figure from head to toe with a podgy thumb.

The gates were opening slowly. A long thin gravel drive was in front of her, rock-bordered, leading up to the house. Holly drove slowly, taking it all in . . . Gardens in winter always made Holly think of old women - doing their shopping, with their triangular coats, their tartan trolleys, their headscarves. Like these Arndale-warriors (an expression she'd learnt and adopted from Alan) the gardens were tired but determined. Someone had been doing a good job of keeping up appearances . . .

The house was six-bedroomed, four-bathroomed, with a dining room, two living rooms, a gymnasium, and even a separate little room - a segregated nook - in which to make phone calls. Hugh had told her all this already. He had also mentioned somebody called Bertram, but had refused to be drawn on the topic . . .

As Holly was removing her suitcase from the boot, Hugh came out of the house. With amiable professionalism they greeted one another and shook hands. 'Leave that,' Hugh told her. 'I'll ask Marcus to get it for you and take it to your room.'

'Thanks.' The strap of Holly's handbag had become twisted; she fiddled with it, hoping that the movement didn't look panicky. She put on the bravest face she had. Then Holly and her new client climbed the five steps to the front door beneath the impressive porch. The case was left on its own by the car's backside - like a child in wartime by the train that would whisk him to safety.

'Come on in,' said Hugh. 'Meet my people. Welcome to the Commuter Zone!'

5

One of the gifts that Alan had given Sarah was her workplace.

On their first anniversary, the money was going well, but for the previous couple of months, Sarah had complained about her life lacking a direction. She'd confessed to a desire to return to what her friends envied her for escaping: full-time employment.

'Well, what do you have in mind?' Alan asked. 'If you want to work, that's fine by me. But what do you want to do?'

The crux of the problem.

Sarah had no interests to speak of . . . apart from smoking, drinking and sex; and the idea of a lease on a shop came late. Many weeks and suggestions had passed. But Alan and Sarah got there in the end - as they always did. A video store. Small but Sarah's own. An emporium of cross-sectioned celluloid: prime suspects from every genre, style and taste. The place was going well.

Even so, she was delighted to leave every night. The only time the idea of work is great is when you don't have any. Sarah stretched, and then smoothed her skirt against her legs. Her joints clicked. Enough, she thought - enough for one day. Saturday night: it was time to decompress. She looked at her watch. Eight o'clock.

But there was still one thing to be done before she left; one thing that had nothing to do with the shop. The phone bill was still in its envelope on the counter in front of her. Although the day had been only reasonably busy, Sarah had not found the time to open it. Or the courage. Did she really want to know if Alan had been calling Holly recently, or calling the Palace Hotel in Buxton?

No time like the present. Sarah ripped the envelope with unnecessary violence - like a woman possessed. On the first page were the stone-cold facts: £69.84's worth of call charges, plus line rental, plus VAT. On the second page, itemisations began.

Sarah blinked for a long time . . . unless she'd passed out for a second. The latter was possible; the world had certainly lurched unpredictably, and with inordinate aggression. Sarah could feel the guilty rumbles of rage in her belly.

She stopped reading. The Yorkshire number had already been mentioned three times; Sarah didn't care to know how many more times had been recorded for the remainder of the bill. Were Alan and Holly still together? Sarah pitied them either way. Carrying her handbag and her holdall of sports clothes, she locked up and deposited the day's takings at the bank. The air was thick, stodgy, unmoving; good storm material. The atmosphere could do with a stir. Then she aimed the red Jaguar at the gym.

She was trying very hard not to think about Alan. She was trying very hard not to think about Holly. She was trying very hard not to think about Daz.

MTV was on the screens as she cycled and rowed; as she stepped and lifted and sat up. She enjoyed the music. Enjoyed the mindlessness of the physical exertion. But the sauna, afterwards, was even better . . . The cautious application of the skin below the swimsuit's bikini line to the scalding wood of the highest benches: ouch. She established herself primly in the tiny dark room, with the aromatic steam making the raw flesh at her nostrils sting. Thankfully she was alone. Very soon she was perspiring. She tried to make out the shape of the box's corners.

The sauna door opened. A gust of cool air brought a momentary comfort to Sarah's beaded skin; the waves of steam rolled like puppies of subnormal intelligence, playing. Although inside the box it was dim and murky, Sarah recognised the new arrival. Her heart gave a thud of moronic recognition. 'You found me then,' she said. She was relieved.

Lime green swimming trunks; ironing board chest. It was Daz all right; it could be no one else. He was grinning. 'The hard part was finding a swimming cossie to fit me.' As though plucking a guitar string, he snapped the waistband with his skinny thumb.

Daz was far from perfect. But Alan had driven Sarah to despair. Alan had taken a scouring pad and got inside her skin with it; those abrasions didn't fade.

Daz would do.

'They are a bit baggy, to tell the truth,' Sarah admitted. 'But I'm glad to see you. I was hoping you'd come. I knew you'd be here.'

'Then it's okay?' Daz sat down on the bench opposite Sarah with his knees angled out to give his upper legs the shape of a boomerang.

Breathing deeply, Sarah nodded. Daz's scent was remarkably strong: the smell of smoke. 'I've never been in a sauna before,' Daz was saying. 'Expensive, innit?'

'I have a membership card.'

'Got it sewn up though, ain't they?' Daz pitched his sneer and stare at the protected cauldron of artificial coals. 'All about guilt, if you ask me. Put a gym where they ain't got one, it reminds people how fat and unfit they are.'

'You can say that about any business.'

Daz shook his head. 'No. Take Bible Street Cars. Where I work.' He stopped looking at the hot coals and looked instead at Sarah's body, which her costume could scarcely keep in check. 'You need your car fixing, you look us up. Seeing an ad don't make you bring your car round: your car ain't broken. But when it's to do with your elf, what you're really thinking about is your death. . . '

Sarah was ready for him; she was waiting. But it wouldn't happen tonight. There was a need in her to control Daz; she wanted to make him wait. But it would happen; she was certain of that. 'Look, Daz,' she continued before he had made another sound. 'I can't go for a drink tonight because Alan knows my movements on a Saturday night too well. There'd be hell to pay. But I could meet you tomorrow. I'd like to get to know you.'

'The feeling's mutual.' Daz found this amusing. He considered the proposal with the care and consideration of a world-class chess supremo. 'There's a pisser near where I work; I work for Bible Street Cars, but I'm in the pub half the time, to tell you the gospel. We could rendezvous there. The Happy Abbot is it? Not far from where you work, as a matter of fact, my dear. Do you open the shop on Sundays?'

'For my sins.'

'Well, how about after work then.' He had the face - the expression - of a children's entertainer, of a lucky-dip magician. Some you win, some you lose. Comme ci, comme ca. The facade of one who is amazed to have courted some banal, some tinkertoy version of success. Or he who cannot believe his luck. 'I'll be there from about seven o'clock. You just get there when you can get there and we'll all be hunky dory.'

For the ignorant are strong. And the stupid will struggle.

SUNDAY

The inability to forgive is in all of us. We just have to find it . . . It's like a second pulse - sleepier, dreamier. Find it if you can, because you won't regret using it once you have. It will make you human. So you think you've forgiven him for spending three-quarters of the grocery money on bike magazines and beer? Well, you haven't. Forget about it. Or rather, you will forget about it. But if you're lucky, your inability to forgive - to forgive unconditionally - will be kindled by the initial spark of anger.

\- Sarah Chandler

1

It was ten o'clock in the morning, and Sarah couldn't resist it; she couldn't wait until the evening. She had to see. Logic told her that she shouldn't have driven here . . . but there'd come a point when the choice had been taken out of her hands. Curiosity had stronger muscles than the fear of failure . . . But his workplace, Sarah? His workplace?

Bible Street Cars.

In the sauna last night she'd had the discussion with Daz about the near-misses, or the also-rans, in the contest, two years ago, about what to call the business. That sort of conversation was always safe. The choice had been (as all important decisions continued to be) that of Daz's employer, Roy. Bible Street Cars had nearly been Fixit, or Tune Ups!, or - the eponymous contribution - simply Roy's, or Roy's Motors and Repairs.

Bible Street was narrow, and clogged with parked cars of either an antiquated or a dilapidated nature. In the autonomy of automobiles, this was not one of the places where the strong survived: no, this was a place where the strong didn't bother to go. Sarah felt a momentary crackle of nervousness about leaving the Jag here unattended.

Sarah felt thirteen. She was abandoned in the maniacal throes - the torrents and currents surrounding her first ever boyfriend. Which, in fact, should not have come as a surprise. Every boyfriend made her think along similar lines.

I'm not a bad person, she had time to think. So why am I so happy to be doing a bad thing? For revenge, she reminded herself; everything that happened this week was for revenge. Nothing is purer. Nothing is simpler.

And nothing tasted sweeter.

Down the thin strip of pavement Sarah walked - past an office suppliers, a plant pavilion, and three dreary, effortless houses. And here it was: much smaller than she'd expected. Bible Street Cars: the garage, with its heavy armour of a metallic, winch-down shutter. Even in the bad light (strange weather they were having) Sarah could tell that the facade could do with a lick of paint. She caught her breath like an Olympic triathlete.

Sarah paused before the door that had been cut into the shutter. Like a door in the iron gates of a prison, she thought. Then added: What the hell am I doing here? What did she expect to achieve? Her fingertips were on the door handle. She had to see; she had to catch Daz in his natural environment. But it was fairly early on a Sunday morning; perhaps they hadn't started work yet. Maybe they hadn't opened up for the public; maybe the door was still locked. The shutter itself was a padlocked a metal hoop pinned into the pavement . . . Sarah pushed down on the handle, and the door opened inwards.

The aroma was the first thing she noticed. What was it that made garages smell as they do? Oil? Petrol? Sarah stepped in to a workspace crammed with three wounded beasts: the motors that would be looked at next, or soon, or at any rate at some point. Cars between seven and ten years old, with dirty paintwork.

'Well you took your fucking time!' came a voice beyond the far wall. Where? Ah, yes: the doorway, to the right, over there, leading out, no doubt, to a kitchen annexe and a windowless bathroom. Roy's voice, Sarah presumed; or at least not Daz's. 'Bring em in then! What are you waiting for?'

Leave now, thought Sarah. You were never here. It never happened.

The pause had obviously worked on Roy's resistance. Something was wrong. With a rag in his hand (he was wiping his fingers) Roy emerged from the doorway with a frown on his face. Over the parked cars that was about all Sarah could see of the man, but from this she deduced that he was short and squat.

'Sorry, darlin',' Roy went on, 'thought you was my worker bee. We're closed, I'm afraid. Open at eleven o'clock.'

'It was your worker bee I came to see. Daz. Can I wait for him?'

'Is this business or pleasure, love?'

'Pleasure,' Sarah answered - and it was, though of a funny kind. A peculiar taste. It was pleasure in the sense that she found pickled gherkins a pleasure and enjoyable: in the sense that she couldn't believe she didn't retch at the very thought.

Roy nodded. 'Yeah, come in. Have a seat. Daz has gone out for the breakfast. Do you wanna cuppa tea? Or you can wait till he gets back with the beers and porkpies. He might even get some chicken wings or summing.' This said in a tone of awed indulgence. 'Some Wotsits. I give him a tenner so it should be pretty good. He's popped to Tesco's.'

Well, it should be pretty good, Sarah agreed, wondering why Roy was so keen to sing the praises of a supermarket. Then she realised that he was just talking: to fill the time. The weather would have been a silly topic, so he was talking about the supermarket. He was frightened of her, perhaps. Like a ballerina at her barre, Sarah tiptoed along the gap between two of the cars, catching sight of herself in the windows. Beer on a Sunday morning, she thought; what would Holly think of her? 'A beer sounds good. A bit naughty; I like that.'

'It's pretty standard here, believe it or not. As long as you don't get lashed; as long as you can still do the work - what'sa problem? You're a girl after me own 'eart, you are.' Roy waited for her, still fastidiously wiping his hands, as though attempting to remove the skin. It was probably a sign of nervousness, and that pleased Sarah no end. 'I'm Roy, by the way,' he continued.

'Sarah. I've heard a lot about you.' This was true, in the sense that in the sauna Daz had rattled on about his work (and his boss) as much as he had about anything else. What Sarah would discover much later was that Daz had failed to mention his other source of income . . . but for now, that was neither here nor there.

'Me too. Daz goes all gooey when he talks about you, the soppy sod. He's been on about you for weeks: the sort in the video shop. I must say . . . ' Roy nodded once, approvingly ' . . . he weren't joking, though, was he? Weren't exaggerating. Not like him to pull summing classy.' At this moment in time Roy was under the impression that he was being chivalrous. 'I thought he'd won the fucking Lottery the day he got up the courage to ask you what your name was. But he's young.' And Roy turned his back - a virtually square back - to make some preparations backstage. Sarah joined him in the little room.

The table was also square and covered with a red-and-white chequered tablecloth. Two plates had been set, and two pint glasses. A bottle of ketchup. 'Like I say, we're just having a spot of breakfast before we kick off for the day,' Roy explained unnecessarily. 'Take a seat. Make yourself comfy. So you're the love of his life, eh?'

Sarah smiled. 'I doubt that. But we're getting on fine. You probably know: he comes into my video shop. HandyFilms? I'm an independent.'

'I know it,' Roy replied sternly.

'We've just got friendly. And then last night we met at my health club.'

'Cool. Good luck to you both.' Roy's eyebrows rippled. 'He's a geezer, that boy; he's solid. The dog's bollocks. Pardon my French. Want nothing but happiness for him.'

'I'll do my best.'

'Nothing but happiness.'

Sarah said nothing.

'Now where the bloody hell is the knob?' Roy continued. 'I'm starving.' He stood on the threshold into the garage proper. 'Only asked him to go to the supermarket. "Go to the Shop-All-Nite" I says. It's only up the road.'

'It's where I go too.'

'But "no" he says, "too expensive. And the porkpies are made of gerbils." He's got this theory the meat tastes like it come from a different species.'

'A different planet,' Sarah replied. 'I'd have to agree with Daz on that one.'

'So he's gone off to bleeding Tesco's. They only open at ten, the lazy buggers. The Shop-All-Nite? Open twenty-four hours, mate, like a shop should be. What's the time now?'

'Ten past.'

Roy nodded and Sarah thought, Maybe he's just boring after all. Maybe it had nothing to do with him being apprehensive about me.

'Takes him twice as long as the next man to do anything,' Roy went on.

So he wasn't, Sarah noted, the dog's bollocks in that respect.

'He's always late . . . Takes him fifteen minutes to go to the lav.'

By the time Daz arrived Sarah had listened to, oh, a good twenty minutes on how bleeding slow Daz was at executing even the simplest task, such as visiting the post office or the bookies. She was beginning to wish he was faster herself.

Daz looked as though he'd been stabbed when he saw her. Candidly (and somewhat hostilely) suspicious, he gabbled an immediate demand: 'What you doing here?' Relaxing after she'd put his mind at rest, Daz said, 'I thought you might be here to have your car fixed. Wouldn't recommend it.'

'You cheeky streak of piss. See what I have to put up with every day? What's in the bag - or are you just gonna hold it all day?'

Porkpies, sausage rolls, cheese. Eight cans of strong supermarket lager.

'How the hell do you stay thin?' Sarah asked Daz.

'I sweat it out. I worry.'

'Well, it ain't from overworking, is it,' Roy noted.

'I wish I'd known you was coming; I'd'a got some more beer. Put a fiver of me own in, got another eight. They're doing a promotion. Eight for five quid.'

'I'll only have one,' Sarah assured him. 'I've got to open the shop.'

'So I didn't get any change for that lot then,' said Roy.

'Did you bollocks, mate. I had to put in two quid of my own. That cheese is Japanese; it cost a bleeding fortune.'

'So why didn't you get cheddar like any other twat?'

Daz pleaded his oil-stained equivalent of the Fifth Amendment on that one. Instead he asked a question of his own: 'Are we still meeting up for a drink tonight?' To Sarah.

'The Happy Abbot. Any time after seven. I'll be there.'

'Good stuff. Wicked.'

Shortly afterwards Sarah left the two men to their work, and drove back to her own place of employment. She was indulging herself in a gamble, as anyone does who participates in an affair. And Sarah had seen the damage that gambling had caused Alan; during the time when he'd been bad with the disease, he'd been like a hole that was getting bigger. It had eaten away at his thoughts; it had cannibalised any other notions. But Sarah had been more responsive to Alan's gambling - more sensitive, more understanding - than she'd ever imagined she could be. She only hoped that he hadn't started again. The only way she found out last time was by accident.

How would Alan react when he discovered that she was having an affair?

That a woman could gamble too.

2

Keeping a sense of bAlance and perspective, Holly was pleased that she had two working legs. They were too long and pianoey, but they carried her where she needed to go. And that was good. Similarly her arms were fleshy, but they lifted objects, inserted tubes, or crossed when they were required to do so. And that was good also. She had a fine working brain and organs that needed no help from her, only co-operation among themselves. She was healthily and regularly menstrual, to a predictable accuracy of a day either way: the Blob (as she referred to her period) was due on Saturday. No allergies besieged her body, apart from an annual fuss between her nose and the air's pollen saturation. In other words, Holly acknowledged that she had much to be thankful for.

What she hated as much as her size, however, was the paucity of her vision. Holly wore contact lenses. She was too vain for spectacles, apart from when she knew she would be alone. So every morning she made a blurred stumble for the bathroom, where her spacecraft-shaped lenses case was docked next to tall and 25th Century buildings of eye-friendly solutions. Like a Chinese chemist she mixed and discarded. And like Jonathan Swift's 'Young Nymph Going to Bed' in reverse (a poem that Holly always thought of, scantily, at lens time) Holly prepared herself for the working day. Her forefinger pushed each lens, with its shallow boul, on to its sticky eyeball. She then blinked a few times to make sure that the programming had been thorough.

But there was a problem this morning while getting herself ready. Holly had discovered that the solution in which she'd soaked her lenses overnight had gone bad in its opened bottle. The tears that resulted when she gingerly placed the lenses on her eyes left her whites beetroot purple. And she was due to meet Hugh in five minutes - on business - for a trial run of the sort of evaluation that he'd be paying her to provide.

Disaster!

There was no time to re-wash the lenses. And Holly had refused to bring her old-fashioned spectacles with her. Thus it was that she offered the first of her appraisals to Hugh while 'ambiguously-sighted'. Cheekily, almost holding her breath throughout, she squinted into one of the spare bedrooms (which she had fortunately already seen) and said to Hugh:

'So what did you really want to say with this room? What did you want to communicate?'

Hugh looked into Holly's face - to make sure she wasn't smirking; to make sure she was being serious. 'Well,' he said, 'I wanted it to say "Hello, I am a bedroom".'

With a quick, serious nod of the head, Holly smiled and let the sarcasm trickle away like so much water down a drain. 'You know something? It doesn't say that to me.'

'It doesn't say "I am a bedroom"?'

'No.'

'Despite the presence of a bed.'

'That's right. This place looks like it was thrown together. This room is just storage space - one of the items you happen to need storing being a bed.'

'I see,' Hugh replied.

If Holly's eyesight had been 20/20 she might have seen a look of worry cross Hugh's face at this point. But by now Holly was on a roll - stating confidently some of the options that were available to transform a room of this size and shape. Hugh might as well have been absent. By the end of the week Holly knew that she must have a list of at least six alternatives for every room in the house; plans for every detail of the renovation, down to costings per roll of wallpaper or pot of paint, and a realistic timescale for completion, which she'd be expected to stick to.

The real work would be where the fun began.

Holly's mind did not contain rooms as much as it was made up of tectonic plates. These strata shifted and cracked, creating (on reformation) decisions and mindsets that were fixed for a very long time. That she had an open mind was a description, or accusation, unlikely to be levelled in her direction. When she made up her mind, it stayed made up.

After the mistake with Alan, Holly had made the decision to let the waves of her work cover her, drown her, and take her away again. Men were trouble. With regret and embarrassment Holly sometimes looked back on the three who had preceded her brother-in-law. Two had been at university, and Holly did her best not to think of them too often. Sure enough, they'd thought little enough of her, although one at least had possessed the good grace and manners to come back and fuck her a second and third time, which had made her feel at least mistily desirable. On the fourth occasion with this paramour Holly had gone on top at her own instigation. Needless to say, he'd come, but she'd rarely seen him afterwards - not even socially. Unbelievably she had scared him away. But that was university, where the mating criteria were simple. Or non-existent, in fact. Being alive was an advantage, but other than that, in Holly's opinion, undergraduates weren't too fussy.

Man Three was the love of Holly's life.

A year after graduation, and a party thrown at her sister's Hertfordshire home. They'd talked all night, dancing and drinking. He'd kissed her during 'I Will Always Love You' and again during 'Eternal Flame'. He'd asked for her phone number. They were a couple for five months and Holly still hankered for him, from time to time. She had fallen in love. Holly would have done anything for that man. Daily she had ploughed, pulled and virtually poleaxed her girth into the trembling twang of a reinforced girdle: to make herself look slimmer. Comparing her own attributes with those of the actresses and singers she knew he liked, she'd had her hair restyled like Bjork (circa 'Hyperballad') and Cameron Diaz ('A Life Less Ordinary'). She had bought attractive underwear of intricate designs - like multi-roofed parachutes - and sure enough, had enjoyed watching him remove these items from her body (pushing the bra straps down her arms and kissing her shoulders and neck). He had enjoyed putting his lips to her underarms, tasting the spray-flavoured oxters like a connoisseur. On occasion she would use roll-on deodorant, which had left a rheumy residue, like moistened calx, but he had sipped on these morsels with equal fervour and enthusiasm.

He had left her for another woman. As he'd tried to explain to a catatonic Holly, it wasn't that she had done anything wrong . . . Holly's replacement was two stone lighter.

He hadn't needed to say anything else.

Then, there was the fiasco with Alan which had only ended three months ago. Even at the time she had known it was bound to end in tears. But she'd gone through with it anyway. On the rebound? Oh, Holly had been on the rebound all right \- bouncing around like a squash ball. It might have been anyone, but it had been Alan. Scratch that. Holly knew that the first part of that conclusion - It might have been anyone \- was untrue. The criterion was stricter than that. Holly had needed to be with someone who was currently with somebody else. The theft was as pivotal as the consummation: a way of trusting her own abilities of being vibrant. Only it hadn't quite worked out like that. The affair with Alan had made Holly feel like a prostitute.

Work was everything. She had to make a name for herself. And Hugh Bargeld was her big opportunity. She was with him now in the next bedroom along. 'And what do you have in mind for this one?' she was asking, staring giddily into the mishmash of colours that the absence of contact lenses created. There was only space available in her head for ambition. These days nothing else got a look-in.

'I was thinking of maybe an imbrication here,' she said a few minutes later as they stood on the threshold of the upstairs bathroom. She pointed at the tiles above the bath.

'What's an imbrication?' Hugh replied.

'It's where you have the tiles overlapping.'

'Like on the roof.'

'Yes, but nicer tiles,' said Holly. 'It'll give the room an odd shape, seemingly: like a child's bucket on the beach.'

Hugh frowned. 'I'm not sure anybody will want to go to the lav in a bucket.'

'There's more to it,' Holly persisted. 'Let me know what you think of this. We move the bath away from the wall slightly. The tiles slope away from the wall and join the ledge - the new ledge we'll put in - at the top of the tub. So the illusion is, you've got a bigger room because the wall is leaning backwards. Of course, only a bit of it is. But it's different. Then we surround the bath in wood, light brown, so it looks like a witness stand, sort of. The tiles are pinkish? So are the walls? Gold taps. The wood cabinet for the basin and storage space will be the same wood as around the bath, and also the toilet seat. In fact, we could have the imbrication effect all around the room. A foot-wide band of sloping tiles. And where the tiles stick out the most we put in an artificial wall down to the floor.'

'But surely that'll make the room a lot smaller.'

Holly shook her head. 'It's all an illusion. Trust me. It'll look bigger. This is a large bathroom. You can afford to lose a few inches of floorspace.'

'And moving the bath,' said Hugh. 'That'll all be in the price, will it?'

'Absolutely,' Holly said.

'Then I bow to your superior knowledge.'

Holly loved it when a customer said something like that.

Shortly after this consultation, feeling glowing, clean and polished - feeling, in fact, how she felt on the depressingly rare occasions that she had sex - she returned to her room and had a celebratory snack of Maltesers and a glass of wine. (She had brought her own corkscrew for the occasion.) She watched the omnibus edition of EastEnders on the small television that Hugh had either provided, or which was always present in the room. Then, a little heady from the wine, she went through the video collection (all copies, no originals) like a genteel, sensitive burglar - as though careful about leaving fingerprints.

Interesting. If the films had been placed here specifically for her recreation times, Holly wondered what assumptions had been made about her before she'd arrived. The Omen, The Bad Seed, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Mary Poppins. A schizophrenic choice, if ever there was one. Blue Steel. Crash. Ghosts . . . of the Civil Dead. Then some old cartoons: Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny, The Roadrunner.

Children. Violence. Cruelty.

Explain the message, thought Holly. What did you have in mind?

Pretty soon, Holly realised that she was tipsier than she'd imagined. This admission led to her pouring another glass of wine: she had about her an attitude that she'd adopted while attending university. When tipsy, continue drinking. How much worse could it get? She assumed that she could not get any drunker. In fact, she assumed that persistent drinking would eventually sober her up. What goes around, comes around, as Alan would say: she was bound to arrive at the starting point sooner or later. And if she happened to finish the wine, she had in her luggage a three litre bottle of remorseless cider. Holly felt as though she was on a holiday, not an assignment. Sipping more wine, she examined the eczema on her left elbow. Fretted about her contact lens solutions, wondering where she would get some more locally. Then she opened a bag of cashews.

What should she do this afternoon? She slotted in the tape marked 'Scooby Doo' and lowered the sound level. The picture flickered like World War II footage - Pathe News \- before settling. But Scooby Doo was not present, nor were Fred or Thelma, Daphne or Shaggy. The tape had been recorded over, by this:

A murder scene. Badly lit. Holly frowned through the static of wine consumption, and gazed at the bloody world that her screen contained. She ejected the tape. She'd been right: she'd started it at the beginning, which meant that there were no credits. And the story really did start with this killing. For the second time she pressed PLAY, and she experienced a lurch of recognition that turned the alcohol in her body to antifreeze. Blood splashed against the camera; Holly didn't want to drink the rouged remains in her glass.

The camera wasn't moving. There was no background music.

Like larva, her stomach acids started to bubble. Holly knew why: it was because the film looked more like a documentary than a movie; like one of those fly-on-the-wall career revelations from the BBC. Only, this one wasn't called The Clampers, or The Dustmen, or The Brothel-Keepers; it was called The Torturers.

Two burly satyromaniacs were having fun with a blood-caked university professor . . . or so he looked. (He reminded Holly of Dr Ghassemi, who had presided in a lordly fashion, a witch doctor fashion, over the curriculum of Holly's course.) The topless victim was seated in a chair, with his hands tied behind his back. From his unmasked mouth came a string of falsetto whines, like the urgent siren of a speeding emergency vehicle. The torturers were clearly amused by their plaything's distress. To hoots and snorts of laughter, they were sliding in and out of his flesh with cut-throat razors.

Holly felt sick.

A roadmap of scratches, cuts and abrasions now decorated the victim's chest and cheeks. He had not given up the struggle against his bonds . . . and Holly didn't want to see him give up any other type of struggle either.

She pressed STOP and then EJECT.

Sitting on her bed seconds later, she wondered what (if anything) she should do. Wind the tape to the end, she told herself; see if there are any closing credits. But what if there weren't? What then?

Excuse me, Hugh, but did you know you had a snuff film upstairs?

Ridiculous. There was bound to be a logical explanation.

Deciding that she would choose the right moment to ask, Holly drained her glass and poured another (her distate for the stuff had not lasted long). In the hours between now and dinner time (she could smell the duck cooking downstairs) she would read. She didn't read enough anymore. She could watch the television tonight.

3

With the care of someone inserting a pin into a baby's old-fashioned, disposable nappy, Daz was massaging medicated shampoo into his depreciating locks. Any hair he dislodged from its root during his daily toilette Daz took as a personal failure. On his hands and knees after the shower, he even examined the plughole for evidence of further loss.

This evening? Not too bad. Daz dressed.

He had a date with Sarah in an hour's time. Having gelled his disobedient barnet into spikes, he dusted his legs with talcum powder and pulled on a pair of leather trousers as narrow in the leg as drainpipes. His favourite t-shirt (THE MINGUS BIG BAND) he eschewed for reasons of personal hygiene and general decency. Instead he wore one which bore the legend: THE LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL 1998. He pulled on his black leather jacket and his best pair of Reeboks. He was ready . . .

Arseholes, thought Daz, entering The Happy Abbot an hour later. He hadn't thought about the possibility of Sky TV being on. A football international would be screened in twenty minutes' times, and already the crowds at the bar were three drinkers deep. It was as noisy as a rock concert. Sarah wouldn't like it here. Perhaps he should give her a buzz on the mobile; tell her to meet him at The Cauldron instead . . . He reconsidered. Nah. Bit risky, that. They'd move on when she got here. You don't wanna start calling when she's with hubby. Things could get well tasty, the poor mare.

Eventually Daz was served a brimming pint of free radicals, fizzing away in audible effervescence. Craning his neck, having secured a miraculously vacated chair by the window, Daz watched the plastic faces of sports pundits. They were twats. This was Daz's opinion on the matter. For the same reason that Daz deplored rock concerts but could tolerate a rock song on the radio (Smudge FM), he detested the jingoistic communal fanaticism when England played on the pub's telly, but could quite happily watch the game - on his own at home, with some iced vodka and four or five boiled eggs and toast soldiers. A matter of refinement. And Daz was a creature of class. Jazz was superior in every way to rock; and cricket, likewise, had the edge over soccer. Still. Enjoy your pint and take the bird out, thought Daz. Empty your mind, like.

. . . Oh dear. What have we got here then? he continued thirty minutes later, midway through his third pint. She was late. The football had begun. Spain had started confidently, much to the hooted chagrin of the sardined supporters.

Fucking animals, thought Daz, listening to bellowed soundbites of advice and criticism such as these:

' . . . Wide is it. Wide. Play it wide, son. Wide. Go on, my son. Oooh, ya cunt . . . '

' . . . Don't fucking 'og it. Pass it . . . '

' . . . You blind, ref?'

' . . . Gertcha. Down he goes.'

' . . . Fuck was that . . . '

' . . . they paying him to chuck the cunt or what . . . '

' . . . Up you get, Manuel . . . '

And so on. If animals ever learnt to speak, hyenas would sound like this.

Sarah arrived. Better late than never. Appearing like a woman unexpectedly trapped in a dream, she looked from table to table, obviously nervous. She thought she'd got the wrong place. But then she saw Daz - his arm lifted effortlessly in a loose crescent, his box's fifth cigarette clamped between first and second knuckles - and she dirtydanced her way through the crowds towards him, glad (for once) that she was wearing jeans and not her usual short skirt. This was not the sort of place in which she'd want to wear a short skirt.

'Hi. Sorry I'm late.' She was grinning.

'S'allright. What can I get you?' Daz asked.

They talked for two hours, rasing their voices against the din. Daz even gave Sarah a bowdlerised version of events with Paulette, his former girlfriend. He didn't want to blow his chances with Sarah, however, so he failed to mention the fact that he'd had a daughter, little Carol, with Paul. That was all rather messy. Daz tried not to think about it too much. Paulette (at seventeen, a full two years Daz's junior) had found out that he'd had a one-night stand with a woman named Jill. Very messy. Worse still, Daz had made Paulette pregnant again; there was another one on the way. But Paulette had moved out of Daz's flat and now had a tiny place of her own, which Daz paid for. One day he hoped to sort the whole business out.

But not tonight. There was only one thing he wanted to do tonight.

Daz opened his card-filled wallet. 'I'm going to give you me business card,' he stated, 'in case you wanna chat in the middle of the day or whatever.'

'Put your home number on it too. I've got a pen.' Sarah's slim fingers moved about inside her handbag with the motions of someone kneading dough.

Sarah watched him as he wrote. The numbers were large and hard-pressed. 'Thanks,' she said as he handed her the card. She thought about putting it straight in her handbag but didn't do so, for two reasons. The first was that Alan had an occasional rummage through it, looking for what she had no idea; Sarah didn't much fancy the conversations that would surely follow. His gentle probing: So why have you got a mechanic's business card in your bag . . . (Of course he'd have to invent a reason for his snooping in the first place. He'd be looking for some chewing gum, or the John Lewis charge-card they shared.)

The second reason that Sarah didn't put the card in her handbag was simpler. She wanted to see it again, and it was statistically probable that inside the chaos of her handbag such a miracle as an eventual reappearance might be denied and sneered at. Sarah was forgetful and disorganised. Her handbag was a Bermuda Triangle of rubbish and unnecessary objects. Precisely the worst place to put something she wanted to keep.

Sarah slipped the business card into the back pocket of her jeans. She would hide it somewhere safe when she got back to the flat.

'Do you want another drink?' Daz asked.

The question caught Sarah on the hop. Perhaps it was the cacophony and the vodka that had disoriented her; or perhaps she could feel the weight of the air as much as she was certain Daz could. Indeed, at this very moment, the shape of the evening seemed up-for-grabs; her answer might well decide how things went.

They both knew it was going to happen. But Daz wanted Sarah to make her acceptance clear; she could smell his youth and indecision.

'No, why don't we go back to your place, Daz,' she suggested.

4

The inaugural flight of the lovebug piloted by Daz and Sarah took off from the spongy platform of the former's mattress. Indeed the space imagery is appropriate. The lift-off was shaky (incorrect fuels had found ways of slowing down the catch times of the engines) but before too long, the astronauts were fairly well floating in their tin can, their Spunknik, in the pitch of space. And Sarah felt travel-sick and detached. She was thinking of Alan; or of betrayal, to be precise. She remembered the terrible scenes in the bathroom - at their house in St Albans. Her suicide attempt, if that's what it had really been.

Suicide?

She hadn't wanted to die, of course. And that was why she hadn't. Not die for Alan; he wasn't worth it. The events in the bathroom, though ghastly, had been as much a pretence as Sarah's apparent acceptance of Alan's claim - that his affair was with his secretary. At the time, unwilling to deal with the truth about Holly, Sarah had gone along with Alan's lies. She wouldn't be doing so for much longer.

But she didn't want to think about that now.

Sarah gripped a handful of Daz's hair. 'Come here,' she said softly.

They kissed only briefly, both keen for more intense pleasures. Reaching for Sarah's groin with a look of concentration on his face, Daz opened up her vaginal lips as he might a packet of crisps: pinch and separate. Sarah was similarly insistent with Daz's penis. In an attempt to rid herself of the queasy feeling, Sarah told herself to concentrate. This, after all, was what she wanted: this man lying on the bed for her, waiting. Kissing her way down his body, she was bemused to note that even his nipples smelt of cigarettes. A short gulp of nausea climbed up her windpipe; quickly, hungrily, Sarah closed her dry lips on his erection . . . In pornography, of course, the men were well-hung: that was how and why they got into pornography - fulfilment of the physical requisites. Sarah wasn't so sure about the appeal of this (give her something manageable any day) but it looked good: like a valiant struggle. And now here was Daz, and his. Thin, cylindrical; only vaguely bulbous at the tip: like the end of a broom handle. Sarah played and toyed with the elasticity of the skin. She teased the glans with the tip of her tongue. But she wanted more than that now.

'Will you wear a condom?' she asked.

Daz (quite unexpectedly, quite disturbingly) looked at her with unqualified disgust. 'Will I what?' he said slowly.

'Sorry. It was just a thought.'

'Will I wear a condom? I ain't got nuffing. A you?' Daz sat up and gripped his knees with his sallowed fingertips.

Sarah caught sight (in shock) of the dot-to-dot drawing on his back. The spots were remarkable. She'd forgotten how young he was. Daz had spots on his back like clowns' noses: unmilkable, throbbing.. 'Daz, I'm sorry,' she said. 'I didn't mean anything by it. It's a good idea, that's all. I didn't say you had anything.' She palmed the creases of flesh on his hips. 'Forget about it. Come on: lie down.'

'I ain't wearing no fucking rubbers, all right?'

'Okay, forget it. Bad idea.' Good idea, badly timed, was what she meant.

'I thought you was on the Pill.'

'I am,' Sarah lied (it had been unnecessary for some time) and she gently pushed Daz's chest to flatten him down. In the unlikely event that she'd been asked, she'd have been unable to explain why she'd assumed a position of inferiority before this man. But it was a question that would vex her in the days to follow . . . However, not at this instant. She wanted him inside her. As though mounting a horse, Sarah swung her leg over and, pinning down his shoulders, she used her hips to coax him inside.

He filled her nicely. 'Is that good?' she asked him. Grimly Daz nodded. Sarah kissed him and moved slowly up and down; she felt his skin concertina, and his hips gently lift. Placing her breasts in his face, she watched him lap and suck at the nipples. There was a heavy frown of concentration on his face; Sarah was going to replace it with a goofy grin if it killed her.

'I'd better be getting back,' she told him an hour afterwards.

Out in the tower block's parking lot, they kissed perfunctorily, like siblings. No mention was made of what they'd recently shared; nor were any plans made for future assignations. In fact, Daz was thinking of the bacon sandwich they'd each consumed. She put the bacon under the grill after she'd just wanked me off. Didn't even wash her hands, the dirty cah. (It was cah, and not cow, for even Daz's interior monologues were strictly adherent to Estuary English, if not barrow-boy Cockney Gorblimey.)

She was a one. Daz watched her wriggle in the driving seat of her Jag. She was trying to get comfortable. Lucky chair, thought Daz. He leaned over with his fingers on the roof of the car. 'How about this?' he said. 'We meet tomorrow. Here. At noon.'

Sarah smiled. 'Sounds good. I'll take the afternoon off.'

'Roy'll never let me have the whole afternoon. He thinks I take the piss as it is, being late all the time.'

'Yes, he mentioned that. See what you can do.' Sarah twisted the key in the lock and the engine fired up; a vainglorious sound, healthy, strong.

'Till tomorrow then, my love.'

'Till tomorrow,' Daz agreed, standing up straight. He watched her drive off, he even waved goodbye, then he walked over to the rusty van and got in.

5

Paulette Jones was Daz's ex-girlfriend. They had broken up a month ago. She lived (for now) on the fourteenth floor of a block of flats even more ghastly than Daz's own. Daz was paying her for the privilege. But he wanted her to come back to him. Life felt undernourishing without her and little Carol to come home to at the end of the day.

'Your poor lamb,' said Paulette with a marked lack of sympathy once she'd opened the front door. 'Lift knackered, is it?'

'Predictably.'

'You better come in. You ain't staying though.'

'I wanna see me daughter.'

Paul snorted. 'Yeah, right.'

Daz closed the front door; the letterbox rattled. Then he took the three necessary steps over to the far side of the living room, where Carol was flat out on the sofa.

'She's snoozing; don't wake her,' Paulette told him as she waddled into the kitchen. 'I've just made tea. You want some?'

'I'd rather have a can, if you got any.'

'I'll have a look.' No raising of the voice was required because the fridge was a few footsteps from where Daz sat. He heard her say: 'What you come here for? I ain't coming back to you, if that's what you're thinking.'

'Maybe one day,' he muttered, a little hurt by his ex's aloofness. He stopped looking at the sleeping child and instead joined Paulette's one-person-only kitchen. She handed him a can of Heineken. 'I need some help, like in the good old days. I'm lining a job up,' he said in Paulette's one-person-only kitchen. 'A video shop: HandyFilms.' He moved to the side to let Paul pass with a cup, which she placed on the chopping board. He was now nearer the fridge than she was.

'Silly me. Pass us the milk, will you? Where is it - this shop?'

Opening the fridge Daz gave the relevant information as Paulette poured herself a cup of mud-brown tea. They remained in the kitchen, leaning against surfaces. Paulette sipped her beverage while Daz gulped his. And then, with a strange smile on her face, Paulette did something unusual; something that Daz had seriously not anticipated.

She refused him.

'I ain't doing it,' she clarified after Daz's first wave of petulance had passed. 'I'm pregnant for Christ's sake. What do you want me to do, have your baby on the bloody pavement? Forget it, mate. Get someone else to be your lookout.'

'I ain't got no one else.'

'Ask Jill.'

'Paul, don't,' said Daz, and actually sounded wounded. 'Jill was a stupid thing to do. I said sorry.'

'Yeah, I can't deny you said sorry.'

'What more do you want me to do?'

Paulette wrapped both of her hands around the mug. 'Do you know what you can do? You can leave right now. Give me time to think things through. Just go.'

Anger was bubbling up inside Daz. 'I pay for this dump.'

'And I'm grateful, Daz; but that don't mean I'm your slave.'

Daz frowned. 'I need the money, Paul. The video shop . . . it's a dead cert. Sweets from a baby, like. I know the owner. It's a piece of piss.'

'Good,' Paulette replied. 'Go for it. Just leave me out of this one.'

'You won't be saying that when I can't pay your rent.'

'You're not broke, Daz; who you trying to kid? Please leave. I want an early night for once. I'm gonna put little Carol down.'

In a tone of mild outrage Daz asked, 'Do you mind if I at least finish me beer?'

'Take it with you.'

6

For some reason it never seems as though scenes with these people are finished. There's no closure, or little of it anyway. Nobody is willing to take matters to their logical conclusion: their catastrophic finale. But they'll have to soon. Because everybody has a sentimental breakdown - a moral disintegration - waiting somewhere down the line. It's like the lorry coming towards you around the bend; you don't see it until it's too late. I think all the people here are on the road because of bad decisions, rather than because they are essentially bad people. And I think that taking scenes as far as they go might just take the sting out of the storm of bees heading their way.

See, everyone is a bad person. You might try to be a good man or a good woman - but what does that make you to start with? Bad.

London would be great if no one ever tried to be anything ever again. We'd all go feral and have mating seasons and tribal pecking orders. The concept of crime would be redundant because the concept of crimelessness would not exist, so there'd be nothing to compare it against. It would be the norm. And just maybe then - just maybe - people like Paulette would recognise fear as a daily certainty and not worry that there's so much of it around.

7

'Why Sarah? Why was it your sister you had to steal from?' came a calm and inquisitive voice.

Holly was pretending not to understand the question. Dressed in a plum blazer, she was standing in the dock of a packed courthouse, her hands white-knuckled on the balustrade. The judge posing the queries was not known by any respectful or accurate prefix: not Judge This or Judge That. Not even Your Honour. Holly was frightened of him - because he was a man-sized lobster, like something from a Japanese B-movie in the 50s. He was called The Scraper.

'Answer the question, Holly.'

'I don't know,' said the accused, dipping her head.

'You could have chosen any other man you knew,' The Scraper went on. 'You could have hired someone if it was only for the sex. But it wasn't, Holly, was it? You wanted to hurt Sarah. So tell the court why.'

Holly was crying. 'I don't know. Because I hate her. She treats him like shit.'

'You'd be a better wife would you, Holly?'

'She always gets everything her own way. She always did!'

'A better wife?' asked The Scraper.

'Yes, probably,' Holly replied defiantly.

'Then I now pronounce you man and wife.'

Holly panicked. Suddenly Alan was with her in the dock. 'No, I don't want to marry him,' she started to protest, but the air was wriggling and alive with chucked confetti. A blizzard of it. A church bell rang.

'You may now kiss the bride . . . '

Alan, his smile the same shape as a post-box slit, stepped towards her, his arms wide open. Holly could hardly see him through the confetti, which was now as thick as television static.

'I don't want to marry him!' Holly shouted. 'I don't want to . . . '

Holly woke. White light as severe as operating theatre illumination was in her face. She was gasping, but there was no confetti; the church bell, still ringing, was in fact the persistent beep of her mobile phone discharging itself. Lack of sustenance.

Sitting up Holly wiped a caul of sweat from her forehead into her hair. 'Thank Christ for that,' she whispered. But in dreams begin responsibilities, if the short storywriter Delmore Schwartz was to be believed.

Holly's bed was soaking wet.

'Fuck dreams,' she muttered, climbing out of her quicksand.

8

At approximately the same moment as Holly woke up, Hugh was sitting in front of his computer, enjoying a brandy and a slow perusal of the Internet. One of his games was to do a search by unusual words, or combinations, and see what he found. He had located a web site devoted to pyromaniacs. Some things would never cease to amaze him.

For instance, he'd been astonished to learn that the sort of film that he'd placed in Holly's room actually existed. Let alone the fact that he could get his hand on a copy. Hugh's daughter had obtained it for him - at an outrageous price . . . but it was all part of the plan. To bugger up Holly's sense of equilibrium - to start with, at least. A film in which acts of homosexual sadomasochism were unflinchingly recorded. Hugh had no way of knowing if Holly had watched it, but as she hadn't mentioned it, he supposed not. Or would she mention it? Guessing the answers to such questions was part of the fun.

Hello? thought Hugh. What was this?

Hugh had an e-mail waiting to be read. It was dated back to Friday, at four-thirty. From Alan Chandler, the soft sap. Hugh clicked it open.

Hugh:

Just a quick message to say I hope all goes well with Holly Paver redesigning your house. She's a lovely girl and I'm sure you'll get on fine.

Bests,

Alan . . .

Hugh snorted and drained his tumbler of brandy. Writing non-company e-mails was bad enough, but on company time? 'Disciplinary offence, you piece of shit,' Hugh muttered. And what was with those three dots after his name, the arrogant bastard?

She's a lovely girl . . .

Yeah, I bet you think she is. We'll get on all right. Don't you worry about that, Hugh went on silently. Then he put down his glass and clicked on the RETURN option.

Typed:

Alan:

There's no excuse for wasting company money when you should be making some.

Hugh

Succinct. Unfeeling. Ungrateful.

Perfect.

Oh, I can be a bastard when I want to be. Hugh poured himself another brandy and clicked his way into the 'Read Mail' file. There he went to one of the best bits of comedy he'd ever read. It was another e-mail from Alan, from about a month ago.

Hugh

Just wanted to let you know how delighted I was to recommend Holly Paver for the job of redesigning the insides of your house.

I'm glad the conversation came up!

Bests

Alan . . .

But the joke was, the subject never had come up. It was laughable. One month ago, during the football World Cup, Hugh had allowed his employees an extended lunch break in order to watch England play, on the proviso that the hours were made up that evening or by coming in early the following morning. Hugh had even been so generous as to suggest that he would buy each of his employees a drink . . . Half the building had repaired to the nearest pub that was showing the game - The Coach and Horses. Including Alan. That lunchtime, Alan had proceeded to get suicidally drunk, presumably believing that nobody was noticing. Hugh himself saw Alan walk to the bar four times for pints of Guinness (and even swipe down a crafty whisky while he was paying for one round). The opportunity was perfect. Hugh insisted on asking Alan how a certain project was going, so at the very least Alan would later be able to recall that he had spoken to his boss. And then, at five o'clock, Hugh sent Alan a message:

Alan

Glad we were able to able to have that chat at lunchtime about the interior work for my house. And thanks for your recommendation! If you're certain she'd be prepared to travel down for the right price, I think I'll employ her to stay a week at the house, making whatever notes need to be made.

Best wishes

Hugh

To this day, Alan thought he really had recommended Holly for the work. Certainly Holly believed he had . . . When Hugh had asked Holly how she knew Alan, she'd said, 'Ex-boyfriend.' Uncharacteristically, Alan had acted with some decorum on being asked a similar question. 'Friend of a friend,' he'd replied.

Not for long.

MONDAY

No, we're not 'people' - we're persons. Because 'people' suggests solidarity to me. Uniformity. And I'm not like you lot. I'm the only person I know who ain't bought the ticket on the ride to self-destruction.

\- Daz Sandford

1

Paulette Jones woke in turmoil. Her world was still crumbling. She'd dreamed of Daz (as usual) and he'd been chasing her down narrow streets, wearing a green surgical mask and carrying a pair of long hospital scissors. The houses' windows had been smeared with blood. Uncomfortable, Paulette sat up. Backache unfolded along her shoulders and reached down for her spine. Surely even limbo dancers did not suffer so!

At the foot of her bed, in her cot, little Carol was humming and gurgling in shallow slumber. With a hand on the youthful globe of her belly, Paulette walked over to her. Little angel, thought the proud mother, when she's quiet.

. . . Paulette, at the start of the working week. Not that Paulette worked.

What are we going to do about Paulette? Or what is she going to do about herself? Paulette. A self-protector; a social analyst, of sorts; a survivor. But damned, unfortunately. Seventeen years old - and wrecked. Finished. Her hopes flew like arrows from the towers and gables in which she was imprisoned. Surely someone would find the message attached to the flint-head: to rescue her.

My name is Paulette, she would think as if in prayer. I am not a slut, a floozy, a slag, a whore, a harlot, or a jump-me-bones. And life rolled on. Paulette wanted to live in a realm in which life was simple; in which the light shone all the doo-dah day. Where everything was expected or accounted for. And where there were no problems.

Bliss.

Such friends as Paulette had were learning about nightclub mores, or how to snag your man. Paulette was pregnant with her second child, and this time she did not, in all (or any) honesty, expect anyone else to assist her through the morass and minefield of gestation. For this was her own - her very particular - struggle.

With a rare smile Paulette recalled how different it had been the first time around, with little Carol. The dour and lumpy eroticism of her first pregnancy! As soon as she'd started to put on weight (or more weight, Paulette never having been what you would call a lithe figure) she had started to worry about losing her appeal. She thought Daz might stop finding her attractive - or whatever it was that he found her. The weight-gain and the worry were index-linked in their incremental rises. But Paulette needn't have been concerned. If anything, he'd seemed thrilled by the new state of affairs. For Daz it must have been like having sex with a brand-new woman: a fatter one, more eager to please (if that was possible), with larger breasts. Nor did the diminishing number of positional possibilities dampen his ardour. As Paulette became heftier, and the all-fours method became the only comfortable option for Paulette, she'd expected him to grow tired of it. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. With his hands gently on her soccer-ball stomach, he had knelt behind her with no obvious dwindling of his libidinous intentions.

This time round she was all on her own.

Perhaps it's a universal truth that all expectant mothers suffer moments of indecision that border on schizophrenia. Contrary to what Paulette might have imagined, these moments were more tangy and frequent this time. Familiarity had shown her no favours. Paulette was unaware of the word, but sometimes she thought of her swollen stomach as a sort of caisson: she viewed her predicament in stark and militaristic terms, and her rotundity was a chest of explosives.

Despite his one-night stand with another woman, Paulette still loved Daz. How could she not love him? She'd met him when she was fifteen and he was seventeen; she loved him with the sort of concentration that can only be found in the hearts of those who have never loved anything or anyone previously, or have never been loved by anything or anyone. She was besotted with him. But she had moved out of his flat a month ago, and now lived in this grotty place, fourteen storeys up from ground level. She had shared with Daz the finest two years of her life, and with little Carol only eight months old at the time he had slept with another woman. That was gratitude. That was love. Experiencing now the sensation that amputees are said to experience - that of believing the severed arm, for example, to have grown back - Paulette couldn't believe they were a couple no more. Her first pregnancy had killed off communications with her family. Paulette had no one. What on earth was she going to do without Daz?

Think of happier things, she told herself. Think of Carol.

Think of the one on its way.

Paulette longed for a nursery, for the new nipper. Just the usual: pastels and pictorial clouds. Or maybe the wallpaper would be crowded with cows or other farmyard animals . . . Paulette wondered why it was that adults assumed children enjoyed such scenes. Animals were as frightening as any nightmare. One of the few things that Paulette remembered from her childhood (or earlier childhood) was the dream of the nasty squids. How their gelatinous limbs had flapped, spanked and tried to smother her! How Paulette had screamed and occasionally wet the bed.

I can't even think of happy things now.

But there was one memory guaranteed to make Paulette smile: the early courtship with Daz Sandford. Seemed like yesterday . . .

To begin with, they'd been partners in crime (of a sort) - and not simply in the sense of indulging in under-aged sex. In a circle of friends in The Boot in West Acton Paulette accepted Daz's offer of a Campari and soda, and they started talking. Though she couldn't stay long (it was a school night, and there was a Maths test tomorrow) they agreed to meet the following evening. On this official 'date', Daz decided to test the waters, having got his company drunk on Bacardi and Coke. He told her he was going to move out of his parents' home the second he turned eighteen. How will you support yourself? Paulette asked. Daz shrugged. Putting bricks through car windows; mugging old ladies; going on the Dole . . . Paul nodded, and when she said something about petty crime being a growth industry (a phrase she'd learned in Economics) Daz knew he'd found a soul-mate, an accomplice.

True to his word, Daz left his Mum and Dad the day after his eighteenth birthday celebrations: at three p.m., with a hangover. For the previous year he'd been lackeying for a chunky bloke called Roy who had his own business as a mechanic. Daz kept this position, though in a more experienced, seniorized, and better-paid capacity. His parents liked it that he had steady, full-time employment that he seemed to enjoy. And Daz did enjoy it; but of course it was only one of his sources of income.

Shortly after Daz's nineteenth birthday Paulette learned that she was pregnant. This was unfortunate, for a number of reasons. Chiefly there was the problem of Paulette's father to contend with. Stout and ruddy-countenanced, Paul's old boy had offered Daz an ultimatum six months earlier. The charges of statutory rape would be dropped on the strict and inflexible proviso that Daz never saw his daughter again. Daz had accepted the terms and conditions. Paulette's father seemed pleased to have encountered a young man with a full modicum of common sense \- a reasonable lad \- who'd considered the fact that Paulette was only a schoolgirl and needed to concentrate on achieving an A-Level or two. (At the time, she had recently started her Lower Sixth year; a little later, dropping out of education was but one of the rueful decisions that Paulette had been required to make in her life. She still hoped to study again, at some point.) Fair enough, said Daz; no harm intended. And the father said, Who knows? In a couple of years . . . Daz agreed. The father went away - and Daz met Paulette down The Happy Abbot. She laughed when Daz told her of her father's tomato-coloured face. We'll have to be careful, though, she told him. I'll have to tell him I'm going to a friend's to study, or the library . . . Six months later, she was pregnant.

This put matters in a new perspective, of course. Paulette consulted her diary, having returned from the Family Planning Clinic, ironically enough. That's right: it should have started three days ago. In the bathroom she removed her unsoiled deposit. Oh dear. Not a smudge. Well, women aren't machines, she thought, aperch the cold plastic yoke of the toilet seat; a few days here, a few days there . . . A week and a half later, her suspicions (terrors) were confirmed.

Options were few. Daz took the news \- it should be said - extremely badly. First there was blame; and then there was panic. I thought you was on the Pill! he sneered with incredulity. I am . . . But you forgot to take it: don't tell me . . . Daz, I haven't missed one in me life. I don't know how it happened . . . What we gonna do?

This final question was posed many times in the days and weeks to follow. Like a military operation of utmost secrecy, they arranged to meet less and less often. Too risky . . . Unfortunately, Paulette got it into her head that this wilful absence on his part represented a developing lack of interest in her as a person and a partner in crime. Daz didn't ask her to be his lookout while he broke into parked Fiestas to steal raincoats or briefcases or paperbacks. Nor did he seem horny for her anymore, for a little while. It wasn't fair. Paulette's thoughts turned murky. But he'd done this.

Paulette loved Daz, or at least her youthful mind told her she did. And Daz loved Paulette. But Daz was now scared of Paulette. Scared of what her condition signified. 'Blimey,' he was known to say to Roy with falsely cheerful chutzpah, 'me a dad, eh?' But the actual status of fatherhood was often far from his mind. How were they going to tell their parents? And how was he going to get his nose, teeth and limbs fixed afterwards?

'Abortion' is an ugly word for a pregnant woman. Paulette, in her darkest and most panicked moments, referred to it as the A-word. As in: I'm going to have an A-word. Nuffin else for it. Daz didn't want this to happen. And furthermore, he didn't want it to happen for a genuinely altruistic reason: he didn't want her to be obliged to go through the indignity, the waiting room, the dentist's chair, the stirrups, the instruments (a drawer of mangled cutlery), or the antiseptic anti-surgeon, with his placatory smile. 'I don't want none of that for you,' Daz said. 'Have the kid. Have my baby. I'll support you. Come and live with me.' It was as simply proposed as that. 'We'll sort something out. I'm proud of you, girl,' Daz added.

From adversity springs triumph. Faced with the prospect of a flat to maintain, a sprog to bring up, and a common-law to support, Daz forced himself to work unprecedentedly hard: at crime. He had to get some spondoolicks in the bank.

Oh, the cars he broke into! The numbers. Even as the brick was leaving his fingers on its way to the side window, Daz was known to feel a pang of remorse. Because these weren't all company cars (his usual choice and speciality) from organisations that could afford the loss (fuck 'em, right?): these were the cars of pregnant mothers with their shopping; of first-time drivers; of OAPs who, in Daz's opinion, shouldn't be on the fucking road anyway. Real people. But steal from them, nonetheless, he did. He stole anything that had been carelessly left on the back seat (pushchairs, cameras, personal stereos) or he wrenched out the radio . . . In far-flung suburbs of London, he ran out of Mickey Mouse used-electrical shops with video recorders under his arm. He didn't do anywhere big: they had closed circuit, didn't they? From chemists he pelted with his holdall full of scooped-together bottles of shampoo and conditioner. Leaving stunned attendants, he ran away from minimarts and bookshops and petshops and coinshops. Daz wasn't fussy. Or violent. The simple life, it was, for him.

That was one of the things that Paulette thought sweet about Daz. He'd rob you blind but he'd say sorry afterwards; and he'd never break your fingers if something went wrong. Not like some of the scum she'd heard about.

Daz's fence was a bro named Amstrad. (Amstrad had been his fence for many years now.) Two and a half tonnes of black muscle and gold jewellery. Gold, needless to say, in either earlobe, but also in the pouch of the left nostril, around the throat - even in the throat, a simple stud, like a buttoned-up tracheotomy scar. Amstrad. So named by another fence named Jimmy Cuckoo, who furthermore represented that fine and diminishing league of villain: the mild-mannered psychopath. Jimmy Cuckoo knew all about computers: he'd received and stolen enough of them. He named Amstrad Amstrad because the black man spoke in a language that no one else could understand half the time. Somehow the name stuck. Amstrad liked it because it sounded good to say, 'I'm Amstrad - from Trinidad.' Which was untrue: he hailed from Chigwell.

Amstrad liked Daz. He liked Daz because Daz showed him the correctly balanced amalgam of fear and respect. 'Amstrad,' Daz would say on the phone. 'Got some gear you might wanna take a gander at.' And Amstrad would say something like, 'Boom. Bring it up. Yat.' Daz knew how to speak his language. And so did Paulette, who often accompanied Daz in order to buy dope from the man.

Bring it up? Yes. Up seventeen flights of stairs in the tottering high heel of Hartnell Towers. The lift? Forget about it. 'He an old boy,' Amstrad would say, referring to the tower block; 'he elevators no work no more.' Like the man unfolding the deck chair, or (more pertinently, perhaps) like a murderer dragging his cumbersome corpse, Daz would ascend, groaning and wheezing, with a box of stolen china in his arms, or a bird cage, or a ghetto-blaster. To do the deal. Daz was invariably disappointed with the meagre sum offered.

Stealing was easy money. And good exercise. Without theft and crime Paulette didn't know how she and Daz would have managed. They were hardly rich, but they scraped by. So maybe she had been wrong to turn down Daz's offer to burgle a video shop. She would have to give it some more thought.

Paulette's nose wrinkled in anticipation. The memories had cheered her up a tad, and now here was something guaranteed to shove her down again.

Little Carol's nappy needed changing.

The baby silently received Paulette's adept ministrations. (Paulette examined the blotchy remains of her dying nappy rash.) Carol looked up at the ceiling and her chubby legs tried to find some purchase in the thin air. Paulette mumbled some nonsense to her. The sound of Paulette's voice had been known to soothe the child when she was restless, although Paulette couldn't understand why. She was perfectly aware that she had a horrible voice. She dropped her T's. And her H's, half the time. She said 'summing' for 'something'; and 'done it' for 'did it'. But Carol was cool with all that; she didn't care, which was a relief.

The telephone rang. It was only ten o'clock. Swearing at the inconvenience, Paulette reached for the receiver while holding a profoundly dirtied nappy in her other hand. 'Hello?'

'It Amstrad. Boom.'

'Hello, darlin'. How are you?'

'Peachy. I hear you and Daz you not a thing no more.'

'We split up. About a month ago.'

'That sad, mon. I thought you and he you were rock.'

Paulette watched Carol wriggle helplessly on her back. 'These things happen,' she said. 'Who knows? We might get back together. What can I do for you, Amstrad? I'm right in the middle of changing Carol.'

'I be quick, mon,' Amstrad replied. 'You got a flat now on you own.'

'That's right.'

'I need to use it. Listen up: I have a business propo-zisshun.'

2

Upstairs, third bedroom. Holly regarded the pastel shades and fairy-castle furniture, feeling like a fraud. There was nothing wrong with this room. Hugh's brief had been to mould a new house from the melted-down clay of the old. Let's see. What did the room feel like? The soft pink flecked carpet helped to give it a cosy impression. Holly knelt down. She felt the carpet's texture. Hard wearing; possibly stain resistant. Interesting. Holly frowned. Flecked carpets were most often used for hallways or children's rooms because they did not show the dirt. Very interesting indeed. Then there was that strange square of cushioned vinyl in the corner: ideal for a child's play area. In Holly's opinion this had once been a little girl's bedroom.

Holly had no right to expect biographical details about an employer, but she thought that a child having lived here once might have been mentioned. Or was she wrong? And where was the little girl now?

Family business, thought Holly. Best left alone.

Holly's own relations were a rum bunch, after all. Mother Dorothy a lugubrious slapper, pregnant with Sarah at the age of nineteen - the father being some semi-mythical shadow from way back. Neither Dorothy nor Sarah knew him. That must have been hard on them both. Then along came Dennis \- Holly's father - who had taken on the imperial task of sperm-donation, and then run away as well. Holly spoke to him every week on the phone, and so (she was certain) did Dorothy. Dennis worked in a Cash and Carry. He delivered cut-price gin to Dorothy every now and then, unbeknownst to his second wife, Ola, a Polish Jew from Zakopane, who received instead her supplies of the painkilling tablets to which she was addicted. Holly always referred to Ola as her mother-in-law, for reasons known only to herself. Dorothy was still alone, every well-meant romance since Dennis having splintered like driftwood in the sea.

Holly left the room.

An hour passed. Perspiring heavily, Holly was back in her room.

Resembling nothing more than a cartoon pirate's cartoon bag of gold dubloons, the sack of toffees sat plumply in the middle of Holly's desk. She reached for her sweets. What her body needed now was some muesli with sliced banana: she had just returned from Hugh's gym. Holly unfolded the radioactively yellow paper. She popped the chocolate-covered treat into her mouth and began chewing . . . The gym. How on earth was she going to change that? Her courses had said nothing about gymnasiums. She undressed. She stood in the bath and in the shower's steam she felt protected; she even managed to forget that there was a world outside the clinging plastic curtain.

Back at the desk, in her dressing gown, she smoked a rare cigarette and tried to decide what to do for the rest of the day.

Having dressed, she wandered downstairs and into the kitchen. And was, as usual, flabbergasted by the energy of its sole occupant. Those in doubt about the existence of perpetual motion could do a lot worse than to witness the movements of Mrs Eggleton as she dervished about the kitchen and ground floor every day. What was her motivation? How could anyone enjoy housework so much? wondered Holly, coolly regarding her. And surely there was a finite amount of work available anyway.

'Hello,' Holly said.

Mrs Eggleton turned. 'Hello, dear,' she replied, then returned to her furious circular wiping of the work surface.

'I was going to make myself a cup of tea. Would you like one?'

'Can't stop yet, dear.'

Yet? It was after midday. Holly knew she was invading Mrs Eggleton's terrain; but what else could she do? She wanted a cup of tea and that was the end of it. She filled the kettle. Leaning back against the fridge, Holly felt the unpleasant stirrings of guilt at being so inactive in the eye of what would appear to be a hurricane of panic. 'Is there anything I can do to help?' Holly asked.

Mrs Eggleton stopped working. Clearly not used to hearing such offers, she regarded Holly for a few seconds as though she'd told an anti-religious joke. 'No, I can manage, dear. Thank you.'

I've offended her, Holly thought. The silence - or the growing angry hiss of the warming kettle - would have been better. Holly should have kept her mouth shut.

Mrs Eggleton straightened up. She had stopped looking upset. 'So how are you enjoying your time here?' she asked.

'I like it,' said Holly. 'It's a lovely house.'

'It is that. I hope you won't be changing too much in here.'

Holly smiled. 'I'll keep its spirit if I possibly can. At any rate, Hugh'll have the final say, obviously; and I'm sure he won't go for anything if it'll upset you.'

'You're probably right, dear.'

'There are a few rooms upstairs I haven't been in yet,' Holly went on. 'The doors are shut and I'm appraising one room at a time so that I don't get too bogged down. But tell me: is there a bird in one of them.'

'That'll be Bertram. Mr B's parrot. Light of life that creature.'

That was interesting. Idle but pleasant chit-chat followed, with Holly angling for an opportunity to bring up the topic of Hugh's family tree. While pouring the boiling water on to two tea bags in two cups (Mrs Eggleton had changed her mind) Holly nonchalantly asked, 'Did Hugh ever marry?'

'No, dear,' said Mrs Eggleton. 'He had what we used to call a roving eye. But I don't think one woman would've been enough for him. He's not the type for a wife and kids and slippers.'

'Oh, I see. So he has no children either,' Holly continued.

'Well I probably shouldn't answer that, but just so you don't make any faux pas' \- she pronounced it foo-pars \- 'no he hasn't. He did but he doesn't now. She died, the poor lamb. Got knocked down in the road. Ran away from her mum . . . '

'That's awful,' said Holly.

'And I'll tell you something else. I don't know if he ever recovered.' Mrs Eggleton frowned, as if this was the first time she had ever given any thought to the subject. 'I don't know if you ever do, from something like that.'

3

In Daz's flat, the occupant and his guest were down to their underwear in seconds. Daz had only just time to put on some Duke Ellington music before Sarah sneaked up behind him. 'You said we had to be quick,' she told him with his penis in her fist. 'We don't want to make you late getting back to work, do we?'

Although still trying to discover what the catch might be with this woman (it couldn't always be this simple, surely), Daz was not one to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Four fingers he employed to enter Sarah's vagina. On the sofa, while they were still in their knickers (of comparable skimpiness) Sarah's fingers shuttled Daz's foreskin back and forth. His bulge was handsome.

They undressed completely. Sarah opened her legs and lay back. Minutes later (but not many minutes later) Daz had established a pace that seemed to have earned his lover's respect. Daz couldn't believe his luck with this one. But then she said something that he didn't want to hear:

'Come on, lover,' said Sarah. 'Make me come.'

So that was the catch. Daz had known there had to be something. This directive caused Daz no small amount of trouble. It was beyond his comprehension. Despite reading up on the topic (not in pornography either, but in the library - the medical section) he was still unable to see that he could have any direct influence on her body in this way. (Make her come? You're joking.) Daz would valiantly and happily play his part in any sexual opportunity that was presented to him, and if she happened to yelp and go spastic on him halfway through, that was brill. Pat on the back, like. But the notion of female orgasm Daz would only entertain in a strictly but literally lucky-dip manner. If she did, she did. Bingo. If not . . . maybe next time, eh? Make her come? Jesus.

Though (to his credit) he'd never actually counted, Daz imagined that on a good day he might be able to ram in a hundred good strokes before he ejaculated in his customarily copious fashion. Daz supposed these were reasonable odds. One hundred chances to take her up the garden path, like. Or maybe it was more than one hundred . . . Not to his credit, Daz started counting. A few seconds later he thought: Christ, that's ten already . . . Twenty . . . Thirty. Clearly Daz was going to have to re-evaluate the statistics. Sixty-three, sixty-four. A bead of sweat fell from the end of his nose and landed on Sarah's top lip. Like an animal careless through hunger, darting out of its den for a meal, Sarah's tongue licked away the extra moisture. Daz liked seeing the inside of her mouth. It was an unusual intimacy; a rare one. Eighty-three. Eighty-four. Will I make the century? Daz asked himself. He thought of cricket. The picture was unbidden and unwanted . . . The over-arm bowl, the red hard ball sharking in for the precarious stumps in the ground. Plock! It's whacked away skywards by the waiting batsman. Oh, it's high: that's a beauty. That's going for the boundary! It's a six. One hundred and two . . . Daz's thoughts got mixed up. He thought of a bowl of spaghetti. The ball was flying. With his forearm Daz pinned down Sarah's upper body as his groin sneezed inside her . . .

When he opened his eyes, Daz looked down into Sarah's panting, rouged face. She grinned. 'Thank you.' She kissed his lips. 'I've wanted to experience that with you. It felt great.' So he'd managed, then. Daz hadn't even been aware of this conquered peak. He rolled on to his back; the bed linen was cool against his perspiration. Noticing a flush across her chest, Daz realised that for future reference that would be as good a clue as any to how high he'd taken her.

'But what did you mean, Daz?' said Sarah.

'You what?'

'When you came. You said "a hundred and twelve".'

'Did I?'

'Yeah. A hundred and twelve what?'

Daz smiled. 'A hundred and twelve not out.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Nothing. Shut up now for a bit. Let's have a cuddle. I'll probably have a quick kip and then I better get back to work. You can stay here all afternoon if you like.'

'All right,' said Sarah, sliding warmly into the embrace.

4

Suddenly Sarah knew what the sight reminded of. She had been staring out of Daz's lounge window for five minutes, perfectly happy and at peace with the world, sipping vodka and cherry juice from a mug (his tumblers were chipped, with smudged glass), and she'd been trying to think what the other tall buildings she could see looked like. Then she had it. The buildings of London were like people queuing up at a vast cosmic bus stop, standing very still. (Before she'd started on the vodka, Sarah had helped herself to a very generous cigarette of Moroccan tobacco.)

It was four o'clock, and it felt good not to be at HandyFilms. It was like playing truant from school. Sarah had already watched some of Daz's taped comedy - and now it was time to use his phone. Finishing the vodka, Sarah picked up the receiver, sighed, and tapped in Holly's mobile number.

She cancelled the connection immediately. Staring out of the window, she wondered if it was too late to cancel everything \- not just the call. So far what had happened? Nothing that couldn't be put back to its original order. True? So maybe Sarah could call the whole thing off; maybe that would show how much better than Holly she was: that she had a conscience about such matters . . .

But then Sarah thought about the pain that Holly had caused her. And that thought led to a speculation on how smug Holly must have felt - to believe that she'd got away with it. Damn her!

One fact that had emerged as a result of Holly's brief affair with Sarah's husband was that Holly clearly imagined herself to be more intelligent than her sister. This was undeniable: first Holly had cast herself as being beyond suspicion; then she'd had the gall to offer a sympathetic ear to Sarah. Holly didn't know that Sarah knew that Holly was the Other Woman. But very soon Holly would know that Sarah had known for some time. Because a husband can't lie to his wife: not for ever. Eventually the pressure from within is too much.

And Holly was going to be sorry.

With a quick smirk Sarah dialled Holly's number again.

Retrospectively, after Sarah had discovered that the lipstick on Alan's collar (as it were) had belonged to Holly, Sarah had thought along these lines: If Alan had been to bed with a woman - a stranger - on one isolated occasion, when Sarah had been ill or away - that would have constituted, in Sarah's mind, a ghastly and unforgivable sex crime. (She was perfectly aware that she was something of a hypocrite in this regard.) But Alan had felt the need to make it non-anonymous, to make it familial. Their own family! And Holly! For God's sake, Holly! With her telegraph pole legs and her unattractive body . . . Seeking comfort from the situation in any way she could, Sarah would find herself wishing he'd paid for some grand-an-hour hooker in Knightsbridge: someone who put all the effort in. Good dresses, stockings, suspenders; reasonable looks. But no: for some reason it had needed to be Holly. And not once. Three times. Three times that Sarah knew of; three times to which Alan had confessed. And not when Sarah had been sick or absent: when Alan's problems with gambling had escalated.

He had told Holly about the gambling before he'd told Sarah.

They'd both be sorry.

'Hello?'

'Hi, Holly, it's Sarah. How are you?'

'Oh, fine; I'm working in a great big house in Buckinghamshire. Aylesbury. Things could be worse. What about you?'

'Well, that's why I'm calling. I've got some goss. Could we meet for lunch tomorrow? Say one o'clock . . . ' And Sarah gave Holly directions to the Happy Abbot.

5

Very young men and their mirrors, on the whole, have pretty good relationships together. Very young men glance into their mirrors before leaving the house: to make sure the tie is straight or the hair is a) nicely brushed, or b) furiously peacocked, depending on personal taste and the intended message. Very young men watch themselves shaving, which is an endlessly fascinating show. Very young men expect a reasonable appearance from their mirrors: that's all. It's only when very young men become simply young men (say, at the age of twenty-or-so) that this sort of scrutiny starts happening.

What sort of scrutiny?

This sort: Daz's.

It was six p.m. and Daz had just got in from work. It had been a difficult afternoon: when Daz had gone back after his lunch-hour, Roy had given him a bollocking about being late again, and the employer's mood had not softened much until it had been time to go home. C'est la vie, Daz thought now: Roy's temper was the last of his worries. Daz was looking into his mirror and feeling appalled. He was a very young man, but his relationship with his mirror was precociously premature. Why? Because the deterioration of his body was, in his opinion, precociously premature. He was staring at his own face. This shouldn't be happening yet, he silently protested. He was only nineteen; this wasn't fair. Couldn't it just have waited a couple more years.

The tragedy for which Daz even half blamed his mirror was this: he was going bald. Daz wore his hair long and floppy so that the isosceles triangles of his bald patches were more or less hidden. What he was doing now, in private (just him and his mirror, with Sarah asleep in the bedroom) was pushing his hair backwards, and then from side to side: to see if the baldness had got any worse. Since lunch time.

It was a ridiculous situation. On his cheeks and chin he couldn't get rid of the fucking stuff. His legs looked those of an ape. His chest was a matte-painting of hair. His groin was protected by its hairy cushion of pubes. But on his head? Where he needed it most? Forget about it.

Daz lit a cigarette. Reclining now in his chair with a pint of iced vodka, waiting for Sarah to arise, Daz picked up one of the four remote controls from the low table beside him. A nice bit of jazz, he thought. Daz's living room was tethered and held together by ropes of infra-red light. From his throne King Daz could thus control his domain. There was little in the room (small as it was) that could not be operated by one remote control console or another: even the curtains swished back and forth at the press of a button.

Miles Davis started to play. Good old Miles, thought Daz, before he went mental. Daz took a swig of his vodka. He thought of Sarah.

She was a one, thought, weren't she? Daz couldn't get his head round her. What was she on? Always up for a bit. On the whole, Daz approved of this erotic candour; this approach. Saves all that nonsense, getting your fingers wet, he thought. What an astonishingly forward-planning idea: she gets herself prepared for the occasion. Just join me when you're ready, love. Brill. But it had its downside, of course: before Daz had left to go back to work this lunch time (after a ninety minute break) he had wanted to catch the sports results on the TV. Daz had been sitting in this very chair with a vodka and a cigarette, his attention on the screen; Sarah had knelt down in front of him and opened up his dressing gown with that mucky little smile on her face. Daz had been obliged to say, 'Fuck off, will you. I'm watching the tennis.' This had not been received with full understanding, but a man has his limits; it had only been half past one - they had finished in the bedroom a mere twenty minutes beforehand.

Anyway. Sarah would have her uses. Though she knew nothing of Daz's ulterior motives, Sarah would soon be joining the meagre ranks of things truly necessary to Daz's contentment and well-being.

Daz was going to burgle her video store. It was his next big project.

Making as much noise as possible, Daz removed his clothes in the bedroom. When Sarah refused to wake he called her name, gently at first. But not gently at second. Or third, fourth, or fifth. He knelt on the bed, smiling: she was wearing his dressing gown. She looked lovely. Daz kissed her forehead, suddenly protective of her, and smelt the incendiary blast of swallowed vodka from her mouth as she breathed in sleepy recognition.

'Sarah, it's time to wake up,' Daz said. She was stirring. 'Been hitting the bottle a bit, have we?' he asked as her eyes fluttered open.

'Yes. You don't mind, do you?'

'What's mine is yours, my love,' Daz replied, adding silently: And vice versa.

'I had a smoke as well.'

Sarah reached for her cigarettes and her lighter. This was a shame because Daz had hoped she'd grab him by the penis and demand he climbed on board. Oh well, they could have a quick fag first, he supposed; Daz was tolerant in this respect. He could be a man about this. Have the post-coital ciggie before the coitus.

Once they were both under the covers it didn't take long for the memory of their lovemaking episodes thus far to enflame their collective imagination. It took about twenty seconds. Daz patiently waited until she had smoked about one-tenth of her cigarette before making his move. Enough was enough. Sarah responded favourably, which was a bonus. (As ever, she seemed pleased to be wanted.) The dressing gown was discarded. Daz feasted on her nipples and drove himself inside her with a sickening lurch.

Things were going very well when Daz decided that it was time to develop the repertoire; to include a new routine. This would be the tester. Not even Paulette was too keen on what Daz very much had in mind. While maintaining a rhythm, 'Do you go south of the river?' Daz whispered into Sarah's ear.

For Sarah, looking up into Daz's eyes, it was a terribly confusing moment: it was a question asked of taxi drivers, not in the throes of high passion.

'Do I what?'

'Go south,' Daz insisted, the exercise wearing him out.

Whatever could he mean? The head was north, presumably, which meant that the toes were the southernmost point. The river? The waist and hips? Was he asking her if she'd go down on him? Now? And why would he say Do you? This was not a happy moment for Sarah. He knew she did, because she'd been sucking his erection within half a minute of shedding their clothes for the first time. Suck his toes, perhaps: is that what he wanted?

Daz eased himself out, knelt up, and placed Sarah's ankles on his shoulders. Her backside moved towards his penis as he leant forward again, bending her in two. There was a sound of shifting air pockets: like a mwa; like an air-kiss. Daz used his right hand to reposition himself; to aim again.

Oh God, thought Sarah as she felt the inquisitive snuffle against the puckered knot of her anal muscle. 'Be gentle,' she said. Daz applied an almost noncommittal pressure . . . The women in pornography could do this at the drop of a hat: why couldn't she? Alan had wanted it - once. Though Sarah had agreed to the proposition (and it felt like that, a proposition, something indecent, cheap and nasty: which she loved) she had needed practically a bottle of vodka before she would even think about it (or was it, stop thinking about it?), and then half a gallon of baby lotion, for lubrication.

Daz seemed to want it au naturelle. Unprepared. But maybe this was best: not as much time to get worked up about it all . . . Endeavouring to locate a deeper well of relaxation, Sarah closed her eyes and breathed out quietly. Calm . . . The persistent prod - had it made any leeway? she wondered. The very best scenario would be a moment's discomfort while he established his pulse and rhythm. The worst would be excruciating pain and a feeling of squalor and nausea.

Sarah took a sharp intake of breath. He'd broken the barrier. It hurt. She tried to concentrate on the feel of Daz's chest-skin against her vertical legs. His hands were on her sternum, making smooth circular motions; that helped.

He kissed her left shin. 'Is that okay?'

'Slowly . . . ' replied Sarah. The pain was fading. She took hold of her bottom lip between her upper and lower teeth.

South of the river, she thought with a smile, and suddenly it was all right. Sarah's pain and body melted away; there was only him, hard and lazy, and his weight on her back - and the warmth in her head.

6

Sarah had assumed - with the bravado and erroneousness quite typical of this situation - that late nights would be, if explained, easily overlooked. Forgotten. But Alan knew (scarcely believably) that he wasn't even Sarah's type. So how was he going to disregard this, Sarah's third late night home on the trot?

'We're going to meet a friend of mine,' Daz told her. 'Get your kit on.'

And eventually they climbed into the van - that wounded insect. Its rust and dreams of retirement! Its noise! Some time later, on only the seventh floor of Hartnell Towers, Sarah goaded Daz, thus: 'You're not tired are you? A fit young thing like you . . . '

'Shut it. Fucking hell,' he whispered. For Daz was more than tired. The stairs so far had made him feel (quite normally) as though he'd lost a pint of blood and as though he hadn't eaten for a fortnight.

Achieving the seventeenth floor was like having his passport stamped at the border control into Heaven.

Daz knocked on the door - and even his knuckle was exhausted.

Amstrad was in. He rarely went anywhere, apart from on the days that he took his ex-girlfriend's kids somewhere cheap. 'Boom,' he said, answering the door. 'Enter. Yat.' He was snacking on clouds, a couple of miles high.

It was always interesting to bring a woman into Amstrad's immediate presence, just to see what his reaction would be. The black man would either ignore her, or drool down her delecottage. Nothing in-between was ever deemed suitable.

On this occasion, the latter (to Sarah's chagrin) was the case.

Inevitably and quite reasonably, the subject of drugs was quickly raised. The acquisition of drugs was the reason they had made the journey here. After some half-hearted bartering on Daz's part (he knew how tough Amstrad could be with his figures), the Moroccan gear in its polythene wallet was purchased at Amstrad's original asking price.

Forty minutes later, back in his own flat, Daz was rolling great quantities of the stuff into makeshift cigarettes. Fifteen minutes after that, Sarah was wasted. Again. But she had to get home. But she was wasted. But she had to get home . . . Over and over, her thoughts groped together, ending up sounding like a mantra.

'He'll get suspicious,' she said to Daz, referring to Alan. Her mind was slurred, if not her voice.

'You better go then.'

'Yeah . . . ' Sarah's face became a picture of concern. 'Christ, I've got to drive. I can hardly see.'

'You know what'll help? Exercise. Get it all through your system.'

'I think I can see where you might be going with this,' Sarah told him.

'Come on, darling. Howsabout one for the road,' Daz suggested, opening up the tatty dressing gown that he had donned upon their return. 'Come here.'

7

What a crap day. It was eight-thirty; the theme tune to EastEnders was trilling in the other room (it had been a more-than-usually harrowing instalment), and Alan was sick to the eye-teeth of working for Bargeld Enterprises. His working day had been more than routinely awful, hence his temper. Hugh Bargeld personally had summoned him via e-mail for a '10.30 chinwag'. At a quarter to one Alan had emerged from his superior's office, his ears ringing with the noise of complaint and beration. And the day had resolutely refused to get better. He'd spilled hot coffee down his shirt; the sandwich machine had eaten his pound; his e-mail system went belly-up for four hours . . . And so now, back in the flat, Alan, with a rare cocktail in one hand (only rare because of the faff it required to concoct one) was running his evening bath, hoping to get lost in sweet steam and booze.

I'll quit the bloody job, Alan told himself. But he couldn't do that; he'd been extremely lucky to get it in the first place, and bored or not bored, he had to stick with Bargeld Enterprises until they fired him for incompetence. He had an expensive wife to keep, and in addition, Alan was perfectly aware that before too long he would have to give her more for her Saturday present: just to keep her. It wouldn't be easy.

Where the hell was she now? It was quarter to nine. Alan stripped off and lowered himself into the hot water. She was staying away from the house for longer periods. Perhaps she was having an affair. Alan sipped his cocktail, surprised that the notion of his wife sleeping around stirred neither pain nor anger. Odd, that. He closed his eyes with a hot flannel over his face. Maybe for next Saturday's present he should buy her some pornography, seeing as that was one of the few things that Sarah showed any interest in these days. Alan finished his Pina Collada. Oh yes, he knew about her interest in porn. At least, he was under the impression that she enjoyed the occasional dirty movie. And this he didn't mind. In the past, he'd actually felt affronted that Sarah should have to try to keep her hobby so much of a secret. For he knew she watched them at work. Soon after he'd bought her HandyFilms, Alan would pass by every now and then (he no longer did this) and behind the counter there would be title or two in plain black boxes. Blazing Bedrooms. Hard Sell. Or the presentations based on pre-existing cinematic material: The Cockfather. A Room With a Screw. Alan had noticed, even during the time when he still visited the video store, the collection slowly growing. So by now? Perhaps it was a film club solely for discerning Adult viewers these days.

Sarah had brought a film home a couple of times - at Alan's bidding. They'd started to watch it together, with beer, in the flat. As an infrequent but interested viewer of pornography, Alan had watched breathlessly the action taking place. The freedom of the performers was what turned him on more than anything . . . He looked at his wife. She seemed embarrassed, nothing more. Sliding his hand between Sarah's thighs, Alan was delighted to discover her vaginal moistness. They made love in the bedroom with the pornography watching them \- until Sarah pressed the red button on the remote. What Alan knew now was that her films were to be viewed in private. This was their appeal. It was meant to be a solo screening. Watching porn with her husband made Sarah horny all right, but not for him: for herself.

Alan got out of the bath. Dripping water, he regarded his reflection in the mirror. He was more barrel-chested than the men in Sarah's films. And his penis had shrivelled to a chipolata. Great.

The front door opened and closed. Sarah had arrived home and now called 'Hello? Alan?' The cuckolded husband was reluctant to call anything back, but that would be churlish. He pictured his wife hanging up her coat and then re-hanging his own suit jacket so that it wouldn't crease. Towelling himself down Alan said, 'I'm in the tub. Be out in a minute.'

'Okay. Do you want anything?'

'There's some chilled Collada in the fridge. Pour me one of those, please.'

'Sure. I'll join you. Sounds yummy.'

She already sounds pissed . . . She's expecting me to ask her where she's been, Alan realised. He had to bite his lip. In a toga and turban of clean white towels Alan left the sweaty furnace of the lavatoire, and sat down along the sofa from Sarah in the lounge. Although she smiled at him, and he smiled back, there was no hello kiss. They drank and watched Wildlife on One, saying nothing; neither of them offered to make anything to eat.

8

The room was dark, save for the light spilling in from the landing. Sarah was sitting up in bed, her backside a little bit sore; she was smoking and staring into the shadows. Marriage, she was thinking, was exhaustion of the will. Marriage seemed to be the place you went to when you had stopped going anywhere else. It was stability - but for the wrong reasons. When two people could think of nothing better to do, or nowhere larger to grow, they got married. But what then? It can't be this for the rest of my life, Sarah thought. Both pornography and adulterous affairs allowed Sarah to reinvent herself; that was their appeal, she supposed. She was allowed - actively encouraged - to fantasise for the simple reason that whatever she did under the auspices of these great traditions was, of course, distinct from her life with her husband in their comfortable homes.

Sarah crushed her cigarette out as Alan twisted onto his side to look at her. She was wearing a skimpy nightie of that slippery material that Alan liked the feel of so much. Suddenly everything was reminding Alan of the early days of their courtship. Sarah used to remove the nightie then wrap part of it round his erection and masturbate him with it. Sometimes he was lying on his back when they performed this, and she kissed the semen off his navel afterwards.

'Sarah?' said Alan.

She faced him. 'What is it, love?'

Alan's throat clicked, but then he said, 'I wish I could be more exciting for you.'

For a few seconds his wife said nothing. What he wanted her to say (and what he thought she would say, even though both knew it would be untrue) was something like: You're all the excitement I need. Or just: I love you, Alan.

But in the boudoir's gloom Alan clearly saw her eyes become ice-chips as the landing light reflected off their burgeoning, fresh tears.

'So do I,' Sarah said through a clogged and harmed voice. 'Alan, so do I.'

9

Pausing for reflection Paulette congratulated herself on having spent another day in which she had accomplished absolutely nothing. Not a single thing. That's quite an achievement, if you think about it. Let's see, she thought . . . She'd woken, she'd ambled about the flat wearing only her leopard print tanga briefs . . . Oh, wait a minute. That was a thing: she'd kept her daughter alive, and quite possibly happy, for another day. She should chalk that one up. Little Carol - to whom Paulette was currently fixed, right now, this late at night, eleven o'clock, on a purely physical basis. For breast feeding had soon enough ceased to be an emotional, warming, enriching experience between Paul and her daughter. The pinched pores of the former's etiolated nipples soon saw away with that. Mammary-to-

mouth was now a matter of stark survival, of infant territoriality, and a painful habit entertained by Paulette in a mood of plangent indifference. On the few occasions when Paulette had felt that her breasts were really not up to the task, she had tried to refuse her daughter her midnight snack, or sunrise sustenance. The child had perfected a disapprobative stare of such condemnation that the young mother had swiftly given in.

The day was over. Little Carol was asleep with her lips loosely puckered around Paulette's left nipple. With the wincing caution of someone transporting a box of dodgy grenades, Paulette carried her daughter to her prison-barred cot. Ahhh . . .

'Sweet dreams,' said Paul, pulling the thin blankets over the chubby legs and camel-hump belly. 'Sleepy girl sleep. And the sandman will creep.'

Paulette poured herself a glass of water. She was becoming an aqua-holic. In her favourite chair, she pondered on the subject of life. And as the day had begun, so would it end: with Paulette, alone, wearing only her leopard print tanga briefs. She had taken to doing this quite a lot, this daylong striptease - or erotic fandango. When she woke some mornings, there seemed little point in dressing. There was nowhere to go - and no one would come round to see her. (Of course, this situation would change if she accepted Amstrad's business proposition, as outlined to her on the phone this morning.) So the near-nudity was a form of recognition - of her solitary status - and a form of protest - against the same. This was her bloody flat, and she would dress within it any damned way she wished. Saved on laundry too. Wrapped in a duvet, with her pregnant woman's feet (complete with falling arches) in the washing-up bowl filled with hot water, Paulette had watched the television deemed suitable for women who stayed at home - or women in her condition. Every advert break - Jesus! - showed more brands of tampons, more derivations on the art of menstrual embarrassment-control; more nappies, more cleaning products, more vacuum cleaners, more kiddies toys. (There was even, with bizarre misplacedness, an advertisement for a company - or group of cowboys - offering memory-improvement techniques. Paulette, who was not a stupid girl, had noticed and mourned the loss of brain cells during her pregnancy; and she'd even been tempted to ring up. But something stopped her; something was wrong. That was it: she had no fucking money.) The talk shows Paulette could almost imagine having come from another planet, or another dimension, aimed as they were at the intelligence quotient of your average suave and urbane gorilla. A septuagenarian white-haired knob was leading the pack in a discussion about male rape ('And how did it make you feel?'). Paulette switched over.

Cookery. This was slightly more interesting, though for utterly the wrong reason. On one of the shelves in her cricket-wicket-sized kitchen, Paulette had a row of hardback cookery books, stolen by Daz. The books on this shelf were an ironic touch, perhaps: strategic placements made to allude to culinary discernment and guile. Need it be said that such an impression would be completely without foundation? Paulette didn't cook; at best she warmed things up. But cookery programmes reminded Paulette of the guilt she felt at not being able or willing to cook. One of these days the guilt would attain the density of compulsion, and she would attempt something more glamorous than beans and cheese on a baked potato.

Not today though. It was bedtime. There was nothing on TV to watch apart from politics (more debate), an American thriller (hard-hitting, with its two-star rating in the telly mag), some sport . . .

Dreamily Paulette regarded the two cans of lager in the fridge when she went for some orange juice. That would keep her happy: getting drunk. But she was pregnant, and there were many months to go before the prison of abstinence was opened again and she could walk free.

How would Carol cope with her new brother or sister? She pictured them in a professional photographer's picture frame, arms linked. Paulette smiled and slipped off her knickers to get into bed. The world was a weary place, and it made those in its cold breath weary too. Paulette was exhausted. The sheets were like paths frozen with ice. Paulette pulled the duvet tightly around her body. The darkness was hissing a little bit: this was normal, if not expected. Sleep was soon crawling towards her, making its initial whispered enquiry.

Then the phone rang.

Swearing, Paul hauled herself out of the covers and made a stumble for the bleating apparatus in the next room. The hip which clipped the corner of Carol's cot was the first link in an uncomplicated chain reaction that would result in the child being awoken and starting to banshee.

Two minutes later, with Paulette shaking, the receiver was placed down in its cradle. She picked up her wailing child from hers, and giggled and snickered in what she hoped would be a soothing fashion.

She had just said no to Daz. Again. (The video shop sting was what he'd been promoting, once more.) Saying no had taken extraordinary reserves of strength, which was why Paulette was trembling. Well, that and the torrent of abuse and admissions that had followed; details about Daz's life that she would rather, much rather, not learn. As she felt the baby's hot and saccharine breath on her face, Paulette wondered if she'd made the correct decision. Although it wouldn't be like Daz to act in a callous way towards her, he could cut off her income at any moment.

And if he did? She'd be heartbroken.

But Amstrad was prepared to pay her for the occasional use of this very flat. That would be handy money coming in. Amstrad didn't want to deal drugs from his own flat anymore; it was too risky. He wanted an accomplice.

She'd told him she would think about it.

He'd said Boom.

TUESDAY

Sometimes I wake up and just wonder what the point is. I can't be bothered. I lie there like something washed up on the beach. Then Carol starts crying and I remember what I have to do. I'm a mum, but I'm seventeen. Why did I have her? That's a terrible thing to say, but why did I? What was I thinking of?

- Paulette Jones

1

It always took Holly a long time to prepare for a date with her sister. A long time to look great and then another long time to look as though she hadn't spent half the morning trying to look great. To appear as though she had made very little effort was an exhausting experience. This was one of the reasons that they lunched together infrequently. Another reason was, of course, that Holly lived in Yorkshire, hours away. And another (the one that Holly gave thought to on the train from Aylesbury station: sod driving in London) was that she didn't actually like Sarah very much.

Not true.

She was jealous of Sarah. Referring to one of her premarital affairs one time, Sarah had had the following to say about her most recent lovesick imbroglio: 'He'd crawl five miles over broken glass just to wank on my shadow.' Which pretty much summed up the situation. That was the sort of maddening devotion Sarah inspired. And by association, perhaps, that was the sort of heavenly shell the woman had for a body. And she had good eyesight, too, thought Holly as her left orb prickled briefly. It wasn't fair.

Bitch.

Holly blinked away the tears in her eyes - these produced by the invasion of the transparent miniature frisbees that so aided her vision. Put away all that jealousy. Sarah had said that she had news. Holly tried to imagine what it might be as she followed Sarah's directions from the station to the designated public house.

How busy it was! Sometimes it seemed to Holly that everyone lived in London - everyone in England. More reasonably, she amended this view to one which said that the sanest and smartest people lived in London - the coolest, the trendiest. The third opinion - the one she entertained whenever she was actually in the city, as now - was the diametric opposite of the second.

This was where the nutters roosted.

Unwilling to enter a public house on her own, Holly, on locating The Happy Abbot, sat on the benches outside, waiting for Sarah. Watching the world go by. Listening to the muffled race commentary and the raucous cries coming from the betting shop next door. Holly was a little bit early. Then more time passed and Sarah was late. (Sarah was always late.) Holly checked her watch on a thirty-second basis, for something to do as much as for any other reason. She wished she'd brought a book.

Several metres away, two examples of caramel-coloured London young were arguing in the street. From the way they'd been dressed (neutrally, non-gender-

specifically) it was plain they were brother and sister, the latter dressed in the former's hand-me-downs. The girl, aged four or five, had an object that her older brother wanted. Holly smiled. It was a comic: a copy of The Beano. The boy was holding out his hand with a child's longsuffering patience. 'Give us it,' he said quietly. Holly was experiencing such relief that the basis of the quarrel was not a snuff magazine or a bag of Crack that she honestly had some temporary hope for the future of British youth. Just say 'please' to her, Holly wanted to advise. For the girl, with her braids and her charmless dungarees, was clutching the comic to her chest with maternal possessiveness.

'Gissit here,' the boy said more heavily.

The girl was now under the impression that it was a game. She giggled.

'Gissit. I said give us it, bitch,' the boy went on, stepping towards her.

Holly witnessed the flash of panic and uncertainty in the younger child's eyes. Holly wanted to intervene, but had no idea how. She was frozen to her seat.

The boy hit the girl. It was a cursory, negligible blow - a clip to the younger child's bauble-adorned left lobe - but it brought on the desired squall of tears. The girl raised her arm in protection: against further slaps.

'Now,' said the boy. 'Fucking gissit. Give it here now.'

And the girl handed over The Beano.

Holly felt cold. It was the first real domestic she'd ever witnessed. This was not school theatre: this was prophecy. This was future violence, in its embryo.

The father arrived. His tired eyes, his Spurs scarf, and his skin so much darker than that of his spatting offspring. He'd been in the betting shop. His hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket, he arrived upon the aftermath with paternal need-to-know.

'Wuppan?'

The girl blabbed quickly. 'He hit me!'

As did the boy. 'She wouldn't give me my comic!'

The belaboured father was bent at the middle, more or less at a ninety degree angle. The lumpiness of his bulging wallet showed through the fabric of his rain-grey jeans like the mound of earth after a pet's back garden burial.

'Both of you,' said the father. 'Shut it. I have enough. Boom. Wait till Mum hear about this . . . '

There was nominal further protest as Dad took a child's hand in each of his own. Holly noticed that he wore no ring. She imagined the family set-up, based on this meagre observation: Mum was white and blonde, haggard and unmarried; she prepared the children's supper, still clothed in her dressing gown. This was the father's turn to take the boys somewhere; he'd chosen the bookies.

'Where to now?' he inquired grandly.

Holly longed for courage; it was one of her human weaknesses - the lacking of it, and the constant desire to receive it. With courage she would have said something to the father, who was now loping away, dragging his children like bags of shopping. She would have insisted that he examine the case more carefully. The boy had called her bitch and then smacked her because she wouldn't give him what he wanted. Now where had he learned to do that?

Never mind, Holly thought. Here came Sarah to take her mind off the incident; to defuse the bomb. Holly watched her sister approach, and couldn't help but be impressed by the sway of the hips, the confidence. So many women that Holly knew walked like ballerinas or Tyrannosauruses. Walked like men. And a walk says so much about you! Holly wished she could walk as well as Sarah; and look as good as Sarah. But Holly walked like a man; even looked like a man, as often as not - especially when wearing her baggy winter clothes and one of her various hats or Balaclavas.

Holly prepared herself to smile. Standing up she noticed that Sarah was making similar facial preparations, though she was still some metres away. The effect was not for Holly. Sarah was greeting the black guy chaperoning his two errant brats. They had both stopped walking; it was a relationship that needed more than hello-and-how-are-you. Holly wished she hadn't stood up, but eventually Sarah joined her.

'A friend?' said Holly.

'A friend of a friend, more like,' Sarah replied. 'How've you been?'

'Fine. And you?'

'Thirsty. Let's go in have a couple.'

The Happy Abbot, at lunch time. Busy, with a damp carpet smell to the place. Cigarette smoke curled in beams of sunlight. 'What can I get you?' asked Sarah.

Finding a table by the quiz machine, the two sisters sat down. 'So what's the big newsflash?' Holly wanted to know straight away.

Sarah exhaled; an eddy of blue smoke connected her lips to the light-fitting on the wall. 'I'm seeing someone else,' she said quickly. 'Someone . . . fresh.'

'Oh, I see,' Holly replied, her belly gulping. 'Someone fresh.'

Sarah sipped her drink. 'Well I didn't expect you to approve. His name is Daz.'

'As in the washing powder.'

'It probably won't come as much of a surprise, me and Alan have been drifting apart. On our good days we tread water pretty effectively, but we never actually swim anywhere. So I want him to divorce me; I won't contest it. I want you to tell him.'

Holly frowned. 'Tell who? Alan? No way!' Her senses had started to prickle. She felt as though Sarah was divorcing her.

'I can't think about him anymore . . . ' Sarah said.

'Well, obviously.'

'His memory doesn't get caught in my net. It has no substance.' She smoked in silence, watching Holly intently with the eyes of wary prey. 'You'll tell him for me, won't you? Please?' She was aware of the acres of mental space between them; the secrets.

'Not a chance,' Holly told her, and took too large a swig of her gin and tonic.

'Why not?' her sister countered, a little sharply. 'He'll believe you.'

What the hell did that mean? Holly sipped her drink as a hot flush broke out all over her body. Oh Christ, she thought, he's told her. Or she's guessed.

Very soon Holly wanted to change the subject. So she said, 'This gig I've got - in Aylesbury? Something odd's happened. Well, horrible rather than odd.'

'Nice segue.'

'Shut up. You work in the film trade. Do snuff movies really exist?'

'I'm sorry? I wasn't expecting that.'

Holly stared out, towards the bar. 'I mean, I've heard of them,' she continued, 'but could a video distributor actually get his hands on one?'

Sarah wrinkled her brow in consideration. 'Theoretically,' she replied, 'I suppose so. I don't know the answer to that, to tell you the truth. Why do you ask?'

'I found this tape where I'm working. There were two guys torturing another one, but it didn't look like a horror film. It didn't look like a film at all; it looked like . . . '

'A snuff movie,' Sarah finished. 'This is making me feel ill. Physically. You actually saw the murder? I think you should report it to the police . . . '

'Well, no I didn't see anything other than the first few minutes. You know me and blood: I couldn't bear it. But the camera wasn't moving. They were torturing him.'

'Could have been S and M.'

'Pornography?' Holly asked hopefully. 'I'd thought of it, but . . . '

'You'll have to watch the tape to find out,' Sarah told her, and then proffered her opened box of Benson and Hedges. 'Do you want a fag?'

Holly shuddered, not at the offer but at the previous suggestion. 'I don't know how anyone could watch that stuff. Or any pornography.'

'You'd be surprised how many people do.' Sarah's eyes were twinkling.

'It's degrading.'

'To who?'

'Well, to the poor bastard tied up in the chair, for a start.'

Sarah lit another cigarette. 'Oh, you know what they say about victims,' she said.

Holly waited.

'They're all asking for it, really,' Sarah finished.

Two hours later, the sisters having parted amiably enough (Sarah appearing a bit smug), Holly gave some thought to Sarah, back at Bargeld's Buckinghamshire home

. . . How best to understand Sarah's pride in her own adultery? With a guy named Daz? To Holly (who was hardly innocent of the same charge) the artlessness of this form of self-destruction was unappealing. Then again, Sarah didn't have an artful bone in her body. How two such different women could have the same mother was a mystery. If anything, it was to Holly proof and testament of the strength of the male contribution to the cocktail; to the power of the fatherly chromosome and energy deposit. If Mum was the unifying factor, what made the sisters so different must be their respective fathers: Dennis and . . . a stranger.

Maybe that was why Sarah was so screwed up (metaphorically and literally): no father figure. Or, to be accurate, a substitute father figure (Holly's) whom Sarah had loathed and despised through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. Even now, it was all the two of them could do - Dennis and Sarah - to send each other Christmas cards. They didn't bother with birthdays.

Holly told herself to stop thinking about the family. There was work to be done. When she plugged the power-booster into her mobile phone there was a chairlift of black dots that ascended the display panel to show that the rejuvenation process was working. Holly herself got a similar surge of juice whenever she stepped into a beautifully designed room, or a room with magnificent potential.

Relieved to be working again after her extended lunchbreak, she was in Bargeld's upstairs living room. It seemed to Holly unimproveable. Hugh had even done away with curtains, both nets and drapes being, in Holly's mind, overrated room-enhancers. The light through the three long, arched windows was brilliant. The room was a shrine to pastel colours, and the light gave the place a cool, fresh, clean appearance.

The walls were a white-tinted-with-mauve colour that would look different in any other light; the carpet and seats were a complementary green. The occasional tables (two of them) tottered on tall, spindly legs and were like tripods in a chemistry lesson. The lilac-and-mauve-veined marble fireplace was just for show and not usage, Holly surmised, given that you could have eaten your dinner off the grate, it was so clean, and that no fireguard was present. A to-the-ceiling wooden-framed mirror was above the hearth. There were attractive vases of colour-coordinated flowers, and in one corner (the piece de resistance for Holly) a stuffed parrot with similarly coordinated plumage was perched on the crossbars of a tall, thin metallic letter T, by the sun-filled window.

For fear of leaving boot indentations on the immaculately maintained carpets of the house, Holly was walking around in her socks. She slid into the room. Can't be used much, she thought. It was clean to the point of obsession.

The parrot squawked at her. Holly gasped in momentary fright. It was not stuffed after all: so this was the famous Bertram! Walking over to the bird she wondered what and where it ate. 'Who's a pretty boy then?' was all her grinning mouth said.

The parrot answered her: 'Pretty boy.'

'Oh, you're lovely,' Holly told the creature. 'What else can you say?'

The bird was opening and closing its mouth in its equivalent of a nervous tic. Its eyes were black and beady.

'What else can you say?'

The parrot considered the question with a ripple of its feathers. It examined the range of its standards before deciding on: 'I love you.'

'Ah,' said Holly. 'Bless.'

'I love you,' the bird confirmed. 'Pretty boy.'

'Don't call me a boy.' Holly was leaving the room when something the bird said after a fruity squawk disturbed her. She was back on the threshold when the bird said:

'Kill you.'

What was that? Holly went back in and padded towards the parrot - too quickly. She scared it. Like a rainbow exploding, the colours of the bird's plumage flew up towards the ceiling, the heavy wings causing drafts that shook the petals in the nearby vases.

Flying from the room, the parrot was pursued by Holly: down the corridor, where the sound of its concerted efforts was the sound of a ship's sails in the breeze, or the sound of a larger bird or pterodactyl. Its goal, clearly, was the open door at the end - a room into which Holly had yet to venture. She did so now, and she was not the first human inside.

'Oh sorry,' said Holly as the parrot landed on top of a large cage in the corner of the room, on a table.

The other woman present said, 'I see you've met Bertram.'

'I have. He was so still I thought he was an ornament at first. I'm Holly Paver. Sorry to interrupt you . . . '

'No problem. I was just about to start. I'm Hayley. I do upstairs.' She was middle aged, in Holly's definition of the term. About fifty. Two years ago Holly had defined middle aged as forty, when life begins, or so they say. Now the crossover boundary had to be higher, because Holly couldn't accept she was slowly getting closer to it. 'Tuesdays and Fridays,' Hayley finished.

'It might sound funny,' Holly said, 'but that parrot - I'm sure of it - said kill you.'

Hayley smiled reassuringly as she started to untangle the vacuum cleaner flex. 'Oh, I don't think so,' she said. 'He says I love you. But he wouldn't harm a fly.'

Holly realised that. 'I understand he doesn't really want to kill me. It's just something he said. Like he doesn't really love me.'

'He wouldn't harm a fly,' Hayley repeated. 'In fact, he's scared of them. But he's got plenty of places to go if he gets frightened.'

'Is he allowed out all the time?' Holly asked.

'Yes. And before you ask, yes he does occasionally. That's why I'm here Tuesdays and Fridays: to clean up any messages he leaves. I'm starting in here . . . ' It was a room with only a desk and a wardrobe - and Bertram and his cage. 'Then I'll do the rest, including yours, if that's okay.'

'That's fine,' Holly replied. Perhaps she'd been mistaken. What sounded like Kill you that might be in a mimicking bird's standard line-up? To Bertram Holly said, 'Kill you. Kill you. Pretty boy.'

Hayley used a socket in the corridor to plug in the vacuum cleaner. 'I wouldn't let Hugh hear you say that,' she advised. 'He loves that bird. You'll be out of here soon as anything.'

Is she stupid? Holly wondered.

'Pretty boy,' Bertram repeated, back on familiar ground. Holly leaned in so close that she was surprised it didn't try to use its beak on her nose. Bertram's soft and tiny tummy feathers were moved by Holly's warm breath as she chirpily said, 'Kill you. Kill you.'

And Bertram, finally catching on, squawked once and said something very like 'Kill you' before lancing his way back down to the other perch in the other room.

Holly felt appeased. 'Did you hear that?'

'I did. I wonder where he learnt it,' Hayley replied before turning on the vacuum and ignoring the house guest.

2

Alan didn't gamble anymore: that was finished. There was the Lottery, of course (a quid a week: you never know) and the occasional flutter: a cert at Newmarket on his birthday, or a tenner on the nose for the Grand National. But he didn't gamble. That was finished. That was healed, all addictions after all being defects or flaws in the fabric of one's personality. Get this straight: Alan. Did not. Gamble.

Fine. So why was it, then, that he found himself outside the doors of an illegal spieler ten minutes from Filthy McNasty's (the pub in which he had just finished drinking), between Kings Cross and Islington? Why? Alan thought, as had his wife in other circumstances recently, Why am I here? Compulsion had brought him; now what did compulsion intend to do with him?

He didn't gamble . . . And besides, he only had fifty quid in his wallet.

Alan wracked his brain, trying to think of a reason he might have to justify one quick 'shoot' (the game of craps being his chosen method of thrill and financial expenditure). Nothing. The anniversary was donkeys' years away (whatever that meant); there were no birthdays or celebrations . . .

Wait. Of course. A social visit.

Alan smiled and entered the building. Leaving the elevator, he was cardiacked by a jolt of fear. The cause of this was the sheer familiarity of the sixth floor, and the associated memories of self-betrayal and pungent self-disgust. Oh, and the memory of being financially embarrassed. Of having no money.

Room 31.

But it was okay because Alan was here to see Vincent. Not to gamble.

He knocked.

As ever, the door was opened by Elvis, the bouncer: a bomber-jacketed white guy with a shaved head and a bloody great scar down the left side of his face. Elvis had told Alan the story of the scar one evening, after Alan had just been bled of his penultimate fiver. A broken bottle, a bankrupted record producer: lethal. The guy in the suit with his shades on had insisted on continuing the game - even though he had exceeded his credit limit by some twenty grand. Elvis had asked him to leave quietly; he was disturbing some of the other players. Fuck the other players! That's really not the right attitude, sir . . . The bottle, now broken, being wielded like a truncheon; the sideways, baseball-styled pitch. A hot lash of pain . . . Explaining the following five minutes, Elvis was apt to use self-declamatory statements, such as: 'I must admit, I got a bit tasty with him at that point.' Or: 'The bottle was his mistake. Things mightn't've got so chronic if he hadn't broken the bottle.' The story had ended with what Alan had quickly come to recognise as a familiar coda in Elvis's work. Elvis said, 'Cunt'll never walk properly again.'

'Alan!' said Elvis, opening the door wider. 'How's your luck, mate?'

'I'm doing okay. You?'

'Mustn't grumble. Vince'll be pleased to see you. Take a perch; I'll tell him you're here. Alice? A drink for Mr Chandler. On the house.' (Or, as it came out: onnee-ass.)

Alan, at this point, felt embarrassed. Not ashamed of himself (that would follow, in about a half-hour's time), but embarrassed that he could ever have reduced himself to the hunger and self-absorption of the poor saps gambling in this very room. It was a sobering thought. A room of panthers, mentally prowling in the dark; seeking. There was a craps table, a roulette wheel, and a blackjack table. A bar to the left, which Alan visited now. The door beside the bar led to another office where poker was played with fifty quid minimums, and the door to the right - through which Elvis had lumbered - led to Vincent's private office.

'Yes, sir. And welcome back.'

'Thank you. Pint of Guinness, please.'

A quarter of Alan's journey through the murky lands of a pint had passed, when Elvis returned. 'Sorry about the delay,' Elvis was quick to say. 'But Vince is ready for you now. He was on the phone. Follow me. No, bring it with you.'

Thus carrying his black drink through the very small jungle of predatory stares (feeling simultaneously like a rock star and a piece of garbage) Alan accompanied Elvis into Vincent's inner sanctum.

An unambiguous welcome awaited him. Vincent was on his feet, his arms opened wide - although he remained behind his desk. 'Alan Chandler, as I live and breathe! It's good to see you after so long. Please.' He karate-chopped the air, his fingers pointing at the seat in front of the desk.

Elvis left them.

There was a good reason why Alan was receiving such preferential and authentically good-natured treatment. It wasn't simply that Alan had once owed Vincent a very large amount of money (most of Vincent's customers adhered to that generality), nor was it the fact that Alan's contributions had helped Vincent through some otherwise lean years. No. What had impressed Vincent about Alan was the latter's punctuality of repayment. Showed respect. None of this 'I'll get it to you next week' nonsense. Alan was well aware of the savage gravity of debt. Losing Alan as a client had been a dark day.

'What can I do for you?' asked Vincent.

'Social visit.'

Vincent nodded his head: a shallow dip. 'Yeah I heard you'd stopped playing. Might've been nice to get a call from you though, mate. Let me know man to man.'

'Yeah, sorry,' said Alan. 'Maybe that's what brought me here: to finish it off properly. I didn't mean anything personal by it. I was ill.'

Holding up a hand, Vincent said, 'I wasn't taking it personally, Alan. Believe me, if I thought that's what your game was you'd've heard from me before now. I saw the hunger in your eyes turn into something worse. I should have stopped you coming in long before you stopped yourself. I feel responsible.'

'It takes two to tango,' said Alan, and immediately regretted the utterance. Vincent, however, saw wisdom in the words:

'You're absolutely right,' Vincent replied. 'After all, gambling's only lovemaking - but with higher stakes.'

Lovemaking? thought Alan. By this analogy, what Alan had been involved in at the end had been full-blown necrophilia. Every time he had picked up the dice he had been toying with death: the roll of the dice had caused his shallow soul to shrink.

'When I was getting treatment,' Alan said (and felt a twinge of discomfort), 'their best line of attack was to tell me - or try and convince me - that gambling's a mug's game. Like I didn't realise that.'

Vincent nodded at the ceiling. 'Load of bollocks, innit, all that therapy malarkey? Paid a fortune as well, the wankers. Let me tell you something: losing's the mug's game. Not gambling. Gambling's that bit of all right you can't get anywhere else. It's your bit on the side. It's the dirty stuff . . . '

Alan smiled: that description was closer to the truth. 'Not love; it's lust,' he said.

Vincent's eyes were twinkling. 'So how horny you feeling?'

'I've got to get back to work; I'm already a bit late.'

'It's on me,' Vincent replied, reaching into his jacket pocket for his wallet. As Alan frowned at him, Vincent removed five ten-pound notes. 'Here you go . . . ' tossing them across the desk. 'Enjoy.'

'I can't take your money, Vincent.'

'Why not? I've taken plenty of yours, over the years. And you've always been a good customer. There's no strings attached, mate. All in one go . . . or whatever you want. All I'll say is, if you win, you give the fifty back. Is that fair?'

Oh what the hell, thought Alan as the two men stood up. It's one for the road.

Yeah, and that's what alcoholics say about the last drink before leaving the bar and trying to drive home.

Alan persuaded himself that accepting Vincent's offer would prove he had control over his former addiction. He would control the buzz. In fact, there would be no buzz. There would be no reaction whatever, not even disgust: if something disgusts you it has worked on your emotions; it has achieved a seat in the arena. Your opinion can be altered. It's much better, Alan was thinking, now standing before the craps table, if I receive no communication. For nullity in this situation was not avoidance: it was survival.

Craps. A fast pocket-drainer of childlike simplicity. Alan regarded the table as a battlefield, and rolled the two dice in his hand with the same tenderness and care he used when testing for testicular lumps. His heart rate was quickening. In his other hand, of course, he had the five notes. It was all or nothing. He placed the £50 on the table and looked to his right. Vincent was smiling. 'Be lucky, Al,' he said. Alan compared the two other gamblers against whom he was competing: a ferret and a bear. Both of them in middle-priced suits, less expensive than Alan's own. They both put down on the table fifty pounds, in ragged assortments of fives and tens, to cover Alan's bet. Be lucky \- for Alan was shooting. He kissed his knuckle to spread his fortune to the dice. And with a flick of the wrist - a sideways flourish - he rolled the bones along the surface . . .

This moment - these two or three seconds - were what his stake paid for: the electricity bolting in like a lightning-strike, to spark up his stomach and brain. He held his breath.

The first die settled on 5. The second on 6. Five plus six equals eleven, and eleven was one of the two totals that allowed the shooter to scoop all the money. The other was seven. Alan had just won £100 in less than ten seconds.

'Natural!' shouted Vincent. 'Go for it, sunbeam!'

Leaning over the table to collect his winnings Alan replied, 'I'll quit while I'm ahead, I think. Break the habit of a lifetime.'

'And spoil these gentlemen's chances of winning their money back?' Vincent asked rhetorically. 'You'll do no such thing.'

Alan was smiling unconvincingly. 'Sorry, gents,' he said. Then to Vincent: 'I can't get back into it, Vince, I really can't. She'll leave me this time. Here's your fifty back.'

Vincent shook his head. 'No, I've changed my mind. That's for old times' sake. That's a way of showing my respect to a valued customer. Stay lucky, Al. I'll hope to see you around.'

Having bid goodbye to Elvis, Alan descended the stairs. He could go back to Filthy McNasty's for another pint of Guinness and a shot of Powers . . . He broke out into the London afternoon; the sun was shining but the air was brisk and frisky. No, he thought sadly, I'd better start thinking about those plane tickets for Dublin.

Into his car he climbed. 'Obey!' said Alan tersely every time the engine failed to catch; and how he thumped the steering wheel! The gnashing of his teeth!

Pretty soon he'd have to get the car fixed too.

3

As Sarah entered the work area, she saw Daz conversing with a pregnant woman who was holding on to the handles of a pushchair as though to the rail of a heaving ship. Daz's face didn't look too happy. Giving him grief, was she? Giving him some verbal? Giving him (and this was Sarah's favourite) a right bollocking?

Sarah stood two metres away, with the sun on her heavily coated back. She was first confused and then alarmed to see something cross Daz's face that she had yet to see: a look of panic. Brief and fleeting, true, but it had been there.

Oh, thought Sarah suddenly, I see.

Daz spoke to her now. 'Not ready yet, I'm afraid, me darlin'. Tomorrow, maybe. I'll give you a bell, stand on me.'

I get it, Sarah mumbled to herself as the other woman turned to face her: the round visage, the crescents of fatigue beneath the eyes, the hair pulled back in a ponytail. So this was her: Daz's ex. This must be Paulette, or Paul. The padded shampoo-green windcheater; the leggings; the hobnail boots . . .

'No problem,' said Sarah. 'You've got my number?'

'No worries. Tomorrow, yeah?'

'Fine.' And Sarah walked away.

But wait a second: Paulette was pregnant. Paul was up the duff. The ex had one in the oven . . . Sarah was by now sitting at home, on the couch, with a vodka and tonic. With a V.A.T., as Daz would say. She had to stop this. (Not the pregnancy: the relationship.) Sarah knew that a baby put a new slant on matters. Though not entirely sure why it did, Sarah was nevertheless convinced that Paulette's pregnancy could only spell trouble. Sarah closed her eyes. It was because a child was a rope; it was a way that Paulette could pull Daz back. She was being silly. Why would Sarah be so opposed to that idea? It wasn't as though she had any intention of keeping him herself. Not once she'd had from him all she expected to receive.

Why, Sarah? What's that? Could it be . . .

Could it be jealousy?

4

The dining room. Holly joined Hugh a few minutes after the allocated time, not wishing to be sitting on her own, virtually banging on the table with the ends of her eating irons, singing 'Why Are We Waiting?' Hugh looked up from the Evening Standard. 'How was your day?' he asked Holly as she sat down at the other laid place.

Holly nodded. 'Good. Confusing, but good.'

'Confusing how?'

All afternoon Holly had debated with herself over the quandary of whether or not to tell Hugh about the parrot's programmed behaviour. One second into the conversation, now, and she was already spilling all.

'I must admit, I share your confusion,' Hugh said afterwards. 'Are you sure?'

'Hayley heard it as well.'

'How bizarre. He's never said it around me, or if he has I wasn't listening. After dinner I'll test it out. But no, I can't explain that one.'

Dinner was lamb. The portions were rather modest. Holly was idly considering the bag of doughnuts that she'd bought in London, which were in her travelling bag, up in her room. She'd have two or three for her pudding.

At seven o'clock Hugh said, 'I suppose I should go and do some work. I've got some stuff to work on on the Internet. And there're always half a dozen messages on my e-mail. So I should love you and leave you.'

'No rest for the wicked,' Holly answered.

'Indeed. What are you doing tonight?'

'I might use your gym again. It'll be great if I come away from this job actually healthier. An added bonus.'

'Feel free. To tell you the truth, I hardly ever go in there anymore,' Hugh said. 'That's why I'm getting a bit paunchy. Hayley's been known to have a row on the machine. And Marcus used to use it regularly, but he's happier outside and in his greenhouse these days. Which is fair enough: that's what I pay him for.'

'And Mrs Eggleton?'

Hugh smiled. 'Not in this lifetime, my dear.'

5

'Why didn't you tell me?'

Daz waited. Not for a response, for it was he who had been asked the question. Daz waited for his stomach-wide wave of nausea to vamoosh.

'Well?' Sarah prompted.

She was pissed off, he could see. 'Tell you what?' he said defiantly.

'Jesus. How to fix an engine. What do you think tell me what? Tell me you had a baby, of course. And tell me Paulette's pregnant. They're both yours, I assume. Tell me if I'm wrong and I'll shut up.'

Good, thought Daz; that's all right then. Relief was the overriding emotion now. Daz had crept through the minefield, and he was on safer ground now. 'None of your business,' he said simply.

'None of my business? What the hell am I?' Sarah asked. 'Your girlfriend or what? Simple courtesy, Daz, that's all I'm asking for. That's all we're talking about.'

The accused shrugged noncommittally. 'Didn't know she'd be there, did I?' he said.

' . . . That's not the point.' Now Sarah was at least attempting to remain calm.

'Didn't know you'd be there either, come to that,' Daz went on, having seen a possible exit.

And suddenly Sarah realised why she'd always loathed dealing with any of the workmen that Alan hired to fix engines, or mend gutters, or fit windows, or whatever. It was because she feared failure. Not her own; at least, not at first. Sarah feared the failure - the amateurish, incomplete toil - of workmen: because then she would have to complain. And she was only a woman; what did she know about tree-felling, or boiler servicing. Sarah could not compete, or debate, with her intellectual inferiors; they never understood her point of view, which meant that she could never win. And that was her failure.

The same situation now presented itself in the disagreement with Daz. Sarah was not for a moment certain that he believed he'd done anything wrong. So he hadn't told her everything about himself: so what?

'Let's just forget it,' said Sarah. She then immediately contradicted this statement by asking, 'Is there anything else about you I should know?'

On this point, if on no other, Daz was clear, if not downright eloquent. He said, 'Look, babe, there's bound to be stuff about me you don't wanna know. Same with you. I done things, all right? You don't need to know. Like with Paul: You didn't need to know, so I don't tell you. Yeah? It was only gonna cause bother, so I gave it a wide boeuf. I'd ask that you show me the same fucking courtesy. I don't wanna know. It's just grief, innit?'

Wilful ignorance; determined understanding. A selection of facts, chosen at random, or because of their appeal to the sense - like sweets in a shop's display. Those nice shiny wrappers or those ugly black toffees? No contest . . . Sarah wondered if what she had discovered was a rich/poor phenomenon, or a male/female one. To test the question she thought of her husband. Did Alan regard some matters as being beyond - well beyond - her need to know? He certainly had in the past: the gambling, the affair. But now?

'This is going nowhere?' Sarah said. 'Let's have a drink and forget about it.'

Thank God, said Daz's face. His mouth asked, 'Do you fancy a smoke? The Moroccan? Put it in the bong, shall I?'

'Why not?'

'Why not indeed, my love.'

The bong, as Daz typically undignified it, was actually an Arabic sheesha pipe: an artefact, no less, that went up to Sarah's waist. The bulbous glass base, like a giant's tear, frozen, or a god's. The pipes; the water; the saucer-sized platform for the hot coals and grass. It looked like an instrument of torture. It looked like a set of bagpipes.

'It's beautiful,' said Sarah. 'Where did you get it?'

'Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.'

'Get on with you. Where?'

'Golders Green,' Daz lied. Fifteen minutes later he said, 'Ow. Fuck.'

'What are you doing in there?' asked Sarah, getting impatient, now smoking an ordinary cigarette - an unmodified one. She was staring at the sheesha. She'd been to Cairo once, with Alan (his treat), and had spent several happy hours at the tables outside teeming coffee-shops, smoking apple tobacco through one of these very mechanisms. Suddenly she fancied a Turkish coffee.

'Heating up the coals,' Daz replied. 'Ow.'

'Just put 'em on a plate, for Christ's sake.'

Fifteen minutes after that a state of calm had descended chez Daz. They were taking it in turns to suck on the saxophone mouthpiece. Before long, the resulting bubbles in the bulb were sounding like applause to Sarah. She explained this observation to Daz, who laughed maniacally. 'You're sweating,' he told her when he'd composed himself again.

It was true. A light dew had collected on Sarah's upper lip and forehead. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her shirt.

They were sitting on the floor, facing each other. 'Why don't you take it off?' Daz suggested.

For a second she thought he said take off . . . Leave? Astrally project? No, take it off: the shirt. Oh. 'I can't, Daz. Time of the month: I started this morning. All the excitement brought me on a few days early.'

'I only said take your shirt off. Jesus.' He took a long drag on the pipe; bubbles rippled upwards as though a mine had exploded under the water.

Sarah wished she hadn't revealed the truth about her current menstruative state to Daz. Not so quickly, at any rate; it had sounded like a pre-prepared excuse (which it wasn't), although thankfully he hadn't picked up on that.

His response, however, was causing Sarah a different problem. I only said take your shirt off. Tuned as she was to the frequencies of pornography (or was it nymphomania?) Sarah couldn't quite tell the difference between what Daz had proposed and the inevitable gravitas of sex. It had been a long time - a very long time indeed - since undressing in front of a man (her doctor excepted) had not resulted in her opening her legs for him, ten or fewer minutes later. I'm a tart: she knew this. Yes, Sarah accepted the verdict. But in her own mind, she was an actress in pornography. It was a part she played.

High as she was (and therefore unnaturally daring) Sarah decided to test the theory. 'Okay,' she said, unbuttoning her shirt. How long would he be able to resist her? She removed the garment and threw it aside. She watched him gaze at her (through decidedly waxy eyes, it must be said) and a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. Her breasts in their white lacy cups: pushed up and together . . .

Daz's brain was making connections. The last time he'd seen those two . . . that had led to . . . oh, and then she'd . . . Christ, that's right . . . up her wotsit, the dirty . . .

'Take it off,' said Daz.

Sarah half dislocated her arms (or so it seemed to her paramour) unhooking her bra round the back. Why don't they all do up at the front? wondered Daz. Paulette's had. Much easier, wouldn't it. He remembered how she'd spill out of her brassiere; how they'd flop against her ribcage like washed-up squids on the sand . . . Sara's were smaller, but nicer. Daz felt himself getting moved. He'd been worried that the dope would disable him in that department. No danger. A stallion, him: no worries. Daz sniffed.

Lying back on the carpet, Sarah felt something prickly halfway down her vertebrae. Biscuit crumbs, she concluded, or dropped and crushed crisps . . . Daz stood up and removed his fake Nike t-shirt. He unbuckled his trousers and dropped them to his ankles, kicking them off with his smelly slippers. Like a real trooper (or perhaps one used to the necessity of a swift getaway) he left on his white sports socks and parked himself on top of the reclining Sarah.

They kissed . . .

Oddly enough, kissing was something they had yet to indulge themselves in very much. Daz had a complicated technique in this regard. In the past, Sarah had known of various quirks and mannerisms - including the guy who, until he'd met her, had never had somebody else's tongue in his mouth. There'd been a head-loller, a seed-pecker, a guy who'd insisted she only kiss his throat. But never before - Daz. The complicated orchestration that Sarah had been obliged to learn like a musical score - or indeed, like an acting part - what with Daz being inflexible in this as he was in most other matters. He ran his tongue along the mountain ridges of her teeth, thinking, non-romantically:

Ouch. Bloody belt's in me goolies. Daz tried to reposition himself to attain a higher standard of personal comfort. By straddling her be-jeaned midriff he ended up instead with the belt buckle halfway up to his rectum. No good either. Breaking the kiss, he climbed up Sarah's body on his knees, dragging his scrotum behind him like an overworked Santa with an overfilled sack. The brush against her navel ring was nice. En route to Sarah's face, Daz tarried at her breasts, thinking While we're here . . . He inserted himself between the shiny and slippery obliques. Sarah pushed her boobs together to make it more snuggly for him.

The procedure felt odd, after Paulette. (Daz conducted a survey in his head.) Though of a comparative all-over friction, this with Sarah represented a lighter touch. With Paul? Christ. You might never get him out again. She was ruthless, that one. Fat birds tended to be, in Daz's opinion . . . This was great: Sarah knew what she was doing. She understood melon pressure: the correct tightness of the sandwich. It would, however, occur to Daz later to inquire at some stage what it was that women got out of tit wanks, especially soapy ones, in the bath. It just didn't seem like there was much in it for her, though God knows Sarah seemed content enough. But then, she was a one.

Hello? thought Daz. Ah: with you. Better stop there, I suppose. His upper body had twitched in warning, in preparation. He knelt his way up further and leaned forward so that the angle was complementary with the ravine of Sarah's throat . . . Ah, that's it, he thought. Blissful, that. Always a bit tingly after the tits, though. Strange.

Sarah took hold of his penis at the base. The dope had got to her; something was short-circuiting. She kept having these strange and frightening blackouts, for a second or two at a time. She had no idea how long they'd been going, but it couldn't have been long. The room was rotating - or what she could see of it was, to either side of Daz's sternum. She tried to concentrate on the matter in hand, sliding as it was back and forth in her grip. With her other hand she squeezed a buttock and virtually broke her wrist, reaching round and underneath to cup and stroke his balls.

Sarah sensed him getting closer. His movements were increasing in speed and jerkiness . . . The trick here was in coordinating the payoff so that the initial spurt did not choke her to death. Yes, that was the trick with this particular intimacy: not dying. She gripped him harder; he tensed and flexed; and then he came over her nose and eyebrows.

Sarah smiled as he rolled off and away to lean back against the settee. He was panting. So was Sarah. That way might not be the best form of exercise, she thought, but it's certainly a lungbuster. She sat up. The sheesha tipped and wobbled in her vision like footage of tower block demolition, played and rewound. The coals were still smouldering. It looked like a distant palace in Far Eastern wartime, burning with some inner fire.

She turned to face Loverboy. She fell asleep watching his penis dip and dwindle, and then finally fall asleep itself.

6

When the telephone rang Alan was doing something unusual: trying to write.

Well, he'd reasoned, there was very little drink in the house, it was raining outside, the car was dying, and there was nothing on TV until EastEnders came on in twenty minutes. Not that this was his first try at writing. Like many people in the wrong job, Alan had often incorrectly assumed that his future lay in a pursuit of the creative arts. And being a writer seemed like a good life . . . The period of convalescence that had followed the extraction of his gambling tumour was marked by Alan's frantic scribbling. He had told events from his own life in an exaggerated style. And it had all been crap. The worse sort of juvenile nonsense. What was wrong? In accordance with most of his literary heroes - Bukowski, Carver, Lowry, Mailer, Thomas - Alan had drunk fantastic quantities of alcohol and then started to work. What ingredient had been missing? Why had it always read like Ezra Pound in the morning?

Tonight (until the good telly came on at least) he was taking the unheard-of option of attempting to write while sober.

'Are you okay to talk?' Holly said into the phone.

'Sure,' Alan replied. 'Sarah's out at the gym still. How've you been?'

'Not bad. Look, I've got a question.' Holly looked around her room in Bargeld's house, wishing that she could be looking Alan in the eye. She took a breath, clucked her tongue, and asked, 'What does Sarah know about your affair?'

There was an infinitesimal pause. 'Nothing. Only that I had one. Why?'

Miles and miles away, Holly squashed herself tighter up against the headboard, as if for protection from some foul beast. 'I met Sarah for lunch and she said something odd.'

'What did she say?'

'She wanted me to tell you something, and then she said if I told you, you'd believe it. Like it had to be me who told you.'

'What was it she wanted you to say?'

'You're missing the point,' Sarah told him. 'What could she have meant by that? Don't you think it suggests she thinks we're . . . intimate? You know: we share things?'

'But we do.'

Holly rolled her eyes; she had guessed that this would be no good on the phone.

'Will you for Christ's sakes wake up . . . Sarah's not supposed to know we talk.'

'Okay, okay, let me think about it. You've caught me on the hop a bit. Something strange happened yesterday and I'm still thinking about it. I gambled.'

Seconds passed. 'You've started again, haven't you?'

'I don't know.'

'Don't lie to yourself. Remember all that therapy . . . But why, Alan?'

'Have I started again?' Alan breathed heavily into Holly's ear from miles away. 'That's a question I've been thinking long and hard about. And do you know what I've come up with? This'll make you laugh.'

'I could do with it. Why?'

'To buy Sarah presents,' Alan said. 'Bigger and better presents. That's the only thing I can think of. Other than the thrill of it of course.'

'Of course,' Holly repeated bitterly. 'But she'll divorce you if she finds out. You know that, don't you?'

'Yes. Maybe that's what I'm banking on. Masochistic old me.'

'Don't do it to yourself, Alan.' Holly was experiencing feelings of compassion and warmth that should have been buried for once and always two months ago, when their affair had ended by mutual consent.

A few more seconds passed. Then Alan said, 'I like talking to you on the phone but I want to see you again. How about a meeting while you're down in the London area? A meal one night? Just a drink?' He was thinking of all the miles he'd covered for the duration of their relationship. Driving up to Yorkshire a few times a week. That was probably the reason why the silverfish Omega was so stubbornly ill-of-health: he'd overused it for the sake of having sex with Holly.

'Sure,' Holly answered, 'just a drink sounds good.' At the same time as she said it she was honestly wondering if two ex-lovers could ever have just a drink. Wouldn't the acts of the past cloud the atmosphere? 'How about . . . '

'Gotta go,' Alan hissed. 'She's home.'

7

A dead tone droned in Holly's ear. No way, she thought. She was not going back there again: not to the place where only lies could be accepted for currency. She'd change her mind and give him another call sometime. Since the affair ended, they'd talked on the phone (he rang her all the time, just for someone to chat with) but they hadn't met.

It was over. It had to be over. Holly was sure of it.

She turned on her TV and slotted into the mouth of the VCR the tape that had once been Scooby Doo (although why had Scooby Doo once been recorded? For whom?). In the pub, earlier today, Sarah had suggested that Holly watch the whole thing through.

By now, late at night, Holly had drunk enough cider to contemplate such a procedure.

Three minutes of televised torture passed. One man was tracing the victim's forehead creases with a scalpel. Was it gay S&M porn? Holly hoped so, but if it was, this film did not represent the sub-genre that she'd always had in her mind. She had always thought S&M was about leather straps and handcuffs; men in biker clothes. Yeah, she thought, like that one in the Village People.

Then another thought occurred.

I don't have a better friend than Alan. Why can't I see him if it's just as a friend. I miss him. He loves me. I miss him a lot. Do I love him?

They had broken up a month ago. It had been the right thing to do.

It didn't mean that Holly had to like the idea.

She watched ten minutes of the film and then depressed the Fast Forward with her thumb. The images twitched and scattered; Holly thought of penguins, inappropriately enough. The executioners's waddles seemed analogous . . . The atrocities continued and then ceased unexpectedly when the tape rippled into grey fuzz and static.

Holly exhaled in gratitude. The victim was still alive at the end of the recording. But the film had no credits and it had low production values. It was like a segment from a much longer tape. And here was something odd. Although the cassette and the box it was in were clearly labelled Scooby Doo, the rest of the tape seemed blank. Holly had expected the violence to finish, and then to be halfway through an episode of the cartoon, as though it had been taped over in error. But this had been a blank cassette.

In which case, why was it labelled as it was? Holly felt chilled to the bone. Was it possible that she had been manipulated? Possible that she'd been expected to view the cassette at some point during the week?

Whose S/M fantasy was it anyway?

Very late on Tuesday night. Or is it Wednesday morning already?

We are approximately halfway through this week; and it should be made clear that in the space of a week the lives of the people in this account were changed forever. One week was all it took. But it must be understood: this week was only the body of the spider - hairy and cruel; it had been building its web for some time. Strands from all directions criss-crossed, tangled - and then finally met at the centre: the spider's jaws. The spider trapped its flies. The week in question dragged its victims in, and they were forced to be surveillants on the disclosure of truths that had been better off left as lies.

Call me cruel.

WEDNESDAY

Forgiveness is not a word, or a sentence, regardless of how that word or sentence feels to the one being forgiven. Forgiveness is all about habit projection, or mood extrapolation. Human beings are finely honed machines - but they're still machines. Design flaws can be delayed but not destroyed. Witness the serial killer, the Internet nerd, or the frowning accountant with his briefcase full of amphetamines. Compulsive egomania and self-centredness: uncorrectable. No one should be forgiven because there's no way of knowing that the offence will not be repeated.

\- Holly Paver

1

Chocolate-coated raisins were Holly's mid-morning snack today. She had already consumed half the packet. She always ate best when she was thinking, and vice versa.

On pieces of paper in front of her were jottings and doodles of the work in progress. But such matters were not on Holly's mind. She was thinking of Hugh. Or more specifically, she was thinking of Hugh's child: the one he had murdered. Allegedly.

Holly's flimsy rationalisation went as follows: So often had he said 'Kill you' or some expansion of the same to the hapless mite that even Bertram the parrot had learned to copy it. Then he had practised what he'd preached, as it were. And then he had taught his staff to lie on his behalf.

Watertight, that.

It must be said, and quickly, that Holly was not serious in her accusation. She did not believe her crime story, but she could think of no obvious explanation: the pixels were not making up the picture. And it was none of her business anyway.

But it was strange. The video nasty she'd found (maybe) had taught the parrot how to say the words. Holly had been unable to watch any more of the film, so she had no idea if such dialogue was present.

Holly stood up. The chocolate raisins - a few had spilled out of the bag. An association of ideas made Holly think back to her childhood - to an early Christmas. A period of the year charged with excitement and indisputable envy. Sarah was older, and with hindsight Holly knew that Sarah had lost contact with her faith surrounding the myths of Christmas much earlier than she herself had. Sarah was interested in the presents (prophetically enough) but for Holly it was all about the build-up. The lights and decorations; the bad tempers of shoppers and the grinning oafish Santas in store doorways. The Christianity: for Holly still clung to a smudgy soiled belief in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; the three Wise Men; the guiding star; the baby Jesus in his curiously shite-free manger. Holly was reasonably confident that she could be a friendly Good Samaritan - a grinning holy girl - if only God would prove His presence to her. Holly wished for luck sometimes by stroking the Christ figure dangling from her rearview mirror - like a Magdalene Colossus; the last temptation not even the Son of God could have imagined - but surely that didn't count. That wasn't faith.

But where had this memory come from? Chocolate raisins to a debate on religious belief was a difficult path to follow. But that was it: the word path. It all flashed back for Holly once more. The raisins reminded her of the crumbs left on the plate by the fireside. Every Christmas Eve, before going to bed, Dorothy had made a great show of leaving a mince pie and a glass of brandy for Santa at the bottom of the chimney: as a reward, as recognition. Sarah used to ask questions such as: How does he get down the chimney if he's so fat? Or: How does he get through the electric fire at the bottom? Holly used to hate her sister for asking such things, but the questions had launched Dorothy into a pre-perfected script of awesome simplicity: It's magic.

In the morning, the glass of brandy would be empty and there would be a few crumbs on the plate, evidence of a hastily consumed snack. In the very early days (before the girls knew what their mother's handwriting looked like) there would be a one-lined thank-you note as well. And Santa's autograph. The spilled raisins had made Holly think, though, of the minced pie remains - themselves like a trail of bread crumbs leading a path through the enchanted forest.

The same sort of path that she was following now.

Who knows where it might lead?

Holly's thoughts chattered as she entered her en suite. She was perfectly aware of how odd it was to have arrived at a job that allowed her enough spare time during the day to think so much. Precisely because she had so little to do she was making up silly fantasies about her employer. But what else should she be doing? Her day's evaluation was already finished; she was now waiting for dinner, when she would make her report and recommendations.

She ran a bath. The noise of the water reminded her of stays in various hotels, where the sound was always similarly hollow. Her own bathroom (with its patches of damp, its extractor fan, its knucklebone taps) always sounded different. A more warming sound.

In she climbed, with caution. The bristly prickle of the scalding water on her private parts: after orgasm she was always sensitive for hours, and she had teased herself to heights this morning. The scented water swallowed her rump, her navel; smooth suds encupped her breasts. Holly relaxed. She was thinking about the lead-coloured stubble on her legs. Tonight she would have to shave or wax: tomorrow would be too late. She'd have turned into Piltdown Man, an orangutang. Bigfoot.

The house was a vacuum, or so it seemed. There was never any noise. The staff moved about with the whispering gait of cocky ghosts; and each room was so insulated that . . .

You wouldn't hear a scream, thought Holly, shocking herself.

Where the hell had that come from?

Supposition has a curious power; an inflexibility, a lack of suppleness. You suppose one fact and others marshal themselves into ranks behind it. Once this is done, putting the whole platoon at ease takes an age. It's the same with double entendres. If somebody spots one, just about everything anybody says for the next hour is also lewd. Holly had supposed that something was wrong - or had been wrong - in the house, and now events were just proving her right. She was on the train - and there were no stops.

Holly splashed water on her face.

And then she heard the child screaming.

2

I still haven't bought our flights to Dublin, Alan was thinking, no longer certain that he even wanted to go. He closed an orange lever-file and 'Alan Chandler' he said into the telephone receiver, more relieved than anything else to have been disturbed by a call.

'All right, Al?' came the murmured voice down the line.

'Yeah, not bad. Who's this?'

'A friend. Listen. I've got some news for you. It's important. It's about your wife.'

Tensing visibly (though there was no one else in his office to see, not even Liz, the group's secretary) Alan replied, with uncustomary restraint, 'Well, all my friends have names. What's yours?'

'Call me John.'

'Okay, John, now tell me about my wife.'

'She's having an affair.'

'Is that right? And how would you know this?'

There followed a thin and watery chuckle. 'Well, I first got suspicious when she guided my cock up her arse.'

'John, I'm going to report this to the police, you know that, don't you.'

'Just passing on a piece of information. No crime in that,' said the caller.

Alan's grip tightened on the telephone receiver. 'Listen to me carefully. People who ring up other people like this are sick in the head. I hope there are no sharp instruments in your room: you'll hurt yourself. Actually, how did you get them to give you the phone in the first place, you mental case?'

'Oh, they're watching me right now. They think I'm gonna strangle myself with the cord.'

Alan replied, 'I wish you would. Now go away, John; it's nearly time for sleepy-byes. I'm gonna put the phone down now.'

'One last thing, Al.'

'What?' Alan said, suddenly weary.

'Your wife's name is Sarah. You have a house in St Albans in Hertfordshire and a nice flat in Islington. The last present you bought her was a pair of earrings. You drive an Omega and she drives a Jag. Don't ever assume from now on when I call that I'm a nutter. My name is Daz and I'm gonna fuck up your life.'

The line went dead. To discover who called him, Alan dialled 1471. The recorded message said, 'You were called today at thirteen seventeen. The caller withheld their number . . . '

Ex-directory.

I'm going home, Alan thought, I've had enough. He stood up and removed his jacket from the back of the chair. Moving to the door of the open-plan office, Liz met him on her way back in and said, 'Are you going to the sandwich machine?'

'No, I'm not feeling very well; I think I should leave.' Get your own fucking lunch, he added silently, sick and tired of the lack of respect he commanded in this place.

'Oh, what's wrong?' Liz removed her long-nailed hands from her keyboard and worried her brow, in a motherly manner.

'Maybe I ate something last night. If I'm feeling okay later on, I'll come back.'

Liz nodded, but Liar he could hear her stare say.

3

The volume of the cries was right down. Indeed, at first Holly was not sure what she was hearing. But she made the identification while the bath water and her blood turned to ice. A frequency from another dimension. Rigid with fear, Holly slipped a few inches down the slope of the tub. And still, the little girl was screaming. Holly might have believed the cries to be the intro to a song on a distant radio - if only they didn't go on for so long.

A little girl in distress.

Where was the sound coming from?

Why would nobody help her?

Holly rose from the water with a tingling sensation in her bones and fibres.

The screams continued. Sobs, heavy breaths; a terror soundtrack.

Dripping water Holly ran to the wardrobe and removed her robe. Having put it on hurriedly, she went into the corridor. She could hear nothing; the child's pain had been kissed away. She took a few steps to the left, leaning towards the wall in case the sound was travelling through it. No screams. Holly's heart was beating madly. She went back to her room, and with some trepidation entered the en suite. And heard the cries, as quietly as before.

No change in their concentration or their rhythm.

The thought came to her suddenly.

It was a recording; a tape loop.

'For fuck's sake,' she said, standing perfectly still. She was in the middle of the room, breathing the bath oils, watching the sud-clouds deflate. Her feet were in a tepid puddle of water, tapping impatiently.

Think! she demanded of herself.

Where exactly was the sound coming from? Exactly? Holly moved millimetres in each direction to listen for infinitesimal changes in volume. To the right: that was louder. A bit more: louder still. Holly stared in horror at the sink. Then like a pig before a trough, she shoved her head into the water-beaded bowl.

The transmission was tinny but louder.

The girl's screams were coming from the plug hole.

4

The Americans know their onions when it comes to creating new verbs.

This was what Sarah was thinking on her walk from HandyFilms to Bible Street Cars. Led to this conclusion by the realisation that she was obsessing, it was a more interesting fact than the very real truth of her flowering obsession with Daz. I'm obsessing about him, she thought as she entered Bible Street. She didn't love him, or find him as a person particularly interesting (or good looking). But she couldn't deny that she wanted a great deal of sex with him, most of the day.

In the shop it had been a quiet morning. Sarah had tried again to watch The Lesbionic Woman, but for once she hadn't been able to get on with pornography. Strange feelings were afoot when this possibility arose. Instead she had had her right hand up her skirt for a good long time, thinking about what she and Daz had done so far.

In the bag that she was carrying Sarah had eight cans of the strong supermarket lager that Tesco had on offer. Eight for a fiver. She had bought the beer on her way to work this morning. It would be a nice way to kill an hour's lunchbreak, if Roy was up for it.

'The lager fairy's arrived,' said Sarah, holding up the plastic bag.

'You must've read my mind, doll,' said Roy. 'A quick break, eh, Daz?'

'No worries.' Relieved that Sarah had arrived to burst the bubble of tedium which had settled over the garage this morning, Daz was honestly considering asking Roy if he wouldn't mind taking a walk for fifteen minutes so that he and Sarah could do the deed on the table in the back room.

At that very table they now sat.

'What's so funny?' Sarah asked Daz.

'Oh, just life.'

'He's been a stupid mood all morning, this one,' Roy said. 'Shake him by the bloody ears will you, Sarah, before I do.'

Daz laughed. 'Like to see you try, knob.'

Roy also saw the funny side. 'One of these days, mate. You wait.'

'Dream on. What are you doing tonight?' This question to Sarah.

'Washing my hair. Unless you can think of a better alternative.'

'Wanna come round? Eightish?'

Sarah walked with Daz to the front of the property, out on the pavement. Daz said to her, 'I've been thinking about you, babe.'

'Me too. Till tonight?'

'Yeah.' Their faces leaned in towards one another; their lips and tongues met briefly, sweetly. 'There's plenty more where that came from,' Daz said.

'Daz. Come on, mate!' Roy called.

'Gotta go . . . '

Sarah smiled and started to walk back. Only a few steps had she taken before she realised, however, that good luck is always finite. There was someone approaching from the other direction - someone Sarah did not want to see.

Someone shoving a pushchair out in front of her.

Someone angry.

'I saw you, you fucking ore,' Paulette cried. 'He's mine, do you understand me?' They were a metre, tops, apart. 'You can keep your thieving hands off him, you vicious bitch. He's got me and he's got a daughter.'

'I'm very sorry, Paulette,' Sarah replied. 'But I don't think he wants you.'

'Oh no? So why's he on the phone every night, pissed, trying to get me back? Why's he paying for me flat? You didn't know that, did you? Leave him alone.'

'We mustn't hate each other,' Sarah told her (she hoped) pragmatically. 'He's told me a lot about you. But I'm not the reason you guys split up. That's not my fault. But I understand why . . . '

'Don't you dare "understand" me,' Paulette complained. 'Or I'll fucking lamp you one. I'll gob ya. I don't want your understanding - or anything else. We're fine as we are. He fucked someone else before you. And that's why we split up. It has nothing to do with you.'

That's what I was trying to say . . . Sarah began, but only got as far as the second word. Paulette needed this show and this victory; she had next to nothing else. So Sarah let her have it. 'Okay,' was all that Sarah would say.

'I don't want to see you again,' said Paulette. 'Come on, Carol . . . We're going to see Carol's father if that's all right with you.' And Paulette pushed the chair and its childish cargo onwards.

Not able to stop herself, Sarah said 'Bye bye' to Paulette's fat back.

5

While it would be wrong to assume that Alan was currently rifling through the laundry basket for any reason of helpfulness, it would also be wrong to assume that he refused the labours of housework. He did not do the laundry, it was true, because when he'd tried to in the past, something had always gone wrong and the bundle had come out looking like overdone spaghetti. Unshrinkable blouses had inexplicably hydrated to shrivelled handkerchiefs; colours had run together - riant rainbows leaking down the throat of the washing machine. And then there was the drier - which Alan had used to ensure that Sarah's underwear was underwired with a cattle-controlling electric charge: not only could Alan not reach for her underwear in his sexual fugue (she made it perfectly clear when he was allowed to do so anyway), but Sarah could not reach for her own underwear either. Curiously enough, Alan's own clothes had always remained impervious to his neglect. But no, Alan did not do the laundry anymore. But he cleaned the bathroom as though swabbing the decks for the pirate captain's inspection. He mended (or arranged to have mended) whatever was broken. Alan was proud to believe that he did his bit.

None of which explains why Alan was rifling through the laundry basket now. It was perfectly simple. Even if he had not received the confessional phone call this morning, a good rummage was something he did every now and then: every month or so. Suspicion requital. Like any man married to a beautiful woman, Alan was scared that she might be seeing somebody else behind his back. These things happened. The pride that Alan felt in having married Sarah in the first place had long since 'frankensteined' with a fear of loss, of emotional amputation: the resulting hybrid, well-known (again) to men espoused to beautiful women, was a curious kind of masochism. Alan couldn't see why Sarah wanted to be with him now - unless it really was only for the money. That was fine. There was always money. But what if Sarah liked Alan for reasons of which Alan was wholly unaware: for a psychological commodity which might, even now, be drying up into the arid rockscape of Alan's soul? Wouldn't it be terrible to discover, only after something had disappeared, that that thing had been the only thing keeping your wife loyal to you? Devastating.

Or what if this had already happened?

In other words, Alan expected to be hurt by Sarah. He had expected it for a long, long time. Masochistically, he actually wanted to be hurt by her. It would certainly bring matters to a head. Thus, the monthly search through her belongings, given extra poignancy this month after that baffling phone call. And those late nights, early on in the week: that was a point. So what was he looking for? Oh, Alan didn't know. Suspect letters; scrawled telephone numbers - and now, sifting through the dirty washing, for unfamiliar smears and stains, or for pieces of paper stuffed into shirt pockets.

The good thing about suspecting Sarah of course was her scatty absentmindedness. It was a constant source of wonder to Alan that she remembered to activate the shop's alarm every evening. Unless she didn't, and she had simply been fortunate to have attracted no burglars so far. But it was well within Sarah's capabilities to forget to dispose of incriminating evidence. She had almost left the flat without her handbag on many occasions. But not even Sarah would leave anything juicy in her handbag. Alan was sure of this. Not because he imagined her suspecting he would routinely explore it every once in a while (as all wives must expect their husbands of doing), but because he had never been able to find anything good in it, despite how many times he'd tried.

Alan sighed longsufferingly. He scooped the washing back into the basket. Today was going to be similarly and simultaneously a relief and a disappointment. What had he found? Only a mangled, moisture-ruined old shopping list, the print withered, and a business card for a garage called Bible Street Cars: both picked from the pocket of Sarah's smoke-scented jeans.

The business card for someone called Darren Sandford.

Daz?

And a hand-written extra phone number on the back.

Alan sat on the sofa with a thin cup of gunpowder tea steaming dangerously in his left fist. He read the shopping list, just in case. Could the groceries be a code for a rendezvous? Nah. Margarine, eggs, sliced ham, shampoo . . . The note, at any rate, was written in Sarah's own prepubescent hand (her writing was the only thing about her which had not grown up precociously). So the business card, then. Admittedly, that was odd. As far as Alan knew, there was nothing wrong with Sarah's Jag, but in stark contrast, his own Omega remained a wounded animal. With something small causing it immeasurable consternation: like a fish bone trapped in a baby elephant's throat. Maybe Sarah had picked the card up for Alan. But that was unlikely.

Opening up the Yellow Pages, Alan slipped the card into the pages for Car Repairs. If it was evidence, that was as secure a place to leave it as any, for Sarah rarely opened the Yellow Pages; and if it was simply a business card, leaving it filed as he had also seemed sensible.

As for the number on the back, Alan didn't much want to know. He didn't want to take on board what he secretly knew had to be the truth: that Sarah was cheating.

It was one o'clock. Alan removed his business suit and dressed more comfortably in grey slacks (he rarely wore jeans) and he put on a pair of beetle-crusher shoes. He left on his dark blue shirt with the collar buttons fastened, although he pulled off the tie and left it on the coffee table. He put his black cashmere coat back on. His contact lenses were stinging but he decided to leave them in anyway, and he left the flat.

Confident that his friends Lance and Billy would not be in The Green Man, he went in. The last thing he wanted right now was a lot of conversation. Alan needed to think. 'Guinness, please,' he said to Dave the barman, who asked no questions. Astonishingly, Janeece was present, at the 'pimball' machine, with her orange juice waiting for her on a nearby table; she did ask questions, but only until it had been made perfectly clear that Alan wasn't up to talking. She went back to her game.

Sitting alone, drinking, Alan decided what to do. The airline tickets to Dublin would have to wait; there was a more important purchase he had to make. Having finished his pint, Alan called goodbye to Dave and to Janeece, and went out to make it.

Wednesday was Sarah's half-day at HandyFilms; she always took the afternoon off. Today she would be surprised to find Alan already home when she got in.

Unless it worked the other way round. Maybe Alan would be surprised to find Sarah already home - with her boyfriend.

Don't think about that, Alan told himself, and entered the off-licence.

6

There were two possibilities, and Holly hated them both. Either someone had recorded a child's screams and was replaying them now for personal amusement; or was replaying them now specifically to frighten Holly.

She wasn't sure which she hated the most. Either way, there was a sick and twisted individual within these very walls.

Doing her best to ignore the screams, Holly dressed. By now they had gone on for too long to be live action, and she didn't want to embarrass herself by running around the house clad only in a robe.

She closed the door to the bathroom.

She left the bedroom.

On her way downstairs she encountered nobody. Holly's body was twanging to a discordant paranoia. Suddenly she imagined that every step she took was being filmed, or watched by the staff in a secret room that she would professionally assess last of all.

But no: here was Mrs Eggleton. In the kitchen, as usual. 'Hello, dear,' she said to Holly. 'I've got the kettle on. Would you like a cup?'

The honest answer was no, but Holly said yes. Holly fancied something stronger.

'Where is everyone today?' Holly inquired.

'Oh, the usual. Mr B's at work; it's Hayley's day off; and Marcus is pottering about, pulling up weeds or something.'

Marcus.

The screams.

The plug hole.

Holly said, 'I've been meaning to talk to him. I need some advice about my geraniums back home.'

Mrs Eggleton smiled indulgently. 'They won't be flowering now, dear; even I can tell you that. Temperate weather, geraniums . . . '

But Holly was moving to the back door. 'About when to plant,' she continued, swinging it open wide. 'I'll be back in a minute.'

'Don't forget about your tea,' said Mrs Eggleton, as if in warning.

The air smelt of soil and the wind was as frisky as a puppy. Holly had been inside for too long, and she hadn't realised she'd been drowning in recycled air. She wanted a word with Marcus, right now. If she left it any time at all she'd stop being angry and would start being scared again. Anger and fear, after all, being emotions of the same sex, sharing the same metaphysical mattress. It didn't matter who was dominant, or who went on top right now, because it wouldn't be long before they swapped positions.

A tape recorder played at the bottom of the drainpipe would push the sound up the plastic cylinder and out of Holly's sink - if the person pressing PLAY knew which pipe was which.

For now, never mind the why.

It took Holly a very short time to find Marcus. He was on his knees, planting bulbs in a flower bed. At her approach he looked up and smiled, a roll-up held between his lips. Not caring about possible repercussions, Holly wanted to show this man that she wasn't to be trifled with.

He said, 'All right, darlin'?'

And she said, 'Something horrible just happened.'

Marcus nodded, returning his attention to the earth and to the trowel with which he was bludgeoning it. 'Sorry,' he replied. 'Have it cleared up any second. Just gotta get these in.'

'I'm talking about something I heard when I was in the bathroom. What are you talking about?'

'The cat shit near the garage. Why, what did you hear in your bathroom?' He was looking at her again.

'Screams,' she told him.

'It's the neighbour's cats again. Fighting. Or having it off.'

'Not cat screams. I've had a cat. I know what a fucking cat sounds like. Human screams. A girl,' said Holly. 'Do you know anything about this?'

There was a pause. Marcus made his face flex and quiver; the wrinkles moved like lines of transmission on a TV screen during bad weather. 'Yeah, I do,' was Marcus's unexpected reply.

Holly's fists curled into tight knots at her side. She felt close to achieving the pressure of mood detonation: close to tantrums. To stamping down a foot in frustration.

'And what do you know?' she asked slowly.

'It sounds like you just heard our ghost.'

7

With spousal prescience Sarah entered the flat and knew immediately that something was wrong: wrong with Alan. For one thing he was already home. It was only 3.30. Sarah shrugged off her coat and hung it on the stand. Then (she couldn't help herself: she'd told him a hundred times) she removed Alan's suit jacket from the same stand where he'd left it slumped, and re-hung it, using the loop in the collar. Otherwise the garment would fall out of shape.

'Alan? Alan, I'm home. What are you doing home so early?' She walked into the lounge.

Alan beamed at her. 'Took the afternoon off. Wasn't feeling too well. Thought I'd have a few drinks.' He was abysmally drunk: in Daz's parlance he was wankered. Half a bottle of Jack Daniels remained. When she'd left for work there'd been no Jack Daniels in the flat.

'What's got into you?' Sarah asked. 'This isn't like you.'

'Had some bad news today,' Alan replied, though the grin he was wearing might have led anyone to believing the opposite.

'What's happened?' Sarah sat beside him. She pressed the red button on the remote control and the TV picture folded in on itself.

Alan's opinion of the sight was one of almost uncontrollable horror: reflected as he was, it seemed as though the screen was swallowing him. 'A guy called.' Still with his eyes on the screen; he didn't want to look at his wife's face. 'Called Daz.'

A beat.

'Who's Daz?'

'You tell me,' said Alan. His smile had faded as quickly as snow in the sun.

'I don't know anyone called Daz,' Sarah protested. Suddenly there were wasps in her head: not just making a noise, but threatening to sting.

Alan wouldn't look at her. 'He told me you were having an affair.'

'Alan, look at me. It's not true. I swear. I wouldn't do that to you.'

'Why not? I did it to you.'

'Please look at me,' said Sarah.

Alan turned.

'I don't know anyone called Daz. I'm not having an affair.'

'He knew things about us.' Now, Alan's voice started to break: this was where the pain resided, of course: the real pain. Not in the fact that his wife had been unfaithful (after what he'd done to her he always thought he'd forgive her one similar dalliance, in a spirit of tit-for-tat); what hurt Alan was that Sarah had evidently confided in the man.

Except she wasn't confessing. Alan had expected her to be defiant in the other sense: by saying something like, 'So what? You were unfaithful to me.' But maybe the whole thing had been made up. If so, who was the informer?

Sarah's thoughts were running along different lines. She had wanted Holly to pass on the message, of course, but Daz? How could he have done this to her? And why? Sarah wanted to leave the flat and travel over to Daz to shout it out with him, if necessary. She knew the score. That bitch Paulette was involved: she'd demanded Daz make the call. Or what? What had Paul threatened him with? Maybe something to do with the children.

At this moment it didn't matter. Sarah couldn't walk out for a while because if she did Alan would know where she was going: to Daz. He wasn't stupid . . .

Certainly not. For Alan was not even drunk. He had bought the Jack Daniels, of course, but he hadn't drunk half of it. What wasn't in the bottle was not in his belly, apart from one tasty nip. The rest of the drink was in a thermos flask in the kitchen. Alan was pretending. And very soon he would pretend to fall asleep: to see what Sarah did.

Bitch, he thought.

Bastard, thought Sarah, though not of Alan.

The flat was pungent with sourly-released emotion. It smelled as it had after Sarah found out about Alan and Holly.

8

Nearly home, thought Paulette, still seething about meeting Sarah again.

She wheeled little Carol inside and over to the lift. The dreaded sign had been sellotaped over the doors: OUT OF ORDER.

'Oh shit,' said Paulette, unintentionally resting one hand on the dromedary hump of her stomach. The fourteenth floor she lived on, and those stairs were no business for a pregnant woman. But she had no choice. Little Carol was removed from the pushchair with a vacant look on her face, and not a gurgle from her lips. Paulette kicked and folded the pushchair into its most compact form.

The ascent of Everest began.

On the tenth floor Paulette had to rest with a palm against the cool, bland, non-argumentative wall and its visual counterpoint of spraycanned wit: KILL BLAIR. KILL PAKIS. KILL EVERYONE. Paulette disapproved. Not so much of the message, or its concomitant social fury, but of the vandalism itself. Paulette liked the world she lived in clean and tidy. She lived in fear of being shat upon from a great height by a blithe pigeon. She hated crap on the pavement, and graffiti. Not one to comprehend gang rhetoric, she couldn't much appreciate the lion's share of what she read - but she hated it anyway.

Three storeys to go.

Two.

Paulette had let her personal standards slide: it only took such a climb to appreciate as much. She sensed little Carol's constant opprobrium. She had not put on any more weight than might be expected at this stage of her second pregnancy; it was more the case that she'd not bothered to try losing what extra she'd gained during the first. Actually, even with concerted effort, there would scarcely have been enough time to tackle such a monumental sloughing. But Dr Storm had said (with her rubber-clad fingers inside Paulette's vagina) that there was nothing wrong with light exercise throughout the gestation. Obviously not five miles jogs or bungee-jumping; but mild callisthenics were acceptable. Call her old-fashioned, but Paulette felt a tad awkward talking to someone while this decontextualized intimacy was taking place. Paulette had to hold her breath instead: she found turning a livid blue favourable. But Storm's message Paulette had taken on board. Light exercise. Trudging up stairs surely counted. Perhaps she could join a gym. Paulette's problem was not only the weight-gain: it was the random distribution of it about her body.

At last, the fourteenth floor!

Who was that? wondered Paulette as she carried little Carol and the pushchair around the corner of the periphery balcony. There was someone standing by her door, leaning against the railing. Who was it? Paulette recognised her visitor, and smiled:

'Amstrad! How are you?'

'I'm all right. Let's get in, shall we?' Shortly afterwards Paulette was sipping tea while Amstrad guzzled lager from one of the two tins in her fridge. They were sitting in the living room, talking to one another across the paper mountains on top of the coffee table. 'I here to talk business. I pay good bread, Paulette. How much he give you?'

'For what?' Paulette asked.

'For life, mon,' said Amstrad.

'He pays the rent. Bills.' Paulette shrugged. 'Gives me money for food and Carol.'

'Don't sound like you split up, Paulette. You still his slave.'

'I ain't no one's slave, Amstrad.'

'You a stooge.'

'Why you doing this? Why you come here?'

'To present my alternative.'

Paulette looked down at Carol on her lap; she smoothed her daughter's hair down. 'My answer's still the same. I'll have to think about it.'

'Ah, but maybe this an alternative alternative,' Amstrad grinningly protested.

She faced him as he sat down opposite her. 'Well, is it?'

'No.' He chuckled. 'But look how you live, girl.'

Taking umbrage at this (for she had always striven to maintain at least an hygienic environment) Paulette said, 'Look, I might not have what you got . . . '

'You could have.'

' . . . but I do me best. And I just ain't happy about the idea of getting a load of druggies round here. What if something goes nasty? You hear stories, don't you. Burning papers through the letterbox - all that.'

Fingering his throat-stud Amstrad was shaking his head in tiny movements. 'Not these people, Paulette. Selective clientele. Boom.'

'I just don't know, mate.'

'Okay, okay. I give you to next week. I can't say fairer than that.'

'It's a deal,' Paulette replied. 'And it's funny you should come here, really. I was gonna come and see you. I need some merchandise, but I'm pregnant.'

'What you need?'

'Daz told me once you do a herbal thing. Doesn't do your head in; just makes you sleep. I need to rest more; I'm always a cat onnot tin roof.'

Amstrad nodded his head in a stately manner. From the inside of his leather jacket he pulled a transparent polythene bag. 'Just so happens,' he said, and handed it over. Inside were twenty or so pencil-point-sized orange pellets.

'What they do?'

'What you ask,' said the black man. 'Peaceful night, yat.

'What, one at a time?'

'No more than two.'

'And they're herbal.' Paulette's eyes were twinkling. 'They won't harm the baby.'

'They as pure as the driven snow.'

'How much?'

'Call it gesture of me goodwill. Hoping you'll agree to me plan.'

Paulette smiled. 'What they called then?' she asked.

'Lotus.'

Paulette was perplexed. What, like the car? But that goes fast, dunnit?'

Any mention of cars was ill-advised in Amstrad's company. Of a generally good-natured optimism, Amstrad was nonetheless a man in whom burned a fanatical - some would say even pathological - intolerance towards cars, or more specifically, towards London traffic. Even way up in Hartnell Towers, on the seventeenth floor, where the reminders were few and far between, the daily realities of gridlock got his goat. Cars were the only objects he wouldn't receive and then sell on. He wouldn't fence for car thieves: not in a month of Sundays.

'No,' said Amstrad. 'Not the car. From the lotus-eaters. The lotophagi. Boom. Those in the grip of a dreamy forgetfulness,' he recited, word perfect. 'Oh yes.'

Shaking her head - not in denial but in wonder - Paulette said, 'Int you clever?' Amstrad received the compliment with a noncommittal shrug.

'You want some or not?' he asked.

'Yeah, go on. Twist me arm.' Paulette opened the resealable bag and took out one of the miniature pellets. An instant of wary hesitation passed, and then she placed it on top of her wide tongue. 'It's sizzly,' she commented. 'Do I swallow or let it dissolve?'

'In the lap of the gods,' said Amstrad enigmatically.

'It's fizzy. It's nice.' Paulette swallowed and placed the bag on top of some of the coffee table's dead magazines and old newspapers.

After Amstrad had left, Paulette changed Carol's nappy, and then settled down with a glass of water to watch a discussion show about past-life regression. Don't need none of that, she thought, much cheerier than yesterday. Life was starting to look up a little bit. A discussion show she watched later still (around five) was all about young women who acted like young men: nine pints of lager, odious windbreaking, window-breaking, granny-bashing. Don't need none of that neither. She was a mum and mum-to-be: and these things were good enough for Paulette. For now.

9

Sick and tired of Alan's self-absorbed noodling, Sarah eventually said, 'Look, how about this. Tomorrow - after work - we go to the house.' She was referring to their second property, not far away: in St Albans. 'A long weekend.'

'Okay,' Alan said in response; but his body felt like a paddling pool, full of sweaty feet and children's packed bodies. One careless move and he'd be drained.

Sarah's proposal was more a fix-up than an alibi. But it would be interesting to learn exactly where she was going next. Interesting for both of them.

10

'You must've forgotten to mention it: the ghost.'

'Ah,' said Hugh, swallowing a mouthful of his steak and ale pie.

'Yes, ah,' said Holly. 'Would you care to fill me in now?' She forked some food into her face with the delicacy of one who feeds a furnace.

'You've seen her, I presume.'

'I've heard her. After that I really don't think I want to watch her suffering.'

Hugh laid down his knife and fork and leaned his face into the steam rising from the plate. 'It's not quite like that,' he replied. 'She walks around upstairs, carrying a teddy bear. She's just screaming. As though she's lost. She has a night-dress on.'

'Didn't you think it worth mentioning?'

'I'm sorry. I didn't want to scare you away,' Hugh said, picking up his eating irons again. 'It happens once in a blue moon. Hasn't for ages.'

'It happened this afternoon. I was in the bath. It scared the shit out of me.'

'I'm sorry,' Hugh repeated. 'I don't know what else to say. Please: eat your dinner. Mrs Eggleton will want to know what's wrong with it if you don't.'

Not wishing to offend the natives, Holly recommenced her meal. She did not believe in ghosts. And she did not believe what Hugh had told her. 'Do you want to hear what I thought for the child's bedroom?' she asked, looking down at her vegetables.

Holly heard him sniff down a mouthful of wine.

'Yes,' Hugh replied thinly. 'What do you think?'

'My assumption is you want to change the room completely,' Holly said. 'I hope you don't mind - I made a few discreet enquiries. I know she died. I'm sorry.'

'Thank you.'

'Is she the ghost?'

'Or the other way round.' Hugh sat back. 'I don't know, to tell the truth. She was younger than the ghost, so maybe the ghost will get older at a comparable rate. Who knows? I tried asking her name but you can't communicate with her any more'n you can a cinema projection.'

'I hope I see her now,' Holly said.

'Maybe you've stirred her back into life, if "life" is the right word. Like I say, she hasn't been around for ages.'

Holly picked up her wine glass and ran her finger over the nodes on its side like a reflexologist will over pressure points. In silence she watched Hugh eat. She was feeling uncomfortable about his last statement. Did he mean another presence in the house might have caused the apparition to put on its night-dress and tread the boards? Or that Holly specifically - with her bridal train of soiled religion - might have achieved the same?

All afternoon Holly had been thinking of running away. Only the thought of typing the final invoice out had kept her within the four walls. That moment would be raw, uncoded bliss. She couldn't wait until the consultation period was over and she could start to hire for the work. A month from now she'd be thousands of pounds richer. She could pay off her student loan and her overdraft, easily.

What she hadn't bargained on was this nonsense.

11

After dinner Hugh shut himself in his office and resumed his newfound fascination with the World Wide Web - with the Internet. His modem having buzzed him in like an old friend, he was now scouting the ethereal strands for hardcore pornography, as you do. Like father, like daughter. Since buying his computer package for home use, he'd been surprised at how specific one could be with one's requests. What's your pleasure, sir? Well, today I would like to look at Chinese hermaphrodite rooster worship porn. Sir, coming right up . . . But now, attractive young women were specific enough.

Hugh clicked on the X and the images fell away. He checked for new e-mails. This he did every hour or so, compulsively: it was fascinating to note who was working for the company at anti-social hours of the day. From Hugh's perspective, it was never too early to start thinking about his employees' Christmas bonuses. Hence:

COMPOSE E-MAIL was what Hugh clicked on next. He typed in ALAN CHANDLER. Paused. And then typed:

Alan:

Find attached your PRP objectives, as agreed 1/7/97.

On your current form am I able to grade you even a 5 out of 20 for any of the points? No.

Please see me Mon. morning to discuss your plans/future with the company.

This level of commitment will no longer be tolerated.

Hugh

He attached a file called 'prp.chandler' - prp standing for Performance Related Pay. SEND. If Alan failed to come in on Monday morning, Hugh would state that he'd been coming down heavily on Alan for failure to perform. If Alan brought up anything else - that was private business, and if Alan couldn't tell the difference between the two, then maybe he should stay at home until he could.

Bases covered.

Hugh sipped on a postprandial brandy and leaned back in his chair. He felt good. His house-staff saw him as a good employer, a rounded human being; but he ran a company, and that's not a job for marshmallows. Hugh could be bastard; and he felt content to be ruining two people who had nearly ruined his own daughter. Sarah was his beautiful little girl, whom Hugh had known in person for only a year, but whom he had brought up, financially speaking. Now he was going to hurt Holly and Alan.

Like many other absentee paternal figures, Hugh had an in-built sense of guilt and mournfulness. Catching up on your offspring years down the line was a grittily heuristic experience - or education. But Hugh had wanted to wait until Sarah was grown before trying to explain. He should have done it when she'd been closer to twenty than thirty, of course, but she was the only subject in his life about which he had been uncertain. For a long, long time. How would she receive him? Would she hate him? A year on, Hugh was scared of losing his daughter again. Work wasn't everything.

He had asked Sarah if she'd stay quiet on the issue, and naturally she'd wanted to know why. Why not shout it from the rooftops? I know who my father is! Although Holly's curiosity had been genuine, it would be reasonable to say that Hugh's suggestion had immediately appealed to Sarah's sense of secrecy; she'd always loved knowing things that other people were fumbling in the dark to discover. Especially Holly. Sarah had enjoyed knowing something that Holly didn't know - and this was months before Holly's trysts with Alan. The sisters had never been close, as we know, but not even Holly knew quite how much Sarah disliked her, and always had.

Hugh's answer had been simplicity itself. Don't tell a soul about me, he'd said; you never know when you might need a powerful bastard like me on your side . . .

. . . A good father will do anything for his offspring, which is why Hugh had agreed to Sarah's suggestion of revenge in the first place. Or at least, this was one of the reasons. The affair, after all, had nearly killed Sarah. This was fact; no idle calumny. The affair - or rather, her discovery of the affair - had led Sarah into the Hollywood bathroom of their Hertfordshire home, following a seven-hour interlude in her smoking room, with nothing for company but her tears and her four packets of cigarettes. And her thoughts of revenge: let's not forget these. Even so soon after the wounding - before the blood flow has ceased \- the human is ready to wreak havoc; to exact vengeance. This retribution took the form, as above, of a trip to the bulb-acned sanctum of her private bathroom . . .

There she looked at herself in the mirror. And asked: Was she so bad? Why would he have done such a thing? Didn't she give him what he wanted?

Like an old, inveterate stripper on her final stage, or in her final cubicle before the winking monocle of a punter's peephole, Sarah wearily started to disrobe. Behind her back the bath water crashed, consuming her thoughts. Never before had the din been so horrisonant and so conclusive. She was fading in the resulting mist. Naked now, the flocculent tufts of steam were all about her upper body. Sarah tipped the toothbrushes into the cartoon maw of the snapping pedal-bin. She ran cold water into the toothbrush mug - to the brim. She took a sip. Cool water, but as ever (from the bathroom tap, from the tank in the loft) oddly tasting: the faintest hint of toothpaste, of chorine. Sighing loudly, Sarah opened the cupboard beneath the sink and brought out the shallow wicker basket containing the house's medicines - the basket itself resembling nothing more than a cup-like cavity, a calix for a bodily organ . . . What do we have here? Old solutions for Alan's contact lenses: months out of date. A box of Paracetamol. A tiny jar of aspirins. VapoRub; Magnesium Sulphate paste. Hand cream and White Petroleum Jelly B.P.

The pills it would have to be. Anything else would make her sick. Sarah flipped open the aspirins, shook out two and swallowed them with a gulp of the cold water.

Then another two.

Turn off the bath water, she thought.

Taking two more tablets in the steam-filled room unlocked Sarah's thoughts.

The versatility of rooms, she mused. As though the rooms of the house have hidden agendas: much darker ones. True, the bedroom oversaw its occupiers' slumber and sex, but wasn't the bedroom also where the burglar waited for you to wake up \- so that he could bludgeon you and see the fear in your eyes? The kitchen too was remarkably adaptable for homicidal intentions: just look at all the great equipment easily to hand for your curious and experimental psychopath.

But the bathroom was for suicides. The peace of it; the quiet. Slipping away gently in the hot water, the wrist-skin flapping like fish-gills, oozing blood; the knife discarded, and drifting in the bath's tides like flotsam.

Sarah flung open the bathroom door. The air was prickly cold on her skin. As though she'd recently survived the hellish breath of her leisure centre's sauna, she breathed deeply, having been an eye blink or two from passing out.

She'd taken eight aspirins. Should she make herself sick? Sarah recalled - years ago - when she'd drunk a whole bottle of cough medicine, just to see what it would be like. It had made the world go slow and repetitive - like a merry-go-round dragging itself on its orbit in the wrong and lowest gear.

Sarah slipped through the house, through the utility room, the smoking room, to the pool. Still nude, she dived in. Work the drugs through your system, she thought. Exercise hard . . .

Needless to say, Sarah survived. But Hugh could not forgive his daughter for what she'd attempted, however half-heartedly. And because he could not forgive Sarah, he had agreed with her that those who had led her to the jaws of her sadness must be punished.

Of course Hugh didn't like Alan anyway, on a working basis. Putting the pincers on the incompetent idiot would be no hardship for Hugh. In fact, it would seem as though matters had come full circle.

Nine months ago, Hugh had got Alan the position of Purchaser, at Sarah's behest. Alan had been jobless, despondent, and in debt, so Sarah had asked Hugh nicely and he'd given in . . . Problem was, in Hugh's opinion, Alan didn't know his arse from his elbow. Realising now that most of what Alan had put on his CV had been as distorted as images in funhouse mirrors, Hugh recognised a certain ruthless pride in wanting to be rid of the man. Hugh hated being lied to - which was rich considering that he personally lied on a regular basis, for work reasons, and was doing something similar with Holly. But Alan had already been the unembarrassable instigator of several horrific financial losses for Bargeld Trading. Alan would say sorry. And then he'd do it again.

With blissful synchronicity - when Hugh had been wondering how best to let Sarah know that he was thinking of firing Alan, only five months into his employment with Bargeld Trading - Sarah had called Hugh to pass on the information she'd learnt:

'Dad?' she'd whimpered.

'What is it, darling? You're crying, aren't you?'

'I've found out who it was.'

Hugh had known precisely what she'd meant. 'Tell me.'

Fire Alan? No, Hugh had wanted to do much more than that, having heard what his princess had to say. Fire him? Push him out of the fucking window, more like.

Anything for Sarah. Hugh would prove that he was a man who would do what needed to be done, in any situation. He turned off his computer and finished his brandy.

THURSDAY

Words don't really sum it up. Not the way I use them, anyway. They're inadequate . . . It was a mistake, that's all; it should never have occurred. How can you say how any act of adultery happens? It was beyond my powers to stop it. It was out of my hands.

\- Holly Paver

1

Stringent denial was a simple enough (and routine) procedure for Daz, both in his professional and social lives. For example: No, I didn't say I'd definitely have it ready for you today, madam; I said I'd try to have it ready for you today - but I couldn't get the parts . . . Or: I said I thought it'd be three hundred, mate, but your coil was up the Swannee an' all: four hundred. Sorry . . . Or (more frighteningly): I never go to Kilburn, officer; no reason to. Or (worse still, for Paulette was at times a scary dominatrix): No of course there's no one else; I only love you.

Not even Daz, however, could be expected to offer realistic stringent denial at seven o'clock in the morning.

What's her game? thought Daz, referring to Sarah, who had left ten minutes earlier, her ears probably ringing after some of Daz's more voluble denial. As it happened, in this case Daz's feeling of righteous rage had not only been well-expressed, it had also been justified. Ring her husband? he thought, inhaling. Do me a favour. What sort of twat does she take me for?

But . . .

Sarah had seemed pretty upset. (This observation was an undervaluation perfectly characteristic of Daz, and one he employed day-to-day at the garage when summing up to car owners their vehicles' meagre problems: faults which, on collection, had somehow led to the discovery of further troubles and blips. That way you didn't scare the punter off immediately. When they came back, the work had already been done; they had to pay.) Sarah'd given him a right bollocking. A tongue-lashing. A bit of bother.

Jesus.

With his thumb Daz used the electronic gofer - the remote control - to lower the volume of the music. It was Stuff Smith, and 'Keep on Smiling' . . . For the whole world smiles with you, Smith reckoned. Oh yeah? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it. Every time I smile somebody thinks I'm taking the piss, thought Daz; like I know something and I'm not telling.

But of course it was too early to be maudlin. Daz was only halfway through his breakfast: his iced vodka and lemonade. He was smoking a fag in his dressing gown, with his hair wet; he didn't want to go to work, but he had deadlines, just like everyone else . . . She'd come round before opening up the shop - just to give him a clip round the ear. That was pretty determined - that was focused anger - to break your morning routine like that on a weekday.

Sarah was trying to break up with Daz. So she'd concocted this dubious stichomythia, for which he'd undoubtedly supplied his pre- written lines. Blaming Daz was as good a way as any for Sarah to back away.

If this was the scheme then Sarah had put on an Oscar-winning performance. She'd behaved like a Tasmanian Devil.

The other alternative was that somebody had rung her husband and informed on the affair. Who? Daz was terrified of blaming Amstrad for anything (and besides, it seemed to unlikely) - and Roy? Wouldn't harm a fly, would he? The question, Daz supposed, was how many people had these two confidantes passed the knowledge on to?

'I don't need this in my life,' said Daz, standing up. There was already all that business with Paulette, which was constantly on his mind. An unwelcome hindrance to his everyday plans. Even Daz had to concede that he'd ballsed up badly over that nonsense with Jill. But who'd've thought Paul would've reacted so viciously. When half-familiar personages in The Happy Abbot inquired after her, Daz had to spin the unhappy yarn: It's all finished, that. But we're still friends, like . . . Which wasn't true: Paulette clearly wished to hold Daz between thumb and forefinger, away from her nose and body, like one of Carol's catastrophically soiled nappies. A shame. Daz missed Paul and Carol. All finished, as far as the outside world was concerned: true. But there were matters left unresolved. Visiting rights, for one - Daz supposed he should make some effort to request these rights. To show willing; to play the game as it should be played. The other thing was that Daz needed Paulette. How on earth was he expected to break into HandyFilms on his own? Be reasonable, Paul, he wanted to say. He expected his ex to continue her gainful (if infrequent) employment as gentleman's assistant until such time as her waters broke, or the ambulance was actually whooping through the halted, immovable traffic.

Making a decision to visit both Sarah and Paul in his lunch-hour (he'd even ask Roy for an extended one, which was probably pushing his luck a wee bit) Daz dressed, resumed his toilette, and examined his bald spots for fifteen minutes. They weren't getting worse, were they?

2

Either he was a good actor . . .

Yes, Sarah's thoughts were running along very similar lines to Daz's. Opening up the shop (armoured criss-crosses, deadlocks, the alarm system beeping impatiently for deactivation or full-strength holler) Sarah wished she had approached Daz differently. Cautiously. But no: like an itchy basset she'd been roiling in discomfort all night. Alan had lain beside her, stoical and intermittently snoozy - shorting out for ten minutes here and there. They'd hardly spoken a word.

Finally, at around five a.m. Sarah had said, 'Alan? Do you believe me?'

And Alan had said, 'I don't know.'

But by that time they had been low on energy; and arguments need so much of the stuff.

The night also gave Sarah plenty of time to think. About Daz, predominantly: she tried to reason with him, from afar. To understand his motivation. Coincidentally, Sarah thought that the confession might have been Daz's way of finishing with her: bringing it all to a head in a melodramatic fashion.

By the time she reached his flat she had a good head of steam (the stairs she'd climbed having participated to the darkening of her mood). It had got to the point where she wanted to take out her frustrations on somebody, and Daz was as good a victim as any.

3

'Roy-mate.'

'Yeah.'

'Got a prob,' said Daz.

The location: Bible Street Cars. The time: shortly before midday.

The morning, though busy, had been routine, or at least it should have been; but there had been little concentration paid to the work by Daz. In the pit, beneath the scaly Capri, he had been wondering how best to address his dilemma. His lack of attention had resulted in a brief and accidental oil-leak splashing down on top of his head. Daz had clanged an angry spanner against the underside of the car. For twenty minutes he'd been obliged to lever his head under the tap in the bathroom, washing the worst out. True enough, days had gone better than this one so far.

Roy was also beneath a car, in the other pit. Like two victims of a landslide having found a hole through the wreckage, they looked at each other through the skinny vantage point afforded beneath the vehicles' skirts.

'What is it?' said Roy.

'My bird Sarah. Did you tell anyone about her?'

'No. Why?'

'Dunno,' Daz replied. 'It's got about, that's all. Now some cunt's ringing up her fucking husband. Saying he's me. Confessing all, like.'

Roy frowned: this was serious. Not so much the identity-appropriation, or the incriminating phone call: what Roy didn't like was that Daz had told him only after he'd queried him about his own tactical discretion.

'So who else you told?'

'Amstrad,' said Daz.

'He must've said summing. Weren't me, mate. I know how to keep a secret.'

Daz shook his head. 'I didn't mean nothing by it. These things get out, don't they? It's not thy mind you telling no one. I don't. But some cunt's got a big mouth. And it looks like he's got it in for me big time, the bastard.'

'Let's take a break.'

4

Sarah had gone over and over the argument with Daz. And do you know what? She was starting to believe him. He certainly had a point: if he wanted to finish it he could just say so. Or say that Paulette had put the vice-grips on his sweetmeats. Given him the old guilt trip: that nonsense. In fact, the more Sarah thought about it, the less likely it seemed that a young man who was receiving sex on tap would want to annoy his lover in such a way. Stranger things were possible, of course, but Sarah was starting to have her doubts.

No, she'd gone further than that, had she not? Right now, nimbly sprinting up the seventeen floors to Amstrad's flat, she was actually going to buy him a present. A peace offering. As she explained to the man, 'I want to say sorry to Daz,' said Sarah.

Amstrad gave a courtly nod; he made his visitor think briefly of a voodoo warlord. In fact, he'd been smoking all afternoon and it had been all he could do to get to the door when she'd knocked. 'Sorry for what?'

Sarah shrugged. 'We had a domestic. I blamed him for something but it wasn't him. I don't know who it was but it wasn't him.'

'Enigma,' said Amstrad enigmatically.

'Something like that. So have you got any more of that Moroccan?'

'No, babe - gone. But I got something even better. Even better? You say that not possible? I say try me Roundee Worldee.'

'What's that?'

'Dope cocktail,' Amstrad explained. 'Start off in Columbia. Get cut with Arabian opiate. Do the rounds, mon, you know. Loose-oh-genic worm in China or whatever. You with me?'

' . . . Sounds expensive.'

Amstrad rolled the stud in the flesh of his neck with the marble tip of his right index finger. 'Depend how sorry you are, babe.'

As Amstrad had made no effort to conceal his appreciation of her physical form when she'd come here with Daz, she was anything but surprised to acknowledge his supercharged leer at this moment. I shouldn't have come here, she told herself. He's going to want me in bed to pay for the drugs, if that expression is anything to go by.

'How much?'

'Depend on you method of payment.' He chuckled elaborately. 'You can pay me how you want to, darling. Boom,' said Amstrad. 'Pounds or puss.'

'I beg your pardon,' Sarah replied. Despite what she'd expected, the dizzy spell was remarkably swift at getting established.

'Money or minge . . . ' Amstrad laughed.

So did Sarah, though not for the same reason. 'I can't believe I'm hearing this,' she muttered.

'Coins or quim.'

'Yes, I get the idea . . . '

'Hard cash or hardcore . . . '

'Thank you,' said Sarah, closing her eyes. When she opened them again two rows of white teeth, like the foundation brickwork for an igloo, were shining at her. Amstrad's eyes were wise and crinkled. 'I don't know what you're looking so smug about. I've got money. You don't know who you're dealing with. How much?'

'One thousand pound.'

'Drop dead,' said Sarah.

'Or one quick eff-you-key. Yat.'

Sarah smiled. 'I don't need the dope that much. What would Daz have to do for it? I'll ask him to give it to me,' she bluffed.

With a wide forefinger Amstrad conducted a tour of duty around his easily visible piercings, dallying on the unlikely stud in his unlikely throat. 'He make me money, woman. It different.'

News to Sarah! 'Makes you money? How?'

Amstrad shrugged slowly. 'Buying and selling. You know.'

'I don't know,' said Sarah. 'Buying and selling what?'

'Tings.'

'What sort of "tings"?' she persisted, her words sliding along the same oil slick on which she personally was trying to regain her exasperated bAlance.

Amstrad opened his arms. 'Look around, mon. This me kingdom. But a lot come from Daz. He sell it me. Boom. I sell it someone else.'

Sarah's mouth and temper had both run dry. 'You're a fence.'

'A stolen good tech-nisshun. I prefer.'

' . . . Bye bye.' Sarah stood up.

'Sit down . . . ' Amstrad told her.

Picking up her coat she walked for the door, and like an exercise-hungry dog - a Rottweiler, perhaps - Amstrad quickly followed her. A flutter of panic went through Sarah when she opened the door and Amstrad's heavy arm reached over her shoulder to push it shut. She remained facing the wood and the facing the man's hand up against it, the first joints of his fingers momentarily bled white. Sarah's voice was soft but her words were clear:

'What do you think you're doing?' she said.

'I making you me love slave.'

Sarah turned quickly and looked up into his Arctic grin, the smile of swallowed wine a red breath against her nose and eyes.

'If you don't let me out right now I'm going to call the police. Do you understand?'

'Oh yeah?' Amstrad seemed amused.

'Do you understand?'

The grin turned into a sneer. He leant towards her, one arm still on the door. Single capillaries had shed their load in the whites of his eyes.

'You listen to me, Miss Manners,' he said. 'I tired of you attitude, and women like you. Hoity-toity. Yat. Look down on me. Look down on me? Boom. I look down on you . . . '

Sarah was shaking her head. 'Who do you think you are?'

Amstrad pointed a finger in her face, turning his globe-like head to the side. 'No, who do you think you are? Come in here, Miss Lady Muck. Think you own the fucking place . . . '

It was an unwise statement that Sarah came out with at this point. She knew as she said it: unwise. And later she regretted it; but she felt the need to achieve what she was being accused of: to achieve a position of superiority.

'You're a virgin aren't you,' she said, and then quickly added: 'Oh no, I saw your kids - if they are yours. But I would've sworn that what you've been saying is the attitude of a virgin. With no comprehension of female sexuality.'

Amstrad struck her. The fingers of his right hand were loosely splayed, and the backhand swipe connected only negligibly with Sarah's chin: but the shock of the power-shift hurt badly. The shock of the new. A terrible flower had grown out of a badly-identified seed.

'Shut it,' said Amstrad, as though silencing the complaint of one of his children. 'I had enough of you. Boom. I don't care what you do. I just tell you husband you come here with a dirty look on you face . . . '

Sarah's eyes widened. 'It was you . . . '

'Nah. Wunt me. But it is next time. And I tell Daz.' Amstrad sniffed exaggeratedly and kept his upper lip fixed in a sneer afterwards. 'Get out. I don't like you kind.'

'I don't have a kind,' Sarah replied.

'You only think you don't,' Amstrad finished.

5

On the bus, with little Carol planted squarely on her lap, Paulette was thinking about children's names. She was wondering what to call Number Two. This time she had no one with whom to confer, and names was a tricky area for Paulette. She was indistinctly aware that the age of Do-It-Yourself child naming - of DIY kiddie-calling - was coming to an end. Paulette herself, of course, had been an unwitting pawn in this nationwide movement. Acting on a scarcely defined nisus in the late seventies, and being on the very cusp of postmodernity, Paulette's parents, Frank and Sue, had invented the nomer 'Paulette', or so they had thought. Paulette didn't want to call her second child something like that. But football team names had been done to death, and retro-naming (the Sidneys, the Georges, the Elsies) was similarly passe. What was left? Forget about Sharon and Tracey: let's talk about Shaneel and Tracelle. Joanne had become Joe-Ann. Paulette personally knew four examples each of Kelly, Kerry and Zoe. Where next? Where?

A bell sounded: the signal for the driver of the bus to stop at the next shelter. Hissing and farting, the vehicle did so. Blank faces watched it and waited for people to get off. Paulette herself was among the escapees. Carrying Carol in her left arm, she struggled with the telescoped pushchair in her right. On the pavement she expertly returned the chair to its operational status and deposited her thickly-stockinged, be-bonneted daughter on the seat and strapped her in. Right. Paulette was ready for whatever today had in mind to throw her way. Behind her, footsteps clumped along the length of the bus.

Paulette was due in her gynaecologist's pristine iron maiden in twenty minutes' time. It was a ten minute walk. She stopped at a newsagent for a Sun, a scratchcard and a can of bubbles for little Carol to use as a tooth-rottener. Little Carol was being very quiet today, and Paulette could not figure it out. True enough, she had kicked up a stink about being dressed for outdoors, but after that? As quiet as a mouse. While Paul had got ready, little Carol had sat patiently in the lounge, by the coffee table, not doing much of anything - unless you counted knocking over a few papers and magazines. The only possibility that seemed to hold any water was that Carol had finally figured irksomeness for a waste of time: she had realised already that her childhood was currently as interesting as it was going to get. And that was tragic.

'Paulette Jones,' said Paulette to the fresh-faced receptionist. 'With Dr Storm. One o'clock.'

'Please take a seat. We'll call you.'

She's about my age, Paulette thought. Crap job, but regular money. Insurance. Security. Free health benefits, probably. BUPA. Don't have to rely on the Social.

Carol was sitting on the next chair, staring into space. She had become resistant to the effects of boredom. I don't talk to her enough, Paulette thought. Perhaps she's scared of me . . .

Spying the table of scruffy magazines a few metres away, Paulette said to her daughter, 'Would you like a comic?'

Carol turned to her and looked up, with consternation clearly visible. It was probably the smell of the place. Who'd have thought cleanliness could reek so badly? Paulette picked up an old, fingerprinted copy of The Dandy comic. Carol received it worldlessly, but her manners were not corrected. Her mother unfolded her own comic: the morning's edition of The Sun.

A millionnaire footballer had confessed his year-long dallyings with a discreet and expensive call-girl. The President of the United States was unwell. European lorry-driving unions were at loggerheads over pay increases . . .

Paulette sighed. The page three model, Linzi, held her attention for a longer period of time than these tidbits of world affairs. Lovely Linzi was twenty-one. She wanted to be a barrister, which was why she had posed in a pair of owlish spectacles, a white horsehair wig, and black ceremonial robes. The gown, fully open, revealed the isosceles triangle of her thongs, and of course her gravity-pooh-pooing breasts. Paulette sighed again. Linzi was older but looked younger. Linzi had no stretch marks or cellulite. Linzi was going into law as soon as flashing her body for profit had dried up. Maybe I should train to be something, thought Paulette. Surely it isn't too late. There were crèches for working mums. Paulette scanned her mental horizons. By the age of twenty-five she could be living abroad in the sun, post-facelift. She'd be angular of jaw, petite of nose; her arse would be a thing men liked to look at, rather than be appalled at or curious of.

The easier option, of course, would be to accept Amstrad's offer.

And have a bunch of junkies round her gaff, morning, noon and night.

Someone sneezed a few rows behind Paulette. The sound pulled her back. Her daughter was till on the first page of the comic. Although Carol was far too young to read, she often had fun interpreting the colours of the illustrations, and then systematically shredding the paper afterwards. She had even lost interest in messy mutilation. Paulette wondered if she should make an appointment with Dr Hazel.

Paulette's name was finally announced. Mother, daughter and pushchair shuffled and scraped through a door leading into a tunnel system of offices and examination rooms. So many places for so many women to reveal so many sore, swollen or badly functioning private parts. Dr Storm's workspace was the third on the left. The door was open.

'Hello, doctor,' said Paulette, trying as ever to establish some semblance of normality and fearlessness.

Storm was an ashen-faced Canadian woman with teeth the colour of dishwater. She invited Paulette to take up her position on the trolley. Then she smiled. 'Aah, look. She's fallen asleep.' Storm nodded at the child whom Paulette had placed in the pushchair seconds earlier. 'Out like a light.' There would be no need to pull the screen round this time. Storm continued, 'Any problems I should know about?'

'No, it's going well so far,' Paulette replied, suddenly realising that this was the first query about her welfare she'd heard for days. What sort of a world was she bringing another child into?

6

Work had finished for the day; it was the end of the afternoon.

On the fourth floor of Hartnell Towers Daz started to have his doubts about confronting Amstrad. That was one man you didn't want to anger. So make it jokey. Fine. Amstrad-mate? Some wanker's going round pretending to be me; telling Sarah's hubby what I'm up to with her. I've gotta ask you, mate: who knows about me and her?

Give the situation the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume he keeps his cool about that one. What next? Track down the geezer and make him eat his own trousers?

Seventh floor. Daz was more confused than anything else. Maybe it was all a piss-take that Alan had engineered - to see what his wife's reaction would be. Which meant he knew about Daz, unless he'd got spectacularly lucky with his choice of fictional name.

Bloody hell. The stairs. A perky pair of prickly cramps were tinkerbelling up and down his thighs. The Asda bag was bumping against his skin: the bottle of wine - the peace offering. Daz was rapidly out of breath - or more out of breath.

Eighth floor. Let's think about this now . . . Seventeen minus eight is? Christ. Nine to go. It was enough to make Daz think about cracking the top of the wine and going down on it like a Kings Cross rent boy.

Ninth floor . . .

And after an eternity of torment, the seventeenth floor. Amstrad's flat. Bent double and leaning up against the wall, Daz snatched in air with the urgency of a man who has been underwater. Great hacking gasps, unstoppable and mean. Inside, beyond the walls came the thumping sounds of bhangra music.

The door opened. Like a tidal wave the music washed out; the flat exhaled smoke. By the grin that appeared on Amstrad's face (two rows of shiny white teeth, like the lid going up on a set of piano keys) Amstrad took great delight in the woebegone misfortunes of his visitors.

'You hoff, mon, and you poff,' said Amstrad. 'You won't blow me house down.'

Daz asked the next question over the space of the following minute:

'When are you gonna get that bleeding lift fixed?'

'Take a seat. Relax.'

As Daz obeyed he held up the plastic bag. Taking it, Amstrad was swift to make a positive identification and a verdict: 'Plonk. Good.' Daz was starting to get some feeling back in his thighs. Amstrad rolled laconically to the kitchen on his tree trunk legs, with gentle flexes of his callipygian rump.

They sat together on the sofa, each with a pint glass of arterial vino.

'What bring you to my neck of woods?'

'On a social innaye,' said Daz. 'But I got a query while I'm here.'

'Boom.'

Daz rinsed his mouth and said, 'Sarah, yeah? Did you mention it to anyone?'

'I see her yesterday,' Amstrad replied, deciding not to mention her visit. 'Outside The Happy Abbot. She going to see her sister, yat. We chat. I with the kids.'

'See her sister?' Daz asked.

'Yeah . . . '

Daz was finding it hard to concentrate. 'Amstrad-mate, can I ask you a favour? Will you turn the fucking bongos off for five minutes. I'm still having hernia.'

The exotic fruit of one of Amstrad's juicy chuckles broke open. A sound so extraordinarily rich, it was like supping nectar.

Amstrad turned down the volume on the stolen hi-fi.

'Cheers, ears,' said Daz. 'Are you sure? Her sister, like?'

'Yeah, mon. Meet for a drink is it. Boom. Big deal.'

'She never even told me she had a sister.'

Amstrad shrugged. 'So what?'

' . . . Nothing, I suppose,' Daz grudgingly conceded.

Changing the subject Amstrad asked a question. 'Listen, Daz,' he said, 'you wanna buy some gear? I got no more Moroccan but I got some other good gear.' He didn't much care that he knew Daz would be well-supplied by Sarah. Amstrad wasn't running a charity; and he was, and always would be, a law unto himself.

Daz nodded. 'Wouldn't say no.' He couldn't recall how much of the last batch he'd bought remained; this was as good a testimony as any to its potency. 'But I've got some cash flow bollocks at the moment.'

The baseball-glove hand swept the suggestion from the air, like a bear's paw swinging at the moon. 'No problem. We deduct if from you next delivery. Boom. I in the market for some irons.'

'Some what?' said Daz. It had sounded like aye-youngs.

The mime was competently delivered. 'Irons, mon. For clothes. They wrinkles.'

'I'll see what I can do,' Daz replied with cautious professionalism. 'Just tell me summing. Did you mention me and Sarah to anyone?' Daz explained the reason for this ghastly impertinence.

'Okay,' said Amstrad, running the palm of his hand over his closely-shaven head and then fingering the stud in his throat. So that was what she'd accused Daz of: spilling the beans. Amstrad looked deep inside himself and replied: 'I tell one person: Chemo-Sebby. But he don't know shit about Sarah or husband.'

'Chemo-Sebby?' said Daz. 'I know the name.' A guy so called because of his fondness for westerns, The Lone Ranger included, but more pertinently because of his successful chemotherapy treatment for lung cancer. Oh, and for the fact that he dealt illegally in chemicals. Once upon a time he'd been known as Sebastian, but not anymore. Like his prospects and heritage, his name had been abandoned like roadkill. 'As if I could forget it. Where does he hang about these days?'

'You might get him at his chicken place: Wicked Wings.'

Daz shook his head. 'Nah. Not at work. What's his pisser?'

'The She-Devil. On Blythe Road. He larges it there, mon.'

'Fine. Do you fancy one?' They had each half-finished their pints of wine.

'Sure.'

7

The tremble of Thursday night traffic! Amstrad drove them to Cricklewood's She-Devil in his pale blue van, with his heavy palm crunching down on the horn every fifty yards or so. 'Moooooove,' Amstrad would yodel in stark frustration. 'Jesus, mon.'

'No hurry, mate,' Daz muttered, well used to his fence's megalomaniacal tempers when it came to matters of congestion.

In the busy carpark Amstrad positioned the vehicle in a very tight gap. As they walked to the back door of the pub, Amstrad turned and fired at the van with the alarm-setter: fired Captain-Kirk-stylee. The lights blinked on twice and the alarm system chirruped in acknowledgement.

Like wet clothes on the radiator, the pub gave out an impression of damp warmth. Into the chaos and strident energies strode Amstrad and Daz, moving barwards. Drinks secured (costly pints) they looked for the man known as Chemo-Sabby. Amstrad had described him to Daz: white, medium height, medium build; about fifty. Pot belly and a dry sense of humour. Yeah: like most of the male Caucasian population in the building.

Nevertheless they found him. Introductions were made; the question was posed. And then the trail went well and truly cold. Chemo-Sabby shook his head. He had breathed a word about Daz and Sarah to no one.

'What you wanna do now?' Amstrad asked.

'Dunno, mate.' But he did. He was going to see Sarah; sort this nonsense out.

'You need a lift?' The two men were standing in the carpark.

Daz nodded his head. 'Yeah. Drop me at the Happy Abbot is it.'

8

Although not alone in the house, Holly was the only person currently upstairs. Mrs Eggleton was in the kitchen, splitting the atom or something, and Marcus had gone home for the day. Hugh had not returned from work. Holly was sitting not in her own room but in the upstairs living room, watching the TV. Tonight she had dined on cheese sandwiches (her choice), alone (not her choice). She was feeling neglected, which was silly. Her rational mind told her that she should be grateful for a little solitude.

Without this solitude what she was doing now - snooping - would be impossible.

Semi-trying (if that) to convince herself that she was looking in the drawers for an ashtray (she fancied a cigarette) Holly's honest reason for prying was to see what she could find out about Hugh Bargeld. Anything blemishing would be fine. He'd had a daughter, and she'd died. Maybe Holly read far too much, but she couldn't help getting a bad taste in her mouth about this. A parrot that said kill you. A tape of a girl screaming.

To say that Holly wasn't experiencing job satisfaction was an understatement. She couldn't wait to give Hugh her invoice and get the hell out.

What was this? Holly removed from the drawer a paper bag of ten or so photographs. A little in awe and a little frightened, she shuffled through them.

Only one model had been photographed: a little girl of approximately five years. Two of the pictures had her in a cute blue and white sailor suit, complete with hat. One had her in a pink fluffy number that made her look like a flamingo (or so Holly thought).

The rest of the pictures were more disturbing.

Nude studies. Not in any way pornographic, but they were pictures that Holly had been unprepared to receive; they made her feel less than safe. They were pictures of a girl sitting on her own and playing contentedly with a huge teddy bear and with plastic dolls. This was his daughter, Holly thought. But why had this packet of pictures been left in a place that was so easy to find? Did he guess that you'd go picking around? One at a time Holly held up the ten pictures, her hand wide open, her fingertips on either vertical edge so as not to deposit grease. The lifeline in the palm of her hand reached up for the chortling infant. Holly felt the strange emission of a liquid type of sadness: it was dripping into unfamiliar parts of her body. The child was dead. Perhaps what Holly was experiencing was what it felt like to be maternal. Perhaps she was getting broody. No. That wasn't quite it. It was more that Holly found it hard to comprehend how such a tiny ball of fun was not even now smiling into some other camera somewhere.

She put the pictures back where she had found them.

In a different drawer entirely she found an ashtray that was as heavy as a brick. She took it out, sat down again, and resumed her thinking over a pensive cigarette. Quite deliberately, once, she had smoked in order to throttle the restless weed of her appetite; to curb her constant hunger. Now she was smoking to calm her nerves. But it wasn't working. Something rotten was happening in this house, and Holly was far from certain that she wanted to discover what it was.

9

'You can fucking talk.'

Sarah blinked. 'I beg your pardon.' She was surprised and not-surprised to see Daz here; after all, it was his local and the place to which he had introduced her. And given that he wasn't present at Bible Street Cars (she had checked, and Roy had woefully shrugged his shoulders) the pub was a pretty safe bet. She'd been relieved to see him arrive: she could come clean that she now thought she'd made a mistake. She could apologise properly, if not with drugs then at least with sex.

But this was odd: his angle of attack. She might have expected Daz to be upset about the argument they'd had; but what was this all about?

Daz said, 'You hypocrite. You can talk.'

'What are you on about?'

Rolling his eyes at Sarah's ignorance, Daz became further riled. 'Having a go at me for not fucking telling you about Paul. You've got a sister, I hear.'

'So what? Hear from who?' Knowing already.

Daz pointed a finger and went on: 'Don't be throwing no more bollockings at me, woman, you understand? You're just as bad. You're worse.'

Sarah was aware of the attention they were getting; the odd thing was that in the Happy Abbot it didn't much matter. Furious rows, she'd come to understand, were pretty much compulsory for social acceptance. Daz had barrelled in and commenced his self-righteous harangue before he'd even sat down. 'Daz, they're hardly the same thing: your girlfriend and the mother of your children - and my sister,' she said. 'Or half-sister, I should say.'

'Do what?'

'Different dads,' Sarah explained.

'Oh.' That drained the petrol from his engine; the oil from his sump. 'Just no more bollockings, all right?' He clung to his rage like a comfort blanket.

'Fine. But just sit down for Christ's sake!'

'And that includes crap about telling your husband about us. It weren't me.'

'Daz, sit down, I'm getting a crick in my neck. That's what I'm here to talk . . . '

'It weren't me. I'm getting a drink,' Daz muttered. 'You want another?'

'Sure. A double vodka and orange.'

This cheered him up, inexplicably. 'A lady after me own heart,' was all he said and then ventured, wrinkle-browed and squinty-eyed, for the bar.

It was seven-thirty when Daz, having endured a sisyphean struggle for the procurement of beverages, arrived back at Sarah's small table. One of the first things Sarah said was: 'I can't stay long. Alan and I are driving to St Albans. I should have been back at the flat by now; he'll be wondering where I am again.'

'Why?'

'Why what?'

'Are you going to St Albans.'

'Our other house? We're taking a long weekend.' Sarah sipped at her screwdriver. 'It was a panic suggestion; I wish I'd kept my mouth shut. But Alan confronted me and . . . I thought it might help. I realise now I might've wasted an opportunity. Maybe I should've just said yes and have him divorce me.'

Daz shrugged uninterestedly and offered: 'C'est la vie.'

Sarah made a show of smiling, her thoughts as gooey and dark as hot chocolate residue, undissolved at the bottom of a mug. 'I went to see Amstrad today,' she said, 'and found out another little something you forgot to mention. What you do doesn't bother me but . . . you won't rob my shop, will you?'

It took a few beats before Daz managed to convince himself that he'd heard correctly. 'No of course not,' he began, hiding his anger. Amstrad had squealed on him!

'You only do your own kind. Is that it?' She smiled again.

'Yeah, something like that.' Tricky territory for Daz; a return to the previous topic was preferable. 'Listen, Sarah,' he said quickly 'I've been making some enquiries. Nobody knows nothing, but I swear to God I didn't call Alan.'

Sarah nodded her head. Of course Daz didn't call Alan. But she knew who did; the realisation had mugged her with heavy hands on leaving Bible Street. What she'd needed was a quick drink before managing to do anything about her suspicions . . . No, make that convictions. Her face a little pale she said to Daz: 'I'm just popping out for a packet of cigarettes; get one more round in before I go, eh?'

In Daz's opinion, the woman was getting weirder and weirder. 'I thought you were gonna be late. Anyway, there's a fags machine by the bogs.'

'They've run out of B&H. I won't be a minute.' Offering up a smile, Sarah strapped on her handbag and left the pub. Both the cool of the evening and the relative hush were soothing. Eschewing the idea of making the journey in the Jag (it was murder trying to park around there) she left her car outside the pub and started to walk. She walked quickly. It seemed obvious now - the whole thing did - and she was disturbed that she hadn't considered the possibility before a short time ago. On low heels she clicked her way back into Bible Street at exactly eight p.m. Her footfalls sounded like the nibbles of an electric typewriter on a sheet of paper.

Bible Street Cars. In she walked, through the mousehole door, with a head full of steam. 'Roy!' she called loudly.

Summoned by the sound of the door opening, however, Roy was already peeping round the corner, standing in the back room. 'Oh hello again, darling,' he said, beginning to smile. 'Daz still ain't here, I'm afraid; like I said, he won't be back tonight.'

'I came to see you,' Sarah replied, and almost could between the parked dead cars now that Roy had stepped into the oil-scented workspace. 'But I have to be quick. I've left Daz at the pub. Something occurred to me on my way over. I don't know what the fuck you're playing at, Roy, but if you ever speak to my husband again without my say-so, I'll hire someone to burn down this dump. Is that understood?'

'What are you talking about?' Roy asked.

'It was you. I know it was - though God knows it took me long enough to work it out. Daz even admitted he told you about us. He was bragging, and I don't really care about that. But if I want to end my marriage then I'll do it my way. Just nod your head if this is getting through, you fucking Neanderthal.'

10

'Sleepy girl, sleep,' sang Paulette, bedding down little Carol: a didactic nursery rhyme of her own invention. 'And the Sandman will creep . . . ' she whispered in conclusion. But the pat-a-cake meter and the soft and strangely Irish-lilted singing voice - both were unnecessary. For little Carol was already asleep. She had been asleep, what was more, ever since crashing out at Dr Storm's pad. Bless. Who could tell what infant discotheques of the mind little Carol had visited last night to make her so tired today? Paulette smiled down at her regal repose. Carol had been to a Fisher Price rave: the blinky-blonk tunes of a wind-up record player; pints of Snakebite and black - without the Snakebite: just the black. Just blackcurrant squash, scandalously diluted. And pills to take for energy boosts: but placebos, all of them - Smarties, Jelly Tots, Iced Gems.

Paulette flicked the switch on the kettle. A nice cup of tea, she thought. It was eight p.m. That was enough for one day. She really must join a gym. She made the tea and watched a quiz show, feeling no emotion more than any other. While the water boiled, she straightened up in the lounge. A few newspapers and magazines remained on the worn carpet following Carol's aggressive strop, hours earlier. And what was this? Paulette exhaled. That was lucky. Also on the carpet was the bag of orange pellets: the Lotus herbal relaxants that Amstrad had given her.

What the hell? thought Paulette, utterly failing to put two and two together, even though the bag remained just as unfastened as it had been when Amstrad had left yesterday. Popping two on to her tongue, Paulette couldn't get over that fizziness; it was yummy, like sherbet.

The kettle began to whistle.

11

The Hertfordshire home of Alan and Sarah Chandler was in the town of St Albans, and it was where they liked to escape to every once in a while. It was a very nice house in a very nice neighbourhood; it was left unguarded. Though Sarah knew nothing of the fact, they had lost the place once, but this had had nothing to do with burglars.

Alan had used the house as a stake in a game of five card stud - the metaphysical bet. Deliciously ironically (or so Alan thought now) Alan had actually been bluffing. The other guy, in Alan's opinion, had also been bluffing. The supposition turning out to be unfounded, Alan was taken to the cleaners, the only favourable twist to have emerged from the sorry ordeal being that thereafter stud had been out of bounds. Even in the pits of addiction, Alan had seen how dangerous this one was. Alan had decided to concentrate on craps . . . From stud to craps: coincidentally (or maybe not) this change in choice of game correlated with the movement in Alan's mindset on any one of a thousand losing nights. For at first he was the stud: the card gigolo, the pack lothario - using the suits for his pleasure and gain, then tossing them aside with callous abandon. And then, by the end of the evening (around sunup, let's say), with 50p in his pocket, he felt like shit. And so did everyone else.

On occasion (usually Sundays, girded into inspecting the possibility by advertisements for religious programmes on terrestrial TV) Alan would consider the validity in the claim for the existence of God. His thoughts would run as follows: There had to be a Divine Spirit, looking down on wankers like Alan as well as on the important people - the pontiffs, the leper-curers - because otherwise Sarah would have found out about losing the house. But she hadn't. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

There are sayings in gambling: wise words to be used indiscriminately and more or less interchangeably, because they all said nothing of worth. One was: 'What goes around, comes around.' Luck, in other words, could be yours the next time around the block. 'Speculate to accumulate.' . . . Alan's favourite was: 'One man's ceiling is another man's floor.' Loosely translated, this last spoke of the mutability of a gambler's fortune. One minute you're on top, the next . . .

Alan challenged the guy who'd won his St Albans house: any game apart from stud. Tactically Alan waited until four in the morning before doing so. Mr Jenkins had had a tough evening; he'd only broken even, despite having had at one point, a financial advantage of one thousand pounds. They played Blackjack. Alan won his house back and twenty-five quid for his trouble, his lost hair, and to cover the cost of some of the booze he'd got through in the time between the two meetings.

Driving to St Albans, because of this imperial struggle, always felt doubly good, therefore. The house after all was doubly his. Bought and paid for (though by richly differing techniques) on two separate occasions.

Was it worth re-winning? The house was hardly huge by St Albans standards, but the gardens in which it was set had room enough to incorporate in the rear a small swimming pool, which was in its own conservatory of darkened but perfectly see-through glass. One of the ways that access could be gained to the house from the garden was via the pool side: take a walk through the conservatory door, stroll around the edge of the water, then enter through the door leading to what was known as the smoking room, which in turn leads on to the utility room . . .

The pool was mainly for Sarah, and mainly for recreational purposes rather than the taking of vigorous exercise. As he drove his wife north, Alan thought of her in their pool, during summer: on her lilo, with its detachable floating tray; the mug of Margarita, the deadweight supermarket paperback; the box of Benson and Hedges. He'd be zipping around, outside on the lawn, on the beanbag-seat of his tinkertoy tractor-lawnmower. Listening to M People on the personal stereo, his money having made pleasurable what was once an onerous task . . . And he would look over to the Ray-Ban glass of the swimming pool tank, from which Sarah would be emerging to feel the sun on her wet body. And Alan would wonder how he ever could have betrayed her.

Curvaceous, in her black Adidas swimming costume; the smooth and polished weak-tea shine of her legs. The painted nails on her feet in their Roman Emperor thongs . . . But Alan was gripped by dirtier observations. After all, he knew his wife's body very well; he therefore took comfort from the way that clothing betrayed the skin's intimacies and flexes. As she walked - my Jesus - how the costume clutched to the underside of her lapels d'amour. The grip of those lips! And as she pottered about the garden like a princess, she would afford her husband with a view from behind: it was almost enough to make him crash his little tractor. Scarcely containing the globesque buttocks it purported to have under control, the swimming costume took in half of Sarah's backside at best, cutting a diagonal across either cheek at an angle of forty-five degrees. Half in, half out . . .

One time (and one time only) Alan had cut the throat of his lawnmower's growl and walked over to his wife, in the fuschias. She had smiled at him. Taken over by a wholly uncharacteristic sexual fever, Alan had yanked down Sarah's costume to her waist. She responded with a gasp. Alan took her in his arms and kissed her mouth, thinking that he didn't simply want his tongue inside her: he wanted his whole body inside her. Down to the feet. He stroked her back . . . On the lawn, among the fresh cuttings, Alan pulled off Sarah's costume and opened his fly. She was wishbone-shaped on the garden when he entered her, the sun beating down on his neck.

But that had not happened again. Nor had anything like it. Applying the handbrake (they'd arrived), Alan wondered if that lack of spontaneity was at the root of the problems with their marriage.

'Wake up,' he said. 'We're here.'

It was a second home, and it felt like one. Houses learn the daily rhythms of their occupiers as surely as do the pets routinely abandoned within them. The St Albans domicile was one abused puppy. As Alan opened the door it seemed that the building flinched. It wanted to show love and not fear: but what emerged was a cold breath and a kind of leftover, nullified aroma.

The alarm was beeping. Watching her husband striding for the console made Sara think of a daddy-long-legs. Alan twisted the key in the lock. A hush descended. Sarah dropped her bag in the space beneath the stairs. 'What are you doing first?' she asked.

Alan had noticed that she had long since started to refer to their movements in this way, with questions in the second person. Not: What shall we do first. What are you doing first. Almost as though he would choose one alternative only so that Sarah could choose the other.

Reverse it, thought Alan, saying, 'I don't know. What are you gonna do?'

'Have a drink and a swim.'

'Think I'll join you. Relax.'

Sarah found this amusing. 'But you can't swim,' she said. 'You never swim.'

Alan cracked open the stiff lounge door. 'First time for everything,' he replied. 'You go through. I'll put the heating on and join you.' While moving about the house, Two bubbles, thought Alan. That's what we are. The two of them floated through the house like bubbles, occasionally brushing against one another. Alan's thoughts continued in this vein: But there are never only two bubbles in a vessel . . . Alan found himself wondering if Sarah had ever brought another man here. It wasn't far away, after all. She could have said she was going to work (or rather, could have got ready for work: they didn't talk about each other's employment, of course) and then driven here with her passenger looking at her legs half the journey.

. . . How many men had she slept with? Alan by now was drifting off to sleep, but the obsession had niggled consistently throughout the remainder of the evening. How many? He knew about the seven before he asked her to marry him - but since then? Another one? Another two? Perhaps another two a week. Two a day.

Upstairs, Alan half-emptied his bags. That is, he threw some stuff on to the bed so that it wouldn't get too creased. He also took out the flask in which he had hidden half a bottle of Jack Daniels - the half that Sarah believed he'd drunk. He unscrewed the cup; he poured a good healthy measure while asking himself why he was drinking.

Because of Sarah? Because he really didn't like swimming pools, and was scared of drowning? Because of fear for the future? Because he knew he was addicted to gambling, and that it had never really gone away?

Because he was also addicted to being drunk?

It didn't matter. He poured another.

FRIDAY

Don't talk to me about cars, mon. London she a lady, like the song. And all these cars are voodoo pins in her skin. Black Magic is it. Or maybe London she the voodoo doll and we try and kill some other city . . . Yat. I wish the damn thing would hurry up and die, mon. Give us all some peace.

\- Amstrad (from Trinidad)

1

All my pleasures are vicarious these days, thought Alan. I earn my pleasure by feeding joy first to other people. Mainly Sarah.

He knew (more than ever) that the logical solution was to end the relationship. They were no longer any good for one another: that was the simple truth of the matter. Maybe he should be with Holly after all. Surely not. A mistake, that had been.

Alan didn't know. All errors, he thought, are a question of context. The right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time. He frowned.

Perhaps it was strange that such thoughts were uppermost in his mind at this moment. True, he was in bed, where his most prolonged bouts of introspection were commonplace: but these usually occurred when he was sleeping alone, or when Sarah had already dozed off, or was reading, or ignoring him. What was happening now was an act of lovemaking between husband and wife, unpredictably enough. Alan and Sarah were sharing an increasingly infrequent intimacy. And Alan was chiding himself for thinking of other matters - of Holly, for example. Concentrate.

Sipping ruminatively on the clogged straw-head of Sarah's clitoris, however, Alan realised that his wandering mind proved his point. Vicarious pleasures. He was giving Sarah what she wanted and was content to be the supplier of her exalted gurgles. But there was not much happening for Alan. He flexed his pelvis to check on the situation. Flaccid: a sleepy snail. Sarah wouldn't be happy. But this was an act of lovemaking, as Alan now reminded himself: an act. All theatre. Sighing into the vertical pout, Alan lowered his face an inch and opened the curtains of Sarah's stage. His nervous tongue trod the boards in a choreographed dance from stage left to stage right. His plucky performer ran into the wings and climbed the invisible rigging against the backdrop. She tasted tangy.

. . . Sarah's legs were a vertical V for victory, bestirruped and kept apart by Alan's strong hands. Sarah clenched her buttocks together to push her groin further up into her husband's face. On the occasions that Sarah received oral sex, it was customarily true that she wanted her lover's entire head inside her, and this morning was no exception. Sarah didn't love Alan anymore, but she loved him performing oral sex on her. She glanced down, through the mountain pass between her breasts and across the savannah of her belly, at Alan's head. It was real life, that head, and his faceless face was the closest to pornography that she ever got with him.

In general, and broadly speaking, there were two moods that Sarah might be in during sexual congress \- with Alan. The first was a greedy, voracious set of values, or demands; they would enter their contract with athleticism, energy, and horn - in a spirit of derring-do, or mange-tout. Invariably, Sarah would lead the way through the medley of contortions, her breathy demands and suggestions always taken up with panting gusto by her waiting husband. On these occasions Alan would be apt to find himself dangling backwards over the side of the bed while Sarah nuzzled omnivorously against the base of his scrotum. However, these workouts were rarely the order of the day anymore.

The other of Sarah's moods was that of playful indulgence, as seemed to be the case right now: when it seemed as though she would be satisfied to experience the same magic trick, over and over. Thirty minutes after Alan had bowed his back to reintroduce himself to Sarah's nethers (a kiss on either cheek - mwa! \- and a more concerted acquaintance with her lips), he was still in position, his face soaking wet, Sarah's smile now the shape of a leaf. Which was fine with Alan. Thirty minutes since the beginning, and now, finally, he was erect. When her muscles had rippled against his stubble in orgasm, his lower body had warmed up.

Alan slithered his way along his wife's shining skin, pausing only to kiss her navel ring (his face felt like a Brillo pad). He entered her, as they used to say in fiction. Sarah's eyes were closed. Alan touched her face and lips with his own, sharing her scent. They writhed. Sarah gripped a handful of arse in either paw.

Establishing the thrust and rhythm of a piece of industrial machinery took a matter of seconds. There were no dainty tiptoes towards the point of his wife's desire; Alan felt invigoratingly like a bull in a china shop - or like a yob, a hooligan. He was breathing on to Sarah's dipped eyelids: ragged husks of breath. Sarah pressed the soles of her feet together behind Alan's back and said, 'Don't come!'

'What!'

She paused, and then added, 'Go south of the river . . . '

Alan dropped down one gear. 'What do you mean?' he gasped as she opened her eyes.

'Pull out,' said Sarah. Her fingertips guided his lubricated nozzle to the place where she could best explain her intentions . . .

Still mortified an entire hour later, Alan furtively asked his wife what she intended to do today. Sarah actually smiled. In fact, she looked at him as if nothing had happened: as if it was customary for him, before breakfast even, to lose a dose of semen inside her anal passage; and as if was the norm for her then to dash for the toilet to relieve herself of his gluey deposit.

'I haven't decided,' Sarah replied. 'Chill out. Read. What about you?'

'I have a meeting I have to attend, in Kings Cross,' her husband said, not entirely falsely. However, he refrained from mentioning that it was not a business meeting, no matter how much money might eventually change hands.

'Fine. What time are you going?'

'Elevenish.'

Sarah nodded, thinking, Perfect. She'd be able to make a phone call while he was out of the house, doing whatever he was going to do. 'Will you be long?'

That would of course depend on how lucky Alan got, but he couldn't say so. It was a shame, almost, that they'd come here to St Albans. Sure as eggs were eggs, Alan wouldn't be spending much of today here, with his wife. 'It could go on all afternoon,' he replied, and was silently consternated not to notice any sign of disappointment on Sarah's features. It was all over, as he reminded himself now. Their emotions all had dead batteries.

2

With Alan long out of the way, Sarah embarked on the Expedition.

'The Expedition' was how Sarah had taken to referring to every phone call she made to Hugh Bargeld. Why 'Expedition'? Because that's what finally getting through to the man really felt like: an exhausting trek up the side of a mountain, or to the North Pole. Sarah sighed and prodded in the remembered number (nowhere were its seven digits written down, and they had certainly never been left in the phone's memory) even though it was her own mobile and she paid the bill. The dialling tone buzzed: once, twice . . . Sarah cast her eyes at the heavy ashtray with its crushed, bent-double fag-butts: like a team of dead skaters on an ice-rink. 'Come on,' she said. She was in her smoking room, alone in the house. Her smoking room was not called her smoking room because it was the only place in the Hertfordshire home in which she was permitted to smoke, for she smoked absolutely everywhere. No, the smoking room was called the smoking room because it was the only room in the Hertfordshire home in which she did nothing except smoke.

'Good morning,' said Sarah, startled by someone answering the call. 'Can I speak to Hugh Bargeld, please? It's Sarah Chandler.'

'I'll see if he's available.'

Irish diddly-dee music erupted into Sarah's ear as she was put on hold. She shifted the mobile to her other hand and ear and laboriously tugged a cigarette free of its packet. Before she lit it, she flicked a switch to the left of her reclining chair. The smoking room was, more accurately, a dark and unlightable vestibule between the utility room and the swimming pool. Flicking the switch empowered an extractor fan up on the wall to remove any lingering stale smoke, although once upon a time it had been intended to suck out condensation caused by the pool or the utility room's tumble drier. In the smoking room, Sarah would often stare into the darkness and get through half a packet while drip-drying after a paddle.

The Expedition moved to Stage Two: Hugh's PA, Alice, said, 'Hugh'll be with you in a second, Ms Chandler.'

Snotty bitch, Sarah had always thought; with that faintest hint of disdain on the Ms. Nonetheless Sarah replied, 'Thanks.'

The diddly-dee returned. Sarah wondered if Alan's reason for leaving this morning was to see if she would invite anyone, but particularly Daz, to the house. That was interesting. He'd even warned her that he might be gone all afternoon, the more tempting to make Sarah's decision seem, no doubt. Maybe Alan was parked at the bottom of the road, if his exhausted car had managed to make it that far. What if he wanted to see what Daz looked like? Perhaps he was giving her the rope to hang herself. He wanted to be hurt, after all, thought Sarah. He wanted to catch her and her lover in flagrante. Sarah was tempted to call Daz up, just to keep Alan happy.

Eventually:

'Hello, darling. And what can I do for you, my sweet?' asked Hugh.

'Hi, Dad. I was just calling up to say thanks.'

'What for?'

'Beginning it all.'

There was a pause. 'Darling, you've got me,' Hugh said. 'Beginning what?'

'You know: with Al.'

'Oh Christ, I've been busy. Companies don't run themselves, I'm afraid to say. I haven't even started that. I'll get round to it today, I promise. He really is getting to be a pain in the arse, between you and me. World class. What day was it: Tuesday? He goes out for lunch, and guess what time he returns. Bloody four-thirty. Gives me all this nonsense about his car breaking down. I mean, has his car been having troubles?'

Sarah frowned. 'Well, I hate to sound like I'm sticking up for him, but the Omega has been a bit cranky of late. Not on that day though - as far as I know.'

'Well, it's irrelevant. Even if we believed the car, he came in stinking of alcohol. He'd been in the pub. Must think I'm an idiot. The sooner I get rid of him the better . . . '

'I know that.' Sarah was baffled. 'Which is why I thought you started the plan a couple of days ago. He's had some phone calls . . . ' The explanation, such as it was, took under ten minutes; but with every one of those minutes Sarah felt the lanyard that joined her to reality fray a little. The predicament she faced seemed a lamentation to the loss of reason.

'It wasn't me,' Hugh said finally. 'It's what I was going to do, as you know . . . but it wasn't me. Like I say, I was meaning to start it today.'

But if it hadn't been Hugh calling Alan, who was it? Hugh's response was unequivocal, and was delivered in the harsh tones he employed to bark out his most urgent requests. 'Maybe he's having another affair, the silly bastard. I can't imagine the circumstances, but maybe it's someone we don't even know. The husband of his new girlfriend, or something like that.'

Sarah frowned. 'Dad, don't say things like that. Not even in jest.'

'Why not? Be realistic, darling. You could divorce him. He'd support you for ever. And so would I. Just do it.'

'We've been through this a million times. It's not the money: I couldn't stand the shame. If a woman divorces her husband because of adultery, she's admitting her own part in the failure. She wasn't able to keep him happy. It's a personal thing with me. I mustn't have him unhappy - until I reveal everything.'

Hugh sniggered. 'You want to destroy him and you also want to keep him satisfied.'

'Yes, Daddy. Have you got a problem with that?' Sarah asked sharply.

'No problem at all, sweetheart,' Hugh was quick to comply. 'But I'll tell you something: despite what I just said, he better not be having an affair. Not after last time.'

'Why's that?'

'Because if he is, I'll fucking kill him.'

3

Alan's meeting? Oh, a point midway between Kings Cross and Islington, of course: the gambling den, the spieler. Alan's second home these days (would that it were). But before he could start his afternoon's enjoyment at the craps table, Alan had an equally important job to execute - at the travel agent's. Today would be the last chance he'd get of buying some tickets for their flight to Dublin tomorrow . . .

He restlessly waited for attention in the travel agent's swish environs. It was cheaper, of course, to deal directly with the airline, with EasyJet; to give his credit card details over the phone. But Alan had money in the bank and he couldn't be bothered with any of that noise. So he paid over the odds for a pretty smile and some lukewarm service instead. The flight would leave from Luton Airport at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Alan thanked her: that would be fine.

He lunched on an expensive prawn sandwich in a topless bar, and then (for further Dutch courage) he spent a tenner in on Guinness, Powers whisky and a bag of salmon crunchies. All the time knowing that the hole was but a walk away. The alcohol cemented his intentions, and en route to the spieler he stopped at a variety of cash machines by and near the Thameslink station (parking briefly but illegally on two yellow lines) and used a variety of plastic cards to withdraw from a variety of bank accounts the sum of two thousand pounds, even whistling as he motored away.

Bidding welcome to Elvis the bouncer (who, as ever, warmly greeted Alan with a matey sneer and a gruff inquiry as to health) Alan entered the spieler \- and made for the bar. Alice was on. Alan had rarely seen Alice off. As soon as she'd seen his face she'd started to pour his Guinness, for which he warmly thanked her, several minutes later (she knew better than to rush a pint of the black stuff). By one o'clock, with the afternoon just opening like a bud, an inch into only his third Guinness of the day, Alan's feet were back in the grooves that he half believed he must have worn, by now, into the carpet.

Feeling juicy and elastic, he started to play.

Time passed quickly; good luck carried him through the seconds, and then the minutes. Alan thought back to when he'd left the house, only three-and-a-smidge hours earlier. With reptile intensity he smiled - an uneven smile, a dodgy smile; it reminded at least one of the other long-standing gamblers present of something gaining heat under a microscope in the sun. Threatening to burn. He was feeling good. He was feeling proud of himself, cock-heavy. Just popping out for a few hours, love, he'd called to Sarah from the pool side. She'd been having brunch in the water: a sausage sandwich on a plate on the inflatable tray. She'd waved him goodbye but had said nothing. Hadn't even wanted to know where he was going.

It occurred to Alan now - standing before the table, a little inebriated - that most of our addictions are closely linked with our dealings with time itself. Not so much ways of killing time or spending time: addictions were ways of distorting time. Or ways of allowing us to climb outside time.

Who'd have thought, for instance, that it was three o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday. Usually, at this point in the week, Alan would be begging for the end of the day. Now, Alan had no clear comprehension of what the hands on his watch told him - because he was winning. In front of him, in notes both soggy and crisp, was a nest of cash big enough even for Sarah to roost in, the greedy wench. Rough calculations took Alan up to the seven thousand pound mark. The dice were on his side. He was hot; his head was buzzing with success and with the relays of fizzing wine that he was imbibing upon their frequent arrivals. He was winning.

Elvis had abandoned his position at the door to come over and watch a genius at work - the movement, in truth, unnecessary given that there were only five gamblers in the room. But it gave Alan some moral support.

At 3.30 Alan said, 'I'm taking a break. Recharge the batteries.'

Those who had been handed the task of curing Alan of his addiction in the first place might at least have taken some weary solace in this decision. Alan sat at the bar counting his money. Eight thousand. Six profit. Not bad; he'd had worse afternoons.

'I prolly shouldn't say this,' said Alice behind the bar. 'But I'd leave it at that if I were you. Buy your girlfriend something nice.'

Alan was tipsy but nonetheless believed his voice to be crystal clear when he said, 'I haven't got a girlfriend.'

'Well buy me something nice then.'

Alan smiled at her. 'I've got a wife instead. Well, sort of . . . '

Returning the smile Alice repeated, 'Well buy me something nice then.'

Having taken on the right amount of alcohol to distort his critical judgement, so that everything he considered had the weight of truth and veracity to it, Alan thought: Why shouldn't I? Why not? I bet she'd at least appreciate it. Oh. Unless she meant . . . oh, of course she meant . . . 'Okay. What do you want? Champagne?'

'I can't drink while I'm working.'

'Stop working,' said Alan. 'Let's get something to eat. What time do you finish?' Alan's heart had sunk. Alice was simply being friendly.

'Eight.'

'Eight tonight. Fucking Ada, that's a long shift.'

Alice shrugged. 'Eight hours. Pretty standard. It's working through the night I can't stand.'

Determined to give the possibility another try, Alan said, 'Why don't we go to Dublin tomorrow?' He was brave and moneyed-up.

'Dublin? Why Dublin?'

'It's a beautiful city. Come with me \- tomorrow. I've already got the tickets.'

'You just told me you had a wife,' Alice protested.

'In a sense. In name only.'

'Meaning what?'

'She's whoring around. I've been putting off buying her a ticket all week, and you know, I've just realised why, talking to you. Sss-because I'm scared she's gonna turn it down.' Alan held up a smooth-skinned palm. 'Just listen. You see, I buy her a pressie every week - but I don't think she'll want to come with me to Dublin. I don't remember even seeing her wear the earrings I got her on Saturday.' He thought for a few seconds. 'No, not once that I can recall. So why don't you come with me? You can pretend to be Sarah; they won't check on an internal flight. I don't think. I'll pay for everything; it's all my treat. Just say you'll come.'

Alice was smiling again. 'It's a tempting offer, Alan, but I think you're drunk.'

'Drunk and rich.' Alan fanned his winnings like a magician with his cards.

'You haven't even asked if I'm married or got a boyfriend.'

'I don't need to,' Alan told her. 'You started flirting before I did. And that's okay. It's just Dublin. I'm not assuming anything else. Your company: that's all. That's all, I swear . . . Just say you will.'

4

'Group' was what Sarah (and other aficionados) called scenes in pornography which involved three or more principal players. The Lesbionic Woman, which Sarah slotted now into the VCR's rectangular mouth, was Heavy Group. The title itself was somewhat misleading in that it had suggested to Sarah mainly girl-on-girl. But Sarah was pleased to view this particular scene, in which the principal heroine lived up to her nickname. The film was sixty minutes in. Sarah was watching one of the standard one-girl-two-men positions: she on all fours, one kneeling behind, one angling his way into her mouth . . . They had a rethink. One lay on his back; the woman mounted him; the second guy entered her anus. All of which would have been fine. But then the tone changed abruptly: another male performer from the first scene walked on. Even for the erotic arts (where logical behaviour was rarely maintained as a premium) this was something of a non-sequitur. The new arrival had no connection with this part of the plot; how had he found his way here? He'd followed his nose . . . Legs arched like a horseshoe, he plugged into her face, forcing the woman to bAlance on one arm in order to curve her spine upwards. Three-on-one was relatively rare: for Sarah it was a refreshing approach. But it didn't stop there. Another guy from earlier on and another one whom Sarah had never seen before walked into the shot. It was like a curtain call . . .

Let's be realistic, thought Sarah - even as the valiant actress (here was suffering for your art) gripped each of the new members. It had become a single unit, wriggling only minutely, like a multi-limbed and ugly jelly-creature from the sea.

Oh Jesus, thought Sarah suddenly; this is one of those films . . . Working in video she heard tale from time to time of films in which acts of inordinate aggression took place after those of eroticism; in which sex, to all extents and purposes, was the foreplay to violence. They were going to fuck her and then beat her up. For the film.

Sarah's fear was unfounded. Fifteen minutes later the scene ended with the Lesbionic Woman - this factotum of Adult; this cock of all walks, in a sense - making sure that all the damp squibs became ignited. The rent-a-pole actors moved away from one another in territorial disdain, leaving the Lesbionic Woman - the jack-off of all trades - a gulping, bespattered wreck, and a new heroine for Sarah Chandler.

Sarah's muscles clenched hard on her fingers, and warmth volcanoed up the front of her body, towards her breasts. And just in time; the film was ending. It had taken her ages. For some reason, doing it at home simply wasn't the same. But there was more to her sloth than that, as she well knew. The first time she'd felt orgasm approach, an unbidden and unwelcome (to say the least) thought of Holly had entered her mind. And that's enough to put you off your greens, Sarah thought. She'd had to start again, from the lowest rung on the orgasmic ladder.

Not that it was surprising for Holly to be on Sarah's mind. Tomorrow was the day when Holly would discover that her affair with Alan had been rumbled; that, in fact, there had been no length of time in which the affair had been un-rumbled. The information had been there from the start. Sarah was scatty, but Alan was not; when Sarah first began to suspect Alan she made a point of going through his belongings, as one would. If she'd been able to find his mobile phone invoices, she'd have seen several finger-pointing calls to Holly's number in Yorkshire, which might have started Sarah sniffing harder, but were actually proof of nothing per se. (As it happened, he'd called her mainly from the office.) But the most recent invoices at the time had not been then (nor were they now) with the rest of his similar paperwork. Sarah knew that he'd either hidden them or destroyed them; and from her point of view, either was fine - either suggested his culpability, his guilt, his shame. Or at least his participation.

Then there was the mileage Alan had covered in the Omega, during that time. Sure, Alan tried to cover his tracks by saying that he had meetings here, there and everywhere. The problem was, when Sarah made notes of his mileage readings. And what do you know - every time he came back from a business trip, he had driven the same number of miles. So Sarah had tested him? Where was your meeting? It was in Liverpool/

Leeds/ Southampton/ on Venus. It was all a lie.

And they thought they'd fooled harebrained little Sarah.

Truth would muscle in tomorrow, for sure.

5

The afternoon was growing old, humpbacked, and heavy.

Alan bodypopped his way into the driving seat of his car. Within a second of parking his heavy buttocks on the upholstery, his boxer shorts relinquished their hold on his right testicle. It popped out to the side, causing discomfort, his scrotum stretched like a tarpaulin held out to catch the suicide freefaller. Once more Alan reprimanded himself: never drive in boxer shorts. How many more times?

He engaged ignition. And then finally, once and for all, what had almost happened on a dozen occasions finally passed. Alan was almost relaxed about it all.

The silverfish Omega's engine blew.

As has been noted elsewhere, Alan's job had emerged from nowhere - at least as far as Alan was concerned. He had been telephoned by a headhunter. Mr Chandler? Your name has got onto our files . . . Did he want the job? Twist his arm. Within seconds of hanging up on the headhunter, he had been trying to connect with his future employer, a Mr Hugh Bargeld. Astonishingly (in retrospect) Bargeld had taken the call. Why not come in for a chat? Although entitled to a company car, Alan had opted for the allowance instead and had kept his own vehicle. This was not the shrewd business move he'd imagined it to be at the time. For a long time the Omega had needed an overhaul: a few weeks in bed, with hot-water bottles and aspirins, and round-the-clock fuss. As we know, Alan had long since resolved to take it somewhere to be fixed \- as soon as the power problem got any worse: when the fucker would no longer start. Auto-ennui was what the Omega had been suffering from for a while; but auto-catatonia was its most recent development. And Alan was almost relaxed.

For two seconds. And then the following occurred:

'Fuck!' Alan screamed at the steering wheel. 'Work, you vicious sod!'

But he gave up. Two twists of the key in the ignition had produced a watery retching sound; but after that - nothing. The car was a shell: it was official.

Alan locked it up (while wondering if he should even bother) and stared at it for a full minute, noodling on what to do. The first disqualification he made was for the idea of going back into the spieler and asking the sobbing punters for a hand. Having just robbed a few of them blind, the audacity of requesting a push for the jump-start might be construed as taking the piss. It was possible. Gamblers being, as part of their culture, touchy, hair-triggered individuals. Does anyone know anything about cars? Perhaps he'd better not. Buy a new one, you cheap bastard, he heard someone say in his ear.

Abandonment was not such a bad idea. Hang on though. What if Sarah found out where he'd broken down? She wasn't stupid (she was considerably less stupid than Alan believed). The best thing seemed to be to keep it safe until such a time as it could be towed away. Alan thought of Elvis. With a bound he was back in the building, ascending.

'Can't keep you away, can we,' said the jovially unpredictable thug.

Alan explained in his most urban lexicon. Elvis, nodding, noisily drew in breath in grim rumination. 'Not a prob,' he asserted finally. 'There's a coupla Paki lads we pay. They make sure the cars are A1. They just hang about sniffing glue half the time, but they're big. You go near em without a smile on your face, you're fucking mental. I'll have em look after your jam jar, no worries. Fifty quid.'

Now Alan had to phone a towing service. Get to the flat first, he told himself; he wanted somewhere comfortable, with the Yellow Pages out in front of him. Fine. Alan's choice between walking, using public transport, or getting a taxi - took a considerably shorter time to make than it took to write this sentence. On the pavement he used the mobile. The taxi was with him in ten minutes; the drive through traffic was problem-free . . . and the Islington flat welcomed him back with a contented sigh.

Believing that he'd need to be in full control of his faculties, Alan brewed strong coffee in the cafetiere. Then he opened the drawer of the telephone table and removed the Yellow Pages. A spark inside his chest was ignited; Alan remembered what he'd find inside these pages even before he found it: the business card for one Darren Sandford of Bible Street Cars. The business card that he'd discovered in the back pocket of Sarah's jeans. The Yellow Pages - where Alan had placed the card on Wednesday.

Fuck the coffee. Alan headed straight for the cupboard in the kitchen that held (quite easily due to recent consumption) the booze. He poured himself half a tumbler of Jack. It went down as easily as rain down a gutter, so he poured another; he gingerly sipped. Now or never. Alan picked up the telephone.

The dialling tone rang four times.

'Hello? Bible Street Cars. Can I help you?' It was a voice that Alan didn't recognise. He'd been conscious of the fact that the man who answered might have sounded like the one who had phoned him at work.

'I'm . . . uh. I've broken down. Do you do a towing service?'

'We do indeed. Whereabouts are you, mate?'

'Home in Islington. But the car's towards Kings Cross.'

'No problems; minimum rate. Any idea what's wrong with it?'

'Power problems for ages,' Alan replied.

'Okay, could you give me some details. What it is; where it's parked. Or do you wanna come round? We'll get in the van and you can take me there.'

'Let's do that.'

'Right you are. What's your name, mate?'

'Alan Turner. And you are?'

'Just call me Daz.'

'I'll see you soon, Daz,' Alan finished, feeling queasy as hell. Get a grip. He thoughtfully rinsed Jack Daniels around his mouth. Better brush my teeth; don't want to show up smelling like a brewery. And then I'd better find out where to go.

Ten minutes later, having consulted his A to Z (which he had started to refer to, inexplicably, as the A to Zee), Alan began his staggered walk to Bible Street.

How was he going to play it? At first he was going to play it cool - unless Sarah was actually there. Alan couldn't see how she could be, but that was how affairs worked: by playing on the cuckolded party's inability to accept the implausible. Conceivably she could have caught a train from St Albans and then used public transport for a breakneck, hell-for-leather tryst, down in one of those pits under the cars . . . This thought led briefly to another one: a happier one. Aged seven or eight, a friend of similar years had told him about the mechanic's pit in his father's garage: on certain nights (when the moon was full, possibly) the pit became a tunnel to Narnia. The friend's name was Charlie. That was right - he'd joined the Salvation Army Band as a bassoonist. The last Alan had heard, Charlie had been opening a line-dancing club in Derbyshire with his wife. His own wife. Not Sarah. Damn . . . The thought of Sarah came back, unbidden. Some grease-monkey had his oily hands on her breasts while he rogered her soundly from behind. She was making her familiarly flattering noises. Maybe down in the pit, or perhaps she was now - even now - sitting on the bonnet of the car. That was fairly standard fare in certain magazines. It was risk appeal, or the buzz of incongruity: the model, naked, in an easily-discoverable location. Sarah was certainly one for taking chances when it came to sexual gratification. Alan knew nothing of her onanistic tendencies in the video shop, but as he walked he recalled, with embarrassment, a time in Cambridge, at the flowering of their courtship, when sex had been imperative - a matter of life and death - and they'd strolled around the streets, the market, the university buildings, holding hands and carrying bags of purchased books and CDs. They had become uncontrollably lustful on the drive back. Alan had looked forward to ripping Sarah's clothes off in the hallway. But Sarah had wanted it sooner than that: in a field. Reluctantly frightened, Alan had pulled on to some farmer's sun-ripened property . . . It was the first time he had been impotent with her. What he'd placed on her tongue was warm and greasy, like a Chinese spring roll left too long at room temperature. It hadn't worked. And now perhaps, Sarah had found a lover who could perform at the drop of a hat, anywhere at all.

Feeling nauseous, curious . . . excited? . . . Alan entered the premises: Bible Street Cars. He was met by a balding man in his forties who was inspecting an exhaust.

'Help you, mate?'

Wrong voice. 'Are you Daz?' asked Alan, however, just in case.

'Nah. He's inside. What's the prob?'

'I spoke to him on the phone. My car's broken down. Daz said we could go and pick it up. Tow it in.'

'Right you are. He'll be out in a sec.'

. . . The following minutes were hard for Alan. It was like waiting for the headmaster to open the study door to be summoned in. Or like waiting for the interview that you already know is for a job well beyond your aptitudes. As with both of these examples, the difficult factor was owning up to personal failure. This, and accepting that what followed was your punishment.

Finally, out he came. As sleek as a ferret, wearing art-deco overalls; the young face, the twinkling eyes, the rugged mop worn mad-professor-style to conceal the inlets of hair recedence: Daz.

'Gentleman here to see you,' said Roy.

'I'm Alan Turner. We spoke on the phone.'

Daz approached down the anorexic aisle between two broken hulks of vehicles. 'Yeah, nice to meet you. Shall we go right away?'

'Fine by me,' said Alan. Pigeons were pecking his gut; it felt like chicken fat had got caught in his throat. Not only had Sarah gone for a younger model (which he might have expected) but she had gone for somebody who shared none of Alan's characteristics. Quite palpably (or so Alan thought) Daz was an emotional cripple of subnormal intelligence. But he was also as thin as a fire-fighter's pole and he spoke in mutated Estuary English, where the letter T was favoured with suspicion. Why, Sarah? Alan asked in the hollow bowl of his own skull. Then he addressed a similar question to Daz: Why Sarah? Why was Daz doing what he was doing with Sarah?

Husband and paramour ambled fifty metres down the road to the tow truck. It was a relic from another age, an ironic touch given its function. It was an octogenarian thespian, still trying to play the romantic lead. Rusty stubble skirted the vehicle, as though it had been dampened and partially dipped in a factory vat of sugary sherbet.

They left Bible Street to a gunshot of engine-mismanagement: a bullet of soot which exploded from the exhaust pipe. The comedy was blacker than ever, in Alan's opinion. The traffic was tolerably awful, which was an unexpected bonus. It was certainly much better than being intolerably awful. Daz thought of Amstrad: that Mount Versuvius of unreignable vehicle-loathing. Had he been present in the truck he'd already be doing his nut.

'So what is it you do then, mate?' Daz inquired out of professional politure.

'I buy the rights to merchandise characters from children's TV. You know: sheets with Lord Galacticon all over them. Or pencils with the Snuggle-Ups. That sort of thing.' He left a pause. Then: 'Does that sound familiar?' asked Alan.

'Sorry?'

'I work near Liverpool Street . . . No? I just thought she might have mentioned what I did for a living. I was wrong. My mistake.'

Daz could feel his scalp tingling. 'Who?' he said, although it came out as oo.

'You're perfectly aware who,' Alan told him. 'Keep your eyes on the road, Daz.' Some of his courage as a gambler was returning, if indeed it had gone anywhere in the last hour. For wasn't this a gamble as well, of sorts? Of course it was. 'The bit about Turner being my surname - that was a lie, I'm afraid.'

Along this road, this throttled thoroughfare, this car-dorm, there was absolutely nowhere to park. A parking space? Here? You must be joking. But Daz parked anyway, or double-parked I should say - his meat-free left palm descending on the red button that engaged the emergency lights. The tow truck and its ultimate, undignified infamy: a nervous breakdown. How people would snigger. Even Alan, numb and crawling (seemingly) with hatching insects, inside and out, thought the irony delicious.

Daz twisted in his seat. 'Do you wanna tell me what this is about?'

'The question is what we're gonna do about it,' Alan replied.

'About what?' Daz, as ever, was logically ensnared in a spirit of stringent denial.

Alan pretended not to have heard him. 'I say this. I say you leave my wife alone and the two of us will see how to mend the marriage. You play no further part. I can't say fairer than that, can I? And you say?'

Daz sniffed. 'I say: get the fuck out of my truck.'

But Alan's courage . . . well, it knew no bounds by now. 'You've got work to do, pal. There's a dead car half a mile from here.'

'Get some other knob to do it. Fuck off out of here.'

Alan was almost grinning. 'It's amazing how discovery affects different people in different ways,' he said. 'I thought you might be saying sorry by now. How odd of me. Listen: here's the deal. I'll give you a thousand pounds in cash if you agree never to speak to Sarah again. Or see her. And especially, have sex with her. What do you say? I'm perfectly serious.'

'I don't doubt it.' Daz sighed. This was where the pretence broke down. 'Look, mate, I don't know you and I got nothing against you. Sarah's never talked about you and I've never asked. I really don't think she started it with me to get back at you. But you're gonna have to accept something's gone wrong . . . '

'Now it's time to see if Sarah and I can fix it. I'm not angry with you,' Alan lied. 'I'm not even particularly angry with her. But it's time it all stopped. Okay? Now let's go and get my car. I really don't think your governor'll be too happy if you throw away decent work.'

The rest of the journey passed wordlessly. Hitching the Omega to the tow-truck, similarly, occasioned no utterance from either party.

It was Alan who eventually broke the silence.

'You take the car back to Bible Street,' he said. 'And give my proposition some thought. A thousand pounds. You can bet your arse I can afford it. And you can bet your arse I can afford to make life tricky for you if you refuse. Are we in the same chapter?'

'I understand you, Alan,' Daz replied, 'but I don't speak to threats.'

'You don't have to. Just nod your fucking head and get out of here. I've got things to do today.' Alan's hands were in his pockets; he felt like a world leader.

Daz neither spoke nor nodded his head.

'It's perfectly simple,' Alan continued. 'Tell me you get what I'm saying. You go away, fix the car, and give me a ring when it's ready. I collect it, pay you whatever, and give you a thousand pound bonus.'

The other man replied, 'I'll fix your car but I wanna talk to Sarah first.'

Alan shook his head. 'That's not the deal.'

'Then fuck your deal.'

'You've got till the car's ready. After that it's hunting season.' Alan smiled and turned his back, not needing a ride where he was going - because he was only going up the road. He felt lucky. And there was really only one place to go when he was feeling lucky. Singing in his head (which is the only place to sing if you are in public in a city, otherwise people think you're mad) he was floating on a cloud of compressed hydrogen, he felt so light and dreamy. Jubilant. He was walking back to the spieler \- to speak to Elvis again. Not to gamble. For once (and he didn't expect it to last very long) Alan really did not want to try winning. He wouldn't want to spit on fate's blue suede shoes. He wasn't thick. He had other things on his mind. And when mental furniture is rearranged so that an addiction is hidden (swept under the carpet) the new addition to the room has to be one hell of a showpiece. Something flash; black and shiny, with electronic displays. No, no. Something like an antique or an heirloom. What had entered Alan's head was the concept of revenge: the oldest motivation in town.

And Elvis the bouncer could help.

6

The day was drawing to a close, although to all intents and purposes it had given up the struggle hours earlier, the sky inking over.

Without turning on the pool lights, Sarah dived into the water, naked. Having decided on an early night, she had fallen asleep quickly but had awoken after barely an hour, feeling in need of a splash. She'd had a bad dream about Alan, and swimming through the darkness was as good a way as any of ridding her mind of the sticky tatters of nightmare. In the water she felt at home. Knowing that Alan was sleeping soundly in bed, most likely with the covers tangled around his limbs, she would swim to forget him; to forget everything . . . except for Daddy. She thought of Hugh. The pool, in the darkness, seemed disconnected from the house, and Sarah was floating, being his helpless one year-old daughter, in a sense. Ah, to have no responsibilities! to hold Hugh's hand!

A few lengths completed, Sarah stopped in the shallow end, standing up straight. The water came up to her waist. She pushed back her hair and shivered at the cool air on her skin. And she listened to the hiss of silence and the lick of water on tiles.

Beyond the glass was another planet.

Suddenly Sarah's breath caught in a ball in her chest. Then she gasped . . . No, it couldn't have been, could it? She stopped moving. Squinted. She was sure she had seen movement in the garden beyond the pool house. A cat? Sarah frowned. Unless her eyes had tricked her (quite possible, what with the booze she'd polished off and the chlorine her orbs had claimed from the water) the shadow had been larger.

Moving closer to the side of the pool convinced Sarah. Somebody had climbed over the wall and into the garden. Sarah didn't know if she was more frightened or furious, but it took only a second to learn that fear had won the struggle. As quietly as she could, she lay down on the steps and slid nearer the wall tiles of the pool.

The silhouette had walked up to the glass. Had he seen her? What did he want? Acutely aware of her nudity, Sarah covered her breasts with her arms. He couldn't fail to see her in the dark water, could he? Her skin (the pallor of which she'd often been proud, as a mark of distinction from her bronzed friends) seemed a curse. Wouldn't her skin be virtually luminous?

The intruder was cupping a hand against the glass. He was wearing head-to-toe black, with some sort of mask, scarf or Balaclava helmet obscuring his face.

If I scream, Sarah thought, what would happen? Would he run or get angry? And would she be able to scream loud enough to wake Alan anyway? Would he respond quickly enough? Would the neighbours get the wrong idea?

Then all thought ceased. The intruder was moving.

Sarah's scalp was freezing; she felt her hair floating on the surface and thought of kelp. Her lungs were aching with held breath; her eyes were burning. If only I'd turned on some lights, she thought; perhaps the visitor would not have dared get so close. Sarah listened to the continued lapping of the water, hoping it wouldn't disturb the peeping tom. She was being as still as she could be, dimly aware of the cramp gaining solidity in her left calf.

The intruder walked the length and breadth of the poolhouse, his hand and masked face pressed up against the glass.

And then he turned away and walked back into the garden.

Sarah watched as he was swallowed up by the gloom. When he'd slipped out of sight, Sarah remained in the water, shivering. Perhaps her eyes were deceiving her and he hadn't really left. What if he was behind her, as impossible as that was? She had her goosefleshed arms wrapped around her body as tightly as she could. She squeezed herself without mercy.

Then she heard a noise. At the sound \- like that of a gun's safety catch being released - Sarah shrieked. She let go of the hold on herself and began hitting the surface of the water, even after she'd registered the sound to be a door opening inside the house.

Sarah saw movement out of the corner of her eye. A lunging shadow. How the hell had the intruder got into the house? Had he attacked Alan?

Alan.

Sarah twisted herself in the water. Her husband was by the poolside, saying something to her with an inquisitive look on his face; but Sarah couldn't make him out through her tears and released panic.

All she was aware of was holding her arms up to her protector, expecting to be saved. Without his help she would not be able to get out of the water. She was so relieved when he helped her.

7

Elvis checked off his equipment requirements as he placed objects into his black leather gym bag. Sports shorts, trainers, t-shirt, towel, combined shampoo and conditioner, crowbar, brick. Good. Whistling he left the bedsit. It was a dodgy area he lived in. On his travels he thanked some higher power for the childhood he'd lived through: it had made him what he was. Yes, that was him: the skinny kid, with the point of the penknife tickling his Adam's apple, arm outstretched to hand over his bus- and lunch-money. That was him, face down in a puddle. That was him, last to be picked at games . . . But then, that too was him, only two years on: how he'd grown! Elvis was a living endorsement for the benefits of fanatical exercise. Oh, the newspaper routes he'd run! The boxes he'd humped down the local market! The steroids he'd imbibed. Elvis had started to box at the age of thirteen. What he'd lacked in technical cunning he had more than compensated for with dirty tricks and savage . . . what's the word? Savage what? Oh, let's just say savagery. A simple word for a simple truth. Those years had made him the genial thug that he was today. All cause and effect, in Elvis's opinion.

Tough streets. Poor area. Ambition a soiled commodity, hung out after being washed; but a little greyer and harder to clean after every disappointment. Elvis scanned the road ahead. He felt as safe as houses. He was the sort of ruffian that other people were scared of; he had no cause for worry. Even the trio of Crack-hungry brothers on the fire escape there: even they gave Elvis a look of suspicion and awed tenderness instead of the cruel appraisals awarded to every other passer-by, even with their soul-holes and ragged appetites.

Stopping only at the offy for a welterweight bottle of Lucozade, Elvis journeyed on foot to the gymnasium. He owned no car. Once he had, but he'd twisted it up like a used Coke can one New Year's Eve. He hadn't been drunk - because he didn't drink. But he'd been momentarily confused by a dog running across the road. Cars? Better off without them. He built the walk to the gym into his exercise regime.

Iron was pumped. Vigorously. Elvis checked on his muscular progress in any one of a million mirrors. Before long, he resembled nothing more than a rhino, post-rut. He did not work through the pain barrier because he had yet to locate it. Pain schmain. He left the gym refreshed, short hair spiky, with his under-the-arches as talcum-powdered as a fresh forensic fingerprint.

And now? Now nothing; now home. But tomorrow, at this time, there would be work to be done.

8

'I can't believe you're serious. You think I imagined it?'

'I didn't say that,' Alan protested calmly. 'I said it's possible that you were tired - it was the middle of the night - and you dozed off for a few minutes in the water. And when you woke up it was still dark, and you couldn't tell you'd been dreaming.'

'Alan, I wasn't dreaming.'

Alan nodded his head. 'We'll go to the police first thing in the morning.' He smiled. 'How's that?'

It was the best that Sarah could hope for, yet the offer didn't satisfy her. That wasn't Alan's fault. Nothing he could do, after all, short of phoning the law right now. And for what? To have them come round and say there's not much we can do? Sarah would rather save herself the embarrassment. The lights in the house were now on (she had personally seen to that) and the burglar wouldn't return. She was starting to calm down, thanks to a few stiff brandies and a couple of aspirins. She was being more logical. Nothing more could be done tonight, if at all. Seeing the placatory reaction of an imagined lawman - the stated obviousness that the police are very busy, that there are many actual burglaries every night - made Sarah have second thoughts about reporting the experience. Wouldn't they tell her she'd been lucky nothing had been stolen or damaged (apart from a few flowers)? Wouldn't they take prints of the shoe marks made in the flower-bed soil and say that the shoes worn are sold at every shoeshop, in this precise size? And wouldn't they warn her not to swim naked, even in her own pool?

'Can I have another brandy?' she asked, meaning: Will you fetch me one? 'I won't sleep any other way tonight.'

Alan stood up. 'Okay? Anything else?'

Sarah thought about the offer for a second. 'Do you know what I'd like? I'd like to hear some jazz.' She was thinking of Daz, and his collection of CDs.

'Okay,' Alan replied, a little confused. 'I've got some Kenny G somewhere.' As he rattled through a drawer of cassettes he added, 'Maybe we should get a guard dog.'

'Seriously?'

'Semi-seriously.' Alan's back straightened and he turned with a tape in his hand. A silly grin was plastered to his face.

Sarah said, 'Feeding it might be a problem. Or should we leave it here with tin-opener.'

'You don't have to be snide.' He actually sounded wounded. 'You can pay people to look after dogs while you're not around. Someone could arrive every morning and night, give it some exercise.'

Sarah was shaking her head. 'But you hate dogs, Alan. You're against them.'

'Well, I was until my wife was threatened.'

'I haven't actually been threatened.'

'Spied upon then. What do you think?'

'I'm not sure.'

Alan hardly heard her. 'I want to protect you,' he said. His argument was in full flow. 'I won't let him do anything.'

'But he hasn't said he'll do anything.' Sarah knew, however, that she was playing the game wrong. If she carried on she'd be accused of fighting for the other side. By the virulence rouging his earlobes and cheeks she could tell that Alan was finding her reticence beguiling. 'Do you want a dog?' she added quickly.

'It's not a question of wanting . . . '

'You just need me to approve, don't you?'

9

I used the analogy of a spider's web, many pages ago, and I ask you now: Can you see the comparison? These people are all insects, you understand. All incarcerated in sticky strands that do not seem formidable until they are way up close.

I don't mean to be cruel. It must seem as though I'm reaching for any despondency with which to strike these people; but that's not so. You know them as well as I do. I'm not the spider. I'm the botanist.

So who's the spider?

Let's say that everyone is now in the web. Who will be eating whom?

SATURDAY (a.m.)

Animals with dead limbs try to drag themselves home; but what does it mean when persons with wounds who are home - who are in London \- cannot find help for their afflictions? The mad people of London \- that's why they're mad: because no one would heal them, or even dry their tears.

\- Alan Chandler

1

The music of the spheres is a metaphysical conceit. The deal goes something like this, if memory serves. He who is pure of thought and deed is eligible to eavesdrop on some ethereal karaoke. He can hear the angels gently singing. The sound is always pleasant. Heaven might (or might not: how should I know) contain whole regiments of astral diaspora, but there are no pub singers up there. If you think you're in with a chance of tuning in to Sphere FM at some point in the future, don't worry: there'll be no 'Danny Boys' or fortnight-long versions of 'The Way to San Jose.' No. Just tinklings and vibrations and sighings: the music of the spheres.

Of course this notion has its required opposite. The yang to the angels' yin, unless it's the other way around. How best to describe this din? Let's ask Alan . . .

Calling Alan.

Can you hear us, Al?

Understandably Alan was in bed. It was yet to reach five a.m. But he was awake, or at least 'awake': semiconscious - like a car crash victim, post collision, waiting for the body to confess how bad the damage is. In fact, Alan was doubly awake, sporting as he was a caduceus of an erection - an unforgivable and inexplicable ironic touch, given his condition.

Sarah was beside him. Well, she was currently occupying the same square mattress. The truth was, she was as far away from her husband as it was possible to get without falling to the floor. And both sleepers had their own allocation of sheets and blankets. As was her wont, Sarah's were piled on top of her as though she had been buried in a shallow grave. Sarah was a junky for warmth, especially at night - and increasingly so, in Alan's opinion, as the years went by.

Alan was listening to her breathing, among the other things that the waveband his head had fixed on was forcing him to hear. These sounds went something like this: a bus sneezing in air-brake application; sheets snapping and billowing on a washing line in a high wind; the high wind itself. What else did Alan have? Dragster races: brief roarings of engines. His own blood pumping. A gas works, or more modernly perhaps, a nuclear power station's churning endeavours. A feeding frenzy over some felled wildebeest: the gnashes and tears and gimmes. A gamut of sounds - none of which anybody else present in the room would have been able to hear. Sounds engineered by his own brain. Worse than shopping centre musak: a nice bit of piped 'Uptown Girl'. Worse than that.

The music of the beers: a punishment. For Alan Chandler was chronically hungover. This did not happen very often, but it was easy to discern how it had this time. Oh my God, Alan thought, remembering his performance of yesterday afternoon and evening. In horror, cemented into his fearsome insomnia, Alan now did something that he'd long since forgotten it was his perfect right to do. He turned to his wife for comfort.

There had been a time, naturally enough, when the option of waking her to confess his fears had been real. It was no longer so. Alan watched Sarah and wondered when that privilege had been rescinded upon. He took what he could from the sight, sounds and smell of his sleeping beauty. The sleeping beauty who was no longer his. Alan wondered when happiness had packed its bags and left home. But that was the problem with relationship reappraisal: you remembered it all wrong. Got things in their incorrect chronological order. Because Alan had been blind to their marriage's insufficiencies, it was impossible for him to readjust now, especially here in bed in the space of thirty seconds. Why couldn't he be like other men and sleep longer when he'd had a skinful? The time was now ten past five. Jesus.

What was Sarah dreaming of? Alan pretty much took if for granted that it wouldn't be him. So would it be Daz? At least that fucking nonsense was over. But Alan felt guilty. Alan felt like a dishcloth. He was grey and constantly wringable. Wondering why he felt so guilty, Alan cast his mind back to the previous evening. It was a painful path to tread, like a walk over hot coals. Suddenly Alan felt very itchy. The horror of the weekly shopping loomed large in his mind. Dampening the resultant panic attack with the thought that at least they were doing something potentially nice together - going to Dublin on the three o'clock flight - Alan's guilt flared up with the intensity of fever.

'Oh no,' he actually said aloud.

Sarah stirred as Alan's heart stopped. The two events were not connected. Although Alan was looking at her naked back, Sarah had slipped away from the noose of his thoughts. He wasn't feeling guilt specifically because of her - not because of what he might have said last night, nor even because he had practically forgiven her for the affair when logic told him he should hate her and hurt her for it. No. He was feeling guilty about the gambling, though good about the win. Most of all, he was feeling guilty about asking Alice, the barmaid at the spieler, to go to Dublin with him. What the hell was I thinking? he asked himself.

Alan looked at the clock.

5.25.

Mouth's as dry as Ghandi's flipflop, he thought. To a queasying shift of blood in his head, Alan stood. The room settled, but Alan's stomach didn't. He thought it frightening that his head wasn't actually hurting. Had he sold his soul to the Devil to get out of this discomfort? He walked to the door in his boxer shorts. With his fingers on the door handle, he heard something utterly unexpected - even in the realm of quacking ducks and lumberjack chainsaws over which his head had crowned him king. He heard a real sound. He heard his wife break wind. Out of curiosity Alan turned - to see if the raspberry would awaken her. It didn't. He took an odd pleasure in the fact that he wouldn't feel obliged to explain why he was staring at her, and that he knew something about her that she didn't even know herself. Racking his brains as he finished a pint of diluted lemon squash, Alan tried to recall if he'd ever heard Sarah fart before. He couldn't recall a single occasion. Extraordinary. Not even in the early days, when she'd left the bathroom door open half the time. The only occasion, back then, that would necessitate both a closing and a locking of the bathroom door had been what Alan referred to as her 'monthlies'. Nowadays Sarah closed and locked the door if she was painting her nails, or dabbbing antiseptic on her navel if the ring there became inflamed.

Would the supermarket be open yet? Alan wondered. He could do the dreaded shopping while he formulated a plan - before Sarah stirred. Walk there; get a taxi back. Bit of exercise. Customarily he gave his wife her Saturday present at around nine-thirty, and there'd be plenty of time to do that. It would mean they could set off for Dublin earlier. Not that the plane would leave any earlier; the flight would still leave from Luton at three, but they could have a drink in the bar or whatever.

Alan's coat was over the back of a chair. He checked his wallet, as he hoped his wife had not. It resembled a doner kebab. Stuffed as it was with corrugated fifties and well-thumbed tens, there was little chance of closing it until a drastic draining had taken place. Christ, if Sarah had had a snoop, she'd know. She would know that he was gambling again. And that could not happen. So it was settled: Alan would go out at half past seven, deposit the cash somewhere (the cash he was now counting) and do the shopping before Tesco got too packed. Alan found more money in his coat pockets and counted that too. However . . .

Funny, he thought, meaning strange. Frowning he counted the whole lot again. Bit short. Let's see. He'd started with two grand and he'd made six grand profit. He'd bought drinks for the five other gamblers and soft drinks for Elvis, Vincent and Alice. Twenty quid, or thereabouts. A cab to the station. Alan couldn't remember how much that had been. A tenner, tops. Then a pie and chips at a fried food place around the corner - a takeaway joint coincidentally no more than five hundred metres from one of Sarah's main suppliers of pornographic films. The food: a few pounds. The train ticket to St Albans . . .

By Alan's rough tally he seemed to have lost one thousand five hundred pounds. That couldn't be right. What had he forgotten?

Even as he was fisting his trouser pockets back in the bedroom he admitted the truth to himself. The noise in his head got worse.

So it hadn't been a dream. He had gone through with the plan after all.

2

Sarah knew she should just say it. Say: I don't think we should carry on with the presents every week. It would bring a part of their marriage to an end; and the rest would surely follow. Perhaps the refusal of kindness (or was it Alan's desperation) would be the only way out. Maybe that was what it took: brute ruthlessness.

On occasion Sarah would imagine conversations with her husband. In this dream she would loquaciously denounce their sham of a love:

And guess what, Alan. He doesn't buy me presents, and yet I still want to be with him. Try to work that out!

Referring to no one in particular.

But she would never say it. Sarah hated Alan for his affair, but she hated herself for being too weak to act upon her angry feelings. They prickled.

What's wrong with me? asked Sarah. She lifted her knees up so that the heels of her feet touched the backs of her legs. She was naked, warm, on top of the covers, and listening out for Alan's movements. I've got a husband terrified of losing me; two homes; a Jag that goes; my own business; I've got a good body and no eating disorders. I don't drink all that much. I can make a man want to fuck me. I've got money.

But no children.

Maybe that was it: as simple as that. Sarah didn't want children, though. And neither did Alan. Alan . . .

Where was he?

'Alan?' Sarah called. Feeling something familiar but ancient - concern for her husband - Sarah walked into the living room, nude. The previous night he'd been bollocksed on Pina Colladas, and who knew what else. Say he'd drowned on his sick, or in the pool, or had fallen over and bumped his head . . .

She saw what he'd left on the table: the envelope. Opening it up she found his letter - the elegant ski slopes of his script - and two tickets for the three o'clock flight from Luton to Dublin.

'Fuck,' she said quietly. Sarah sat down at the table, wondering what to do next. She couldn't go today. This Saturday was important! This Saturday was the culmination of what she'd planned and worked for.

Today she was going to hand a present back to Alan. Decision made, she dressed quickly without showering first. She wanted to get down to the police station and make a report about the intruder early so that the rest of the day would be free. Because Alan had gone out in the Omega, Sarah called a taxi firm and was taken to the station in style.

She was informed by a young black female officer that the precinct was comparatively quiet this morning. To Sarah it looked chaotic. Everywhere she looked officers were moving quickly, pushing people in front of them or carrying sheets of paper, cups of coffee. The noise was remarkable. Having to raise her voice occasionally to combat the din, Sarah gave her statement to the officer.

On its completion, the officer hit the PRINT button and a sheet of wet-inked paper slid out, with the new words bordered inside the pre-existing lines of the template. The officer skim-read what she'd typed. As she did so, Sarah studied the small brown fingers, the short nails; the wristwatch, the engagement or wedding ring, the fine hairs on the exposed forearms; the frail, smooth, beautiful neck, pretty features, and the hair tied back in a stunted ponytail.

And the younger woman's sad expression.

She laid down the sheet of paper on her cluttered desk. 'I'm going to be honest with you,' she began.

'There's not much you can do, is there?'

'I'm afraid not, Mrs Chandler. If you're certain he left no good footprint . . . ' Sarah was: she had looked to see earlier. The trespasser had left nothing but a few mangled blooms, which, if nothing else, had at least convinced Alan that somebody had jumped from the wall. ' . . . If the intruder had even broken a window we'd have something. But to tell you the truth, even with a good footprint, we got next to nothing.'

'I understand.' Sarah nodded her head.

'I think the best we can do is have a car cruise your road for the next couple of nights, looking out. Other than that, I'd advise you to have the pool light on when it gets dark and not to swim naked for a while.'

'Even though it's my own pool.'

'Even though it's your own pool.'

'Can I use your phone to call a taxi?'

3

Being in the supermarket carpark (with the monolithic red and brown Tesco looming near, its roofs multi-pointed, its slopes and awnings many) often made Alan think of violence. Strange? Not at all. But it wasn't so much the building itself, or its resemblance to an Orientally noncommittal temple up a mountain; he wasn't thinking about religious plunder or holy-boy fisticuffs. It was the ceaseless sound of breaking glass that did it: that made him think of violence. For the only place to park, as a general rule, was about ten miles from the building, by the recycling bins. One after another, bottles were dropped into the glass depository. They shattered explosively, like shop windows at the moment of a bomb detonation. Alan sometimes made up fantasies about glue-sniffers, hanging around the bins, looking for trouble.

Got to go in. Do the shopping. (Alan's interior monologues occasionally ran like hommages to Updike.) Tesco, he thought. Somebody's name, presumably. Now that's a nice car. Shiny silver, like a new 50p. Except I don't like the new 50p's. Too small . . . At least this supermarket was not his regular Tesco. Quite possibly the experience would not be as awful as he'd expected.

He certainly couldn't stand here much longer without attracting attention.

4

It was the morning that Holly had been waiting for: it was Pay Day.

All week she had been arguing with herself; all week she had been trying to convince herself to leave the job and take on the chin whatever circumstances might follow. And they could be nasty, with a guy like Bargeld.

Still, no contracts had been signed. She hadn't welched on any deal. She had done the appraisal of the house and had discussed with Hugh all of her suggestions for its total makeover. She had presented her work in a written form too.

She'd done everything she'd been asked to do - despite her fears and agitations of the heart. It was nine o'clock. Holly had been awake for several hours. She had bathed (and heard no more spooky noises) and she'd packed her bags. She was ready to go just as soon as she received the cheque for her consultation.

The sooner the better.

Carrying her suitcase and her handbag down the stairs, Holly caught sight of Mrs Eggleton as she passed. 'Good morning,' Holly called, and was alarmed that the housekeeper glanced up and then moved on: not so much with a look of anger on her face as a look of worry. What was that all about? Holly twitched her head in denial. This was out of her hands now. What was one more weird activity in a house filled with nut-cases?

Hearing conversation in the kitchen, Holly left her case at the foot of the stairs. She would decline breakfast, she'd already decided; get something on the drive north.

'Good morning,' she said as she entered. Standing up, Hugh was talking to Mrs Eggleton. The latter did not say a word but Hugh returned the greeting.

'And how was your evening at the pub last night?' he inquired.

'Oh, pleasant,' Holly replied. 'A bit lonely, you know . . . ' She adjusted the bite of the handbag's strap on her shoulder.

'Yes, I wish I could have gone. And Marcus was busy?'

'He was going bowling. But it was okay. I read the paper; had a few drinks. I hope I didn't wake you when I got back.' As they'd arranged earlier, Holly had slipped in the back way; the door had been left open. 'It wasn't terribly late.'

'After a week at work, my dear, you could have beaten on a bass drum; I wouldn't have heard you. Flat out, I was.' He smiled although in his opinion, something was a little odd here. Hadn't Sarah told him on several occasions that Holly was the sort of woman who refused to go into a pub on her own? 'So you're all set?'

'All set. Just the small matter of . . . ' Holly paused.

Hugh raised his eyebrows: a question.

' . . . of the money,' Holly prompted.

'Ah yes, the money. Mrs Eggleton, I wonder - could you leave us for just a few minutes. This shouldn't take too long.'

With a nod of her head, and unquestionably this time, that look of worry on her face, Mrs Eggleton exited the room.

When she'd gone Holly remarked, 'You know, I don't think she liked me very much.' At Hugh's invitation she sat at the table, across from him as he also sat.

'On the contrary, my dear, she's very fond of you. As is Marcus.' His eyes were sparkling like jewels; he looked fit and healthy this morning, quite relieved that it was the weekend. 'They're both terribly concerned, of course, about what will happen next.'

Holly nodded. 'I tried to set Mrs Eggleton straight on that; I said there's no way I'm going to change the kitchen too radically. She loves this room.'

'She does indeed.'

'I said that you'd let her know what you'd be going for. I hope that was the right thing to say.'

Hugh was nodding. 'It was fine. As indeed I have.'

Holly was wrong-footed. 'You've chosen? Already?' She had only given over her ideas for all the rooms - her consolidated report - yesterday evening. 'Which plan are you going for in this room then?'

Hugh smiled. 'None of them.'

'Pardon.'

'Now ask me what I've decided for the downstairs living room.'

A pause followed before Holly said, 'Which?'

'Again, none of them.' Hugh left anther pause, which this time Holly was unwilling to fill. 'Now, to show you you've not just been unlucky here, let's try a random room. Ask me about any room upstairs. Ask me, if you like, about the gym.'

A hollowness was growing in her belly. 'You don't like my ideas?'

Putting both hands on the table Hugh said, 'I think your ideas are excellent. The situation is, however, is that I wouldn't choose you to redesign my house if you paid me. If you were the last interior designer in the land, or whatever the hell you call yourself. You've had something coming to you for a long, long time, and now I'm here to give it.'

'What are you talking about, Hugh. We had a deal.'

'We had no such thing. And it's "Mr Bargeld" to you.'

'I've done a week's work and the deal was . . . '

'A week's work,' said Bargeld incredulously. 'You wouldn't know work, child, if it jumped up and bit you. You've had a week at my expense.' His voice was turning ugly, like something rotting in the sun. 'Think yourself lucky I don't bill you. Now leave.'

Despite herself Holly couldn't stop tears forming in her eyes. Panic and hatred were crystallising inside her. 'You owe me for a consultation. I put in a lot of hours.'

Through a snicker Hugh replied, 'That's a shame. A lot of hours. Have you any idea how hard other people work? Now get in your car and drive up to Yorkshire and call me all the names under the sun. Up to Yorkshire, where it's cheaper, as you've never let an opportunity slip by without telling us, boring us to tears, you sad infant. Yorkshire: where you went to "Uni". Just go.'

'We can't all live in big houses in Buckinghamshire,' Holly spat.

Hugh snickered again. 'God forbid I'd ever have you for a neighbour.'

'My cheque. You owe me money. Give me my cheque.'

'What is it that Richard the Third says? "I am not in the giving vein."' Hugh smiled. 'I like that.'

Holly did not - smile or like that. Although she understood the language, she demanded clarification. 'What does that mean?'

'It means, my dear, I don't feel like giving you a fucking penny. And I haven't got to the position of Managing Director of a company like Bargeld Trading by doing things I don't want to do. Capiche? "I am not in the giving vein." Yes, I really do like that.'

Holly watched Hugh's Adam's apple: his pronounced throat-bound knuckle. It dipped and bobbed like a buoy on the sea. Through a voice both squeaky and harsh she tried again to appeal to his professional integrity: 'We had a deal, Mr Bargeld.'

'You're incorrect, as you well know; I dodged every time you asked for such a thing. I know my onions, Ms Paver. We had at best a verbal agreement that said I'd pay you one thousand pounds for a consultation and a further twenty thousand pounds on completion of the work on the house. Or more if you could prove the necessity of the extra. Now, didn't that seem extraordinarily fortunate, Holly?'

'For a house this size that's a reasonable quotation,' Holly replied.

'I don't doubt it, in this day and age. But don't you wonder about how you were so fortunate?'

Holly's voice was smaller than before. 'You got me from the Yellow Pages.'

Shaking his head Hugh said, 'Think about it, girl. You're living in Yorkshire. The Yellow Pages is a directory showing local businesses. You wouldn't be in my Yellow Pages.'

'But you said . . . '

'Yes, I know what I said. If you haven't gathered by now, my recall is nearly total. I said I was on a business trip to Leeds, and apparently I looked at the Yellow Pages in my hotel room. Highly unlikely, I'd say. But it sounds like you bought it anyway.'

Holly swallowed hard, and shook herself. Get a grip! she demanded. Her voice was harder-edged. 'I had no reason to doubt you. How did you get my name and number then?'

'It was a personal recommendation. From Sarah.'

Another pause. 'My sister Sarah?'

'No, the former Duchess. Of course your sister Sarah.'

Weirder and weirder. Holly frowned, desperate to make connections. 'Are you her new boyfriend?' she asked, willing to put nothing past the other woman. Sarah had described the new man in her life as someone fresh: well, who could say?

'Am I what?'

'Obviously not. Sorry. I don't get it.'

'What do you mean: boyfriend.' Hugh demanded. 'Are you telling me she's having an affair?'

'That's not for me to say,' Holly replied.

'But is she?'

Only later would Holly concede that this confrontation - or this sub-confrontation on the battleground of the settlement issue - was one of life's pivotal moments. One of her life's pivotal moments. Asked to reveal her sister's secret, Holly could do so and feel like shit, or do so and feel vindicated. The option of not doing so had been excluded from the frame. And what she felt like after the confession would tell Holly all she needed to know about herself. No further evaluations would be required.

'I think she's a serial adulterer,' Holly said, lifting her chin. 'She has no concept of loyalty - or of anything other than bone-hard egotism . . . '

A twinkle of amusement showed and quickly burned out around Hugh's eyes. His nostrils and lips widened briefly.

Holly hated him. Very suddenly and very desperately she loathed him. Were it not for the money owed to her, she would have left the room and the house in as dignified a manner as possible. But money was keeping her rooted to the spot. She couldn't move without it. Or without answers. 'You know all about me, don't you?' said Holly.

'All I need to know,' Hugh answered.

'Who are you?'

'Jesus Christ, girl, wake up! Who do you think I am?'

Holly pointed a finger. 'Don't call me girl. Or "child". Or "my dear".'

'Then don't be so bloody naive. I'm her father, of course. She's my daughter.'

Holly felt weak in the knees. A spinning humming sound had entered her head - like a grand prix racing car roaring around a very small track and the thought of money had left her altogether. Even if stubborn monetary urges had been present, she would still have felt as though someone had socked her with an uppercut. No, a rabbit punch: from the harsh intimacy of the clinch, a blow to the back of the neck - underhand and unseen.

This was Sarah's father.

Holly found her brain repeating the sentence again and again, like a victim of shock reiterating the one unalterable fact. Literally all her life, this man had been less than a shadow. An absence. A void. She was born after Sarah, to a different father who himself had swiftly buggered off. But at least Dennis had always been tangible. He'd sent cards on special occasions; he'd had a phone number where Holly could reach him.

This pig? Leaves and is never seen again. Until now . . .

Oh god, she went on.

. . . The uterine wall takes scraps and fragments of magicked matter and assembles them into a scruffy simulacrum whose whole is more than the sum of its parts. Cells divide, and conquer, and multiply; and a monster grows eyes and a face.

The human brain does something similar, particularly during moments of stress - when the choice about what to think is no choice at all. Take a tiny fact from here; grab a piece of your history from there. Mix and match and watch them grow. Ugly babies of the head. No mother could love their deformities, or their perfect imperfections . . .

Call it a revelation. Call it an epiphany. It still smells of atrocity - charred limbs and spilled organs - and it still sounds like wailing.

'You're thinking it through now, aren't you?' asked Hugh, although it wasn't a question needing an answer. 'Let it form,' he continued. 'I'm her father, therefore . . . '

'She got me this job,' Holly whispered.

'Right. What are sisters for?'

'Does she know the rest?'

'What rest?'

'That you're going to refuse to pay me.'

Hugh said, 'Naturally. It was her idea. Again: what are sisters for?'

'But why?' Holly asked. 'She's got everything she wants. Why does she need to hurt me as well?'

Hugh shook his head. 'Because you hurt her, of course.'

'Hurt her when?' Holly replied. 'Hurt her how?'

'By sleeping with her husband,' said Hugh with no hesitation.

That was what she'd been dreading. That was the heart of the baby in her head: the organ that kept the child screaming. The indiscretion that wouldn't leave her. The one she had never known for sure was common knowledge . . .

'That was a stupid mistake. For both of us.'

Making a steeple out of his hands Hugh said, 'You have no idea what you did to my child. You drained her.'

Holly added, 'People make errors,' hoping to win Hugh over by appealing to his commonsense and common decency. But what he said in response was:

'Not to my child they don't.'

Holly knew she should get up and walk away; but she also knew that she wouldn't feel complete without her punishment. In a strange way, since the affair, it had been all she ever wanted . . . A child knows a faux pas is never unobserved, regardless of how far from home it takes place. And whether that child knows it or not, the subconscious is working on ways to let slip the crime committed. Holly's sense of displaced morality here made her childlike - and a groaning hulk of ice.

'What happens now?' she wanted to know.

'You go back to Yorkshire. Where it's cheaper. Where you went to "Uni".' Hugh's voice was disgusted, his lips reaching down for his jowls, making earthquake fissures from the bulbs of his nostrils down to underneath his cheeks. 'Consider your wrists smacked. My girl, you leave Sarah alone for now and evermore, you understand? You do not speak to Alan. You and he are divorced.'

There was a pause. Then Holly said, 'You'll be ignoring real life, just like I was. So will Sarah.'

Hugh shook his head. 'We'll have dealt with the problem.'

'The problem is always how to live on after the problem.'

Hugh ignored her. 'I need your answer. Do you accept my terms?'

In her turn Holly ignored him too. 'I need answers from you as well,' she said. 'About this week. This was my punishment? Keeping me away from my business?'

'No, your punishment was a betrayal in return,' Hugh replied. 'And betrayal is a slowly-acting poison, believe me. So is the inability to forgive.' His voice was softer. 'I can't forgive you, Holly. Not for the affair. I had no idea that Sarah was seeing someone else but it doesn't matter. Do you see? I'm not punishing you for having sex with my half-wit son-in-law. I'm punishing you for my daughter's inability to recover. For the way she handled it. In a bathroom, the water running; and a fistful of pills washed down from the toothbrush mug.'

'I'm so sorry. I had no idea,' Holly told him.

'That's the problem. There was no closure, no conflict. She never felt she could address you about it directly. Her weakness, in a way, is your downfall: because it meant I had to get involved. You and Alan will both know what it is to cross the daughter of a powerful man.'

Holly felt the sensation of blame-dispersion. She had anticipated keeping it all for herself - the blame, the guilt - but it was leaking away. How she'd imagined that Alan would be untouched by the seepage was beyond her (or it would be, later, when she looked back). Alan was in the mire because the mire was inching towards him. Holly felt weak. Unpleasantly she gave a split second of her thinking time to the menstrual blood creeping invasively into her entombed tampon. A few hours and she would have to change it. She was nearly at the end of her worse day of her worst week of every month. What an excuse to leave Hugh's company that would be!

'Alan doesn't have to be punished,' Holly said softly. 'He lives with Sarah. That should be enough.'

'Do you think it's wise criticising my daughter at this moment in time?'

Holly snickered. 'How much worse could it get?'

'A lot,' she was told.

'Don't threaten me.'

'I'm not threatening you,' Hugh replied.

'Please leave him alone.'

'Impossible.'

'Nothing's impossible.'

'So you proved.'

'Meaning?'

'You reduced a strong woman to something infected with cow-spine. Congratulations.'

'It just happened,' Holly protested.

'It always does. He's finished at Bargeld Trading. He was crap at what he did anyway. I've seen ballerinas with more flair for purchasing.'

'I'm going to leave now,' Holly said.

'Please do.'

She stood up. 'Just tell me something before I go. The ghost story - it was all a lie, wasn't it.'

'Yes, of course.'

'To make me believe you killed a little girl.'

'Or something like that,' Hugh confirmed. 'Just to keep you on edge really. Same as the video nasty, or whatever you want to call it. Didn't you even see that one coming? With your sister owning a video shop? Don't you think she could get her hands on anything she wanted to? Christ, you even asked her about it. Didn't you get suspicious?'

'No.'

Hugh cocked his head. 'Then more fool you. We just decided to pile it all on. Different sorts of betrayal, I suppose. How much could you take? Et cetera. So we played a tape at the bottom of your drain, or Marcus did, I should say; I was at work of course. I got out a few old pictures of Sarah from the albums and put them in a drawer where they'd be easy to find if you went sneaking. We made up a story about my child getting knocked over . . . And so on. It was all pretty easy; you were hardly some intellectual we had to work over. Getting the staff to learn their lines was no great shakes. I pay them enough.'

'One of them nearly gave you away, you know,' Holly said.

'Really?' But he sounded uninterested. 'Which one?'

Turning her back on him Holly said, 'That's for me to know and you to find out.' With that she exited the room, not believing for a moment that she'd won a point. Simply needing for her own pride's sake an assertive act: something she'd chosen for herself.

5

'I can't go,' Sarah said, 'to Dublin.'

'Why not?'

'I've got something else to do. You should have asked.'

Alan was incredulous. 'I should've asked?'

'I mean . . . '

'I should have asked?' he repeated, and looked down at the bags of shopping as though they were victims of a massacre. The phrase the final straw had entered his head, but he didn't dare say it in case Sarah agreed.

'I mean checked,' Sarah told him. 'That I was free.'

'Well what the hell else are you doing today?' Alan shouted.

'Don't raise your voice . . . '

'I'm serious, Sarah. What's so important?'

'I've got something to do,' she told him.

'I got that much. And I asked you what.'

'Something.'

'You're not going to tell me, are you.'

Sarah sighed. 'For Christ's sake, Alan, I'm going to the Family Planning Clinic, all right? It's women stuff. Then I'm going to Boots to buy some Lilettes and some aspirins. Okay? You don't need to know all this. Stop trying to hem me in.'

'Will you get me some contact lens stuff?' Alan asked. A test.

Sarah nodded. 'Of course. Just tell me what kind.'

Pouty-lipped Alan tried hard to stoke the fires of his pride - to keep them from dying. Time was when Sarah had known exactly what type of solutions he'd favoured. 'The usual,' Alan said, deliberately being awkward.

'Fine.'

Something plump and juicy was forming in the air: invisible but unavoidable. It was filled up with words, like a blimp filled with dangerous gases. One or other of the married team was going to burst the skin; and something would ignite. Words of a bitter taste and a spiky texture would fall out. There'd no longer be any restraint.

The end of their marriage was looming.

'Why don't you want to do anything with me anymore?' Alan asked. His arrow brushed against the balloon.

Sarah looked away from him. 'I don't know how to answer a question like that.'

'With the truth,' said Alan. 'That's all I've ever wanted from you: the truth.'

'I don't remember how to tell the truth,' Sarah replied. 'It's been a long time. It's like a language I used to know and I've let go rusty.'

'Jesus, what else aren't you telling me then?'

'What bits do you know?'

'About Daz.'

Sarah paused and then sighed. 'Daz was just a silly mistake.'

'Was?'

'Yes, I think so. Was. It didn't really get started.'

Alan felt weak in the heart. Now that they had arrived at Honesty Central, he wasn't sure he wanted to get off the train. By no means was he certain he wanted to stay here. Already he was havering for the old days: for the lies; for the continual sense of dramatic irony, in which others would know much more about the play than he did.

These thoughts and sensations aside, however, he asked the question he feared:

'Did you love him?'

'No. But I loved someone wanting me,' Sarah replied. 'Someone different. Alan, I think you want to keep me but for reasons . . . I think you just don't want to be alone. It doesn't have to be me. Just someone.'

'I love you, Sarah.'

'I know you do. But we're no good for each other. We want different things.'

Alan said, 'Why, what do you want?'

'I don't know. A rest maybe.'

'I've bought us tickets for Dublin! You can have a rest. That's the whole point of that place. We'll do a great big pub crawl and come back on Sunday night.'

Sarah was shaking her head. 'I told you: I can't go. I'm busy this weekend.'

Exhaling noisily Alan told her: 'I won't let you see him.'

'Daz? It's got nothing to do with him.'

'What could be so fucking important then?' Alan shouted. The words made the balloon ripple; its skin was being worn away by the anger in the room.

And Sarah said it, finally:

'Your girlfriend.'

'What?' This was a punch that Alan had not urged himself to anticipate.

'You heard me.'

'Who are you talking about?'

'Holly, of course. Unless you've got more than one.'

Pop! Carnage was all over the room. They couldn't see it, but the air was viscous with coagulating blood. A beat too late Alan started to contradict his wife.

'Have you gone insane?' he asked.

'Don't bother, Alan,' said Sarah with deceptive insouciance.

His guns were not so easily cooled, however. 'She's not my girlfriend.'

'Ex-girlfriend then. Don't insult me. Don't say one more word in denial. At least face what you did with your shoulders squared.'

'And what did I do?'

'Fucked my sister.'

There was another pause. Another sigh. 'How did you find out?' Alan asked.

'Maybe I'm not the scatterbrain you think I am,' Sarah told him. 'Maybe I'm more than a pretty face.' She laughed.

'How did you find out?' Alan repeated.

'A number of things. It doesn't matter. The phone bills. Your boss.'

'My boss?'

' . . . What matters is you thought you were smart enough to fool me and you couldn't even do that . . . '

'What about my boss? You mean Hugh?'

'Not even dizzy old Sarah.' She was ignoring him. 'I mean, did you honestly believe you'd get away with it? Or did you just assume I'd forgotten about it?'

'Both. But what about my boss?'

Sarah shrugged. 'Then you were wrong on two counts, weren't you.'

'Sarah.'

She sighed. 'I asked him to see if there were any office rumours about you and your secretary, for one thing. There weren't. Then he had Liz - that's her name, isn't it - into his office. He told her that if there was going to be friction working for an ex-boyfriend, then she and you could pack your bags. He scared her, but she didn't know what she was talking about. He said he must have been mistaken, and not to tell anyone about the meeting. She didn't mention it to you, did she?'

Alan was stunned. 'No, she didn't. But wait a minute. You asked Hugh Bargeld to do all that - and he did it?'

'Anything for me, that man.'

Shaking his head Alan replied, 'I just don't get this.'

'You stupid man, why not? He's my father.'

There was something needed - the silence begged for it - but neither of them knew what it was. Alan's imagination folded in on itself until it had become so small that it no longer meant anything. More conversation followed, but the theatre was already closing.

Knowing full well that he was fast-forwarding through some of the action, or the dialogue, Alan said, 'So where do we go from here?' Part of his brain was thinking of Holly, in Hugh's employ at the Aylesbury residence. The picture was clearing; the snow inside his head was melting away - to reveal the deal he'd struck with Elvis. One option was to hare around to the spieler and try to call it off. But no: Elvis didn't work on Saturdays. That was part of the beauty of the arrangement: its simplicity. And Alan certainly didn't know Elvis's address. You didn't want to get too matey with hooligans like that. Besides, Alan wasn't sure he'd be able to talk Elvis out of the idea anyway. He'd seemed quite keen - as Alan recalled, through the sliding vision of yesterday's alcoholic bender - and that was even before the money had been agreed.

It was imperative that Alan got on the flight to Dublin. If not with Sarah, then alone. Why?

Because he needed an alibi.

'Where we go from here is - maybe we take a place each,' said Sarah. 'They've both got mortgages, after all. Maybe I'll have here and you have the flat. What do you think? For the pool, mainly. You'll never use it. And I can get to work in what? Half an hour if I'm lucky? No big deal. And you can travel down to Liverpool Street as usual . . . ' This last bit was a deliberate attempt to mislead.

Alan was stunned. 'You've given this a lot of prior thought, haven't you.'

'Someone had to,' Sarah replied. 'Couldn't you feel us drifting apart? Seriously, Alan, would you really want to be with me knowing I know who you slept with?'

'I know who you slept with, Sarah, as well.'

'There you are then,' she said. 'Why did we do that if everything is okay with us? Face it, Alan, it's over. Let's do it now before we start to dislike each other.' Precisely where the current of self-belief needed to say these things had come from, Sarah had no idea. She had stepped outside herself, almost; she'd allowed a ventriloquist more eloquent and rational than herself to recite the lines. Now Sarah was back: in the aftermath of the bomb. 'I'm sorry, Alan,' she felt she needed to say.

Alan's head was bowed. He was sniffing. 'You told me you forgave me.'

'I know. I shouldn't have said that; it was stupid. I didn't forgive you then, and I don't forgive you now. I don't know how to.' Sarah frowned. 'No, fuck that noise: I don't want to forgive you, Alan That would be an easy way out for you, and you can forget about easy ways out. There aren't any.' She caught her breath and continued: 'No, don't get upset.' It was almost an aside. The damage done, she could now speak ruminatively; her voice was calmer. 'I think I might have been able to forgive a one-night stand. With a stranger. But not what you two did. Why did it have to be Holly?'

Alan looked up. 'Why did it have to be Daz?'

'Touché.' A smile flickered on and off at her lips - like a faulty contraption buzzing and trying to engage as the volts pass through it. 'I thought touché was something only said on the telly, and here I am saying it as well. Fear makes idiots of us all.'

'I can change, Sarah,' said Alan.

'I don't want you to change,' she replied. 'It was always going to be like this, you know that. One of us stronger than the other. One saying yes and other saying no. This time next week it would be me trying to hold on and you trying to escape.'

Blobs of light had filled Alan's eyes. Realisation had gripped him and was squeezing his gut like a sponge. 'You're really splitting up with me . . . ' he said in awe.

'For Christ's sakes, why don't you hate me, Alan?' said Sarah in frustration.

'I'm not a big enough man to hate.' Tears were rolling down his face. He held hands with himself very tightly. 'I've got a confession to make,' he said.

'Another one?'

'I've started gambling again.' He didn't wait for the enormity of this to sink in before continuing. 'I now know that you're the thing that keeps me sane. As soon as we started to go to pieces this week, I went back to the craps table . . . '

'Oh Alan.' Frustrated; woebegone. 'I thought you'd . . . '

'Yeah, me too. Don't leave me, Sarah. I'll go mental.'

'But if I stay,' she replied, 'I'll go mental. Nobody wins. It's the end of the honeymoon.'

'It's the end of my life,' Alan said quietly.

6

In the bedroom Alan had packed carelessly while Sarah smoked in the kitchen. From Alan's point of view there was something tragic and ironic about losing a wife and gaining a fortune in two days. Now Alan was carrying his holdall and standing on a train platform at St Albans station. He had often been on a train platform at St Albans station, but nearly always he had been travelling the other way: towards London. This time, he was going a few stops north - to Luton. Catch the courtesy bus to the airport. Fly to Dublin. Alone. Alan sighed and tapped his feet.

If they'd come to St Albans in Sarah's Jag, Alan wondered, would she have offered to drive him to the airport? Instead of stinking up the place with her cigarettes?

Scarcely relevant. Alan looked down the railway line to where it slipped into a bank of filthy mist. To commemorate and commiserate this oh so exceptional day, Alan was doing something he rarely did. He was chewing gum. Sarah did it all the time: to camouflage the monsters on her breath (heavy smoking having the ability to turn the mouth of an angel into Hell's Passage). Alan thought he'd try it when he went into the station's news-vending shop to buy a paper. Quite frankly, he couldn't see what the fuss was about. It was like some of the other things that Sarah liked but Alan didn't: peeling oranges, smoking fags, anal sex - you had to put more into it than you got out. Alan wanted somewhere to spit out his gum.

A fruity voice nagged for his attention. 'Giles, dear boy!' it said . . . Alan quarter-turned, an expression of disgust on his face. A City ponce in his wanky striped suit with the dubious flares was rattling about the meeting into a mobile phone, at the other end of which a different City ponce wearing tortoiseshell goggles and a fucking bow tie (Alan imagined) would be spunking over the desk in joy. It was Saturday, for God's sake . . .

Having waited for many, many trains in his life, Alan experienced the familiar impulse of wanting to push somebody on to the railway line. It happened waiting for the Tube more than anywhere else. In the Metro system in Prague, Alan had once seen a teenaged boy jump down on to the lines. People had called to him, panic-stricken. When the train pulled in, he'd scampered back up to the platform, laughing.

Alan had wondered ever since what it would be like to see a body hit by a train. He wanted to push the City ponce onto the tracks.

'Ciao for now,' the voice said.

Twat, thought Alan, reaching for his own mobile phone. He didn't want it going off while he was on the train. He hated that; and he didn't want people thinking of him as he was thinking of the City ponce.

Bugger it! It was already turned off. Maybe Sarah had been trying to call. He switched it on, waited for the Vodafone connection, and then dialled up his messaging service.

'You have . . . one . . . message,' the robot bitch told him. 'Message . . . one.' The roar of a call made from inside a car; a bad transmission. 'Alan? It's Holly. Something dreadful's happening,' she shouted. 'I've got to see you . . . ' (the message crackled) ' . . . they know all about us . . . ' (crackle) ' . . . set up. Sarah and her dad. I'm working for your boss and he's gonna ruin you. They planned it together. I'm on my way to St Albans right now; I'll see you at the house . . . ' (crackle) ' . . . they got us . . . '

End of message.

And Alan breathed, 'Shit.'

7

As soon as Alan had left, Sarah had started to get herself ready. First, to clear her mind, she took a dip in the pool; but did not take in with her the inflatable tray or any booze. Or indeed, even a swimsuit (bollocks to intruders, to peeping toms!). She swam five lengths, naked as nature intended, the water massaging the aches and pains from her body. By the time she finished, she was in the mood for sex (inappropriately enough), but there was no time even to play a video. (She had brought to the house The Lesbionic Woman, which she still hadn't finished watching; it was in her luggage.) Having finished her exercise, Sarah donned her vast fluffy dressing-gown, unlocked the pool house door, slipped the key into the deep left pocket, and wandered out a few metres into the garden. The air was nippy on her wet skin, and she soon went back inside. Although she closed the door behind her, she forgot to lock it.

She was nervous. But the point of no return had passed a long time ago. There was no way out . . . Quickly but efficiently she assumed the position for her bowel movement (frustratingly irregular, even after all these years), and she checked the sloping bowl after she'd flushed. She gouged at her inner ears with cotton buds, and mined out a frightening lode of fudge-cake-coloured sludge. (That was the thing about living in London: she never noticed how filthy the city made her. This sort of examination, and revelation, could only come as the result of distance and comparison.) She waxed a few weak and willing hairy foot soldiers from her vinyl-shiny shins. She showered. Shampoo'd and conditionered. Applied the bare minimum of makeup. She was ready.

Sighing frequently, and with odyssean overcaution, Sarah then prepared for the inevitable challenge from Holly by taking all of her possible paths: by welcoming into her body her various soporifics and relaxants. A calm-down pill from the chemist, two joints, and the three glasses of supermarket red wine that had not been supped the previous evening . . . If Holly wanted to have it out with Sarah, she'd either have to travel here or phone. Either way, Sarah was relaxed, calm ..

Sleepy.

But she must stay awake. Confronting Holly was the reason she'd come here this weekend in the first place, she'd come to comprehend. Her suggestion to Alan had never really been about their marriage at all.

Sarah sat in the lounge, smoking and waiting.

SATURDAY (p.m.)

Don't step on my blue suede shoes. Or I'll break your legs.

\- Elvis (the bouncer)

1

'You fucking bitch,' Holly said to Sarah.

She had entered the home via the pool house, having rung the bell several times. Holly couldn't believe that Sarah had been so stupid as to leave the pool house door unlocked, so soon after she'd received an unwelcome visitor. Even if Sarah had gone out (there was no car in the driveway) Holly entered, carrying her handbag; the intention was to startle her sister on her return. What she hadn't expected was this.

Sarah was asleep. This however did not stop Holly's diatribe: not many things in this life would have been able to. 'You filthy fucking bitch . . . ' Holly continued breathlessly. She picked up the glass by Sarah's side and sniffed the millimetre of liquid inside. Red wine. At this hour of the day. It wasn't even noon. Furthermore, the room had clinging to it the sweet smell of a non-tobacco cigarette: the one still burning in Sarah's hand.

Rage was clogging Holly's arteries. As though she'd just rewound a tape, she pictured herself entering this room and swearing at her sleeping sister. Now her hands and her voice were shaking as she continued:

'My whole life I've played second fiddle to you, Sarah. Not anymore. Do you know why? Because today you revealed your weakness. It's your bitterness. You're so bitter it's going to eat you up. And when that's happened I won't have to worry about you ever again . . . '

Holly took the joint from Sarah's hand as though she was tweezing for a splinter. She took a drag. 'And these things,' Holly said; 'you're gonna burn the bloody house down one day . . . ' The taste in her mouth was metallic, unfresh.

At first Holly thought it was the smoke from the joint that was making her eyes water, but it was nothing of the kind. At university one time an American student in her Halls had told her that she loved her Aunt Mabel, but couldn't stand her guts. Holly had seen the statement as paradoxical - but she didn't now; nor could she see any reason why it had never made sense. Holly loved Sarah deeply, but she didn't like her. Had she ever? It seemed now, looking at her sister's beauty as so many men had (and even women, for all Holly knew) that only in sleep was Sarah perfect: when she couldn't open her mouth to bark or bite. For Holly had always been scared of Sarah; this came as a quiet epiphany. Sarah the elder; Sarah the independent. When Sarah had been experimenting with popularity and with peer control, Holly's only experiments had been in well-monitored Science lessons. Holly had chosen academia because Sarah hadn't.

Holly took a few drags on the joint and then bent down to kiss her sister's lips.

Shake her awake, Holly told herself; but what she was going to do was precisely the opposite - leave her to fend for herself, and then One Other Thing. Sarah had to learn what it was to be put in danger, to suffer: as Holly felt she'd had to, every day of her life.

No rational reasoning entered Holly's head. Her subconscious was an accessory before the fact - as indeed it would be one afterwards. Holly took a final drag on the joint and then executed the One Other Thing.

She dropped the burning cigarette on to the carpet.

As she did so, an ugly, unfamiliar emotion opened up in her stomach. The rage had changed into something else. All fingers and thumbs, Holly unfastened the clasp at the neck of her handbag. The insides of the bag, as ever, resembled a dozen partially digested meals, slurping and slapping together. Holly's body was bristling, as though it had been colonised by a sudden and potent fever.

She took out her small tube of hairspray.

Wake up, she said silently. Wasn't it true that there was still something logical, flickering away at the back of her mind, like a dying will-o'-the-wisp? But the forest was deep; the insect was lost. Whole oceans were crashing through Holly's skull; the noise was abysmal. But there was a choking, marginalized part of her brain that wanted Sarah to see this. Or to stop her doing it. A part of Holly that wanted Sarah to be the boss again. But Sarah didn't wake. Didn't move.

Holly flicked off the top of the hairspray and, leaning over, aimed the nozzle at the smouldering joint. The air seemed to be hissing, as if in disapproval: she was the pantomime villain, earning her just approbation. Except that it was the gas in the cylinder hissing, nothing else. A cone of effervescing white droplets, the pattern of which immediately lost form. If she could have seen her own face, Holly would've been scared: it was the face of a beast. Gritting her teeth, Holly sluiced the joint's dying ember with a long squirt of inflammable vapour.

Then she raised her fat forefinger away from the plunger.

A small fist of flame punched upwards. The joint's paper was instantaneously carbonised. Holly stood up, as though stretching, or backing away from an unexpectedly hot oven. Part of the carpet had caught light.

Holly's lips said nothing, but her mind said plenty. She was rehearsing her speech, in case Sarah woke suddenly.

I always thought those things would give you cancer, but they won't. Because you're the cancer, Sarah. Your pass on your disease to anyone you don't like.

Well, guess what. I've found the cure. It was staring me in the eye all along. You don't treat a cancer like you; you destroy it. You cut it away from its host.

That's what I'm doing . . .

'That's what I'm doing,' Holly muttered as she turned away from Sarah. The rage was still within her - she felt its raw and toothy scrape - but her body was boiling with a vial of other, alien chemicals. She didn't feel like a person as she made her way back through the house, around the pool, out through the garden, and into her sobbing car.

She felt like a goddess: a very indignant goddess. Her day had been packed with surprises . . . and now, here came another one. Reversing into the road, Holly saw a crestfallen man raise his hand. Holly leaned over and opened the passenger door.

'Get in,' she said loudly.

Bent into the shape of a boomerang, Alan looked Holly in the eye. 'What's going on?' he asked. 'I got your message but the transmission was bad.'

'I'll explain on the way. Get in.'

'The way to where?'

'Wherever it is you're going with that bag.'

'Luton Airport.'

'Fine. My sister and I are officially divorced. We're finished.'

Alan got into the car. For the second time in two days his testicle performed a nimble leap from the side of his boxer shorts. Unselfconsciously Alan rearranged his errant genitalia as Holly started to talk in a fast, inflection-free voice. The world worsened visibly around him. They passed a business park called Capability Green, then the huge Vauxhall factory and its gulag fashion sensibilities.

Even with the traffic as stupid as it was, the airport was soon no more than five minutes away. 'Come to Dublin with me,' Alan said.

Holly was feeling hot and bothered. She couldn't speak or think for a few seconds, although Alan's proposal had not caused this fugue. What the hell have I done? she thought. In her head, an inferno - a Satanic playground of spriting little demons, doing jigs among the ashes and the flames. Curls of smoke were turning into faces, mouthing obscenities and accusations.

The curse of conscience . . .

Holly saw Sarah as the flames licked up her legs. The breath she exhaled, before the fumes took her wits, ignited in a flame-thrower's puffs. Holly - Christ - had sealed Sarah's death warrant . . .

Alan, meanwhile, knew what Holly's answer would be for two reasons. Would she be travelling to Dublin with him? No. Because she had said nothing and was thinking of a way to let him down gently. And secondly, because she'd chosen the lane for short-term, pickup, put-down parking.

But Alan was in denial about everything these days. To the engine's hum-along he looked at the airport building and said, 'I hate Luton you know. Someone said to me once: "When God picked His nose at the beginning of the universe, Luton was where he wiped His finger."' Alan laughed, although the line was far from fresh to his ears. Now that he'd told Holly it, he'd told it to everyone he knew. Nor was it somebody else's gag: Alan had made it up himself - one of the few useable lines salvaged from his short-lived aspiration of being a writer. A chime sounded somewhere inside his body - from an organ that Alan felt he'd never utilised before. He couldn't even be honest about the origins of a joke. 'Divine snot,' he finished quietly.

He turned to Holly but she was looking at Jesus, dangling from her rearview mirror. The obscene calm and coolness of his face!

'I feel sick,' said Holly.

'It's the shock,' Alan told her, confused that he had yet to experience something similar.

Holly corrected him. 'Actually it's the lurgy. I've got the painters in this week.' How she hated herself for that comment! She even euphemised like a man these days. Her fingers tapped the steering wheel. 'I'll meet you in the bar,' she said.

Only hearing the last sentence, Alan said, 'What?'

'If there's more than one, make it the one nearest the entrance. Okay?'

'You're coming?'

'But I've got something to do first. Give me your keys.'

'Sorry?'

'There's no time, Alan. Yes, I'll come. Just give me the keys.'

'We can phone her,' Alan protested. 'There's nothing more you have to say to her. Use my mobile.' He dipped his fingers into his inside coat pocket.

Holly shouted at him, 'I've got my own fucking mobile, remember? I called you on it. Now give me your house keys or I'm not going.' And her brain added: And I'll have to think of a different alibi.

'Okay, okay. Jesus,' said Alan.

He watched as she sped away, hoping that his face was not as ashen as hers.

3

Of course the dope joint, if and when it was examined (Holly knew next to nothing of these things) would have her own saliva on it as well. DNA investigations would put Holly at the scene of the crime, even if the nosy suburban neighbours did not.

Driving dangerously and fearlessly, Holly managed to punch in 999 for emergency services on the mobile. She was asked what service she required.

'Fire!' said Holly. 'Wait! Changing gear . . . There's a fire.'

'Connecting you now.'

That was good enough for Holly. She dropped the phone on the passenger seat. Nearly there. A horn parped to her right but Holly disregarded it. Her call would be traced because she'd seen such scenarios on TV. Holly was certain that the fire engines would be on their way shortly: they could not afford the risk of assuming it to be a hoax.

Like a gymnast hitting the springboard before a leap, Holly's car bounced up the slope and into Sarah's driveway. The suspension thudded in complaint. Leaving the key in the ignition, Holly turned off the engine and took Alan's house keys from the dash.

From the outside, the house did not appear to be on fire. Could Holly have got it all wrong? Could the butt have been extinguished by a nonchAlant stamp of Sarah's foot as she dreamt?

Opening the front door produced a roar of sucked air, and the atmosphere was cancerous and heavy. Flames crackled. So did Holly's sense of outrage. Into the house she stepped. The warmth immediately blanketed her and the noise in her ears was a slowed-down, muffled scream.

She called, 'Sarah!' The living room was ablaze and the fire had described a vague arch. Apart from a few places the carpet was not alight. The same could not be said for the curtains, wallpaper, ceiling . . .

Upstairs would fall into downstairs, and if Holly didn't move quickly she'd be caught in the avAlanche. Putting a hand over her face, she ventured into the blinding light. The door frame through which she entered caught, with flames reaching across for one another, making a tangled brush of fire. To all extents and purposes, the way back was closed off. She had passed the point of no return . . .

And Sarah was not in the chair.

The worst part of being in the middle of fire (as Holly would later concede) is not the fear of being burnt. The temperature of the body is already so high that the brain disregards the notion of there being further notches of heat that it's possible to reach. Worse is the awful, drug-induced confusion - when panic has crystallised into an hallucinogen. The flames were spreading and Holly couldn't tell what she was seeing and what was imaginary.

She started to cough. Her respiratory system quickly acknowledged this to be a mistake. Once started, it was difficult to stop. Moving deeper into the room, she began to hack like a vomiting stegosaurus. Black spots were dancing in front of her eyes, and she knew that her oxygen supply was dwindling. More of the carpet was alight than ever, although none of Holly's clothes had caught light.

Holly screamed out her sister's name. And the fire sent the sound back to her ears, confirming the dreadful solidity of the blaze.

The problem of low air reserves, and the convenience of having no clothing on fire, were both altered dramatically in one fell swoop. To the sound of a car misfiring the bay window exploded. Glass tinkled. Immediately the shape and the mood of the fire changed. Fresh air gave Holly a momentary boost of energy - but so it did for the blaze. Like peasant children grasping for the foreigner's benevolent handouts, the flames grasped for the new air. The rest of the carpet turned into a bonfire. And Holly's trouser legs caught light.

This time Holly's scream was not in the form of her sister's name.

Delirious and violently panicking, Holly ran through the flames with her eyes shut: towards the kitchen. She'd become an auto-sadist by the time she'd arrived, slapping hard at her legs, trunk and face. One eyebrow had a single inexplicable flame to it now, like a candle on a birthday cake. Holly palmed herself off like a rugby player.

In the kitchen some plastic or other non-natural material was burning. The smoke was as thick as grief, and tasted poisonous. The good news was the comparative scarcity of fire. Holly progressed through the house. But how would she get upstairs if she couldn't find Sarah?

God, her legs hurt! Away from the main blaze, the relatively cool air was making her calves sting.

The utility room? No.

The smoking room? No . . . Silly cow! If only Sarah had stuck to that room in the first place! No combustibles; no wood. And beyond, the swimming pool. Of course! Sarah would have run out, past the pool, out into the garden. She was safe.

That came as a relief to Holly . . . for a second or two at least.

Because Sarah had done nothing of the kind. Inexplicably, she had entered the pool. Holly shouted at her, 'What the hell do you think you're doing?' Sarah's presence in the water (a frightened look on her face or not) had rekindled the fury, and with it - storing away on the liner, as it were - came a peculiarly drunken sensation: an amalgam of shock, pain and the body's self-produced laughing gas.

Sarah was midway along the length of the pool-wall. Frowning heavily as she trod water, she asked, 'What are you doing here?'

Holly didn't answer. Cold water was good for burns, she was thinking. Her legs were sore, but no worse than a case of overtanning. Without hesitation Holly jumped into the shallow end, half expecting a cartoon hiss . . .

When water is colder than 6 C you have a matter of minutes to get out and get warm, depending on your level of fitness. You will shake and then your body temperature will go down to 30 C, at which point you will probably decide that you've had enough.

Sarah's swimming pool, of course, was much warmer than 6 C. However, this fact did not stop Holly from shaking, nor from wanting to give up. The heat from behind her back as the fire spread, and the coolness of the water, gave Holly a feverish, flu-ridden sensation. Only the sight of Sarah's sarcastic grin gave Holly the strength to endure. She started to breaststroke towards Sarah - where the water was deeper.

'Well, here comes my cavalry,' Sarah called, her words rubbery with wearing-off booze. 'My Baywatch.' Face to face, they trod water, expressionless.

'Why did you get in the water? Why didn't you leave?'

'It's quite a novelty to swim with all your clothes on,' Sarah answered.

'Why, Sarah?'

'Oh, I was drunk and high.' The matter seemed unimportant to her. 'Still am, probably; I certainly wouldn't want me on the roads. I wasn't thinking straight. It's not every day you wake up with the socks you're wearing on fire.'

'I meant why, Sarah. Why did you do it?' Holly asked.

'Oh, that.' The response was simple: 'Because I hate you.'

'You've got nothing to hate. We made a stupid mistake. Forgive and forget.'

'My house is burning down, bitch,' said Sarah. 'Don't talk reassuringly to me. Anyway, I got replacement phone bills; I know he still calls you.'

'So what?' Holly sounded incredulous. 'You can't fuck long-distance, Sarah. We're only talking. There's stuff to discuss. You know, brother and sister stuff. I would've thought even you'd think that's all right.'

Sarah shrugged. 'Shows how little you know me after all, then, doesn't it? Because it's not all right. The only thing that'd be all right is if he passed you a disease.'

' . . . You have no spine. Do you know that? Come on, let's get out of the water. The fire's bound to get close, sooner or later.'

Sarah replied, 'We'll be safe in here.'

'I think I pity you,' Holly continued. 'You're just thick.'

But Sarah didn't reply to that. 'Alan was having the flat. This was going to be mine. Now look at it.'

Holly wrinkled her nose in disgust. 'You're a leper,' she said.

'Sticks and stones.'

'And do you know something? I'm going to enjoy the secrets I have that you don't.' And she started to swim away on her back, her quick dip completed. Although her burns weren't serious, they were still painful - and a worrying dizziness had started to form. Black soldier ants were marching into her vision.

'What secrets?' Sarah asked, experiencing her own fair share of nausea: of the kind inspired by devotion to brain-altering chemicals. 'Where are you going?'

'I'm getting out,' Holly replied, her voice echoing against the glass as though she was already some distance away.

'It's burning, you daft cow! You can't get out . . . ' Indeed, the smoke was now curling into the swimming pool area. On the off-chance that floor tiles were combustible, Sarah had splashed water out of the pool. She would be safe with her nose and mouth just above the surface, the smoke rising and unable to dive down to her lungs.

'Out of your life, I mean,' Holly finished, her voice necessarily raised. A more confident exit would have been a silent one - a wordless one. But even now, after all that had happened, it had come to this: yelled sentences over a body of water; the attempt to get in the wisecracking last word.

'Don't break my windows!' Sarah called, swimming closer to the edge, still midway along the length. She was about to add that the door might be open. She certainly couldn't remember locking it after she'd gone out there, earlier on. She'd put the key in her dressing gown pocket. However, another part of Sarah's mind was working, slowly but surely, on a different outcome to the scene altogether. She already knows the door's unlocked, Sarah thought. How does she know that?

Dripping wet and feeling weak, Holly was standing at the door to the garden, mere metres from her sister, looking down on her. She was smiling the smile of one looking for humour rather than experiencing it. A nervous and arrogant smile; a car salesman smile. 'Oh Sarah, how're you gonna cope on your own?' Holly shook her head. 'You didn't lock the fucking door, you silly bitch. That's how I got in in the first place.' She proved her statement. The door swung wide, like a flick of the wrist.

The air outside was cold; a light drizzle had started to fall. Holly's legs were stinging and throbbing; she had the terrible thought that when she pulled off her jeans, the skin would also be removed.

'How did you know that?' Sarah asked. In her own limbs she felt a different sort of discomfort: heaviness. By no means was she certain that she'd be able to pull herself out of the water, even in the shallow end by the steps; her clothes would pull her back down.

Holly felt like a child baiting the bear behind the fence. Poking the stick through; throwing stones. It made her a bully . . . and she loved it. With Sarah, no longer would she be the underdog. 'Even after you were trespassed on,' Holly continued. 'You still can't remember to lock your doors, can you?'

Sarah frowned. 'So my memory's crap: so what? How do you know about the trespasser? Or is that a silly question. Like he does anything I say anymore. As soon as I told him not to mention it, I bet he was on the phone to you.'

'Alan didn't tell me.' Holly turned her back on her sister, intending this sentence to be the last they ever shared. Only slightly in discomfort, she wandered out into the garden, little knowing that the burning sensations would intensify. Not the burning on her legs; but the feeling that had just commenced - that her life had started to smoulder. This wasn't the end of anything; how could it be? She'd tried to burn down somebody's house. This might be where another set of problems began.

2

Hugh picked up the trilling telephone and, even though he was at home, said his name.

'Daddy, it's me,' Sarah warbled - her voice unlevel, like the reading on an encephalogram machine. She sounded young; she sounded like Daddy's Little Girl.

'How did it go? And what's that noise?'

Either the words or the inquisitiveness, flowing like blood through them, unlocked the cache of emotion. Sarah started to cry. Her hulking gasps filled Hugh's ear piece.

'My house . . . ' he managed to hear.

'What about it? Darling . . . ' Forceful, masterly. ' . . . what about it?'

'On fire . . . '

'Oh, Jesus,' said Hugh. 'Was it Holly?'

'I don't know.'

'Where is she now?'

'Gone.' Sarah's words were getting clearer. 'But Dad? I think so. And it was her last night - the intruder. I can't believe I didn't think of it before. I thought it was a man.'

Hugh's eyes watered. He knew that Holly had gone out last night, and something had been ringing false. Holly didn't go into pubs on her own: Sarah had said so. Holly had driven to St Albans: Hugh couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it either . . . Or was that true? Not quite. What Hugh couldn't believe was that Holly had shown the nerve and cool of not being under his thumb when under his thumb was precisely where he'd expected her to be.

'I'll be there as soon as I can,' said Hugh. 'I'll call you from the car. Are you calling me on your mobile?'

'Pay phone.'

'Give me your number.' Taking this dictation Hugh pressed down so hard on the last digit that the pencil lead broke and skittered across the table - like a bullet fired horizontally across wasteland, and sliding to rest an overfrozen lake.

Sarah, meanwhile, was wondering whether to shop Holly to the police. Although she was by no means certain that Holly had set the house on fire, she could not discount the possibility. And so what? So what if Holly hadn't? It didn't mean that Sarah couldn't say that she had. What she'd be voicing, after all, were reasonable doubts. Logical suspicions. Nothing petty. Nothing other than what amounted to self-protection.

3

The hierarchy of panic and dissolution states that in moments of crisis one turns instinctively to someone older than oneself. It was a rule that Holly was happy to obey . . . Her body tingling with nerves, she was sitting in her car at Luton Airport: in a bay in the acres for Long-Term Parking. She needed advice; she needed a psychiatrist. She needed a Valium. She needed a Curly Wurly or some chocolate-coated raisins. She needed a very stiff drink. Alan would be waiting for her in the bar, and he would at least be able to buy her the last on the list. But before she went in, she wanted to talk to someone outside the drama. Dad: Dennis.

Number one on her Speed Dial.

She got his answering machine. To it she said, 'Dad? It's Holly. If you're screening calls, please pick up. It's urgent . . . Okay, you're not there. I'm at Luton Airport. You're going to disapprove, but I'm getting on a plane with Alan. There's a good reason. I'll leave this on until we get on the plane so call me back. Something awful's happening . . . '

Holly took a series of deep breaths that were close to hyperventilation.

Speed Dial Two.

Mother: Dorothy.

It rang twelve times and Holly was melting into the car seat. And then it was answered. Holly wasted no time on pleasantries. 'I've got a question, Mum,' she said. 'Do you or do you not know who Sarah's father is? Tell me the truth.'

'What's brought this on then?' Dorothy replied: evasive enough to make Holly's heart sink.

Betrayal.

'Yes or no,' Holly pushed.

'Why do you ask?' The voice was weaker.

'Because he set me up. And Alan. His name is Hugh Bargeld, but I'm pretty sure you know that, Mum. I believe he left you when you say he left - when Sarah was little. But he grew a conscience - somewhere in-between then and now - and he made contact with Sarah, and I think he made contact with you as well. Why didn't you tell me?'

For a few seconds Dorothy said nothing. Holly was just about to ask the question again when her mother said, 'He paid me not to. Both of us. He said it's our business - no one else's.'

'And what price was your silence?'

'Don't be angry with me, darling. It's nice to have some extra money around, you know that. And some of it went on your university . . . '

'As if that makes betraying your daughter okay.'

'I didn't betray you, Holly.'

'Then right now you're betraying yourself,' Holly said. 'Go on and buy yourself something nice with your hard-earned cash. Like a set of morals.'

Holly went to the boot to retrieve her luggage. Caring little for prudence she pulled off her jeans when she was back in the driver's seat. It was the worst case of overtanning she'd ever experienced. Falling asleep that time in the Lanzarote sun had nothing on this agony. But oddly, it didn't look too bad; and it was only overtanning. Red and welty, like faces in old English films about witch-burning. She half expected her legs to look like spare ribs.

She fumbled for her beige slacks. On tiptoe, her bottom raised, she pulled up the trousers and fastened the snakeskin belt. She looked her dangling Jesus in the eye and said, 'Don't you get high and mighty with me.' And then she got out of the car, stuffing the ruined jeans beneath the Jeep in the next bay.

4

Gambling was Alan's addiction, his way of stepping outside time. But he had found another path to this secret realm of timelessness: to Chronocessalis. It was alcohol; it was Guinness. Into the white flat-top hairdo of his latest brimming pint Alan stared. He was on his fourth since Holly had darted off. It was amazing, he thought: Guinness. Something so black, heavy and rich: it was a strange thing to want to do - to drink it. It seemed much more sensible to pour it into your car's engine. Or use it to coat the shed. Yet Alan drank it all the time; he spent fortunes on the stuff. It looked like a naked black athlete, running to fat - with a peroxided barnet from too many years in the sun. Or the foam was an island in a very polluted sea: Chronocessalis, perhaps - the Island that Time Forgot. Starring Doug McClure . . . Alan's thoughts were chattering on and on, as mindlessly as people in laundrettes.

Alan took a long swallow of the beer. When he put the glass back on to the table he discovered that his lip had bitten irreparably through the island. A fat crescent moon was now in its place.

When you sit on your own drinking, it is difficult to acknowledge how drunk you are becoming. But Alan had whole expeditions of fellow travellers, bustling in and out. Business people in slightly crinkled suits. Young families. Alan knew exactly how drunk he was becoming: not drunk enough. Two Scandinavian teenaged girls with rucksacks had been and gone. On a budget, Alan thought: two halves of the weakest lager. Bloody English prices. Sexually, they both appealed to him. Their youth; their vigour! As though Alan would be able to tap off some of their collective energy. That's what I've become, he thought: a vampire. Skulking around in dark places, needing. He'd been sorry to see the students go; already he missed their Moomin language, their watery chuckles. Come on, darling, he'd thought to their luggage-humped backs, non-specifically: come and sit on my face and I'll guess your weight.

The ugliness of the line appalled even Alan. When his curious inner monster started to control his thoughts was when he knew that inebriation was the next stop.

Holly saved him from this destination, damn her, by arriving at his side.

'We're going,' she said to him.

Alan had half a pint still to go. 'It's not time. It's only two,' he replied.

'Away from here, I mean. Come on.'

'Come on where? We're going to Dublin.'

'No, we're not,' Holly said. 'It's the first place they'll think of.'

'What? You're not making sense.'

'You can talk!' she answered loudly, meaning: you're being hypocritical. 'I'll explain. The car's waiting. Believe it or not, things have taken a turn for the worse.' She stood up. 'Yes or no. Are you coming?'

'No.'

'They'll notify the Irish police, you know.'

But nothing's happened yet, Alan was sober enough to think. It doesn't until tonight: the plan. 'What police? What's going on?'

'Are you coming?'

Alan stood up. Right now he needed an ally, a friend; to the best of his knowledge, so did Holly. She simply expressed her fears through different channels, at different wavelengths: by taking charge. It was Alan's method to disappear.

And servility was his middle name. He stood up a little unsteadily.

. . . At the bottom of the road leading up to the airport, left would take them to the motorway or St Albans; and right was unknown territory for both Holly and Alan.

Holly turned right.

'Where are we going?' Alan asked.

'Don't know. Somewhere to think.'

Alan gave a thought to the deal he'd made with Elvis. 'I need to be somewhere tonight,' he said.

'Where?' Holly turned right at the next roundabout as well, deliberately avoiding spending too long on any one road.

'Anywhere I can prove where I was.'

After a short pause Holly said, 'Why do I get the feeling you're not telling me something?' She turned left: going straight on would have provided an alternative route to the airport.

Alan did not answer Holly's question. The world outside his thoughts was oddly blurry; the only clean air and crystal waters were inside his head. 'When I was a kid,' he said, 'I used to play a game . . . '

'You've told me: Find the Lady. For coins from your schoolmates.'

'No, not that game. This was one I played on my own.'

Holly turned right into an area of shops. She needed petrol. 'We're not going out together anymore, Alan; I'm not sure I should be hearing about games you played by yourself when you were a kid. I'll be back in a second.' She had parked next to a petrol pump. She turned off the engine.

Alan gripped her arm and looked into her eyes. 'Wait. Just listen. I played a game of getting myself lost. I had a bus pass to get me to school and at the weekend I used to help this guy on the market set up his stall. He sold foam \- for chair upholstery. That type of thing. And fabric and coats. A Jewboy called Harry Nathan.' Alan smiled. 'Mum and Day thought I was there all day, but at about ten o'clock, see, I used to get on the first bus that arrived - with my bus pass. I sat upstairs with the smokers if it was a double decker. And I just let it take me anywhere. I'd get off the bus somewhere I'd never been before and just start walking. Enjoying being totally lost. What do you think that says about me?'

There was nothing that Holly could think of at first. But then she said, 'You're talking about Sarah, aren't you? About why you've been so scared to leave her.'

Nodding his head Alan replied, 'I suppose I've enjoyed being lost. In a relationship.' His voice had turned down its own volume, and the sound was brittle. 'But today . . . Sarah said she knew all about us, and it was like being found. The game was over.'

Holly smiled. 'That's very Thomas Hardy, if you don't mind me saying so.'

'I don't mind at all. You're the only person I can talk to about books.'

Holly removed Alan's hand from her arm. 'I need petrol, Alan. We can talk on the way.'

'Please tell me where we're going.'

'To the enchanted forest. We're going to get lost together.' The moment pinched at the sides of her head, and at her eyes, squeezing the next sentence out. It came: 'I missed you.'

Alan nodded. 'I've missed you too.' Emotion was rising up through the swamp of fear and alcohol, like a bubble popping. 'I've been so lonely . . . '

'Don't break down on me, Alan. We've got a lot to talk about . . . ' Holly unfastened her seat belt and opened the door. 'How about getting some shopping from the supermarket?' she suggested. 'I don't know when we'll be stopping next. Have a wee if there's a toilet, seeing's you've been drinking.'

As Holly unlocked the petrol cap, Alan glanced at the hulking horror of the Asda supermarket. Clearly Holly had forgotten what supermarkets meant to him, and his ego protested at her suggestion. This week was not his turn to do the shopping.

Don't be a baby, he told himself. You're drunk as a cunt. He climbed out of the car, smiled weakly at Holly, and breathed the fumes. Dangerously, he'd always enjoyed the smell of petroleum. Then he walked over the busy road to Asda, with a sigh.

A do-gooder was selling small paper flowers by the door: all proceeds to Save the Children. Alan pushed fifty pence through the slit in the woman's blue maraca, and was thanked. Her fingers were turning the same colour as her collecting box. Refusing the paper flower for his donation, Alan entered the store, the door sliding closed behind him. Christ! Here was another one, but a different charity: Cancer Research. All my pleasures are vicarious, he thought, slipping in a pound. He accepted the old girl's sticker for his lapel. Alan lived in fear of testicular cancer - as most men do, whether they know it or not. His gonads wriggled in their pimply sack. Aisle one, and Alan was thinking of the cancer that he did not have, but might one day: cancer of the balls. Any subject was more cheerful than supermarkets. Some men had to have them out because of the threat of prostate cancer. That simply wasn't fair. Have the fucking prostate out, he thought, illogically. And they're replaced with what? Ball bearings have been known. Ping pong balls? - with the scrotum floating on the surface of the bath like a dying creature of the sea. Alan recalled the punchline of a joke: But now I only get an erection when I see a cheese sandwich . . . That was right: in the joke he'd had them replaced by pickled onions.

He queued for hot chicken drumsticks: four for a quid. Not bad. He bought crisps and doughnuts; pork pies and pop. An eight-can crate of Stella lager. And then he thought of Holly. Had she said something about having her period?

A delayed reaction came burping through the crowded room in his head.

Her trousers. She was wearing different trousers. What had happened to her jeans when she'd gone back to the house? Alan paused in front of the remarkable array of sanitary products - like a man trying to get directions from a gaggle of foreigners. The language was different: there was no connection. But having deduced correctly that Holly was in the throes of her 'monthlies', he was now determined to show consideration and buy her some tampons. Holly had always changed clothes a great deal when she'd been having her period. Withdrawing from her once, his penis had been lightly basted in her menstrual blood. It had made him feel nauseous, but not wishing to hurt her feelings, Alan had surreptitiously wiped himself off with a discarded sock.

Astonishingly Alan remembered Holly's specifications. Hers was a Great Dane of a period, whereas Sarah's was a nimble, sprightly puppy - virtually drying up to sticky fudge in half a minute, and gone by sunrise. Holly's body was a more expensive vehicle, Alan thought: it needed more fuel and it produced more waste of every kind.

The check-out lad asked him, with professional need-to-know, if he had a points card. Nah. Would he like one? Nah. The spiel that was then launched into had been rehearsed, but the youth's interest had a short shelf life - about thirty seconds - and both of them were bored by the time the list of regurgitated advantages had come to an end. Had Alan changed his mind? Nah.

Alan's inebriation was decaying. But what slapped him back to reality completely was the sight that befell him on leaving the store. He wanted to drop his shopping.

Across the road, by petrol pump ten, Holly was having an argument . . . with Hugh and Sarah. Now Elvis's voiced sounded in Alan's head. This is where things get tasty . . .

Taking another step, however, caused a disintegration of the picture's pixels. What's wrong with me? Alan demanded of himself. It was only Holly: his sense of masochism or expectation had developed the rest. She was leaning into the lion's mouth of her car's engine, checking the level of oil on the dipstick. She held it up against the light and scrutinised it like a scientist.

'I just imagined Hugh and Sarah had found you,' Alan said. 'I'm going nuts.'

Holly wasn't listening. 'Lucky we stopped. I'm out of oil. Bloody thing.'

Stupidly Alan said, 'You've come to the right place.'

Holly still wasn't listening. 'Something smells good,' she said.

They were each firing arrows, but they were all falling short of straw packed targets.

'What did you buy?'

'Chicken and beer and tampons. And some other things.' Holly gave him a curious look. 'You changed your trousers,' Alan explained. 'It was just a guess.'

'Spot on. But that's not why I changed them.' Holly let the bonnet slam down. 'There's something I've got to tell you . . . '

5

'What did she say?' Sarah asked.

'They checked in all right. Well, Alan did. But then she saw them leave,' Hugh answered, having returned from the EasyJet front desk. 'I told her we need to know where they are because I have his medication. And I tell you what: I'll give him some bloody medication as well, when I find him.'

'You can rip out his spleen for all I care. It's Holly I want.'

Neither one of them exactly what they really would do, when and if they caught up with the eloping pair; but anger's voice is faster than its mind.

'What do we do, Dad? Wait here in case they show up? They're cutting it fine.'

Hugh shook his head. He'd been giving this a lot of thought. 'I don't think they're going to Dublin. I bet they're going north.'

'To Holly's house?'

'I'd put money on it if I was more inclined to be that sort of idiot.' Hugh pouted for a second. 'We're not going to let this go, are we? Not after what they've done. Are you up for the ride?' he asked. 'I can do Yorkshire in three hours on a good day.'

'This has not been a good day,' Sarah replied.

'You know what I mean. The wheels'll hardly touch the road. Yes or no.'

Having given it a second's consideration, 'We might even beat her there,' Sarah said. She could answer questions about the blaze any time. She wasn't even certain it mattered, except for the gruesome insurance details that were sure to come limping along any second now. 'Will you phone Mum for the directions?'

'Yes. Let's go.'

Hugh's claim to be able to do Yorkshire in three hours seemed, if anything, an underestimation, if his initial tyre-squealing velocities were anything to go by. Yorkshire in three hours? The way Hugh was driving, he could have done Yugoslavia in three hours. Now that much of the wine and dope had worn off, there was nothing in Sarah's system to make the journey seem slower than it was. She got the full whammy - and she was scared. Scared every time Hugh bolted through a red light; scared every time he roared past a speed camera, saying 'Fuck it' under his breath, where he thought his daughter might not hear; and scared every time Hugh's hand-heel crunched down to release a plump parp from the car horn - to punish another driver's sloth. The further they drove - now - up the M1, the worse his language became, and louder. His agony at having to slow to (say) ninety was released as a yodel of longsuffering despair. Hugh flashed his lights at any driver who would not comply with his wishes and move aside.

'Dad, listen for a second,' said Sarah.

'I'm listening.'

She wanted to say something for two specific reasons. The first was, she hated the silence between them; it felt as though a bomb was ticking - Hugh's anger was set to self-destruct. And the second was more embarrassing: the reality caused by no breakfast and pre-noon drinking. A light but persistent pressure in her bowels. And could she stand the shame if it was louder than she'd anticipated?

'They might not be going to Yorkshire,' Sarah said.

'What makes you say that?'

'They used to have a hotel they went to. In Buxton.'

With foolhardy negligence Hugh took his attention away from the road, although he as travelling at well over seventy. Sarah did not turn to face him.

'It showed up on the phone bills a few times. I'm just trying to remember the name of the place.'

'Why Buxton?'

'Is it a halfway place between here and Yorkshire?'

'No.'

'Then I don't know,' said Sarah. 'It's just a thought.'

'It's a good thought. Try and remember the name of the hotel.'

'I'm trying. It's very simple; it's one word. Like "Royal" but not "Royal".'

'The Queen's Hotel? The King's Hotel?'

Sarah grinned. 'The Palace.'

'So that's option two,' said Hugh.

6

The fire had been extinguished. A few neighbours had come out of their houses in their slippers to help control the blaze by showering it with good intentions. The press had arrived: young blades from Home Counties Newspapers, sniffing the carbon in the air. The fire engines, the police car, the ambulance: all parts of the circus. The house looked like an overtoasted marshmallow, or a raisin. It looked smaller. Compressed. And inside were the fossils of a long-dead marriage.

Alan had insisted that Holly drive him here, of course. Once he'd heard Holly's economical version of events, he'd harboured no wish to run away.

There would be questions - for both of them. Questions were fine. Holly crossed her arms, already trying to convince herself that she had not dropped the burning joint on to the carpet. That hadn't been her: Sarah had done that. If necessary, Holly would go under oath and say as much. And why had she fled from the burning building in her car? To fetch Alan from the airport. Holly was prepared.

So was Alan. But he didn't understand sibling rivalry. Staring in shock at the home he had owned, not owned, and then owned again - and now lost for the final time - his brain was a National Grid of tangled thoughts of different colours. He was already considering the aeons of litigation and libel that he would now have to face. A divorce; insurance claims, and the crafty tactics of the formerly mumsy companies. The resolutions of ball-breaking squalor.

'Jesus,' said Alan, apropos of everything.

7

Cardiovascilated and feeling loose and supple, Elvis knocked on the door of the terrible flat in the terrible tower block, whistling by coincidence rather than as a satirical statement 'In the Ghetto'. He tapped a plimsoled foot. Or rather, a foot entombed in the coffin-like silk and self-deodorizing gills of one half of a two hundred quid pair of trainers. He'd been to the gym. He felt like a jungle cat, rippling and ready.

. . . because if there's one thing that she don't need . . .

Elvis's brain had taken to singing songs to him - to keep him occupied.

Elvis Aaron Presley, thought Elvis, still tapping his lucky toes, still waiting for an answer to his knock. He rang the rattling doorbell instead. Funny name to give a kid. And funny how the 'Aaron' caught on over here but the 'Elvis' didn't . . .

Elvis knew several minor-league crooks called Aaron. His health-food supplier was called Aaron Wordsworth. And then there was Aaron Sarson, the geezer in marketing who played roulette every now and then . . .

. . . mouth to feed . . . in the ghet-to . . .

Come on, for Christ's sake.

Elvis knocked again. Then pushed the doorbell again. He was starting to feel a tad selfconscious, what with the crowbar in his hand and everything. Maybe he should just put his brick through the window.

The door opened.

Oh, this would be easy enough, thought Elvis in a split-second. The man was half-dressed and half-drunk.

'You Daz?'

'Yeah. Who you?'

Elvis swung the crowbar up into Daz's groin. Daz was wearing only boxer shorts and a t-shirt, and the metal connected with the loose underbagging of his scrotum.

'I'm the King,' said Elvis, stepping into the flat. He pushed the doubled-over Daz to the side, and closed the door. Taking a step closer to the gasping figure before him, Elvis dropped the gym bag and swung the crowbar again.

The sound of anything against a human head is ugly, but the sound of metal against a human head is particularly bad. Even Elvis didn't like it. A bit like a church bell with one of those muffly things over the clanger, he thought. Loud enough to be heard in the next flat, probably, if they weren't fucking arguing in there.

Daz had spun a full pirouette but had managed to stay on his feet. He now had one arm raised in self-defence.

'Don't be silly,' Elvis chided, and the crowbar was singing through the air again.

Ooh, that clang.

Daz went down on to his knees.

'Now listen to me carefully,' Elvis said. 'Are you listening, or do I have to knock your fucking head off?'

Daz managed to say, 'I'm listening.'

'Good. Look at me. Look at me.'

Daz raised his chiming skull. Elvis sniggered. 'Bit blurry am I, cunt?' he asked. 'Tough shit, mate. Don't fuck around with other people's wives. You got me? She comes round here again you give her the fucking boot. 'Cause I'll be watching you,' he lied. 'You understand me? If you and her even talk on the phone, I'll wrap the fucking wire round your neck. You talk in semaphore and I'll bust your arms. Two of yous are finished. I do hope I've made my point clear.'

A reckless impulse made Daz say, 'I know where you live, mate . . . ' Implying that vengeance would be his soon enough.

Fortunately Elvis saw the funny side of this show of bravado. 'Yeah, I'm down at the end of Lonely Street,' he said. 'Heartbreak Hotel.'

'What?'

'You'll be needing some money now,' Elvis continued, ignoring the question. He picked up his gym bag and rifled through it, in search of the envelope. He had separated the money earlier on: a thousand for Daz, and five hundred for himself. When he'd found the envelope he tossed it to Daz. 'Courtesy of Alan Chandler, even if he was a bit wrecked. Rather generous I'd say. Then again, I got five hundred so I'm not grumbling. A thousand quid, Dazzy. Don't spend it all in one place, you naughty boy.'

Daz opened the envelope. It was crammed with fifties. 'I don't get it,' he said.

'A grand,' Elvis told him, 'to stay away from Sarah. Recoverable with interest if you two are ever seen together again. Interest not necessarily money.'

'I thought that bit was bullshit. The bit about the money.'

Elvis shook his head. 'Nope. And nor was the bit about your slap. Alan Chandler's a good bloke. He don't need cunts like you in his life. Stay away.'

Dipping his head Daz said, 'Message received.'

'Good. Now. Do you wanna call the ambulance straight away or later?'

Still on his knees Daz asked: 'What ambulance?'

'For your broken nose.'

'What broken . . . No, please,' Daz whined.

'You silly, silly boy,' Elvis said to him, stepping forwards and swinging one of his expensive trainers at Daz's face.

8

Many hours later, there was a phone call, as Saturday was leaking away into Sunday morning; a phone call to Holly's mobile. It took seven rings before anything happened. Holly closed the bathroom door and sat on the edge of the tub. She was wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of knickers; she'd been sleeping. Under only one sheet. Although her legs would need no surgery, the burns were stinging.

'I knew it would be you,' Holly said two seconds after answering the call. 'Who else would call at this time at night?'

'You'd be surprised. Is my husband with you?' The voice was cold; emotion was being held in check.

'He's asleep.'

'Wake him. I want to speak to him.'

'Then dial his mobile,' Holly replied.

'I did. It went to the answering service. Wake him up.'

A bitter laugh followed. 'Haven't you grasped it yet? You can't order me around anymore, Sarah,' said Holly. 'You forget that.'

Huskily Sarah drew breath. 'Are you two together? I mean attached.'

'I think so,' Holly replied. She was concerned about how reasonable Sarah was sounding; that didn't seem like her at all. The switch that turned on Sarah's anger had been damaged, perhaps, by the smoke; by the shock. Or else (and quite possibly) she was in the arms of Good Prince Valium. She'd been tranqued. She'd been dosed up by some forgiving, gullible GP. Holly elaborated into the telephone's chunky silence. It seemed better to be saying something, than listening to the hiss of crippled hatred. 'I don't think we were really apart. Not really. I'll say sorry for that bit. It was never meant . . . '

'Vindictively,' Sarah interrupted. She was sounding more brain-dead by the utterance. 'I know. Change the record . . . You burnt the house down, didn't you.'

The reply was immediate, and adamant. 'No, I didn't. You fell asleep smoking.' The lie was growing on her; she was feeling more comfortable wearing it. And she had to feel relieved as well that the two of them were back on familiar, or at least expected ground: accusations. Incriminations.

This time there was only the tiniest of pauses. Sarah breathed sibilantly. Holly had made a mistake to assume that Sarah had taken Valium, or any other prescribed medication; but as was customary for a Saturday night, or indeed for any night, Sarah was drunk and a little bit high. Only seconds before she'd dialled the number, she'd been thinking of the trip to Cairo she'd made with Alan, some time ago. After strolling through the Cities of the Dead, they had taken a cab to the Khan - the rambunctious, deathless market. They'd watched the astonishing Sufi dancers, and then they'd gone to the swing-a-cat apartment of an Egyptian journalist. Said hack had promptly supplied Sarah and Alan (but mainly Sarah) with grass that had been cut with a powerful opiate. Sarah had smoked her way through several refills of the sheesha pipe. And on the way back through the alleys, she'd had the feeling that she was inside a bubble, observing life. Brown people with inquisitive faces swam by. A few last-minute pendant-hawkers, or sweetbread salesmen, tried to peddle their wares, but Sarah had been more impressed by their spotless traditional dress and their ferret-fur moustaches than their goods. She'd been perfectly lucid, but outside existence: in a dream, in a film . . .

And she felt the same way now, talking to Holly. It didn't seem real. How could this conversation be happening? Sarah told herself to toughen up, but what she asked was genuine and ruminative - not intended to be malicious in any way.

'Why do you hate me?' Sarah asked. 'I need to know before . . . '

'Before what?'

'Just before. I need to know.'

'You're taking this better than I thought you'd be.'

Sarah answered, 'You have no idea how badly I'm taking this, you slag. But you haven't won yet. Tell me.'

'Okay, so I'll tell you already. It's simple. Listen carefully; I don't want to repeat it . . . Ready? I hate you because nothing's good enough for you. You're never grateful. You're a cruel, twisted piece of dog shit, Sarah; no one deserves what you give.' She thought back to the speech she'd created in the burning house. 'You're a cancer.'

The membrane protecting Sarah from the real-world was stretching. But if she came out of her vision-improving sphere, there would be no gift-sellers (no plastic camels, no gaudy lamps): there'd be pain. Sarah felt raw with it already. And that was with the cocoon of narcotics and liquor around her. The pain was waiting.

'I see. And I give up. You're not in Yorkshire, because I went there with Dad. And you're not in our flat - because I am. A hotel?' Sarah needed to hear it from Holly's lips - and that should do it. Then Sarah would be ready for the next stage.

Sarah needed to hear Holly try to fool her once more.

'You went to Yorkshire?'

'Dad drove. He was furious you weren't there.'

'Diddums,' said Holly. 'We went to see the house. Alan insisted.'

'So where are you now?'

'A hotel. It doesn't matter where. It's basic but clean. Expensive though.'

'It's okay. Alan won big last night. But you've as good as told me you're still in the Big Smoke. If that's not an unfortunate way of putting it.'

'Okay, we're still in London. And he told me about yesterday. So what's next?' Holly frowned into the silence, having noticed a strange echo on the last thing Sarah had said. 'Where are you, by the way? It sounds odd.' As though . . .

Sarah paused. 'I told you: in the flat. Get him some help, will you? Please? The gambling's a problem.'

As though she was hearing Sarah through the phone in one ear, and the mumble of her voice in the other ear, real time . . .

' . . . I'll do that,' Holly told her. 'I'm sleepy, Sarah. It's been a long day . . . '

'One last thing. For my information,' Sarah added quickly. 'Why did you trespass on our property last night? To see me or to see Alan?'

Holly had given this question some thought. 'Neither, really. Just to show I could. Just to show you're not invincible.' A crazy notion had entered Holly's head.

'And did I prove that?'

'Yes.'

Sarah panted: or so it sounded. 'So who gets custody of him for Christmas then?' she asked. Her voice had the sour bitterness about it of unrefrigerated cream.

But Holly treated the query seriously, replying, 'That's up to him. All I can say is, right now he's the only person I don't blame for something. And that tastes like nectar. I can't imagine how I'll ever speak to my mum again.' She stood up and hugged herself.

'Please do. She was broke. That's why; that's all.'

Coldly Holly said, 'I'll take that into consideration. And I need to know: How did you know it was me? Who broke in.'

'The way you walk, funnily enough. A few things you said of course, but mainly . . . I watched you as you walked away from the swimming pool. It was like a revelation.' Sarah coughed a little of her bitterness away. 'Are you going back up north?'

'Probably. Maybe Alan and I will work together. He hates Bargeld Trading with all his soul.' Holly shrugged. 'It's too soon to tell. The only thing we can be clear about is, we've got to say goodbye.'

'You're tired: you said,' Sarah commented, but Holly was not satisfied with that.

'I mean goodbye,' Holly told her. 'For good. Timewise for good - and for the better for good. I don't want a Christmas card from you, Sarah, and you won't get one from me.'

'Boo hoo,' said Sarah.

'Shall we go to sleep?' Holly wondered, and then remembered something. 'The divorce, by the way?'

'Ten minutes, tops. Grounds of adultery. Both say we did and everyone's a winner. Is that rational enough for you?'

Holly replied, 'You're the cruellest bitch I've ever known. Goodbye, Sarah.'

'There's one more thing, Holly.' Now the red whip of nastiness lashed and crackled in her tones again: the voice that Holly had expected to hear from the beginning.

There was a knock at the door: four loud raps.

Holly's body froze.

'Open the fucking door, you fat slut,' Sarah hissed into her ear.

9

Elvis worked quickly. This was the only adverb that qualified his self-defined notion of 'work': quickly. If and when trouble broke out at the gambler, being quick was the only chance he had of being successful. Successful violence depends on speed. Even standing around at the gambler waiting for trouble to break out - Elvis did that quickly too. He stood around at great speeds - in the sense that his mind was working. How many thoughts per second? His thoughts were like a hummingbird's wings. At the gym? He pumped iron vigorously. At home he danced to 'Jailhouse Rock' in a similar fashion.

Outside Sarah's video shop Elvis worked quickly. It was late and there were only a few drinkers around. Having sorted out Daz, Elvis had walked back home for a rest, and now he was raring to go again. Dressed in black, he headed for HandyFilms, in his woolly and his leather gloves. He went down on his haunches and used the multifunctional crowbar to attack the lock on the portcullis. A few heads turned his way. But who was willing to get involved? After a minute, the padlock twanged like an elastic band and skittered half a metre across the pavement like an ice hockey puck. Elvis rolled up the metal barrier. Then he jabbed the tool at the glass below the waist-high horizontal divide; and a high-pitched whoop resulted.

This was make or break time. Like a magician pointing at the objects that will disappear, Elvis waved the crowbar at the glass that remained in its frame below the letterbox.

The alarm was piercing inside the store. Elvis had only seconds. He rugby tackled the till on the counter: in the same way that the safe drops from the high windows in cartoons, it fell to the ground with a tremendous crash, ending up on its back with its display panel shattered.

Elvis removed from his pocket the business card that Alan had produced yesterday at the spieler: Daz's card. He deliberately dropped it next to the cash register. Elvis also removed a tissue from the pocket of his track suit bottoms. Having battered Daz into unconsciousness, Elvis had run a hand through the man's longish locks; the follicles thereby collected (a noteworthy harvest) he'd wrapped in a tissue. Elvis dropped this tissue next to the business card.

It would appear, Elvis thought, as though Daz had been here. If the police found the thousand pounds, so much the better. The very least that should happen was an examination of Daz's working methods. In this manner alone, Elvis hoped he would have lived up to Alan's directive to make sure Daz's life became hell.

Elvis ducked back into the open air and made good his escape. The alarm sounded quieter and quieter behind him: as did the sirens, overlapping and interrupting one another, like the greedy cries of geese.

SUNDAY

A week in London is the equivalent of a fortnight in most other major cities. Or even longer . . . London life runs around the track faster - lapping other competitors - to stay in the lead. And London social exchanges take a fraction of the time required by those in other major cities. A world can be born and then die - within the space of a week.

\- Holly Paver

1

Immediately wishing she'd woken Alan, Holly opened the door to their room at the Palace Hotel, Buxton.

As she'd guessed, Sarah was waiting for her outside, the phone in one hand.

'How did you know?' Holly asked.

But Sarah did not reply. For a second, it was like they were back in the pool - one dizzy with fright, and one stoned - treading water. Then Sarah lunged forwards, a wolfish sneer on her face. As she did so, Holly tried to close the door on her. But Sarah's weight and elbow pushed the door inwards, and out of Holly's grip. It thumped against the wall.

Holly backed up two steps. However, Sarah managed to connect the phone she was holding to Holly's jaw: a brutal punch. The attacked woman whimpered. Now inside the gloomy room, with its light and smoky smell, Sarah used her other hand to slam a fist into Holly's stomach. Holly bent over slightly, and Sarah brought the hilt of the phone down on the top of her head. The shock more than the pain disabled her. Holly's legs weakened, and she dropped to her knees. This position was perfect for Sarah to aim her right knee at the side of Holly's head, which she did. Another well-connected blow.

Holly shouted, 'Alan!'

Sarah used her free left hand to slap Holly's face, although it was a negligible strike. 'Don't you dare call out for my husband! He won't help you . . . '

In one of the two large single beds, Alan stirred. He mumbled something in the language of the mermaids while Holly raised her hands to protect herself from further attack. Which was quick to follow. Having dropped her mobile, Sarah was now using both hands to volley a series of slaps to her sister's arms, face and head.

Holly screamed a protest. Raising herself up on her knees, and leaning forward, Holly butted her head into Sarah's stomach. Sarah clutched at the area just above the top of her miniskirt.

She dropped back a few paces, returning to the hall.

The hotel murmured with a few late-night drinkers downstairs (the bar staying open for residents) but otherwise there was a deathly hush to the place, and many of the lights had been turned off. The noise of the struggle - to Holly, at least - seemed monstrous. Yet so far it had lasted only seconds, and no attention had been drawn . . .

Except for Alan. Now reluctantly climbing up through layers of sleep, he was aware of trouble . . .

Holly didn't know that he was awake. Keen to capitalise on her head-butt, she stood up, her burnt legs and bruised jawline hurting. She ran out into the corridor - at Sarah. Their bodies connected heavily. Her teeth bared, however, Sarah leant to one side, hoping to use Holly's momentum to send the woman on her way.

She could not have known how effective the move would be.

Holly's face made impact with the lightly-flowered wallpaper. Something cracked, and pain unravelled through her skull. A smear of blood - like a paint ball - was left on the petals of one of the flowers.

Knowing that she was heftier than Sarah didn't help: there was nothing logical about this. Size wasn't important. And neither of them had any skills or experience at fighting. But Sarah seemed to be learning the ropes a lot faster . . . She was growling underneath her breath. Right now, with her head and body towards the wall, Holly knew that she was vulnerable. Indeed, Sarah was taking advantage of the situation by punching at Holly's flanks and kidneys . . . one blow after the next in a regular rhythm.

'Stop it!' Alan said from inside the room. In his boxer shorts he dashed to the door and tried to restrain his wife. But Sarah wriggled in his arms, and aimed an elbow backwards. Alan yelped; and Sarah moved away from the door - further down the corridor, back the way she'd arrived.

Holly ran towards her, despite the protest that Alan made. The two sisters embraced like sumo wrestlers, or rugby players inside the scrum: locked together, but throwing illegal punches and stiff-fingered jabs.

Pain did not exist. It was not a concept.

The only concept to acknowledge was victory.

As though sensing this truth, Alan moved with them along the corridor - like a referee. With no idea how to separate them; but with the knowledge that this would not end before something serious happened. The scum had risen to the surface; there was no way to stir it back into the broth. The two women were oozing out poison. Catharsis. But it resembled any cat-fight, or yob violence on the terraces.

The sisters leaned against the door, and emerged in the open balcony area above the wide flights of stairs that curved down to the mezzanine. From where the fight continued, a splendid view was available. Not that either of the combatants was admiring the opulence of the hotel . . . By now Alan was trying to split the two of them apart, digging his nails and fingers into the scrimmage - as though attemping to lift a drain-lid, or a paving slab. He shouted, 'Careful!' - for they were at the top of one of the flights of stairs. No one fell. The fists kept flying, among the insults.

'Sarah, no!' came another voice - from the ground floor.

Alan looked down to see Hugh, who had been waiting by the check-in desk, on his daughter's orders, begin the ascent of the thickly carpeted stairs. (A woman behind the desk picked up a telephone.) Sarah had wanted to confront the couple herself, but Hugh was already regretting giving in to her wishes. Look at what had happened! He called her name again, as Sarah and Holly . . .

. . . With a lurch, they fell against the banister. The sternum-high wooden balustrade groaned - as loudly as Sarah did. Alan had his arm between them.

The moment stalled: fermata.

Then, as though something had been swallowed, the passage that would take them on to the next event was cleared. And the inevitable became the tragic . . .

Fear caught in Sarah's throat. Holly shrieked.

The momentum with which they'd hit the banister made Holly lose her bAlance. Like the spokes of a cartwheel, her legs flipped round in a circle. A fraction of a second passed in which it seemed that Sarah would be able to keep hold of her . . .

Then Holly fell to the mezzanine floor below. Plummeting, her arms flapped as though she was trying to swim, or was waving farewell. Her mouth was a rictus.

Hugh on the stairs, Alan and Sarah on the landing, the lady behind the desk, and even a few of the late-night drinkers in the bar - all heard the muffled crunch and thud of a body onto a hard surface . . . Alan, at first, didn't look over. He didn't want to see. A grim weakness had infected his bones, and he was suddenly acutely aware of how little clothing he had on. Because thinking about his near-nudity was a way of not thinking about anything at all. Or about Holly . . . who had fallen.

Sarah screamed, albeit a brief scream. The woman behind the desk put her hand over her mouth, now realising that her instincts had been correct: the old man and the younger woman at the top of the stairs (now the only younger woman at the top of the stairs) were not residents. She should have challenged them.

No words were spoken. Finally Alan looked over and smiled. Not because he was happy or had seen anything encouraging (quite the opposite: Holly's body was in the shape of a question mark, curled up on the floor, with blood still leaking from her nose, and now also from a great gash on her forehead) but because he had lost his grip.

'I didn't mean it,' Sarah whispered . . . but no one was listening.

2

'Paul? S'taz.'

Paulette's voice was croaky and badly-formed. 'Do you know what the fucking time is, Daz?' she asked.

'Yeah, sorry.' In fact he didn't. He had only regained consciousness thirty seconds earlier.

'What's wrong with your voice? You got the flu or summing? Or just pissed?'

'I had me nose broke.'

Paulette was curiously unimpressed, but impressively curious. 'You never. Who by?'

'Some knob. Listen, me and Sarah's finished, all right? I've give her the big E. That tit Amstrad let her know what I do on the side. I can't exactly burgle her shop now, can I, and someone else had a pop at her house. They'll be like Dobermanns and bollocks. No chance. Tripwires? Forget it. She's no use to me no more.'

Paulette waited. 'Boo hoo,' she said finally.

'Don't be like that, girl. I'm asking your forgiveness innaye. I went off the rails. All right: I'm a twat. But I'm sorry. Come back to me, Paul.'

She was hugging herself as she said, 'I can't.' But did she want to?

'Why not?' Daz asked.

'Made alternative arrangements.'

This kindled Daz's sense of moral outrage. In a tone of bristling incredulity he said, 'You got someone else already? 'Oo?'

'That tit Amstrad, as you put it.'

'You pulling me chain!'

'Straight up.'

'Amstrad? Are you mental?'

'Maybe.'

'He's already got a bird. He's got kids.'

'So have you,' said Paulette. 'Didn't stop you alleycatting around, did it? Don't be a pot and a kettle, Daz. Anyway, we ain't going to bed. It's a business set-up . . . '

'The fuck are you talking about?'

The phone call was going extremely badly. Daz had expected, for his sacrifices and his loss of business, full emotional vindication from Paulette: full forgiveness. And what had he found instead? That Amstrad's knives were as sharp as any other bugger's. How was Daz supposed to do business with the black man now? Daz had expected sympathy for his beating, and instead he'd had salt thrown into his wounds.

That was a point. 'Listen, darling,' Daz said. 'I better go to the hospital now. Make sure I'm all right. The geezer got tasty with me.' Daz thought it prudent to omit the details of the grand he'd earned for his troubles. 'Will you meet me there? We should talk. I wanna know all about this so-called business set-up.'

'It's the middle of the night, Daz. I ain't going nowhere. Carol's asleep. We'll talk tomorrow if you want, but I ain't having you back. At least I know where I am with Amstrad. He never pretended he was anyfing else. But you? Butter wouldn't melt, would it. I trusted you.' Paulette coughed; she was getting cold. 'Oo was it, anyway?' she added as an afterthought.

'Oo was what? Oh, the slap. A friend of her husband, as it goes.'

Paulette laughed. 'Oh, we are in the wars. Daddy's little soldier.'

Daz was not best pleased. 'Shut it. You know I'll have to cut off your allowance if you go with him, don't you?' Daz said. 'Love or business.'

'He warned me you were gonna do that anyway. We've come to an agreement.' Paulette was proud of the lack of emotion in her voice; it sounded as though she didn't need him anymore. She had almost convinced herself.

It is interesting to note that only now - so late in the conversation - did the subject of their gestating child rear its head. 'I'm not gonna let Amstrad have my babe,' Daz said. 'Forget about it.'

Paulette laughed again. 'What are you gonna do about it?' she cried. 'You know, Amstrad told me something. He takes his kids places - even if it's only the betting shop. When was the last time you took Carol anywhere?' Paulette felt confident and sure of herself, now that she had Amstrad's backing. 'Face it: you've lost interest in us.'

'Bollocks.'

'I'm going back to bed, Daz.'

'I'm in agony!' he protested.

'Then you shouldn't've done it to me, should you? I don't care what your ulterior motives were. I had little enough without needing to find out I ain't even got that. Security, I mean. Loyalty. Leave me alone now, Daz. I've had enough. You can do what you want. Carol's gonna have a new dad, but I don't suppose she'll know the difference, she ain't seen you so long. Amstrad's gonna look after her on Monday. I've got an appointment. I'm going back to school.'

Daz sniggered. 'You're doing what?'

'Yeah, go on: take the piss. But I'm too young, mate. There's gotta be more, you with me? Goodnight, Daz. Get well soon.'

Click. Brrr . . .

. . . Bitch, thought Daz. This was chronic. This was wank . . . Very early on a Sunday morning and Daz was contemplating the visit to the hospital. Things weren't right, and there was no point pretending that they were. Throughout the conversation, it was as if Daz had been clinically numbed by Paulette's words. As Daz climbed to his feet, however, he realised that the anaesthetic had well and truly worn off. Pains everywhere. The bastard had been thorough. When the time came for Daz to offer the counter-contract (the mark on Alan's head) maybe he could get the same bloke, if he was an independent.

Daz was looking in the mirror: never a pleasant endeavour for this young man at the best of times. But this morning? Bless my soul. His face was a messy pizza: bloody and virtually flat, the nose now resembling a speedbump rather than a hill. He spat purple phlegm into the sink. And his left hip hurt noticeably worse than any other part of his body. Apart from his nose, nothing could be broken; but nothing was quite right either.

Having limped to the telephone, Daz called for a taxi rather than an ambulance. He was reasonably certain that he shouldn't be driving. Not caring about the hour of the day (one a.m.) he said, 'Tell the driver to honk his horn. I'll hear him.' Daz feared hospitals, and an ambulance might feel a little bit too much like the Final Journey.

Daz dressed himself carefully in the bedroom and tied his trainers up loosely. Even the tops of his feet had been beaten.

3

Halfway up the stairs, Hugh didn't know if he should continue up or go back down.

Alan was more convinced about what to do. His legs like pistons as he descended to the mezzanine, he ran to Holly, passing Hugh en route, and ignoring Sarah's calling of his name. His fingers were tingling and his head was burning with the after-image of Holly lying crumpled on the floor. A piece of litter.

'Get an ambulance!' he shouted at the check-in assistant.

The woman picked up her telephone again.

By the time he reached Holly's body, a steward from the bar had come out to see what all the fuss was about. Alan knelt down at Holly's side. Every instinct he had said not to move her; he'd seen hospital dramas, he'd seen films. Don't move the body in case of broken bones. But he wanted to hold her in his arms.

Her eyelids were flickering. She was still alive.

Most unpleasantly, Holly's head in a puddle of her own blood made Alan think about a steaming Christmas pudding, covered in custard. A bizarre association, which Alan managed to shake away quickly.

'Holly?' he whispered. 'Can you hear me?'

Alan was aware of other voices, elsewhere. He didn't know it but behind his back, Hugh was talking to his daughter, saying Come on, for Christ's sake, let's go . . .

Holly's lips spasmed. 'Feel giddy,' she managed to say.

'You're going to be all right.'

'She didn't mean it, did she, Alan . . . '

'No,' said Alan. 'She didn't mean it.' He didn't know if he was telling a lie.

Holly smiled, and then closed her eyes. Alan felt as though the entire ground floor of the hotel had been compressed into a space of a one metre radius, around of the two of them. Outside this circle, there was neither light nor hope.

Only the hotel staff were watching as Hugh dragged Sarah down the stairs. 'Walk with me,' he was hissing. 'Let's go.'

But all Sarah could do was watch Alan and Holly. Sarah's skin and brain felt scratched. 'I don't want to go anywhere,' she told her father in a monotone.

They were now at the foot of the stairs.

'We can't stay here,' Hugh explained to her in a lowered voice.

'Where are we gonna go, Daddy? I did this.'

'It was an accident.'

Sarah faced him; some tears had emerged from her eyes. 'We set them up, Dad. How can you say it was an accident . . . '

'We did it for you.' Hugh looked puzzled. While not sure that he was thinking properly, he was nonetheless certain of one thing: staying put would mean mean facing questions. There was no way around that. And he ran a large business operation; he couldn't afford to be incriminated in this. Wouldn't be good for the image of the company.

'I've got to stay,' said Sarah.

'Don't be naive. We're going.' And Hugh tried to pull her by the elbow towards the door. She shrugged her arm out of his grip.

'We can't, Dad. I'm tired.'

'You're drunk, you mean. Let's go. Right now, young lady.'

But Sarah was regarding the situation logically. 'She's hurt.'

'You run a video shop, not a nursing home. There are people who deal with that sort of thing. Come on . . . Or I'll go without you.'

All of a sudden, the air seemed to ring, or whistle. Very quietly; the sound of mild tinnitus. Hugh couldn't believe that he'd said that to his daughter.

Sarah frowned; her heart wrinkled. 'You wouldn't leave me again, would you?' She sounded, now, like a lost child - one of those seen holding lollipops and surrounded by strangers. One of the shopping centre abandoned. Trying to put a brave face on it.

'Again?' But of course he had left her once - and what was more, he'd left her for many years. Only present as a phantom bill-payer. There'd been no connection, but what a time to bring up Hugh's faux pas. He looked at his daughter, and the terror on her face was as obvious as bugkill on a windscreen.

Wanting to slap her for her weakness, and for putting him in this position, Hugh did the next best thing instead. He explored his lack of restraint in a different way.

He let go of Sarah and ran over to where Alan was silently nursing Holly. Half a metre from the couple Hugh stopped and swung his foot at Alan's head. Hugh's polished toe-tip caught the light for the briefest of moments . . . and then there was a dirty slapping sound, an expulsion of air from Alan's mouth, and Alan fell to the side, away from Holly.

'Cut it out!' the hotel's barman said, while trying to position himself between Hugh and Alan. However, Hugh's strength was built of rage and fear of failure: a powerful mixture. Although the barman did manage to push Hugh back a little bit, Hugh got a few more kicks to Alan's body.

'You piece of shit!' Hugh was screaming. 'You fucking lice! Do that to me would you? Do that to my daughter? You bastard.'

'Enough!' said the barman, trying to restrain Hugh; he was throwing his whole bodyweight into the task - which admittedly wasn't much, but neither was Hugh's. 'I said: cut it out!' They wrestled for a few seconds while Alan, holding the side of his head, stood up to prepare himself for further attack.

Hugh's eyes and Alan's eyes burned into each other; or rather, they sent out jets of ice. The two men had become feral; they were like coyotes, circling and waiting for the moment of the other's weakness.

Alan said, 'I'll have you for this.' And he pointed a finger.

Hugh shook his head. 'A kicking's nothing to what I'm going to do to you. If I had a gun I'd blow your head off.'

Alan smiled. 'I didn't mean me.' He pointed at the floor. 'I meant to Holly.'

Eyebrows twitching, Hugh said, 'I didn't do that.' .

'I think you did,' Alan said.

The hotel's security guard was approaching, summoned by the check-in assistant's first telephone call. He was a burly man, a good ten pounds and ten years out of condition; but he looked authoritative. Alan thought quickly of Elvis: the guard and that thug were of a similar build. And in Elvis's parlance, the guard looked tasty.

'I was on the stairs,' Hugh protested.

'Ah, but you would say that, wouldn't you? Where's your witness?'

Without a doubt Hugh's feathers had been ruffled. There was a witness, of course - the lady behind the desk - but Hugh had misplaced her in his head. Instead, he was thinking of his parrot, Bertram, squawking, Kill me, kill me.

Hugh was aware that Sarah was behind him; as he turned slightly, he thought that she was going to cuddle him, or at least hold his arm. But she did nothing of the sort. She walked past him and past the barman was now only loosely holding Hugh's arm, and past the ready security guard; and she knelt down beside the unconscious Holly, whom everyone else seemed to have forgotten.

'Darling . . . ' Hugh began.

And Sarah, ignoring him, said softly, 'Holly . . . '

To the security guard Alan said, 'This bastard pushed my sister-in-law over the balcony.'

'Liar!' Hugh retorted. 'It was him.'

'What, push my own sister over, did I? You'll be saying that Sarah did it next.'

The security guard spoke for the first time. 'Look, this is a hotel,' he said, 'people'll be trying to sleep. We'll have to go to the office, okay? Till the police arrive.'

Police? thought Hugh.

'Holly, wake up,' said Sarah, who was utterly unaware that two men were protecting her - even when she had no wish for them to do so. It didn't matter now.

'Come on, let's go,' said the security man.

'I'm staying with Holly,' Alan told him, and went down on his knees beside the sleeping woman. His head was inches from his wife's, but the two of them did not so much as acknowledge one another. The moment was Holly's.

She had finally managed to upstage her sister.

Don't move her, Alan reminded himself. And then he thought once more of Elvis, and the line with which he had often concluded one of the violent autobiographical stories in his repertoire: Cunt'll never walk properly again.

Alan hoped to Christ that this punchline would not apply here.

4

What once had been a doorbell, as we know - a playful jingle - was now a door-rattle: the quickly-ticking noise of a wounded slithering creature. Which was apt, given the circumstances.

The noise pulled Daz away from the grip of sleep - or semi-consciousness. Daz got up. Like a slow-mo penguin he waddled over to the door, collecting his coat from the back of the chair. The taxi driver had come up for him, having got no response from the honking of his horn. All those stairs! thought Daz, ruefully. He'll be expecting a tip.

Daz's hand was on the door handle. Wait a second. He put his bruised eye to the peephole. The two heads he saw were unfamiliar but there was no mistaking their uniforms.

'Jesus,' whispered Daz.

The police! But Daz looked like he'd been in a car crash: he couldn't open the door!

The bell rattled again.

With a heavy sigh Daz opened the door, his resilience having been eaten away by pain. 'Morning, gentlemen,' he said as calmly as he could.

There was nary a flicker of acknowledgement of Daz's appearance. Zombied by over-eventful graveyard shifts, maybe these policemen saw worse than Daz at this time of the morning every day.

'Good morning, sir. Sorry to bother you at this time, but we do have a good reason for calling by.' The policeman then identified himself: 'Sergeant McCready. This is P.C. Collins. Can we come in?'

'Why, what is it?' Daz's automatic reaction was to defend himself. 'I mean, I've got a taxi coming. I'm going to the hospital.'

The younger man, Collins, said, 'We won't take a minute of your time, sir. It'd be best if we came in.'

Daz stepped aside. McCready entered first, asking, 'Do you know someone by the name of Sarah Chandler?' as Collins closed the door.

'Yes I do,' said Daz. 'She's a friend.'

McCready nodded. 'Her video shop was broken into about two hours ago. We've been trying to contact Mrs Chandler but there's no response at her flat.'

'No, they're in St Albans. Her and her husband. Their other house.'

'And can I ask where you were two hours ago, sir?' asked Collins.

It was beginning to dawn on Daz to query how these two coppers had made a connection to him. 'Am I a suspect?' Daz asked.

McCready shrugged. 'Routine inquiry. Why, is there something you don't want to tell us?'

'No. I was lying on the floor, trying to recover from a beating, all right?'

'And who gave you the beating?' asked Collins.

'Sarah's husband arranged it. It's a domestic.'

Having strolled further into the flat, Sergeant McCready was keen to pursue Daz's previous response. 'Over here, sir, you were lying? By this bloody great wad of money?'

Collins raised his eyebrows, still looking at Daz. 'Money, guv?'

'And how much is there then, Mr Sandford?'

Sarah's shop was broken into, Daz thought. 'Look, the money's clean. I didn't steal it from Sarah.'

'So where did it come from?' Collins wanted to know; his face was assuming an odd purplish glow - like a TV screen with an overworking tube. He suddenly looked much older than he had a minute ago.

A car honked from below: a muted sound. 'Can we do this later?' Daz asked. 'That's my cab.'

McCready said, 'Don't worry, we'll take you to the hospital, sir.' It was a gruding politeness; forced. 'Constable? Would you go down and let the driver know that Mr Sandford won't be needing him after all?'

'Certainly, Sarge.'

5

For the second morning running Sarah found herself inside a police station. One difference was that this time, the officers were speaking with a different accent; and the other difference was, this time Sarah's body did not tell her it was morning; it was still last night. In fact, it was a little after one a.m. Her hands trying to choke a cup of sweet hot chocolate, Sarah was sitting in the shape of a cedilla on a comfy padded bench. Her hair was filthy and lank. She stank of smoke - but that was nothing new.

She had just finished giving a long and detailed statement. Now she wanted to go home, and reckoned that as she had been through one of the worst days of her life, a ride home - to the flat in Islington - was a reasonable expectation, however many hours away it was in the car. But she knew she wouldn't be going anywhere for a while.

Her head was choked with thoughts of Holly.

The connected drama of their lives had lasted over twenty years; so how had the final act been so short? Two seconds it had taken Holly to fall to the mezzanine floor? That was bad planning, surely; that couldn't be it. The bAlance was all wrong.

The door opened. In came Baron Frankenstein. Weasly little fucker with delusions of grandeur. 'I've just been speaking to some of my compatriots in London.'

Compatriots?

'Seems this has been a most eventful day for you,' said Inspector Galwroth.

'That's one way of putting it,' Sarah replied. 'What's the news on Holly?'

'Only what I've told you so far. Definite broken nose and both arms as she tried to break her fall. Left leg broken as well.'

'But she'll mend?'

'No thanks to you. Don't you want to know what my colleagues had to say?'

'Does it refer to me?'

'Indeed it does, my dear.'

'Don't call my dear. Tell me then.'

Galwroth seemed put-out. But he regained his composure and said, 'I was talking to Sergeant McCready - he's the one investigating the break-in at HandyFilms.'

'The what?'

'Yes, I'm afraid your video store has had an attempt made.'

'It just gets worse and worse,' Sarah muttered.

'Indeed it does. Because, Mrs Chandler . . . '

Sarah made a decision on the spur of the moment. 'It's Ms from now on,' she interrupted.

Galwroth nodded. 'Ms Chandler. Beg your pardon. Sergeant McCready will be keen to question you about another matter. The pornography. He found . . . ' He paused.

Oh Christ, thought Sarah.

' . . . great quantities of pornographic material in the shop. He'd like to talk about your distribution of this material.' He was keeping the discourse on a professional footing, but Sarah could taste his disgust in his effort to expel it from his body.

'I don't distribute it,' she said. 'It's for my own personal use.'

'I see. This isn't my case, but may I ask - why you don't take it home?'

'Haven't you ever heard of job satisfaction?' Sarah said by way of reply. Galwroth's disgust was making her feel stronger; she'd realised he was of a lower social order.

He did not appreciate the attempt at levity. 'I asked a question, Ms Chandler.'

'Oh, I don't know. But just think if I had taken them to St Albans.' Sarah thought of the blackened chassis of her former home. 'They'd've melted into the carpets.'

Strangely this struck a chord in the policeman. It caused a flare-up in his philosophical sump. 'You might've taken them to the flat,' he said. 'You have a flat in north London, too, I believe.'

Sarah sniffed at the suggestion. 'Oh, that's probably getting burgled as we speak.'

'No, I doubt that,' said Galwroth. He had suffered the compulsory charisma-reduction operation, and had earned an A-Plus on his Advanced Apathy course. 'I doubt that very much.' He exhaled. 'Now. The business in hand. Do you want the good news or the bad news.'

'There's good news?' Sarah asked.

'Two pieces of good news. Of a sort.'

'The good news then.'

Galwroth paused before saying, 'Your father has admitted to pushing Holly Paver from the top of the balcony.'

'No!'

'Now the bad news?'

'No, that's wrong!' Sarah protested. Her intestines knotted as she reminded herself that this week had been about revenge: pure and simple. 'That was Alan.'

'Now the bad news?' Galwroth repeated, disregarding her statement.

'Yeah, go on then: the bad news.'

'Your father has admitted to pushing Holly Paver from the top of the balcony.'

' . . . Is this meant to be amusing,' Sarah wanted to know. 'Just tell me if it is and I'll start busting a gut.'

'It's bad news for us. Unclinical. Messy. Contradictory to eye-witness reports, you see. Nothing definite. Hard work.'

Sarah glared at him with her upper lip wrinkling. 'Diddums,' she said as she turned away. 'Try saying to Holly you've got bad news. See what she says.'

Inspector Galwroth seemed undaunted. He asked, 'Do you want the second bit of good news?'

'Is it Christmas already? Go on then.'

'Someone has already been charged for the break-in.'

Sarah recalled, as though through a mist, a conversation in which she'd asked Daz not to target HandyFilms. Thus, it was with reverence and fear that she now said, 'Does this intruder have a name?'

Galwroth nodded. 'You know a man by the name of Darren Sandford, I believe.'

'Oh, fuck,' Sarah stated in a level tone of voice.

6

Sunday often feels like an afterthought. In England it used to be the land that time forgot. Nothing worked on Sundays, but everything works now. The star-bright brothel of the supermarket invites us all inside, for any pleasure we care to name. The sultry street-harlots called cornershops, with their inflated prices, their tea-coloured pimps or proprietors, and their more restricted repertoire, are catching diseases of poverty. They're going under. Garden centres have replaced the church. Pubs stay open longer. Laundrettes are meeting places. And the traffic is ridiculous . . .

Yet is all somehow feels like an afterthought \- as though we're still getting used to it. Some would still like it to be a day of rest.

Daz would, for example. But guess what: he's had his wish come true!

Daz was lying in a hospital bed and despite the pains all over his body he was happy as Larry, as they say. It was strictly R and R: rest and recuperation. Nothing was broken, but nevertheless Daz had requested the nurse to wheel over that payphone on its trolley - a piece of apparatus that gave new meaning to the word 'mobile'. He'd called the number for Bible Street Cars.

'Roy-mate,' Daz croaked elaborately.

'Don't say it,' Roy told him.

'Don't say what?'

'You're not coming in.'

'I'm not coming in. How d'you know?'

'It's seven o'clock, you daft bugger. What else'll you ring me for? What's wrong with you?'

'Had a slapping,' said Daz matter-of-factly.

'Oh yeah? Premeditated, was it?'

'Very much so. That Alan, yeah? Brought his Omega in Friday . . . ' Daz explained.

Roy whistled. 'Bloody hell, mate. Talk about up a gum tree.'

'It's no big deal.'

'Do you want me to refrain from fixing his Omega?'

'Nah. Take his money. But put a fucking scratch on it somewhere. Run a fifty pee down the cunt.' The phone was replaced on the cradle. Daz settled back against his pillows and wondered if everything would come out right.

7

So who came off worst? Given the evidence before you, who would you say?

No, sorry, let's not do what the rest of the world does: let's not forget about Paulette. She's lost her boyfriend and the father of her children; she's embarked in a deal with Amstrad whereby customers actually pick their drugs up from her flat. And yet it still gets worse, because there's still the problem with little Carol.

What problem?

Carol's sleeping too much. Even Paulette knows this to be true, but she thinks that the child is simply bored. Poor Paulette.

Rewind.

Amstrad gives Paulette the bag of Lotus, the herbal relaxants (the part about the drugs being herbal a complete lie at any rate) and the bag is left on top of the magazines and the newspapers on the low coffee table. Paulette and Carol wrestle as mother puts clothes on to daughter (this was Thursday, with Paul needing to go out for her appointment with Dr Storm). Little Carol is left on her own in the lounge while Paulette gets ready; she pulls down some papers - and an unsealed bag of orange sweeties.

Carol only shovelled four into her mouth, and most of that she might have spat out. The baby had been none too enamoured with the fizzing on her tongue. But all the same, if there is one thing Amstrad knows it's narcotics. When Amstrad says to an adult not to take more than two at one time, that's exactly what he means.

Little Carol has been made one of the lotophagi: those in the grip of a dreamy forgetfulness. Her body and mind had fought the invasion of the chemicals; but it was a very young body, and in many ways, an even younger mind. What sort of resistance do you have as a baby? When you're what? When you're this: like Carol.

A little dreamer, in a world of her own.

8

Fully aware that something was wrong, Paulette woke at 9.15, sitting up quickly and listening to the mauve air. At first she thought that the cause of her distress was the phone call she'd had from Daz in the early hours. But although she was now feeling more for his beating than she had when he'd awoken her, Daz wasn't the reason for her panic. Nor was the unwritten deal she'd entered into with Amstrad . . .

Her radar traced the blips of panic, out across the sea

And came upon an empty island called Maternity.

'No . . . ' she breathed. She peered into Carol's cot. The child was asleep and it was 9.15.

An empty island called . . .

Not empty, Paulette's rational side insisted. As though snatching for the last bargain on the shelf, Paulette picked up Carol and held her tightly to her naked bosom.

'Sleepy girl sleep,' Paulette sang, but what she wanted to be true was the song's opposite. Wakey girl wake . . .

After a few minutes (it might have been longer) Paulette stopped screaming and picked among the wreckage of her thoughts and guilts.

The woman who answered her 999 call asked her when she'd last seen Carol awake. Paulette told her that she'd been sleeping a lot . . . It was almost as though little Carol had been exhausted by the forerunner to sibling rivalry: sibling expectancy. She had grown tired of her new brother and sister, and had taken herself out of the competition.

An ambulance was on its way.

When the mighty fall, of course, they fall a long way, and their dip into the sewage makes us realise what halcyon days have been left behind. But personally, I think that those with nothing to lose who lose it anyway make a more disheartening sight. Do you know why? Because: for the rich and the lucky, the prospect of failure is always present, like a watchful ghost. The poor and the morally dead: you think that's all they have to worry about. That's as far as they need go down. But there's always a sub-stratum. that's why cities like London howl so much . . .

Poor Paulette. I said it before but I'll say it again: What are we going to do about Paulette? Her bad week had nothing to do with her earlier break-up with Daz for his infidelity. Nor her corresponding sense of worthlessness. Nor her discovery that there was another other woman - a wealthy one - whom Daz was going to burgle. On the Lord's Day came Paulette's final blow: the nurse saying to her the word apnoea.

She was given sweet tea - when she'd stopped screaming. Paulette would never be able to remember what sort of fraction of her morning she'd spent screaming, but her throat felt like maple tree bark. She suspected (and hoped) that they had put something in her drink, but she drank it, even if they hadn't. It didn't matter anymore.

'Is there anyone we can call for you?' asked a nurse in a darker uniform, her tone as soft as her eye shadow.

Paulette continued to look at the black and white checked carpet in the visitors' room.

'Your parents?' the nurse said. She had either read the encodements of Paulette's DNA and had deemed her unsuitable for marriage; or had assumed the role of a private detective and had reached the same conclusion.

'Your boyfriend?' the nurse asked next, squeezing Paulette's arm gently. 'Carol's father.' She was assuming one man filled both descriptions.

Paulette turned her way. 'We split up,' she murmured helplessly.

'A friend then . . . '

'No.' Paulette nodded. 'Yes. Call Daz. Darren Sandford. His number is . . . ' She remembered it at length, her face flexing madly like a quiz show contestant. 'He'll come. It's his child.' She did not want Amstrad here, although she blamed him for nothing: nor would she for some time. She had yet to make any connection.

The second piece of bad news that Senior Nurse Alison Rook had to give Paulette Jones on this Sunday morning - this day of rest - now followed. 'We were just about to discharge him . . . ' she said with an accompanying frown. 'I'll see if he's still here.'

Discharge him? Oh yes, Paulette remembered. 'He was beaten up last night. His girlfriend's husband arranged it.'

'Oh Lord . . . ' Nurse Rook commented, feeling (as I do sometimes) as though she was surveying a conspiracy of dunces. When a life crashes, the cruellest part is the number of people caught up in the mangled machinery.

9

Wounds heal, but every scar tells a story. However, you might need to look into madness to hear the words. In the hospital, the staff were preparing themselves to bid farewell to Daz's collection of injuries: the wounds that would one day sing his praises. The usual need for more hospital beds meant that Daz had to be gone by ten a.m. But how brave he was to have come through so quickly!

Regretting the fact that he had to leave, Daz was nonetheless realistic about his chances of talking the nurses into allowing him to stay. C'est la vie innit? thought he, dressing behind his screen in the ward of heavy-breathing old men.

And then, unexpectedly, he received a visitor.

Sarah arrived. Daz was not altogether pleased to see her, having come to regard her as a jinx. He was sorely regretting the fact that he'd got involved with her.

'Oh my God,' she said now, 'you look terrible. Those bandages.'

'Should be in a cell, the geezer did this,' Daz began, but he caught himself quickly. 'I can't speak to you,' he said - before curiosity made him ask: 'How did you know I was here anyway? The fuck are you doing here?'

'Spoke to Roy. Though I wouldn't've blamed if he didn't want to speak to me.'

'Why's that?'

'I accused him of making that phone call to Alan. It's all irrelevant now,' said Sarah. 'Alan's gone off with my sister. Except she's injured.'

'Hard lines. What do you expect?' Daz asked. 'I met him, you know; he came to see me. Believe it or not, his car's at Bible Street as we speak.'

'Set fire to it. Listen: I got let out of prison to come and see you. Sort of. I had to come a long way - down from Derbyshire.'

'I've been charged with robbing your fucking shop,' Daz replied. 'I tell you what you can do: you can tell the cunts I ain't got nothing to do with it.'

'I have. And they'll believe me. Eventually.' Sarah shrugged. 'You can't be robbing a shop if you're having the shit kicked out of you, can you?'

'Not in theory.'

'There you go then. Now listen . . . '

'No, look, we both had a bit of fun, Sarah,' Daz began, 'but I can't talk to you no more.' He was recalling that first kick to his face - that expensive training shoe. Then his brain travelled to a different mental vortex. 'What do you mean, you're in prison?'

'Long story,' said Sarah. 'Holly's injured. My sister? She took a fall. It was an accident but I was involved. No one's going to be charged, but . . . things are difficult. My dad's decided to stick up for me and say it was him. But it wasn't anyone. She's got two broken arms, a broken leg and nose. She got lucky. She'll mend.'

With no idea what Sarah was talking about, Daz could only listen. Then his listening had stretched into an area of silence, and Daz felt the need to patch that up. He said gently, 'Sarah, please. The geezer your husband hired - he weren't messing about. If that's not obvious. He was muscle. Capital M. Said if we got back together, that's it.'

'We're not getting back together, Daz. That's another thing I wanted to say.' Sarah closed her eyes and felt the life of the week's events kick inside her stomach. 'This has been the weirdest week, Daz, and I'm sorry I've dragged you into it all.'

'Speak your piece,' Daz said magnanimously. 'But understand this, Sarah: you and I? It was good but it's over, babe. I can't be putting myself at risk every time I get me kit off . . . '

Nodding her head, Sarah replied. 'Go back to Paulette, Daz; you've got kids and she'd do anything for you. Don't throw that away because of me. I don't know how my sister can live with herself for splitting up a marriage because I feel awful about you two. So at least I've developed a conscience. That's one good thing, I suppose . . . '

'It's a happy ending for you then,' Daz remarked, testing the pain of his nose with a gentle finger. Even the finger felt sore.

The confessional curtain was pulled back. Nurse Rook said, 'I'm sorry to interrupt. But you're Daz Sandford, aren't you?'

The strangest sensation that he was going to be asked for his autograph quickly dissolved when he'd admitted what she'd asked and had seen the compassion irrigate her dry features. 'I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to accompany me.' she said. 'We've got some bad news . . . '

'It's not the police, is it? 'Cause this girl here will confirm my story.'

1But Nurse Rook replied, 'No. It's not the police.' And then thought: That's the last of your worries. 'It's about Paulette Jones.'

10

The D-word wasn't mentioned. Nurse Rook simply called Carol's death it.

'It was caused by apnoea,' she told Paulette and Daz in an office, an hour or so later. Paulette had heard the information before but this time she tried to listen. 'It's an unexplained lapse in breathing during a child's sleep. There's a lack of oxygen to the brain and the heartbeat becomes irregular. Leading to sudden infant death syndrome.' Nurse Rook hated the D-word. 'Sometimes called cot death.' The word stank.

Daz's eyes were raw. Grief had similarized his appearance to Paulette's: grief, the great leveller. Beneath his bandages, and despite his pains, he needed to understand; his heart needed to understand: 'Was there anything we could've done to avoid this?' he asked.

'Not if Carol had never suffered with it before. If she had, she would have had a respiration monitor. But she was a little underweight, and I'm afraid the risk is higher with younger mothers. Sorry.' Nurse Rook did not mention the bit about the children of lower socioeconomic groups being more vulnerable. This couple - joined for now in what passed for panic after the event - had suffered enough.

More than.

11

There is no Hollywood in London - no suburb - so we must accept that London endings are a genre of their own, and forgive the absence of Hollywood endings from time to time. All happiness is relative. Try telling a starving child with its first bowl of rice for a fortnight that its not happy. Try telling a tycoon who has had a flotilla of yachts sabotaged that worse things happen at sea. It's all happiness.

Holly and Alan have each other, for now at least: they are happy, the day after their major events. And Sarah's on her own in the flat. You might say that it's all she ever wanted. Don't worry about survivors like Hugh and Amstrad. Or Elvis. They always get by, and they've lost nothing anyway.

I'm still worried about Paulette, now on top of the sheets on Daz's bed.

Is it possible that the two of them could be happy? Compared with this morning, certainly so. Because now at least they can share.

12

'I've got to tell you something, Daz,' said Paulette. 'It was me.'

'What was you?'

'Who called Sarah's husband to grass you up. You really hurt me. But I'm sorry you got your face kicked in. That's the last thing I would've wanted.'

They had found some temporary comfort: right here, on Daz's bed. Fully clothed. Looking up at the ceiling as they had on any one of a thousand nights. Listening to the clanking machinery of their hearts.

'Don't worry about my face,' Daz told her.

Paulette wanted to confess. 'I put a handkerchief over the mouthpiece and spoke in a deep voice. I didn't even know it'd work.'

'But how did you know all the details? The cars they drive and the houses and that?'

Paulette sighed. 'Oh, Daz, you old soak. You always forget what you tell me when you're pissed. On Monday night, remember? After I told you: no, it was over. you got nasty with me and started bragging. Your new bird and what you were doing to her . . . '

Daz sighed and said, 'Nothing I ain't done with you first, my love.' He was trying to be charming, and in his own head was succeeding. Keen to capitalize, he continued by saying: 'Come back to me, Paul. I miss you.'

'I miss you too, babe,' said Paulette. 'Just give me some time, yeah?'

'Okay,' Daz replied, 'I give you all the time in the fucking world' And their words were hollow, and the grappling wind caused by a vacuum howled inside them. Daz put the palm of his hand on Paulette's stomach. They sighed as one, but not romantically. The stains on the ceiling, looking down, were the ghosts of Christmas future: all of them ugly and dark. But at least the future had not abandoned them like discarded rubbish, tossed from the window of a car speeding through the desert - left to rot in the weatherlessness of nowhere.

At least their lives were tangling back together.

'I want to better meself,' said Paulette. 'I was serious. I'm going to college or night-school or summing. I don't know when they enroll.'

'Nor do I. But fine,' said Daz. Whatever she wanted. Life was too short.

13: Unlucky for Some

Sunday evening.

In a nightmare contraption of hoists and plaster, Holly was awake (one leg at a forty-five degree angle up in the air), and Sarah was standing by her bedside. The visitor was holding - comically, unbelievably - a bag of grapes.

'You can't be serious,' Holly said as best she could with bandages around her face, like a Muslim prayer shawl.

'Peace offering,' Sarah replied.

'I can see what they're supposed to be. Take them away.'

'Holly, wait . . . '

'Do you expect me to thank you?'

'No,' Sarah answered. 'But . . . we always seem to be saying goodbye. Goodbye for the last time, I mean. Isn't it obvious, though? Even now? We can't.'

Holly snorted. 'Just watch me.'

'We're in each other's lives, Holly, whether we like it or not.' She held out the paper bag. 'Take these, they cost a fortune. Seedless. South African.'

'Don't want 'em. I don't care if they come from another dimension. Where's Alan?'

'He said he'd stay away until I'd gone. He's in the cafeteria, having a coffee. Drying his system out . . . Look, Holly, I got my dad to drive me three hours up the motorway to see you; I was in London this morning, seeing Daz. In hospital, funnily enough.'

'Hilarious.' Holly snorted again. 'You're not such a lucky person to know, are you?' she asked sarcastically.

'Suppose not,' Sarah admitted. 'And you don't know the half of it. Daz's ex-girlfriend? Their baby died.' She let the sentence hang in the air; there was nothing to add to it. The words burned like an after-image as Sarah placed the grapes on Holly's stomach, within reach of the plastered curve of the other woman's right arm. 'You could probably sue the hotel, believe it or not,' Sarah went on.

Holly fiddled with a grape. Her hand was healthy, if a little bruised, and she plucked one from the bunch. Couldn't Sarah see that she had no way of feeding herself? 'I'm not suing anybody,' Holly replied. 'I got what I paid for. It's my fault.'

Nothing was said for a few seconds. Beyond the flimsy curtain, hospital life (and the visiting hour) marched on. Dire waffle between patients and over-burdened loved ones . . . A jolly nurse from the West Indies was having a laugh with an old lady. A porter was bringing round the evening meal on a huge trolley with squeaking wheels.

Finally, Holly said, 'Go now, Sarah. Nothing's changed, but give it time. Give it a lot of time. Alan and I want to talk a few things through. That's just the way things've worked out. It was never meant personally.' She rolled the grape between thumb and forefinger, as though trying to smooth it of particles. 'You'll find the right person for you, Sarah. And until you do . . . Alan won't let you starve. Nor will Hugh.' A flakey grumble of vomit turned in her throat at the very mention of that old bastard's name.

'But you still hate me, don't you?' asked Sarah.

Holly didn't reply.

Turning her back, momentarily amused by how this conversation must sound to anyone listening beyond the curtain, Sarah said, 'Yeah. Well, I hate you too.'

She was just about to pull back the plastic when:

'Sarah?' said Holly.

Sarah turned - to see an expression of fearful concentration cross Holly's face. A fraction of a second passed before Sarah was aware of what was happening.

Using her stomach as a launching pad, Holly had flicked the emancipated grape into the air. It flew towards Sarah and hit her on the chin as a sticky kiss.

'Oh, nothing,' Holly replied with a forced chuckle.

THE END

