 
# Misadventure

Copyright 2018 Anthony E Miller

Published by Anthony E Miller at Smashwords

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Chapter 1

As he sat at his desk by the front bay window of his flat the white cursor blinked. The photons that emanated from metal oxide coating of his PCW9512 made Steven feel emptier than the vacuum inside the tube. There seemed to Steven to be more electrical activity in the cathode rays than there was going on in his brain. Perhaps there were indeed no electrical signals in his brain. He imagined doctors connecting him up to an electrocardiography device and not finding a signal. He kicked the desk and hurt his foot. The pain at least convinced him that he was at least not simply a solid inert mass waiting for some incantation to animate him like a Golem.

When Steven had stared writing for the BBC's then new hospital drama "Misadventure" he had found penning the episodes a fairly simple affair. True to the BBC's public purposes set out in the Royal Charter to enrich people's lives with programmes and services that _"inform, educate and entertain"_ each self contained episode was designed simply to unsubtly lecture the proletariat on how those in Wood Lane thought they should (or should not) live their lives (and die).

As the BBC could only afford to have a few regular characters on salary there were an extremely small number of continuing storylines so each episode resembled a medieval morality play but in modern sets and with modern medical technology. The result of this financially imposed simplicity was that the most taxing part of his regular freelance writing gig on the program had been to think up horrific ways for the the visiting artists' characters to get injured/die. Ideally the injury should be both very painful and graphic but not too graphic that it couldn't be put out before the watershed.

To Steven this had become very boring so to make his days and the scripts less dull he would inject dark "jokes" into them of the kind he would never have told on stage himself when he'd been a stand up just to see what reaction he would get from the production office. Most but not all of these would be assiduously blue pencilled by angry script editor Tony Fuller who liked to express his displeasure in tart margin notes and pseudo-Churchillian bon mots.

Steven enjoyed Tony's outrage but he enjoyed it even more when a politically incorrect joke of his made it "under the wire" of Tony's assiduous vetting procedures. One or two of his more subtle jokes had even generated actual complaints. He enjoyed that too because the buck for that sort of thing stopped with the script editor and it was always fun playing innocent while listening to Tony squirm. Tony deserved to squirm. Even when Steven's scripts were entirely sensible and plausible he was often told by Tony they were taking things "too far" so why not have fun and go there anyway? For example when his storyline about rats getting into the hospital mortuary and eating the dead bodies had been rejected by Tony on the grounds it was "too gruesome and obviously implausible" Steven had responded by writing a long letter referencing genuine real life occurrences of similar events. However, Tony merely told him coldly that grave desecration was too taboo for before the watershed. "Blame the vermin on the 6th floor," he said.
Chapter 2

Steven would have cogitated more on all these issues but his mental meanderings were interrupted by a series of loud noises from next door. There were always loud noises from next door or had been for quite a while now he came to think about it. Bangs and thuds that he had no idea how anyone could make in such a small suburban street. It had started since the new people had moved in. It might have been home improvement but Steven hadn't noticed the house next door improving as a result. What was there to improve anyway? It was true the house next door had been built in the 1880s but the Neo-Classical exterior looked as spick and span as if it had only been erected a day ago. Steven didn't know who had moved in but he knew they had no consideration and like most tolerant people he employed a zero-tolerance policy to anti-social behaviour.

He had tried knocking on their door to complain before but no one had come out.

Not being able to see the source of the noise from the front lounge window Steven moved to the back bedroom window. In the back garden of the house next door was a woman he had never seen before. Steven tried to make her face out but she had the hood of her parka up and he was too far away to see clearly. He could tell or guess it was a woman by the way she stood and carried herself. It was cloudy and raining a bit but this didn't deter her from smashing through a small patio with a shovel and from having dug a rather large hole that was filling with rain and mud. Steven watched her stop a moment longer. She touched her unseen face. She leant on her shovel. She went back to smashing up the patio with the shovel.

Steven decided it was very important that he go downstairs and have a word with her.

Eventually after selecting a coat to wear over his pyjamas and after selecting a brightly coloured umbrella to match it he descended communal garden where he peered over the waist level fence and coughed. The lady took no notice or didn't hear him. Steven felt slightly embarrassed and coughed again and was again ignored. The lady simply continued lifting up her shovel and smashing the hell out of what had once been a rather tasteful Andalusian patio.

"Excuse me," said Steven in a very loud but polite voice.

The woman turned. She kept her hood up and her mouth was obscured by a scarf.

"I live next door and I'm trying to write a television script," said Steven as though she needed to know this. "Can I ask what you're doing?"

"Yes, I'm trying digging a hole," said a muffled voice from beneath the scarf.

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Well, it's not illegal ... at least I think it isn't ... but I just wondered if you could keep the noise down a bit because I'm trying to write. My name's Steven Ambrose I live next door," mansplained Steven.

"I'll have finished smashing the patio up soon," said the woman who seemed to have little understanding of either the importance of his vocation or the beauty of what she was destroying.

"Yes... a shame. I thought it was quite a nice patio."

"It was. But it's in the way...," said the woman smashing at it again with the shovel.

"Of what? ... if you don't mind me asking?" said Steven looking at the enormous hole she'd dug. It was about five feet deep at least at the centre and filled at the bottom with muddy water.

"Nuclear shelter."

"What?"

"We're building a nuclear shelter," repeated the woman removing the scarf from her mouth. She had a nice mouth. It seemed a shame to conceal it. Surely it wasn't that cold?

"What for?" said Steven.

"Surviving a nuclear war."

"But the cold war's over?"

"You really think Russia is going to stand for what's going on in Yugoslavia forever?"

Steven knew things were going on in Yugoslavia but had no strong opinions on or detailed knowledge of that conflict so said nothing in response and just let her rant about it for a while. When she had finished and after he hadn't really listened to her "I hadn't thought of it like that" was all he could think of to offer up. He hoped it made him sound as if he understood what she'd said even though he hadn't understood more than a quarter of it.

"Well, you're not Croatian, are you?" said the woman. She gave the ground another whack with the shovel.

"No," said Steven thinking it was rather obvious that he wasn't Croatian. Then again maybe there were lots of Croats that were six foot tall and black somewhere and he was racially stereotyping? He considered that she didn't look Croatian either. Not that he knew what a Croat looked like but he'd seen lots of them on the TV News recently. Then again he couldn't even see all of her head.

"Anyway if the cold war is over then now's the best time to buy a nuclear shelter, isn't it?" said the woman. "They've never been cheaper."

Steven could have argued with the logic but didn't.

After smashing the patio once again with her shovel the woman said "My name's June."

"Hello June, I'm Steven," said Steven smoothly. "Sorry, I didn't mean to be confrontational but I was wondering if ... what you're doing is ...legal?"

June looked at him askance. "What do you mean 'is it legal'?"

"Well, don't you need planning permission or something?"

"Probably... Why don't you come round some time and we'll discuss it? My husband loves to have someone to cook for..."

The last thing Steven wanted was to have a discussion with more people about it. As far as he was concerned she was just wrong and he felt insulted by the suggestion that cooperation might resolve the conflict. It was a simple act of aggression on her part. He considered turning his back on her and walked away. Steven frequently turned his back on people and expected a lot was said behind it - A suspicion he secretly suspected and enjoyed. Steven considered reporting June to the local residents' association as well at the Council.

Steven was the only person who wasn't retired on the local residents' association. They had no real power but he made sure that the august self serving clique wrote particularly snotty letters to anyone who had forgotten to take their bins back in and stuff like that. Joining it had been one of his token efforts to fit in. Besides which someone needed to do something about all the shit that went on in their road during the day. It was easy for people who had nine to five jobs in offices to imagine that nothing happened during the day along Crescent Road. They could not be more wrong. To Steven there seemed to be constant strife of one sort or another going on in the street. Steven had lived on council estates in Islington with fewer arguments and shenanigans going on. It annoyed him intensely that despite recent improvements in his circumstances his world had not got any quieter.

"The thing is Susan ...," Steven found himself saying.

"You can bring her too," interrupted June as if Steven had explained he had a girlfriend which he had not. "My husband loves company. He's having a dinner party this Saturday and I'm sure he'd love to meet some neighbours. Please say yes ... he loves to have someone else to cook for. He's a very good cook."

"Is he a chef?" said Steven beguiled by the offer of free food.

"He's an undertaker."

"You should get him to dig the hole for you then. My girlfriend Susan works for an undertakers' firm as it happens..."

"Really? That's interesting ... Come round. This Saturday? You can tell me about your writing and Harry and your girlfriend can discuss corpses. What did you say you write?"

"Television. Soaps mainly."

"Well, that sounds interesting. I do nothing useful at all," said June then she turned around and started viciously smashing the remnants of the patio again with the shovel.
Chapter 3

"Hello, I'd like to complain ...," Steven began as soon as he eventually got put through to someone vaguely relevant after several rounds of the switchboard connecting him to the wrong persons and having to repeat the same information. While he talked he used his spare hand and penis to play with a rubber duck that bobbed about between the bubbles. Steven liked complaining to the Council. That is after all what the Council were for – to regulate society and make sure things like the "nuclear shelter" next door didn't happen. If there was any loud noise or any anti-social behaviour Steven could spot from his window or anything he didn't like at all Steven made it his purpose in life to complain to someone. If someone left their bins out too long Steven would complain to the Waste Management Department. If a car did 31 mph Steven would complain to the Police. If the woman over the road left her children at home alone for 10 minutes while she popped down the end of the road for a loaf of bread Steven was straight onto the social services to complain that she was neglecting her children.

People who lived on Council estates had an excuse, he thought, for not knowing better but if you lived in Crouch End then you absolutely should know better and should be able to afford childcare. Eventually after he had ranted into his cordless telephone for quite a while the man in the Council planning department said that something can and probably should definitely be done about the situation. However, he didn't have the relevant file to hand just at the moment and wasn't sure what it was. Steven asked his name. Steven always asked for the name of officials who he expected to do something for him but didn't because they never did what said they were going to do. He could then complain about them as well as complaining about the original issue. The man on the end of the telephone said his name was "Samuel".

"Samuel what?"

"Samuel Cimitere."

Steven was about to go on a rant when he laughed instead.

"Okay," he said, "well ...let me know what happens, Mr Climitere?" and hung up.

He doubted the man's name really was Cimitere but he liked the cheek of the man in giving that name. Having finished his call Steven dropped the cordless telephone on the floor by the bath and sunk back in the water. He loved being naked and he loved being naked in the bath. He liked phoning people in the bath naked and the fact they were ignorant of the fact that he was in the bath naked. He touched the amulet round his neck. It was the only tiny bit of clothing he had on. He wished he'd taken that off too but the catch was too fiddly to take it off regularly. He tried to take it off again now but still couldn't undo it at the moment. It would keep. The water was warm and he was drifting into a deep sleep.
Chapter 4

Steven was digging the hole in June's back garden but kept making no progress due to it continually filling up with water. June kept shouting at him "Lazy Bastard. Lazy Bastard. Lazy Bastard...!"
Chapter 5

Eventually Steven woke up and realised that it was not June but Susan calling him a "Lazy Bastard..."

"Hi baby," he said sitting up and moving the rubber duck to cover his penis and genital area. The bubblebath bubbles had now mostly burst. He didn't know why he was covering up his genital area. She'd seen it before. He noticed that she did not kiss him. Steven also realised from the fact it was dark outside the bathroom window that he had not even started washing up or thought about making dinner.

"Don't 'Hi Baby' me," said Susan. "Lazy git. Done anything today?"

"Well ...er ...actually ... no," said Steven trying to turn on the charm, "but I thought about what I'm supposed to be doing."

"Oh good. That'll keep the wolf from the door. You _thinking_ about doing something."

"There were distractions... How was your day?"

"Shit. The warehouse is leaking again. Smells disgusting..."

Steve considered saying something but his brain still didn't seem to be working properly.

"...I told Harry people are starting to notice the coffins are getting damp when they touch them at the services and he's asked some contractors to put a bid in ...but it all takes forever ...and they all try to rip us off."

"The usual pastures then...?"

"Yes... Funny isn't it people worry themselves to death about their relatives coffins getting damp above ground ... what do they think will happen to the things when we bury them? I bet a few of the older ones died of damp and cold when they were alive - that's when their relatives should have worried."

"True, but it's those fears that keep you in a job...?"

"No shit, Sherlock. So what huge impediments did you have to your business of writing some drivel on the word processor today?" said Susan pulling down her trousers, sitting on the toilet and urinating loudly.

"Noise," said Steven.

"Noise?"

"Next door."

"And did you do anything about it?"

"Yes, I went round next door and complained."

"And?" said Susan as the last of her urine stopped flowing. Fuck ...you could at least have changed the bog roll".

"Sorry."

"It's okay ... three pieces is sufficient for a lady ... as long as she doesn't need a dump."

"Have you seen what they're doing?"

"No," said Susan standing up and pulling her knickers but not her trousers up. "Have you thought of changing the toilet roll before it's literally on the last piece of paper?"

"Go look," said Steven.

Susan stepped out of her trousers and washed her hands at the sink. Eventually she left the bathroom carrying her trousers. Steven heaved himself out the bath and started rubbing himself down with a towel. The water had become tepid and outside the bath it was even colder.

"Seriously go to the back bedroom and look," Steven called after her.

Susan was already in the back bedroom looking.

Steven knew this without looking. Steven listened.

"Fuck," came Susan's voice from the bedroom. "What's she doing?"

"Guess," said Steven towelling himself some more then wandering naked into the back bedroom and standing behind her.

"I don't know," said Susan.

"Go on guess."

"Just tell me."

"She's only digging a nuclear shelter..."

"What? What for?" said Susan taking off her top.

"That's what I said," said Steven.

"Doesn't she know the cold war's over?"

"That's a point I made but she seems to think Veljko Kadijević or somebody is going to start world war three," said Steven.

The central heating had come on. The flat was starting to warm.

"Put some clothes on," said Susan who had become aware that Steven was standing behind her naked. She turned round to see be confronted by his erection. "...you dirty man," she added.

"Your wish is my command darling," said Steven not putting any clothes on.

"So why isn't dinner ready?" she said turning round.

Susan looked at his penis.

"Why do we always have neighbours who are fucking mad?"

"I don't know," said Steven. "She invited us round to a dinner party?"

"Did she?"

"Yes."

"And what did you say, Steven?"

"I think I ...kind of left it open..."

"Why?"

"Well ... because we can always decline later?"

"So you didn't ask: _"why are you digging a fucking great hole in the garden and do you have planning permission for that?"_ "

"Well, yes, I asked that too."

"Did you?"

"Yes.... And then she asked me - ... us round."

"How subtle... And are you ...I mean " _we_ " going to go?"

"Well," said Steven feeling awkward, "...I don't know... but... it ... seemed a bit off to just tell them her to fuck off."

"Why? You tell everyone else to fuck off?"

"Well, sometimes...-"

" _All_ the time," said Susan. "I think you fancy her. Normally you'd have grassed her up to the Council by now."

"Well, I did that too."

"Well, that's something."

"Shall I tell them we're not going round?"

"No. Why? If we're not going round and we haven't said we're going round we just don't go round. Anyway I think we should go round. I don't want to stand in the way of your social life, Steven."

"Well, I don't...-"

"Yes, you do," said Susan putting her hand over his limp penis. "Now tell me more about your new girlfriend, Steven. Is she very worried about the impending nuclear apocalypse?"

"I guess," said Steven removing Susan's bra.
Chapter 6

Steven Ambrose and Susan Smith stood on the doorstep of their neighbours' Victorian town house and rang the doorbell. It was one of those old ones you pulled downwards on a wire but instead of ringing a small interior bell it summoned a tinny electronic box of some kind to play "Ode to Joy" out of tune. Although they had only walked from their front door to their neighbours' front door they were both very cold. The weather was rotten. It was windy, bitterly cold and sleeting slightly. Despite their arriving at precisely the correct hour June and her husband kept them both waiting for a good five minutes before the door opened.

At least when June did open the door she was all smiles. "Hello," she said.

There was an awkward moment of recognition.

"June!?" said Susan and "Susan?!" said June at the same time.

"You live next door?" said Susan.

"I would seem to," said June.

They gave each other a brief hug.

Steven gave them his confused look but neither took any notice of him nor rushed to explain their relationship.

"What a coincidence," said Susan. "I'd introduce you to Steven but I believe you've already met him? He said your name was June and your husband was an undertaker but for some reason..."

"Yes ...no," said June.

"That is funny," said Susan. There can't be too many people called June in London who are married to funeral directors ... you'd think I'd have made the connection but ..?."

"That's okay," said June. "I knew you had a partner called Steven but I didn't recognise him...?"

"I'm sure I should have remembered too ... so sorry if I didn't," said Steven feeling it was slightly stupid of him to say this since he was pretty sure he had never seen her before that day he saw her smashing up the patio.

"Perhaps we met at an office do?" said June.

"Probably," said Susan.

"I don't think I've been to any recently but I remember Susan talking about ... Mr Bottomley's wife?"

"Seems so long ago now that Susan and I used to be in the same office... Harry was very upset when he had to ... well ... I'm sorry, do come in?" said June even though they were inside already. She took their coats and scarves and hung them over the end of the white painted banister. "Excuse the muddle," she said.

As June ushered them towards the front room Steven wondered what June had left unsaid. It really was very surreal this enormous coincidence. Steven wondered for a moment if it was a coincidence. Then he felt paranoid for thinking this. The hall was oak panelled but they had been painted white to make the place seem lighter. It just looked naff. There was a black and white tiled floor inlaid with strange animal motifs that looked as though it had escaped from a Masonic lodge. The ceilings were high as was common in buildings of that period. There were several unopened wooden boxes about the place that looked quite dirty. There was also a hat stand and a sideboard that looked as if they had escaped from IKEA.

The front room was equally unimpressive. Contrary to June's statement though there was no muddle only a couple of old chairs and a couple more people who were standing up because they'd tried sitting and found no comfortable furniture. He wondered who on earth they were and why he and Susan hadn't been told others would be there. It dawned on Steven that they hadn't actually been told the event would be exclusive. He'd just assumed this. He felt stupid.

"The Carters are here," explained June as though this was all expected.

Mr Carter moved over to shake hands but some formality was missing somewhere.

"This is Alan Carter," Susan introduced the overweight man in a badly fitting suit to Steven.

Alan Carter smiled awkwardly. "I work with Susan," he explained.

"And I'm Johanna Carter," Johanna Carter introduced herself. She was a similar age and height to her husband and dressed in a flowery summer dress that was presumably supposed to look glamorous yet failed in this aim.

"You work with Susan too?" said Steven shaking her hand.

"No, I'm just Alan's wife," said Mrs Carter.

June explained the situation by which Steven and Susan had been invited to the Carters in many more words than were needed. They all laughed except Steven.

"You invite people round without knowing who they are?" Johanna Carter asked June.

"I suppose I do," said June.

"What fun," said Johanna.

Steven couldn't see any fun at all in the situation. He glanced around him again. The house felt cold and barren and very large. Then a gong sounded.
Chapter 7

Standing in the doorway dressed in suit trousers, open neck shirt and apron and brandishing a hand held dinner gong was a person Steven presumed must be Mr Harry Bottomley. Despite having gone to the odd office party Steven had never actually met or seen Mr Bottomley before but he had heard much about "Mr H" as he was Susan's boss. He spent a lot of the next few minutes trying to reconcile the new visual image of the Managing Director of "Grando Funerals" who stood before him with the fictional picture of "Mr H" he'd grown over several years in his brain. He didn't know exactly how he'd imagined Harry Bottomley before but it wasn't as he was now. The first and most noticeable thing about Mr Bottomley's physiognomy was his beard - short, dark and clipped. Steven imagined it going down very well with the punters. He would have said that Mr Bottomley looked Machiavellian except that Niccolò hadn't had a beard. Mr Bottomley had a slightly southern European look to him that Steven couldn't put his finger on fully. Steven felt guilty for having these thoughts even though he was sure they were completely innocent. "This way," said Mr Harry Bottomley with a broad grin and they followed him into what would have been once the drawing room but was now the Bottomley's dining room. Steven noted that Mr Bottomley hadn't introduced himself - perhaps because everyone there except Steven seemed to know him already.

As with the rest of the house the dining room seemed under furnished. There was a functional circular table from IKEA and some unpadded wooden chairs that looked as though they had escaped from a downmarket bar and were difficult to sit on. June seated them round the round table. The chairs were not quite stable. June sat next to Steven who sat next to Susan who sat next to Harry who sat next to Alan Carter who sat next to Johanna Carter who sat next to June who sat next to Steven. Steven felt uncomfortable seated between Susan and June but didn't ask to be moved.

"Salata od hobotnice," said Harry Bottomley as though they all knew what that meant and it was as common a title as "Toad in the Hole".

"Looks lovely... What is it?" said Steven trying to conceal his revulsion to the sticky mess on the bone china.

"Octopus salad," said June gently.

At first the idea of eating the ugly mess that was claimed to be octopus was unpleasant to Steven – and, indeed, by the look of their faces to Susan and the Carters too. However, when Steven tentatively lifted part of what he presumed had been a tentacle to his mouth he found to his surprise that it tasted delicious. He'd had octopus in the past of course and had not disliked it - just found it to be slightly rubbery – but this didn't look like what you could buy in a supermarket. He wondered how Harry sourced it. He didn't know quite how to describe the experience but both the tentacle slices and the salad they rested on were very delectable. Also a number of unusual sauces had been laced over the soggy looking greenery which was crispy, crunchy. As a rule Steven wasn't a fan of green things but this was very copacetic. It seemed that the others thought so too as they all ate the first course in a revered near silence.

"That was fantastic," said Steven.

"Yes, well it is a Croatian delicacy," said June.

"I find it's very easy for people to be intimidated by their boss," said Harry with a smile towards Susan and the Carters. "So I like to cook homely food to make them feel at home...-"

"He just likes to cook," interjected June, "and needs people to eat it. Honestly ... we dine like this very rarely unless there's company."

Steven felt this was superfluous information.

"It's true," said Harry Bottomley stroking his beard, "dining like this is a rare luxury. We all lead such busy lives. However, I think it's important for an employer to have a social relationship with his employees ... one cannot under-estimate the importance of fit in an organisation...-".

"I'm very glad to have been invited," piped up Mr Carter. "I have to admit that when I heard we'd been taken over I thought that I was for the chop. How wrong I was...-"

"Trepidation is understandable, Alan," said Harry Bottomley. "The industry is full of trepidation these days about consolidations and downsizing but trust me when I say that we at "Grando Funerals" are very big on TALENT. And that you have such talent in abundance..."

"That's good," said Alan Carter immodestly as Harry cleared away the plates, "but I wouldn't honestly say I was talented. I inherited "Carter and Cooper" from my father... but we do have certain ways of doing things that we have perfected over the years and while we're not resistant to change I feel ...-"

"Sorry, need to attend to the oven. You must excuse me ...," said Harry Bottomley as he disappeared into the kitchen without pretending to want to listen to the rest of Alan Carter's thoughts. Johanna Carter looked displeased.

"Yes, Harry tells me "Carter and Cooper" has a very long history?" said Susan as Alan Carter's boring monologue had ground to a halt.

"Yes, indeed," said Alan Carter. "The firm was founded in 1888 by my great grandfather ...and, of course, the late eponymous Mr Cooper. One made barrels, the other carts and they decided it would be good to combine their skills into a sideline ... coffins... which then became their main line. Unfortunately the very latest Mr Cooper died with no descendents and it was necessary to float the company to pay off his widow so ...-"

I wont bore you with the rest of My Carter's soliloquy on the family histories of the Carters and the Coopers and their eponymous funeral parlours suffice to say it was both extremely detailed and extremely boring and that it was eventually interrupted by Harry Bottomley suddenly speeding back through the door of the kitchen. In his hand he had a stainless steel dinner platter and cover dome.
Chapter 8

"Zagrebački odrezak," Harry announced as he proudly removed the dome.

Steven didn't know what "Zagrebački odrezak" was but it appeared to be some bits of steak stuffed with ham and cheese, grilled with breadcrumbs and surrounded by a lot of vegetables. Except the meat wasn't steak and like the previous course it looked unappetising. Eventually Steven plucked up the courage to ask more about what was being laid in front of him.

"The meat?" said June as Harry served each of them a plateful of the concoction. "It's veal."

Steven cut a slither and took a bite. "Lovely," he said almost involuntarily.

Everybody else agreed judging by the way knives and forks scratched plates.

"That was delicious," said Alan Carter eventually.

"Yes," added Johanna Carter with too much grace.

"One does one's best," said Harry Bottomley.

"I'm sorry if I went on a bit about "Carter and Cooper"," said Mr Carter. "I'm afraid I can be a bit of a bore."

No one argued with him.

"That's okay, Alan," lied Harry. "It's only understandable that your business having merged with ours there should be some degree of trepidation on both sides but I'm sure you are open to change and I too like to think of myself as open minded ... " A stream of boring words followed. Steven stared at the greasy remnants on his plate until Harry's turgid soliloquy eventually ended.

"Of course there will have to be changes...," Alan admitted.

"Indeed," said Harry Bottomley.

"But I'm not sure we need to go into them now," said Johanna Carter.

"I don't see why not?" said Harry. "I'd be interested to hear any concerns that Alan has. We try to keep the character of each business we take over however we are all, I fear, slaves to the market once floated. One tries to protect everyone who works for one via increasing efficiencies but sometimes I am I afraid it is just not always practically possible."

"The call centre is an issue," said Alan. He coughed and stroked his head above his ear. "That is to say I understand the need for economy but it has to be said that I'm not sure a call centre is the kind of service we've been traditionally known for."

"I understand," said Harry Bottomley, "but the important thing is not that people shouldn't be put through to a call centre but they should not feel that they've ... being disregarded? This can be achieved with proper soundproofing and good scripting. In the end we have to find ways to make our charges lower in order to compete in what I think you will agree is a tough marketplace. It used to be that people had to use undertakers. Now they can elect to be buried in their own back garden provided they do the necessary paperwork. You and I, of course, would turn in our graves if we were interred in our own back gardens but ... well... while it's an old cliché that undertakers can never run out of customers ... sadly I fear it's not as true as it once was."

"Yes, competition for custom is becoming ever more brutal I fear," said Mr Carter. "I think that what matters though is that people _feel_ as if they've been treated as an individual."

"In the end," Harry Bottomley, "we are in the business of hiding the truth from the customer. Applying cosmetics relatives, filling eye sockets with cotton wool, sealing orifices to prevent leakage... Call centres are just an extension of that deception. It is our job to maintain an illusion of immortality with such webs of comforting white lies. If the customers or their relatives actually had to suffer the reality of immortality- ...but this is a bit of an inappropriate subject given that we're supposed to be eating. I wouldn't mention it at all if weren't almost all" – he glanced at Steven - "in the same industry..."

"So Steven, Susan tells me you're a writer?" said Johanna Carter changing the subject.

"Yes," said Steven glad to change the subject and always very happy to talk about himself, "I'm writing some episodes for 'Misadventure' on BBC1 at the moment."

Harry rose from his seat and collected their plates.

"Oh that's exiting," said Johanna. "I'm an actress."

"Dessert?" said Harry then disappeared into the kitchen.

"Really?" said Steven and thought _"Fuck Off"_.

Steven had been an actor himself once before being a stand up and he knew exactly what actors were like... An even more repugnant form of vermin than comedians if that is possible. They would exploit any social situation to get a gig.

"Well, they're always looking for new faces to suffer horrific injuries," said Steven. "And you're got quite a good face for a horrible disfigurement, Johanna. Interestingly there are a limited number of actors who are really good at physical pain and the public do complain if the same actors turn up as different accident victims too frequently so I'll put a word in."

I've often felt it's a subject that drama schools don't cover sufficiently," said Johanna, "but perhaps we shouldn't discuss horrific injuries at the dinner table."

Steven wondered what they could discuss at the dinner table.
Chapter 9

"Baklava!" announced Harry re-emerged from the kitchen with dessert. At least this time Steven had heard of the word even if he didn't know what it meant.

It would be polite to say the dish didn't look visually stunning. However, it tasted exciting. A strange mixture of nuts, syrup, honey and pastry shot through with many other odd ingredients which Steven could not identify but which were pleasant to the palate. After it had been devoured they all congratulated Harry once again in a way that made Steven feel as though he wanted to throw up even though he was full of such delicious food.

Alan and Harry and Susan talked shop for a while. Steven felt locked out of this conversation as he didn't understand much of what they were talking about. He was left to talk about acting and writing with June Bottomley and Johanna Carter who were both extremely tedious conversationalists.

Susan flirted with Harry Bottomley and Alan Carter. At least it seemed to Steven that she was flirting. She may not have been. Never-the-less he felt to compelled to play up to her show of disinterest in him by starting to flirt with Johanna and June. It only later faintly occurred to him that he might have been wrong, an idiot or mean or that this was in fact a terrible idea.

Eventually Harry suggested coffee and cigars. They were all very happy to remove themselves from their uncomfortable wooden chairs and situations and repair to the front room where they stood about uncomfortably for a while. The Carters left first and shortly after Susan Smith said that she and Steven Ambrose "ought to be heading home now too".

June Bottomley showed them to the front door with theatrical courtesy.

"Well, that wasn't too bad," said Steven as they walked down the path to the Bottomley's front gate.

"I think I forgot my scarf," said Susan. "I'll just run back and get it."

***

Susan ran back down the path and up the steps to the front door. She was about to pull the bell when she seemed to heard something. What exactly she heard she wasn't quite sure. She couldn't quite identify the noise. It sounded like a squelching something. Yet at the same time it sounded as though it emanated from a human. Susan decided on reflection not to disturb the Bottomleys again today. She returned to Steven's side.

***

"You didn't ring the bell," said Steven as the walked home together through the sleet.

"I'll ask Harry for it back on Monday," said Susan.

Steven never saw that scarf again.
Chapter 10

"Grando Funerals Ltd" had many grand looking and spacious showrooms in suitably Dickensian looking locations presided oven by men in top hats and tails but well over half of its staff were non-sales and worked in the vast warehouse on the Latimer Road Industrial Estate where the dead were embalmed one after the other on what I can best describe as an industrial production line.

Occasionally a special request was ordered by a client and the Amstrad computer would tell the primary embalmer to put a sticker on that particular coffin in order that it should be re-attended to with slightly more attention but most people didn't want even that much time or money expended. Most Grando Funerals customers wouldn't even pay the extra £75 for a brass name plate - After all it all had to come out of the deceased's' estate. Grando Funerals weren't the cheapest but they were cheap. "None of our customers," Mr Bottomley would say, "are after the Great Pyramid of Giza. They're after a cheap and cheerful-as-it-can-be service. And ours is not too bad." While not being too bad may seem a low bar it has to be said that Grando Funerals did comfortably meet it. Most of time the correct coffins did arrive at the correct funerals - only occasionally had there been mix ups so bad that at least some of the mourners had noticed. Fortunately very few Grando Funerals customers wanted open coffins so quite a few cock-ups didn't get detected.

Those that had been had all eventually been sorted out but not without the threat of public humiliation for the firm on consumer affairs program "That's Life". There had been an awkward atmosphere in head office for a while after Harry Bottomley had been "doorstepped" by one of Ester Rantzen's underlings but fortunately the segment on Grando Funerals was never actually broadcast. Instead a segment on some amusing turnips was substituted at the last minute. The staff at "Grandos" joked that the Ms Rantzen must have decided that these dead pieces of vegetable matter were more photogenic, lively and stimulating than Harry. In fact there'd been a problem with the videotape which seemed to suffer from dropouts so the whole report had to be canned.

A very few corpses – usually those mutilated in accidents and car crashes - would cause budget over-runs because they needed special treatment but fortunately these were the minority. To keep costs to a minimum Harry Bottomley had instructed the call centre staff (located in Aberdeen) to try and decrease the volume of this type of work by offering extravagant bids on "difficult projects". Despite all this streamlining and the fact that they were "fully ISO9000 compliant" the staff lived in constant fear of layoffs. Today to proactively allay such fears Harry Bottomley was giving the Latimer Road office staff of "Grando Funerals Ltd" a talk of tedious factual veracity in the dull functional boardroom on how the company was doing. As Grando Funerals' administration area was just a partitioned corner of the warehouse there was no natural light to liven up Harry's dull words. Words which were accompanied by a set of equally dull powerpoint slides. Harry had not turned any the fluorescent lights off before switching on the projector which made the dull slides look washed out. These slides contained many bar charts and line graphs. There were no pie charts. He talked in the abstract of costs, turnover, share price, EBIT and KPIs. Then eventually he explained as factually as he could that one set of bars on one bar chart needed to be taller.

Susan understood this. What she did not understand was what she personally or anyone else was supposed to do in order to make any of the bars that were too short taller? It was as if Harry was telling them all off except that he didn't seem to be in any way angry about the diminutive status of the bars he pointed to. He spoke as if he was simply furnishing them with facts and it was their job to do something to change these facts but Susan did not understand either the facts or what was being asked of her. It was as if he was the Pythia speaking some kind of strange riddle which needed to be interpreted by the priests into a poetic iambic pentameter that it did not have in its pre-translated form.

That all said she did understand – as did everyone else - that things were not too good.

"We have to be aware that as a public limited company we are not completely masters of our own destiny. We answer to the stock market which is run by computers and young men straight out of University who have no idea exactly what we do. They do not care. We are simply numbers to them. I know that might sound depressing or as if we have no control but as Managing Director I don't feel that I should shield you from the truth and that is why ever quarter I share these results with you," said Harry Bottomley.

Eventually after another quarter of an hour Harry's review drew to a close and he retreated to his office to do some work on his computer. This was a great relief to many of the staff most who had been standing up for most of the duration of his lecture since the boardroom had thoughtlessly only been furnished with the same number of chairs as persons on the board of directors. Or so Susan assumed but then again she'd never seen all the directors so didn't know how many there were.
Chapter 11

Susan's desk was just outside Harry Bottomley's office. She watched him through the window in the partition which existed so he could summon her when he needed her without ever listening to her. He did not look happy. She decided she should go in and ask him if he needed a cup of coffee.

"No thank you, Susan," said Harry Bottomley, "but thank you for offering."

"We're going to be laying people off again, aren't we?" said Susan.

"I have no official comment but I think the answer to that question is obvious, isn't it? Either we do something to raise the share price or we get taken over, Susan, and then even more people might have to be laid off. As you can see I am in an invidious situation ..." – he indicated the workers beyond his glass office partition – "...but I'm sure most of those that go will get new jobs quickly. There are many transferrable skills in the funerary sector."

"Yes," said Susan.

"It is nothing personal - Just business. Sometimes some people have to go. You may remember I had to lay off my own wife a while back. That was a little awkward to say the least but what has to be done has to be done," said Harry. "It also showed everyone is treated fairly."

"Yes," said Susan. One thing you could say about Harry – he had all the sincerity of Field Marshal Douglas Haig when he started the Haig Fund.

"Still, it's not all doom and gloom ...we may have made another acquisition. They're called " _Byron and Shelley_ " ... a good name don't you think?"

"Poetic."

"Indeed."
Chapter 12

George and Johanna Carter got into their car. Johanna sat on the passenger side and George sat in the driver's seat. They both sat listening to the dawn chorus. It was often like this when George had to take Johanna to somewhere she didn't want to go.

"Are you sure we want to do this?" said Johanna.

"I think so," said George. "Aren't you?"

"I think so."

"Well, I can't think of an alternative. Can you?"

"No."

"Well then ..."

They sat quietly a little while longer.

"George," said Johanna. "You do love me, don't you?"

"Yes," said George. "Do you love me?"

"Yes, of course," said Johanna.

They kissed each other.

"Come on then," said George. "Let's go."

He turned the key in the ignition and pressed the button that activated the garage door.
Chapter 13

As I related earlier the format of the "Misadventure" program for which Steven wrote used to be one of the simplest on television. Bigoted parents, intolerant adolescents, bitter pensioners and other stereotypical archetypes would each week be introduced immediately after the title sequence only to befall a horrific accident or have an emotionally neglected unloved one befall a horrific accident. This simple formula would comprise all of that week's drama with the regular cast serving as little more than a Greek chorus whose main functions were expositional. Steven regarded the regular cast as dull audience surrogates who only really existed to relate how horrible and/or mortal the injuries displayed in each program were. Steven thought the whole thing daft and the audience downright stupid for swallowing it all but never-the-less this simple formula had worked well for many years. Well, it had certainly worked to Steven's pecuniary benefit so he supposed some people must enjoy it. And yet for some reason it had recently started to not work as well.

The obvious – to Steven – solution to falling ratings was to have a more dynamic regular cast. However the production team seemed to be constantly thwarted in this ambition by a very limited salary budget and Tony Fuller was strangely reluctant to sack any of the regular actors. He said he was scared that their agents would start to argue that the artists should be paid more if the job was less secure. Steven often thought Tony would have been better suited to working in an accountancy firm rather than television drama – then again maybe there wasn't that much difference. Acting, thought Steven, was supposed to be an insecure profession but it seemed counter intuitively that the cast of "Misadventure" had some of the most secure jobs on the planet ... If you disregarded the fact that as the show grew ever more boringly predictable it could only eventually end redundancy for everybody anyway. Steven had pondered on why Tony seemed so reluctant to act and after some cogitation had deduced or guessed that it must be that Tony disliked conflict of any kind intensely ...which was odd really as conflict is supposedly the very heart of dramatic story telling.

It was a pleasant surprise then to Steven when Tony related over a passable Merlot and gourmet burger and chips at the Fitzroy Tavern that the "6th floor" were now suggesting killing off some of the more boring characters the main cast played "as part of a long term plan to revitalise the franchise". Steven's pleasure faded somewhat however when Tony added that in order to "facilitate this change in direction" regular writers were being asked by him to come up with some new regular "character ideas and sketches if they wouldn't mind".

Steven was about to say he did mind very much as he thought coming up with new regulars was the script editor's job when Tony started to explain that as a result of the reformatting of the series there might in the short term be a consequent decrease in episode count. Steven then wisely decided to acquiesce and determined to sit down some time next week and sketch out some new characters for the show for we must all adapt or not be hired again.
Chapter 14

The words "reduced episode count" did indeed prove to be a strong motivator. However motivation alone was not enough. This was proving much harder than Steven had at first thought. While Steven was good at the intricacies of implausible plots, creating believable three dimensional characters was much harder than he had expected. The few characters he'd invented in the past had actually been real people who were too vain to recognise their less flattering doppelgangers on the screen or too snobby to watch television. Now that his dream of changing the format of the show had come inadvertently to fruition all Steven could do was think of all the advantages there had been to the old stale formula. How easy it had been to come up with generic ideas and formulaic plots. He strongly resented actually having to think – this is what he had gone into writing to avoid.

Steven did not have many rules for writing but one of them was to not watch television. This rule being more honoured in the breach than in the observance he switched on the BBC News but there was no news at the moment anyway except stuff about the war in Iraq, the collapse of Yugoslavia and John Gummer feeding his daughter beef burgers on a loop. All of these stories were equally depressing and uninspiring in different ways.

Searching for a different distraction/inspiration he switched off the TV and watched the blossom on the pyrus calleryana from the window and then he looked through the window at the cars. Even though he lived on a side road he was amazed at how much commotion selfish drivers could cause each other. It annoyed him too that people parked outside his block of flats even though he himself didn't have a car to clutter up the road with or get blocked in. Today a large van had its wheels on the pavement outside his house. It was delivering boxes to the Bottomleys. The Bottomleys were always having a box or two of one kind or another delivered. Steven presumed they must contain furniture except that they didn't seem quite the right shape for furniture?

What really preoccupied Steven however was the fact that the wheels of the van were on the pavement. Steven, like the GLC under Ken Livingstone, believed that pavements were for people and decided he should lean out of his window and angrily volunteer to the men a piece of his mind but the men looked quite physically tough and sadly by the time he had opened the window to do this they had made their delivery and escape. Leaning out the open window he then observed yet another commotion. A tall black man of unremarkable features had called on the Bottomleys.

June was stood on her doorstep shouting at him.

The man was listening placidly to this invective.

Steven couldn't hear all the words but he did catch some rude ones.

June glanced up at his window. Steven ducked out of sight but it was too late. Soon the intercom buzzer started buzzing. Steven put on his dressing gown.
Chapter 15

As soon as Steven had opened the front door June swore at him profusely. Even though this was expected Steven took a step back.

"You had to grass us up to the Council, didn't you?" shouted June.

Steven realised the black man stood on his garden path some steps behind her was a "man from the Council". He had obviously come to ask pertinent questions about the hole June had been digging in the back garden and what it was to be filled with. Steven looked at the Council official quizzically.

The Council official shrugged at him as if to say "I know".

"Well," begain Steven. "I just rang to ask some simple questions about ...-".

But June was already in full flow again spewing accusations, swearwords and anger in an impossible to digest stream of personal criticisms, abuse and general objections to Steven's handling of the situation. At one point he thought she was going to launch herself through the doorway at him physically but fortunately something seemed to stop her.

At another point the man from the Council interjected "I think that possibly...-"

But June cut him off with "Fuck off you parasitical cunt this is nothing to do with you."

The man from the council smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and wandered off back down the path.

Steven was not impressed by this attitude. Steven regarded the Council as filled to the brim with social do-gooders who were simultaneously busybodies and yet did nothing about anything. This man seeming to get involved but then walking away when it got at all difficult was typical. This was one of the reasons he complained to the Council so often. Steven thought the Council wanted to know too much – particular about him - which was odd because he was always the first person to supply the Council with information about himself and others but there it was.

Steven attempted to look as casual about June's invective as possible as he thought this would annoy her even more. Indeed it seemed to but eventually June ran out of steam.

"Well, don't expect there'll be a place in the shelter for you when the apocalypse comes," her enormous rant ended.

"I'll just sit in the garden on my deck chair and wait to be vaporised then," said Steven. "It would be nice if that view during those last 4 minutes wasn't of a huge hole and a concrete mixer...-"

"It won't be forever and when the shelter's finished you won't even be aware of it," said June.

"In the meantime ...," began Steven.

"In the meantime you can lump it," said June. Then she turned huffily and went back down his path, back up hers and into her own home again throwing him an evil scowl as she passed back past him on the other side of the wall. Steven laughed. June pretended not to hear. He walked up the stairs to his flat again and decided it might be time for his late afternoon bath.
Chapter 16

It was. In the bath Steven pondered on the enigmatic representative from the Council. He'd recognised or thought he'd recognised the voice as the man he'd spoken to on the telephone a while ago. It was Samuel Cimitere. At least he thought it was. That had been several months ago now but he liked to imagine he remembered things clearly even when he didn't. There was something amusing about the man but also something sad. He seemed to be one of life's optimistic losers. Steven started to imagine details to fill in the blanks around this character while he pushed the rubber duck from one side of the bath to the other with his knees and penis. He imagined suggesting a character called Samuel Cimitere to Tony Fuller and a whole series of nasty occurrences that he could inflict on him from mental breakdown to unemployment to redundancy to physical injuries to his wife having an affair. Of course he couldn't use the same name. Or could he? It was obviously fake anyway. Lowering himself deeper into the water till his chin but not his nose was submerged he cogitated utill he slept.

Steven was woken up from his deep sleep by Susan repeatedly calling him a "lazy bastard" and shouting in his face. She seemed to have had a rather unpleasant day at the office and he guessed she would have appreciated him having the dinner on.

"What's wrong?" said Steven.

"What do you think is wrong?" said Susan.
Chapter 17

Steven didn't answer because he didn't know what was wrong and he didn't feel like guessing. Instead he dragged himself out of the bath, briefly towelled himself, threw on some pyjamas and made Susan some dinner while she curled up in front of Channel 4 News. It was never an exiting dinner. Often it was toad in the hole from one of Aunty Bessie's packets with Heinz spaghetti hoops and no greens unless you count tomato sauce. Not even a stick of celery. But he always made Susan some kind of dinner.

Susan lay on the sofa in front of the TV relaxing her mind by soaking in other people's misfortunes; war, BSE, Yugoslavia, being John Gummer's daughter... When it was ready she ate her dinner silently while Steven ate his identical dinner in the armchair holding each bit of sausage up in front of his face before he chewed it - inspecting it as if it would reveal the inner secrets of his girlfriend's emotional life. To Susan's best knowledge none of the pieces of sausage did this.

Steven asked Susan how her day at work had been.

"Shit," said Susan.

"Any particular kind?" said Steven. "Dog shit, horse shit, cat shit, cow pats...?"

"Harry's uptight," said Susan.

"Is he?" said Steven.

"We may be going round to Harry's on Saturday...," said Susan.

" _May_ we?"

"I thought you'd be pleased?"

"I thought you didn't like me going round there?"

"That's when it was your idea. This is my idea so it's different."

"Is it?" said Steven mopping up the last of the tomato source with his last piece of batter.

"He is my boss."

"I know."

"And you like his cooking."

"That's true," said Steven. "But ... We were only round there the other day?"

"Well, I think Harry ... needs some moral support. I think there are layoffs coming."

"How do you know?"

"I may only be a secretary but I do know how the business is doing."

"But he told the Carters ...-?"

"What do you think he was going to say 'Your arse is on the way out'? Anyway that was months ago. The stock price has fallen though the floor since then so the company has to find savings..."

"If you say so, darling," said Steven. "I'm just a writer I don't understand business...-"

"Yes, you do."

"Still ... I'm not sure why _I_ have to go round there again. Last time ... -"

"Well, we're sucking up to him so I don't get laid off. Anyway, June will be there. You like June."

"Yes ... there's that," said Steven.

"What do you mean 'there's that?' It was a joke."

"I was joking too," said Steven quickly. He coughed. "Actually ... now you come to mention ... well, you ought to know ... We had a row today. Me and June... I mean June and I ..."

"You've been round there during the day?"

"No," said Steven. "She came round here during the day to complain. I didn't let her in or anything."

"I should think not."

"She's figured out that I was the one that called the Council on her about the shelter being...-"

"How?"

"I think that man Samuel from the Council told her. He called on her next door and ...-"

"Probably he has a grudge against you because of how rude you were to him on the phone..."

"How do you know I was rude to him on the phone?"

"You're always rude when you talk to the Council on the phone."

"They deserve it."

"So do you. Anyway we're going round there on Saturday so you'll have to be nice and say sorry to June before ...or it'll be awkward."

"But she's a cunt?"

"That's not the point. She's the boss's wife you have to be nice to her and say sorry."

"Well, I'm not sorry."

"Yes, you are."
Chapter 18

Steven sat at his desk brooding over the mission Susan had given him to "smooth things over with Jane before the weekend". He resented having anything to do that was not writing even though all he was doing was staring out of the window. It was bad enough that Susan expected him to fit in doing the washing up, cooking and getting in groceries. Going next door and sucking up to June was a heavy extra duty which he deeply resented. Steven had a lot of work to do and it was always being prorogued by the distractions and extremely irritating construction noises that came from next door. Today these had included a sound like a giant dentist's drill. There were also the engine noises of many vans that seemed to deliver endless deliveries as well as general smashing and banging sounds. Steven was, of course, not allowed to complain about these continuing irritations because he was meant to be "smoothing things over". He wasn't even sure why it was him who had to "smooth things over". Susan and June were friends. Couldn't she smooth things over for him? It was too much. After all it was June who was the problem and she had had no reason to spout a load of unprovoked abuse at him on his doorstep - mad cow. Even now that the concrete that formed the shell of the shelter had been poured and set she was still busy inventing new ways to make noise laying ugly crazy paving slabs where once there had been the beautiful Andalusian patio.

Of course the fact he had been told he was supposed to be being nice to June in person wasn't interpreted by Steven as a reason not to continue to complain by letter and telephone about her behaviour. He had given several earfuls by telephone to Mr Cimitere from the Council only to be told that state representative that if the Bottomleys had gone through all the official channels correctly then it was likely permission would probably have been granted anyway as no regulations were being broken. Perhaps, Mr Cimitere had suggested, it would be neighbourly to just let it go?

Steven had said this was not the point. If people were just allowed to add underground rooms to their houses all over the place without going through the proper channels an epidemic of underground rooms might break out all over Crouch End. It was bad enough that one was never more than five meters from a rat anywhere in London without being a similar distance away from subterranean humans. And how long at this rate before the Bottomleys were at the earth's core?

Samuel Cimitere had replied that sadly there were no clear legal rules on this matter and that the Bottomleys may actually entitled to build downwards as far as the earth's core but that they would hopefully be put off eventually by the magma, the core temperature of 5400 °C and the fact that the surface area of their land would be zero at 3958 miles.

Steven felt that that wasn't the point but had never-the-less been bored into hanging up.

Still, he had made a point and this, in its self, was an achievement. Moreover cogitating on this point had enabled Steven to not do any writing and to put off going round to "apologise" to June till at least three thirty ...
Chapter 19

Glacially the hour came when Steven was forced to shave, to take off his pyjamas and dressing gown and to put on some "non work" clothes so that he could go down to grovel to June because he had no choice. She was in her back garden laying crazy paving. She had the hood of her parka up. She had a pair of gloves on even though it was almost a sunny spring day.

"Hello," said Steven.

June did not take her hood down or face him.

"Hello," Steven said again.

"Hello, Steven," said June.

"I came round to apologise," said Steven.

"What for?" said June.

"For complaining to the Council... I think I should have brought the matter up with you first."

"Yes, you should."

"Yes, sorry."

"No, you're not. You're still complaining to the council."

"I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"No, I'm not."

"I _know_ , Steven," said June, "because ... I am your local councillor and, yes, I am on the planning committee."

"Oh," said Steven, "... well, that was very silly of me t- ... so presumably you'll be giving yourself planning permission?"

"No, I'm not allowed to vote on my own planning applications."

"But surely you should have known that you needed planning permission ...?"

"I didn't think anyone would be so sad as to complain," said June. "Have you any idea of the trouble you've caused for me in the local press? Mr Cimitere couldn't wait to ring up the paper with...-"

"How come you're on the Council then?"

"You really don't read the papers, do you?"

"Not the local. I prefer real fiction," said Steven. "I find real life ... well ... depressing actually."

"That's probably because of how you live it – constantly at war with the rest of humanity... Have you thought about standing for the Council, Steven? It's something positive people can do for the community and might be more productive than sitting at home all day complaining about trivia like this shelter?"

"All politicians are wankers... and I'm not a wanker ... no offence."

"Yes, well... we won't take a vote on that."

"I suppose it would be fairly pointless as there are only two of us."

"I wasn't hugely keen on the Council myself before I stood for it but since I got laid off it's something to do to keep me busy that makes a bit of money so ... I changed my opinion. After all ... we all need a sensible plan for the future and it looks good on your CV."

"I don't need a CV. I'm a writer. My work is my CV. And anyway you think we'll all be blown up ... you don't believe in any future?"

"Not for you. We'll have one though ...we'll have a shelter. That's planning ahead."

"Yes, well I didn't come to argue I just came to say sorry," Steven prized out of his vocal.

"It's okay, Steven. I called you a cunt because you are one," said Jane. "I don't bear grudges ...but we don't have to pretend to like each other either."

"No, er ... well ... fair enough... I suppose."

"Would you like to see inside the shelter?"

"No... thanks... I've got my slippers on."

"Or come in for a cup of tea?"

"I'm supposed to be writing... when you work for yourself you've got to try and have a routine ...-"

"I understand. I'll see you Saturday then."

"Yes. See you later then..."

"See you later, Steven."
Chapter 20

There was a good five minute wait between the doorbell playing "Ode to Joy" out of tune and June opening the front door. As before June and Susan greeted each other as though they were old friends and treated Steven as though he was someone to be slightly suspicious of. Once again June took their coats and hung them over the banister of the Spartan entrance hall. The house continued to contain not much furniture although several more dirty looking closed wooden boxes were scattered about making it feel a bit more cluttered. "You still don't have much furniture?" Steven attempted some small talk as June conveyed them over the black and white tiled floor toward the front room.

"No," said June. "We sold a lot of it when we moved here. We were thinking of sort of starting again furniturewise ...from a blank slate ...if you like."

Susan shot Steven a look.

Steven felt like saying he wasn't trying to start anything but his ruminations on the Bottomleys' unique approach to interior design were interrupted by one of the two other people in the front room. One was a man the other a woman. "Hello," said the man enthusiastically. Steven found his hand being shaken. "I'm John Byron," added the hand shaker. He was about 35, thin, with neat fair hair and was dressed in a sharply cut business suit. Steven smiled.

"And I'm Mary Byron," said the woman next to him in sensible and unremarkable clothing. She was of similar same age, hair and complexion.

"The Byrons are joining Grando Funerals," Susan explained what Steven had guessed already.

"So Harry has invited them round to dinner," added June. "It's sort of a tradition we have ...-"

Steven grimaced unintentionally. He hated traditions of all kinds. Morris Men, Pearly Kings and Queens, Guy Fawkes, baptisms, weddings, funerals, Fathers' Day, Mothers' Day, Birthdays, Graduation Ceremonies, Halloween, Valentine's Day, Christmas, Easter, the BAFTAs, the Oscars, Fetes, Priye Ginen, Honaker, Eid, Harvest Festival, the State Opening of Parliament, the Queen's birthdays (both of them) ... Indeed even his own birthdays were a cause of silent resentment though he pretended to enjoy that one for Susan's sake and because it was ameliorated by presents.

"" _Byron and Shelley_ " haven't quite joined the business yet," corrected Mary Byron.

"No," said June Bottomley and John Byron together.

"Sorry, I meant...-" said June. "Well, you know...-" She laughed nervously.

The Byrons also laughed nervously.

Steven tried laughing too but felt his laugh sounded a false meaningless imposition.

"...but we've thinking very seriously," said John Byron, "of joining the Grando Funerals ... of course."

"I'm not in funerals myself," said Steven because he thought he should come up with an original statement. "I'm a writer ...for television ...-"

"Really?" said Mary.

"Yes," said Steven. "When you say " _Byron and Shelley_ " were related to either of _the_ ...-?"

"Oh no," laughed Mr Byron. "But my great, great grandfather was a big fan of Lord Byron and Percy Shelly so he named his business after them and changed his name. He said it added verisimilitude to the business to be named after two great writers even if the name was a fake... since writing is immortality of a kind and funerals are sort of ... well ... sorrow is knowledge? ...and all that ... perhaps one day someone will name a funeral parlour after you, Mr Ambrose?"

"It's something to look forward to," said Steven.

The dinner gong sounded.
Chapter 21

"This way," said Mr Bottomley gong-in-hand as he led them through the doorway he had appeared in. They followed him meekly into the dining room. June sat next to Steven who sat next to Susan who sat next to Harry who sat next to John Byron who sat next to Mary Byron who sat next to June who sat next to Steven round the round table where June seated them all. Steven felt uncomfortable sat between Susan and June but didn't say anything about it. As before Harry Bottomley had to keep getting up to go into the kitchen between each of the courses which he had, of course, cooked himself.

The first course was recognisable to Steven as a variation on moules mariniers that looked unappetising but tasted delicious. The garlic source in which the mussels were drenched had been infused with some spices that Steven could not identify. These added a peculiar zest without detracting from the expected flavours of such a traditional dish. It was devoured very quickly by the diners. Harry was roundly congratulated when their stomachs were as full as their small talk was empty.

"I'm so glad you enjoyed it," said Harry. "I like to think that cooking is a little something I can do sometimes to give something back to the people who work for me ... or who might want to...-"

"Last time we were here," said Steven, "Harry cooked a fantastic meal for us and the Carters but this time he's surpassed himself ...-"

Mary Byron looked at a pepper pot. Susan looked at her reflection in a spoon. Steven knew he had said something wrong. "Sorry," he said not knowing quite why, "I ...- er..."

"It's okay," said June.

"What is?" asked Mary.

"Doesn't he know?" June asked Susan talking across Steven.

"Don't I know what?" asked Steven.

"I did tell you?" said Susan.

Steven looked blankly from Susan to June. He wasn't sure if Susan's question was rhetorical or genuine. After thinking a moment he was sure Susan hadn't told him whatever it was she knew that he didn't know. "Harry had to lay them off?" he offered up. This had not been told to him explicitly but he guessed it from things Susan had previously said. From the Byrons' faces and Susan's face he knew that that wasn't all he had to guess. He had guessed correctly yet incorrectly. Susan looked at Harry. Harry looked at June. June looked at Harry. Harry looked at Steven. It was as if the circular table was a mirror for magnifying awkward social moments. Steven didn't need anyone to actually tell him the Carters were dead. However, they did.
Chapter 22

"Didn't Susan tell you?" asked June.

"I don't think so ...?" said Steven. He caught Susan's stare. He cast his mind back. Had she told him after all? "I'm not sure ... but I ... I think she did ... might have done ... but you know how it is? ...I didn't connect the name with the people ... I only met ...-"

"Its okay, Steven," interrupted Susan giving him an even more disapproving look. "I didn't tell you. To be honest I put the whole thing to the back of my mind. As have most people. It is quite unpleasant. I suppose it's a way of coping..."

"Oh," said Steven.

"It was suicide," said Harry Bottomley smiling weakly like a vicar conducting a short service where time is a factor.

"Oh," said Steven.

"It's interesting, isn't it?" mused Harry Bottomley philosophically. "If there's anyone for whom death should not be a taboo it's us round this table and yet even we are not comfortable ...?"

"Both of them?" asked Steven.

"Yes, I believe," said Mr Bottomley, "it was what they call " _a suicide pact_ "... strange and rare occurrences these days but they do still happen it seems... While we try to do all we can to protect our former employees from the dark side of redundancy I'm afraid some of them adapt to the unpleasant reality better than others."

"You can't blame yourself for what happened to the Carters," said Susan putting a comforting hand on Harry Bottomley's arm. It seemed a redundant hand to Steven as Harry didn't seem to him to have any emotion about any of this. Then again maybe it was cynical of Steven to think that. Either way he thought his woman should take her hand away.

"It isn't your fault dear," added June putting her hand on Harry's other arm, "and you mustn't blame yourself. You've made lots of people redundant over the years including me... I haven't killed myself."

"No... Well, at least they won't have to worry about getting a proper funeral. We promise lifetime funeral insurance to all our employees and ex-employees," said Harry as if this was the human resources policy that every employee in every corporate organisation hankered after.

Steven thought of pointing out that as they were both dead neither would be left alive to worry about the other's funeral anyway.

"We do the same," replied Mr Byron with a similar lack of irony. "I regret to say that it's been my dubious honour to inter quite a few of my work colleagues and ex-colleagues before their time. Even though death is a fact of life I don't think it gets any easier for any of us in the business to deal with personally. Not that I've ever embalmed an ex-colleague who's committed suicide but I've embalmed quite a few who had met unfortunately violent or unpleasant ends and who's bodies needed quite a lot of work to get them anywhere near display quality....-"

"Your kind words are appreciated," said Harry Bottomley, "but I fear we must be depressing Steven with all this shop talk. Necessary though it has been ...-"

"Not at all," said Steven attempting to lift the mood. "As a writer it's all useful material. I'm sure you've got lots of stories about people dying horribly that would be useful ...-". Susan kicked Steve under the table before he had realised how stupid and callous what he was saying sounded so he added "... that makes me sound a bit callous, doesn't it? But the truth is all us writers of drama are all sort of ... feeding off other people's tragedies and I like to think writing about taboo issues helps real sufferers know they're not alone". This sounded good he thought. In his heart however he suspected that the macabre goings on in many episodes of "Misadventure" achieved nothing except to make the depressed even further depressed. Steven talked some more but the more he talked the more he thought he sounded like a wanker and the deeper a hole he dug for himself. Eventually he stopped talking.

"Yes, quite a lot of characters die horribly on your show, don't they?" said Mary Byron.

"Well, yes and no," said Steven. "Mainly it's the visiting artists' characters .... We can't afford to kill off members of the main cast too often. Not that we wouldn't like to." He expected people to ask him more about this statement but it appeared they had no curiosity about TV production and it was another conversational dead end. Harry Bottomley smiled, rose and silently collected their empty plates. Not to be defeated by their lack of interest Steven continued. "It's funny, isn't it? Although there's a lot of death on the program we never go into the business of funerals and burial ... I tried once but the 6th floor were against it ... of course a post mortem scene is always good for ratings but you're up against Dr Quincy who set the benchmark ...-."

"Well," interrupted John Byron animatedly and as Harry Bottomley disappeared into the kitchen, "of course after an autopsy there's often much less work for us to do as the internal organs have often been removed or drained of fluid. Less messing about with suction pumps and that... We still have to puncture some of the organs but it's not as much work. The Carters are still waiting to come back from post-mortem and I don't know what they're doing to them there but..."

"How did they die?" interrupted Steven.

"Hosepipe and car exhaust... Most suicide pacts are carried out by some kind of poisoning. Usually ingested but sometimes gas," said Mr Byron. "Nonviolent methods allow the synchronisation of the deaths ...and of course allow the pact members to change their minds. Usually in such a dyad there is a dominant person who initiates the suicide pact and a more submissive person who more goes along with it. Usually it's a couple in a very close and exclusive relationship, often free of significant bonds... but I'm sure, being a writer, you'll know all this?"

Steven didn't know all this and considered how much Mr Byron was starting to sound like one of the audience surrogates he used to give such corny dialogue to in "Misadventure". Still he mentally noted it all down in the hope of giving the words or similar ones to a future supporting character on "Misadventure".

"Poor souls," continued Mr Byron, "...of course at _"Byron and Shelley"_ we've been at the forefront of embalming technology since the 1870s. Only last year I patented a new type of trocar and I believe it's had some crossover applications in keyhole surgery...-"

"I'm sure Mr Ambrose doesn't want to hear about that," said Mary Byron.

Steven did but didn't say so.
Chapter 23

At that moment Harry Bottomley returned with the main course – A glutinous Goulash \- which he plopped from a large pot with a ladle into their individual bowls. It looked and sounded revolting. Fortunately when ingested it became clear to everyone that the white wine and paprika had mixed with salmon rich in collagen that had partly converted to gelatine during an extremely long slow cooking process to make a dish that was truly saporous. They wolfed it down.

"That was delicious," said Steven.

"Yes," said June. "Susan tells us you're also quite a good cook on the quiet, Steven?"

"He is," said Susan mockingly. "He just doesn't like cooking for other people."

"I can only manage to cook for about two at a time," said Steven. He scowled at Susan.

"It's not difficult to cook for more than two," said Mary Byron. "Really it isn't. You just have to measure everything more carefully and scale up."

"Yes," said Harry Bottomley. "That's all I do ... really. Scale things up. Same with business."

"Oh, well, I couldn't do it then," said Steven. "I don't measure. I just throw it all in the pan."

"He's being modest," said Susan. "I'm sure he'd love to cook for you really, Harry."

"Sorry no," apologised Steven. "It's nothing personal but cooking for other people is my idea of hell. I'm a bit agoraphobic actually... coming round here is a bit of a struggle to be honest ...-"

"I didn't know actually," said June. "You seem to be able to come round here to complain about the shelter fast enough."

"Yes, but that's different," said Steven.

"Why?" said June.

"Well, ..." Steven began.

"Ignore him," said Susan. "I'm sure he'd love to have you round, June."

"No more than you would love to have Harry round," said Steven.

"I'm sure you'd both love to have both of us round," said Harry as he wiped his beard with his napkin. "Now ...if you'll excuse me a moment," he added. "I think I should get dessert." He flashed them a toothless smith and disappeared into the kitchen again.
Chapter 24

Dessert turned out to be some kind of delightful slightly savoury doughnut like objects which Harry explained to them were called "Fritule". They were slightly sweet but not too heavy or too light.

"That was lovely," said John Byron who had been the first to clear his plate. "Just the ticket."

"It gives me great pleasure that it gave you so much pleasure," responded Harry Bottomley. "I hope when " _Byron and Shelley_ " becomes part of "Grando Funerals" that this may well ...-"

"Well, we haven't agreed anything just yet," interrupted Mary Byron awkwardly.

"I do apologise," said Harry Bottomley. "I meant of course when and _if_ ...a slip of the tongue."

"And the mind?" said Mary Byron. "He may look stupid my brother but he isn't really."

Steven felt suddenly mentally wrong footed. He hadn't realised the Byrons were siblings. Now he wondered why he hadn't thought of it. After all they hadn't introduced themselves as married or Mr and Mrs Byron and they did look similar so why had he put two and tow together to make five? Then again 9 times out of 10...

John Byron laughed. "What my sister means, I think," he said, "is that while we appreciate your interest in the firm there will, of course, have to be a consideration period and possibly caveats in the contract. That is to say ...obviously we have to sell to someone since my brother Matthew died but we don't want to end up like the Carters..."

"The laying off of many of the "Carter and Cooper" staff was unfortunate," replied Harry, "but unfortunately it was only after George Carter signed over the company that the true scale of the debts it had acquired during his father's ownership became apparent. There was nothing that could be done to turn the business round ...without drastic action... -"

It looked for a moment like Harry Bottomley was having an emotion but the moment passed.

"It's true I'm afraid," said Susan. "I see most of the figures as Harry's secretary and...-"

"I'm sure Harry can fight his own battles," interjected Steven.

Susan gave him a glance of pure malevolence.

"Yes I can," laughed Harry, "... indeed I can ...but more importantly ... coffee and cigars?"

***

They repaired to the front room where coffee was drunk, cigars were smoked and nonsense was talked until the lack of comfortable seating meant everyone made their excuses and left.

"A pleasure as always," said June as she walked Steven and Susan to the door.

"You must invite June and Harry round some time," said Susan to Steven.

"Maybe," said Steven to Susan. "Sometime..."

"It's okay you don't have to," said June laughing as she closed the door.

***

"That was rude of you," said Susan as they walked back down the front path. "You should have asked them round."

"Okay, I will," said Steven. He walked back down the path and up the few steps to the front door to ring the bell again so that he could apologise. When he got there he started to change his mind. As he stood there cogitating he hard a strange noise. It sounded like a muffled splattering. He didn't know what it was and he didn't want to find out.

"Actually, no I won't," he said quietly.

"What?" said Susan who was some way back down the path and so couldn't hear what he'd heard.

"Nothing," said Steven returning to her side. "...just thought better of it..."

Susan looked at him suspiciously.

"Do we really have to invite them?" said Steven.

"Yes."

"I'll get in some Fray Bentos."
Chapter 25

Steven Ambrose and Tony Fuller sat in a corner of the Phoenix Artists Bar enjoying a couple of "gourmet" burgers and chips. Above their heads a stuffed dead crocodile smirked. It was just before 6pm which meant that the venue was just starting to implement its "members only" policy that operated in the evenings to satisfy the twin demands of licensing laws and snobbery. As it was early evening now the tourists who kept the venue viable during the day were starting to be replaced by the out of work and/or underemployed actors and comedians who kept it financially viable at night. Steven pondered on how so many unsuccessful people seemed to find drinking industrial quantities of overpriced lager in the evenings more productive than working on their sets, learning their lines or going to gigs and even more curiously how they found the money. He very much enjoyed looking down his nose at them while simultaneously remembering being one of them at least for a while. However after a while he started worrying that if he couldn't placate Tony he might be one of them again very soon. He actually hated the whole place but it was slightly better for business meetings than most of the other late night drinking dens that operated a guest list from 6 PM such as the "Cheers" theme bar on Regent Street where nobody knew his name.

"There's something wrong with this Samuel Cimetière character," Tony was saying.

"So you say? But what exactly? He seems to be popular with the viewers," protested Steven. "You said I should invent you a new character which I feel I should point out is not strictly speaking my job and I did what you asked ...so ... what more do you want? ... and anyway the audience research came back positive?"

"Yes, I know," said Tony, "but having good audience reaction alone is not enough I'm afraid. The other writers have to be able to get a handle on him. They have to be able to feel they know who he is? ... what drives him? ...where he comes from? ... how he fits in? ...and again and again I get calls from other freelance writers complaining that they don't know how to write him. Then I end up staying up all night having to fix the scripts myself... and then I realise that I don't understand him either. It's like he's some kind of cipher ...not a real person...?"

"Aren't they all? I mean ...of course he's not a real person... he's a composite."

"So you say... but unless people can get a handle on him...-"

"Perhaps your problem is that he's not a caricature like most of the other characters?"

"Perhaps the problem is he's not a real person?"

"Perhaps the real problem is that writing Samuel is forcing the other writers to think?"

"Yes," said Tony, "but they've got to have somewhere to start...-"

"I gave you a back history."

"Yes, you did."

"And that's all you asked for? Surely you can tweak it a bit..."

"Yes," said Tony taking a sip of his Sol lager, "...but I feel that we need more?"

"Who is the script editor – you or me?"

"Steven, I get where you're coming from – No, it's not strictly speaking your job \- but please work with me on this. It's a _you scratch my back and I scratch yours_ situation ...?"

"Is it? Or is it a _you use me to progress yourself onto other projects and then dump me_ situation?"

"We respect intellectual property and talent at the BBC and fully reward it," said Tony.

"I didn't say you didn't," said Steven. "I asked if you were using me. Not that I think you are, Tony, but you're on staff. I'm just a freelance and if I lose this gig I could be out the door forever."

"Well, it doesn't help my career when things all go tits up either," said Tony.

"Yes, but you'll still have a career. That's the difference."

"If you really have a career then you shouldn't be reliant on one producer."

"I never am," lied Steven.

"And then there's the name. I told you we've had letters...-?"

"And I told you that there are real Caribbean people called Cimetière. I didn't make it up – get a telephone directory if you don't believe me."

"I may well do that but even if what you say is true it hasn't made my life any easier. Perhaps you should do a block of two or three episodes in a row to cement his place in the overall narrative and help give the other writers more of an idea who he is and where he's coming from and what makes him tick...? That'd be better than more outlines ... however much work you put into them."

"Yes, that could work," said Steven thinking of the money.

Chapter 26

Having shown lots of potentates around the vast warehouse-cum-office on the Latimer Road Industrial Estate over the years Susan had now got her waffle pretty finely tuned. Julia however was clearly not impressed by their business methods no matter how vigorously Susan tried to sell the operation to her. Julia stated verbally that parts of the warehouse were extremely dingy and even implied that some of the living at "Grando Funerals" were not as easily identifiable from the dead as they should have been.

Susan joked that fortunately the dead and living had been provided with different colour name tags to avoid any potential confusion but Julia did not laugh so Susan lied to her that they'd only just moved in the building and that the reason for the dinginess was they had yet to start renovations. This was an old lie she had recycled many times to many people because the old ones are the best. They had actually been in the premises about 5 years. Of course it didn't look good that the warehouse had large damp patches on certain walls, smelled of damp or that certain employees had developed coughs but fortunately there was a fairly high staff turnover that those who stayed long enough to get repetitive fungal skin infections were few in number.

"I see," said Julia. She looked up to the corrugated iron roof of the warehouse with its incandescent lights. There were skylights encrusted with bird faeces.

"We're a people business," Susan heard herself saying at one point. "We value all of the people we have here and we try to develop each individual as fully as possible. We have annual appraisals, a relatives' death discount deal, a company share plan and, of course, should an employee be as unfortunate as to die while working for the company full funeral and life insurance".

None of this seemed to impress Julia who seemed more interested in the embalming techniques than the company benefits. "You store the blood?" she asked pointing to some red bottles.

"Yes," said Susan. "We used to just pour it down the drain but it's becoming increasingly the industry standard now to treat every deceased person as though they died of a communicable and contagious disease and the Council don't like us putting blood into the waste water system anymore so we acquired a specialized waste disposal waste treatment subdivision."

"I see," said Julia.

Eventually the tour ended and Susan conveyed Julia to Harry's office. This was the only room in the place where some effort had been put in to hiding the ugly warehouse roof by installing ceiling tiles.

Harry was sitting quietly behind his desk simulating a look of efficiency. He indicated to Julia to take a seat. She did.

Susan sat just to the right of them to take notes in shorthand.

"So nice to meet you at last, Ms Diamond," said Harry without getting up to shake hands.

"And you too," said Julia.

"So what did you think of our little emporium...?"

"It's very busy."

"4,000 people die in London each day. I like to think that we offer a service that is both sensitive and precipitate."

"Of course some people say you are out for total market control."

"Who is not?" said Harry, "but I think the government would step in before we were allowed to bury absolutely every corpse in London." He laughed.

Julia did not laugh. "Well, you're known for your hostile takeovers," she said.

"Most takeovers are hostile if we were all entirely honest about it ...but if we weren't in the position we are you wouldn't be considering selling your business to us, would you?"

"I suppose," said Julia.

"Anyway," said Harry Bottomley, "no one's _forcing you_ to sell your business to us, Ms Diamond. You are here of your own volition... I hope?"

"At the moment," said Julia Diamond.

"Most of the owners of companies who've merged with us have been happy after the merger."

"Except the Carters?"

"A tragic situation," said Harry Bottomley. "But we do have successful mergers with other firms that don't end ... result ... in such unfortunate ...situations ... not that one actually knows what was going through their minds."

"No ... but as the coroner said it's a fair bet that ...-"

"Perhaps you would feel more comfortable if you got to know us a bit more socially?" said Harry.

"Socially?" echoed Julia.

"This Sunday ...?"

Julia was about to answer when there was a squelching noise and a crash. Instinctively she closed her eyes. The sludge was on her. Everyone was shocked. Julia was completely humiliated and smelled disgusting.
Chapter 27

Eventually Susan realised what had happened. The roof above Harry's office had obviously been leaking for some time and the cardboard ceiling tiles that comprised it had been gradually absorbing water and getting soggier and soggier for months and no one had noticed till this moment. Well, actually Susan had noticed they were grey in colour instead of white but asking the unspoken question "Are you going to fix the roof?" was to difficult and uninteresting. So eventually the weight of the tiles and the water above it had become larger than the inter-molecular bonds holding that cardboard tiles together and today they had finally given way. So now Julia sat drenched in the repugnant mixture of mouldy cardboard and stagnant water. Harry apologised profusely and promised to pay the dry cleaning bill but Julia's best suit was ruined.
Chapter 28

Julia was something of a connoisseur of the artistic capabilities of bar people. It was odd how even in the direst pubs the staff would sometimes spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to draw a shamrock as carefully and accurately as possible with beer from a nozzle - as if they were trying to hone a transferrable skill to their low skill low pay job. There was a real art to Guinness foam shamrocks but no matter how beautifully one was done it was never going to get the person who made it a pay rise. Each one was unique and ephemeral - It would either be destroyed by the drinker or the bubbles would burst. One had to admire the pointless beauty of each one. They were art. Or at least craft. As Julia sat pondering this particular foam shamrock a lady pulled up a bar stool next to her and placed on the table a plain brown A4 envelope.

"John wanted you to have this," she said.

"Thank you, Mary," said Julia. "Fancy a pint?"

"Sorry," said Mary glancing about, "but I've got to be going."

Mary quickly downed the rest of her rum and coke. Then she was gone.

Julia opened the envelope.
Chapter 29

Eventually Steven and Tony Fuller had agreed a new story outline for Samuel Cimetière and broken it down into scenes. However, for some pragmatic reason words would not make it through the blinking cursor. This was a shame as Steven had thought up a particularly good conceit about Samuel "accidentally injecting" a liquid adhesive into his own rectum with a dual-chambered glue gun - a plot that Tony was sure would get "past the vermin 6th floor". However while this had sounded good in conversation making it work in terms of actual drama in order to get paid for it was harder than set epoxy resin. Steven was stuck. Fortunately the intercom bell rang and he had an excuse to stop staring at the blinking cursor. He went to the window and looked to see who was interrupting him before considering whether he wanted to answer.

The person on the doorsteps had on a baseball cap on and a hoodie with the hood pulled up over the cap. Their hands were in their pockets and their face obscured by the portico but he guessed from the build and the way they stood that it was a woman so he put his dressing gown over his pyjamas and wandered downstairs.

"Bastard!" said June as he opened the door.

"What?" said Steven.

"Been onto the Council about the shelter yet again, haven't you?"

"Yes, well ... I'm sure I'm not the only person who's made a complaint about all the noise ..."

"According to Mr Cimetière yes, you are the only person who put in a complaint about the noise."

Steven said nothing.

"Well?" said June. "Say something?"

Steven searched for something to say and found himself wondering instead why June always seemed over-dressed. Even in summer she had a long sleeve tee-shirt on? He knew she was getting angrier and angrier by the second even though he couldn't see her eyes behind her mirrored sunglasses.

"Well, I've never quite understood why you want a nuclear shelter anyway?" he said eventually.

"In case there's a nuclear war obviously."

It wasn't obvious to Steven. He said so.

"You really believe all that Gorbachev stuff? Anyway it's built now. And covered over ..."

"That's not the point," replied Steven.

"What _is_ the point? Do you really want the council to dig it up just to fill it with earth again...?"

"Yes."

"But it's not overshadowing you ... it's underground ... What harm is it doing?"

"I don't know," said Steven. "It might be doing something bad to the drains ...or something. I only really have your word for it that it's just a nuclear shelter anyway?"

"What do you think it is?"

"I don't know."

Steven found himself withdrawing into the hall. He reached for the door as if to close it but thought better of this deciding that this would be too rude. June made as if to walk into the hall but something seemed to stop her. She stopped and took a couple of breaths. "You're not going to invite me in?" she said.

"No," said Steven.

"I've got him well trained," said a voice.

June turned. Steven glanced over June's shoulder. It was Susan. She was standing behind June.

June turned and looked at Susan. Susan looked at June. June and Susan laughed. Steven tried to laugh but it wasn't convincing.

"Do you often drop in on my husband when I'm at work?" asked Susan half-joking.

"Sometimes, but he never lets me in," said June. "Actually I came round to invite you both round to dinner on Sunday. Harry is having another dinner party."

Steven considered what to say. He wondered why June had come home from the office. Was she unwell? Was there an innocent explanation or had she done something wrong? Had she forgotten something? Was she checking up on him? How was he going to get out of another of Harry's dinner parties?

"I'm sure Steven would love to come round, wouldn't you Steven?" said Susan.

"If you would, darling," said Steven.

"Of course I would, darling," said Susan kissing him on the cheek while staring pointedly at June.

"We'll see you Sunday then," said June. Steven could still not see her eyes behind her sunglasses. She turned and headed down the steps and along the garden path towards the road on her way back to her own house. Steven closed the front door. Susan kissed him on the cheek.

"You' home early?"

"I'm on notice to redundancy."
Chapter 30

Steven rang the doorbell that played "Ode to Joy" out of tune. The cornucopia of reasons that Steven did not want to be going round the Bottomleys' house again ran through his mind like the conveyor belt on the "Generation Game". The curtains were always drawn. It was an overly grand residence for a childless middle aged couple. There was nothing inside the house to look at. The chairs were horrible to sit on and wobbled. He did not like it that Susan wanted to hang out with Harry Bottomley in their spare time. Having dinner with your wife's boss and your boss's wife there's a power imbalance. The way June Bottomley would hit on him in front of Susan. The list of negatives seemed endless. On the plus side Harry Bottomley's last meal had greatly surpassed the first he had served them. Steven glanced at Susan. He was not a great follower of fashion but he noticed that she looked different. Not how she dressed for the office and not how she dressed at home. It was pleasant to see her in different clothes. It made him feel both suspicious and proud.

As usual it took June Bottomley a good five minutes to open the front door. June and Susan greeted each other in a more stand-off-ish way than on the previous two occasions. Once again June took their coats and conveyed them through the conspicuously Spartan entrance hall to the conspicuously Spartan front room.

"You still don't have much furniture?" said Steven.

"No," said June.

"Any reason?" said Steven.

"We decided towards minimalism," said June.

"Well, you've certainly achieved it," said Steven. He looked around again. There was not even a television. Steven wondered if they read books instead but could not see any of those either.

Susan shot Steven a look which seemed to say "I thought I told you not to mention that" which inspired Steven to harp on the subject. "Oh," he said. "I thought that was what you were having d-...". But before he could interrogate June further he was interrupted by the other guest to the dinner party who was already in the front room but whom he had not yet noticed grabbing his gesticulating hand. She was white, about 27, had brown hair and seemed to be unusually short.

"Hello," the lady introduced herself enthusiastically. "I'm Julia Diamond."

"Hello, I'm Steven," said Steven. He knew because he wrote lines for actors and had trained as an actor himself what a really bad actor he was being and became paranoid that he was leaking information all over the place through his inappropriate body language. This was silly because he had no guilty secret to leak?

"Julia is thinking of joining her company with Grando Funerals," said June.

"Yes, well, only thinking about it at this stage," said Julia. "I've been lucky enough to inherit a family business and I want to do what's best for the employees ... I'm afraid I don't have time to run it myself ...and... well, one can't just disband a viable business, can one?"

"No," said Steven.

"Very pleased to meet you again, Julia," Susan reintroduced herself awkwardly. "I hope your suit dry cleaned okay?"

Julia did not reply. She glared.

"I'm not in funerals myself," said Steven to break the silence.

"Really?" said Julia. "What do you do that's more interesting than stiffs then?"

Julia didn't look quite dressed for the occasion and she wasn't quite like either the Carters or the Byrons had been. Steven tried to put his finger on what was different about her. Perhaps it was that she didn't seem as afraid? Although the Carters and the Byrons had exuded enthusiasm their manner had seemed timid. Julia wasn't timid.

"I'm a writer ...for television," said Steven with a mixture of pride and vanity.

"Come to observe some of us real people?" said Julia.

"Well, ...-" said Steven.

And then they were interrupted by the dinner gong.
Chapter 31

That predictable sound was accompanied by the predictable sight of Harry Bottomley appearing gong in hand in the doorway. "This way," he ushered them towards the dining room with a broad grin. June seated them round the round table in the ritual manner. June sat next to Steven who sat next to Susan who sat next to Harry who sat next to Julia Diamond who sat next to June who sat next to Steven. As before Steven felt uncomfortable between Susan and June but said nothing. Fortunately they did not have long to wait for the first course. It was a strange brown lumpy concoction that Harry Bottomley explained was called "Žganci - very popular in Croatia."

"You're from there...?" asked Julia Diamond.

"A long time ago," said Harry Bottomley. "Sherlock Holmes used to say a man's brain is like an attic. I'm afraid mine is like that Area 52 warehouse at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". I remember the place well but as one advances in years memory retrieval can take some time... -"

"Were you very young ...when you left?" asked Julia Diamond.

"I was younger," said Harry. "We left after the Second World War ... The war was terrible. As I say it is an effort to recall things now but I think I can safely say that there is no other part of the world which was devastated on a vaster scale by the war than Yugoslavia. They used to say that every tenth Yugoslav had perished. My mother and I escaped."

"Really?" said Julia.

Steven expecting more story. There was no more story.

"This is one of my mother's recipes. She was very fond of cooking. I think it was her way of feeling that she still lived in the old country ...," mused Harry eventually.

"I see," said Julia.

Harry and Julia talked some more but Steven didn't really follow their conversation as he was too involved in devouring the dish. It tasted nectarous. Why anybody was ever taken in by Harry's superabundance of delicious but revolting looking food and completely transparent lies was a mystery to Steven but perhaps the truth was that actually it fooled no one. It just made them feel transiently better about their almost inevitable impending doom. That and the food tasted good. Thinking this made Steven feel he had few choices either.

Eventually Harry picked up their dishes to a round of congratulations and headed back into the kitchen with a broad smug grin. There was not much conversation between the first course and the second. Julia Diamond was particularly quiet. This left June trying to make small talk but the only person who would engage with her was Susan. Steven felt he shouldn't talk to either woman so he smiled inanely. Susan kicked him under the table but Steven still didn't know what to say so said nothing so she kicked him again.
Chapter 32

After a painfully long wait Harry re-appeared from the kitchen with the next course which he genially served from a large silver plated bowl of elegant design using a ladle. The mixture plopped into each individual stoneware bowl with a series of squelching sounds. It was a fish broth of some kind that looked revolting but would taste transcendental.

"This is lovely," said Julia Diamond eventually feeling a responsibility to break the thick ice ...and then, "... I was sorry to hear John Byron passed away," she added as if the two thoughts were connected.

"Yes," said Harry Bottomley, "most tragic and unexpected."

"Like the Carters?" said Julia.

"Sadly ... although quite different circumstances," said Harry. "The Carters unfortunately killed themselves in a suicide pact. We are not yet sure of the cause of Mr Byron's death but I believe it was a paracetamol overdose of some kind which could have been accidental. We're still waiting...-"

"He had just been made redundant," said Julia.

"Lots of people are made redundant," said Susan. "They don't all kill themselves."

"I didn't," said June.

"Yes, but some do," said Julia. "That is to say ...I don't mean to be critical and I'm sure of all this is just unfortunate but I wouldn't be a very good businesswoman if I hadn't done any research in who I'm selling my business to and the fact is ... your do have a reputation?"

"Do I?" said Harry stroking his beard.

"Well," said Julia, "they do call you " _the vampire_ " in the business, don't they?"

"It's possible they do," said Harry, "... success breeds jealousies and we are very successful so people like to cast aspersions ... to spread gossip ... to sneer ... but I can assure you that nobody at "Grando Funerals", Ms Diamond, is an actual "vampire". Least of all me..." He laughed a little.

"I think perhaps," said Julia Diamond, "it is your predatory business practices that have earned you the epithet? 'Grando' have made a remarkable number of profitable acquisitions for a very small company in terms of revenue and turnover...?"

"You flatter me," said Harry Bottomley as if he were indulging a disgruntled employee.

"No," said Julia, "...I just did a bit of basic research on you. Like contacting Mr Byron before his unfortunate death... He was of the opinion – as I have been for some time - that there was some disparity between your share price and the estimates of your profit and turnover ... at least as relayed to the stock market?"

"indeed?"

"Yes, I believe the words he used were 'pump and dump' operation?"

"Well, of course, one does not want to speak ill of the dead," said Harry, "but ... no doubt Mr Byron was very upset and depressed following his recent redundancy. He may not have been -"

"Yes," interrupted Julia Diamond, "he was. _Very_. So upset that he gave me copies of your accounts. And they do seem to tell a slightly different story to what you tell the stock market."

"That was illegal," said Harry Bottomley.

"Well, you can't sue him he's dead," said Julia Diamond removing a small dictaphone from her handbag and placing it on the table.

"Indeed?" said Harry Bottomley.

"I feel I should be honest, Mr Bottomley, I'm not actually the heir to a funeral business. My uncle owns one but he isn't dead. Actually I'm a reporter."

"That must be very interesting," said Harry Bottomley with a patronising grin. "Of course Mr Byron was indeed a manager after the takeover ... but he was very junior management. He may have mistakenly suspected our statements to the stock market were inaccurate ...-"

"Mr Bottomley," interrupted Julia, "I've been round your offices and I've looked in detail at your accounts and I have to say that on a ... shall we say ... intuitive level ... I felt there was some distance between the size of your business on paper and the physical size of the infrastructure and ...-"

"Ah, I see," said Harry laughing, "... we're not relying on empirical evidence at all now? ...we're relying on your "intuition"? Miss Diamond, I wasn't born yesterday. You don't have a story at all, do you? You just have suspicions and you're hoping that I will inadvertently incriminate myself on the dictaphone..."

Julia opened her mouth to speak but Harry Bottomley raised his hand and stared into her eyes.

"...By the way I did not give you permission to use it in here."

"Perhaps we should all enjoy our broth and leave politics till after dinner," said June.

"Yes," said Julia switching off her dictaphone. "Sorry."

"It's a very nice broth," said Steven.

"Thank you," said Harry.

Then they finished their broth to the sound of scraping spoons and nothing else.
Chapter 33

"I'm sorry," said Julia. "I feel I've made a bit of a scene."

"That's quite alright," said June. "As Harry said ...we understand that you're just doing your job. But really," she laughed, "you don't have to worry. We're not crooks."

"I'm sure," said Julia sounding the opposite.

"It is true people sometimes call my husband a vampire but that's just ...-"

"Because of your deal with the bloodmeal plant?" said Julia.

"That's ... confidential," said Harry.

"I thought your explanation for why you were collecting the blood was a bit odd," said Julia. "So I did a bit of digging ... - "

"There's nothing wrong in selling human blood for bloodmeal," said Susan. "In fact many of our clients are quite taken with the idea of their relatives being recycled into the food chain via...- ?"

"Those that haven't heard of bovine spongiform encephalopathy?" interrupted Julia.

"No one's being deceived," said Susan. "It's stated in the small print that some blood...-"

"So why do you say it's confidential...?" said Julia.

"Well," said Harry, "we don't take advertising out on it but what do people think happens to dead bodies after they die? They are eaten by worms... who are eaten by birds who are eaten by larger mammals... it's called the food chain. Bloodmeal is a natural food source."

"But the dead aren't eaten directly by us ... you're short-circuiting the food chain? The mammals we eat are mainly herbivores for a reason. Cows are not designed to eat meat like we are and ... if it's innocent why wasn't that what you told me when I asked at the factory? You told me some set of lies about how you used a specialized waste disposal company ..."

"We do," said Susan. "It just happens to convert a lot of the human blood to bloodmeal for animal consumption. Of course there may be the odd person who has a problem with that ...but we can't pour it down the drain, the Council might complain so we have to do something ...-"

"And after all," added Harry. "humans do eat animal blood in dishes such as black pudding and haggis so what is wrong with other animals eating human blood if there's no longer any need for it? Waste not, want not? We're always reading in pamphlets from Oxfam that there isn't enough food for everyone in the world? So what do you expect us to do with all that spare blood? Drink it ourselves?" He laughed.

No one else laughed. No one else said anything.

"Anyway ... dessert?"
Chapter 34

Dessert was Cremeschnitte. They ate it with silent formality. The puff pastry was both brittle and soft and the vanilla and custard cream literally to die for, thought Steven. He then thought that that was a very unfortunate metaphor in the circumstances. This in turn reminded him that while the dessert was sumptuous as always it hadn't actually made him feel happy.

Everybody ate everything in front of them – even Julia Diamond who placed the food in her mouth as though she was partaking in an eating competition of some kind and only had one more plate full of food to ingest to break a record. When they had all finished everyone sat back in their uncomfortable chairs except for Harry who as usual sat bolt upright.

"Now, Ms Diamond," he said, "returning to your line of questioning...-"

At this moment the doorbell chimed out "Ode to Joy" badly. Without being asked, without asking anything and although it was obviously not her place "I'll get it," said Julia Diamond suddenly and sprinted from the room as though her life depended on it.

Steven ran after her. Susan and June ran after Steven.

Harry laughed.
Chapter 35

When Steven reached the front door he found it was open. Julia Diamond had stopped in front of it. Beyond them on the doorstep unintentionally blocking her way was the man who Steven recognised as Samuel Cimitere. "I'm Samuel Cimitere," said Mr Cimitere who was holding out an official identification card, "from the Council. I've come with an enforcement notice."

Steven read the card Samuel held out and felt very uncomfortable.

It seemed this man who called himself "Mr Cimitere" was actually called Mr Cimitere after all? Originally Steven had assumed that the name the man had given him had been made up as a joke. Then he'd wondered if it was a real name and checked the telephone directory. It had seemed to be a real name and had been in there three times but still he hadn't thought that the man who called himself Samuel Cimitere was actually called Samuel Cimitere. This was silly as, now he thought about it, he had had no reason to doubt Samuel Cimitere was Samuel Cimitere in the first place. But it made him feel odd that he'd created a fictional Samuel Cimitere who was based on someone he'd thought had been pretending to be Samuel Cimitere when they actually were Samuel Cimitere after all. Or at least that's what the Council thought.

"Is there a problem?" said Harry Bottomley from somewhere behind Steven, Susan and June who clustered by the open door in differing states of confusion.

"A small one," said Samuel Cimitere. "I'm afraid that I am here with an enforcement notice, Mr Bottomley." He handed Harry Bottomley a piece of paper which neither of them read.

Harry Bottomley dropped it to the floor. "As I explained in correspondence," he said, "an enforcement notice requiring the actual demolition of the underground structure is, in my view, excessive – not to say ...-"

"Yes you did explain that, sir, but the fact is that it unfortunately isn't your opinion that is the most important as far as the law is concerned," said Samuel Cimitere indicating an array of men with shovels, diggers and bulldozers behind him at the bottom of the front garden. "I'm afraid it pains me to inform you that while initially we thought the structure was not a legal problem we've since discovered it violates a few by-laws."

Steven felt someone brush past him. It was Julia. She pushed past Samuel Cimitere too and ran down the steps to the front door and along the garden path.

Beyond the door it was a typical British summer day - overcast, cloudy and raining slightly.

"Nemoj joj dopustiti da biste dobili daleko!" shouted Harry Bottomley.

Another body brushed past Steven. It was June Bottomley. Despite her high heels she had run down the steps in moments, caught up with Julia and grabbed her by her hair before she could make the road. June yanked Julia to the ground and knelt over her body half obscuring her from sight. The two writhed in a large puddle. There was a cracking sound followed by a sucking sound. Julia seemed to struggle for a long time and then Julia stopped moving. None of them went to help her.

Eventually a slightly dishevelled looking June Bottomley stood up and walked back to the house pulling Julia's lifeless and very pale looking body behind her. It reminded Steven an E. H. Shepherd illustration of Christopher Robin pulling Pooh. Here was Julia Diamond, coming upstairs now. Dead.
Chapter 36

"To je bilo dobro," said June.

"Dobro," said Harry. "Oni uvijek bolji okus kad su pune straha , zar ne?"

"Yes," said June licking her lips.

"I don't think that was advisable," said Samuel Cimitere.

"Report us," said June.

"But ...-" stuttered Steven. "What...? Did you...-?"

"Well, I suppose it's a fair cop, governor," said Harry.

Samuel smiled.

"Did she just ...-?" said Steven still trying to assimilate everything.

"Yes, we do indeed drink people's blood, Mr Ambrose," said Harry as if he was explaining the terms of a mortgage agreement. "Ms Diamond was correct. That is why we collect it."

"Ideally from the frightened and hunted," added Samuel Cimitere.

"It is a true and a strange thing that the best blood is always from either the hunted ...or failing that from the very deeply unhappy," admitted Harry. "That was the wonderful thing about Josip Tito's regime. So many unhappy hunted people who were going to die anyway it didn't seem to matter if we killed them. The likes of Milošević do try but they can't replicate the same atmosphere ... not that it's something to aspire to. But really some people are so unhappy it seems like a relief to relive them of their blood and life ... and I'm sure it is... I know it's not exactly socially acceptable but we do _try_ and restrain ourselves from drinking from too many. Really we're just like refuse collectors...-"

"Bollocks," said Steven, "it's you that make people unhappy making them all redundant and ...-"

"Possibly," conceded Harry, "but that's very much a by product of our activities. Our larger aim is to have enough human blood to live on _without_ having to kill people and I think that should be respected. It occurred to me about 1708 that one logical way to obtain a lot of human blood is to go into the undertaking business. As I say normally we try to find a country with some death camps operating but sometimes such opportunities are simply not immediately available."

"No shit," said Steven.

"Perhaps we do monopolise the market a bit but who else needs such a monopoly...?"

"But it's not enough is it, Jure?" said Samuel Cimitere. "You're drinking almost all the naturally free dead blood in London and you're still only just subsiting? ...and you have to make hostile takeover after hostile takeover to sustain the size of your business ...and you have to tell lie after lie to the stock market to prevent yourselves being taken over ...and those lies need bigger lies to cover them up and those lies require even more lies and...-"

"Jure?" interrupted Steven.

"He's not really Harry Bottomley," explained Susan. "That's a name he made up. He's really Jure Grando. He's been undead since 1656."

"How do you know?" asked Steven.

"She's my newest bride," said Jure Grando putting an arm round Steven's girlfriend. "It's quite sweet really. An old fashioned office romance that... -"

"You're having an affair with ... a vampire?" he asked Susan. Even though she was standing next to Julia's extremely pale corpse the whole "vampire" idea was still difficult to take in.

Susan looked away.

"To be fair," said Jure Grando speaking for Susan, "us " _vampires_ " – I hate that word but sometimes one feels one has to use it just to keep semantics simple – don't really have sex in the conventional sense that I think you're suggesting by the word "affair"? ...and to be fairer I've noticed, Steven, that you have been indulging a reciprocal interest in my wife, haven't you? So "pot and kettle" I think is the phrase?"

"Fuck off."

"Perhaps the simplest solution in such a situation such as this would be to swap wives?"

"But I haven't done anything with your wife ...?" said Steven.

"Well, now's the time to start then, isn't it?" said Jure Grando. "After all, you know you want to? Doesn't adultery start in the heart? Or is it just about the physical...- ?"

"I'm still hungry," interrupted Susan.

"So am I," chipped in June.

"I have to warn you, I think, at this point," said Samuel Cimitere, "that the Council takes a dim view of residents draining the blood of each other while they're still living. It is in fact breaking several by-laws as is building an unauthorised crypt. An authorisation form must be...-"

"You always say something like that, Cimitere," said Jure Grando with a sigh.

"That's because it tends to be continuously true in most times and cultures," said Samuel Cimitere.

"But why do you even say it then?" said Jure.

"Because it is against the rules for you to rest," said Samuel Cimitere. "When you start to rest that's when the blood of the dead starts to not be enough."

"Oh get real," protested June. "You can't expect us to live forever by xenotransfusion."

"Yes, I can," said Samuel Cimitere. "And you can. You chose not to."

"Perhaps," said June smiling at Julia's blood drained corpse on the floor. "But human blood tastes so much better." The she looked up at Steven. "Shall I, dear?" looking at Steven and yet not talking to him.

"Budi moj gost," said Jure Grando.

June opened her mouth to reveal what looked like some kind of fangs.
Chapter 37

Steven flinched. He was unable to move his legs but June seemed unable to get close enough to touch him. It was as if he was surrounded by an invisible barrier. June turned around. She glanced at Susan. Then she looked at the council workers who were still at the bottom of the garden with their digging implements and pneumatic drilling equipment. They had moved some distance backward from the house when June had devoured Julia but they had not run away. Steven wondered why. Perhaps it was fear? Perhaps it was bravery? Perhaps it was curiosity? Perhaps they did not want to abandon Samuel Cimitere?

June started running towards the workmen.

"I have to warn you, I think, at this point," said Samuel Cimitere, "that the Council ...-"

The men started to scatter but June seemed to have super-human speed and strength. She vaulted the garden gate and launched at them one after another like a cat after birds. She bit one savagely on the neck and then pounced on another knocking him heavily to the floor breaking his arm – they heard it crack. She then pursued a third. He was some way up the road before she rugby tackled him to the ground. Steven did not see what she did to him next but it was probably fatal. Or worse.

"You're not from the Council," said Steven to Samuel Cimitere.

"Aren't I? Where am I from then?" Samuel Cimitere asked Steven.

"My script? My Story... " said Steven.

" _Your_ story?" asked Samuel Cimitere. "I thought I was a plagiarised Guédé? A spirit of the dead ...? ...who you attempted to merge with one of your blasphemous fictions? ... or was I someone you talked to on your telephone who you thought was low enough status to be turned into ridicule? A free life story to fillet?"

Steven opened his mouth but no words came out.

"Hard to tell, isn't it?" said Samuel Cimitere.

"But there's a real actor Tony got to play you on television? ... and you work for the Council...?"

"Well," said Samuel Cimitere, "a bit. The truth is I'm syncretised with all of them. As you know – or as you might have known if you'd studied your own religion more deeply - us Barons are creatures of the imaginations. Not any one person nor one character nor fiction but all of these. We live in the space between."

"You're not a Guédé," said Steven. "Nobody's not one person."

"You're the person who says they've encountered multiple aspects of me and if you're seeing several people as one it may also suggest that you're not one person either?" said Samuel Cimitere.

"Are you saying I'm mad?" asked Steven.

"Are you?" said Samuel Cimitere.

"Well, I'm seeing a lot of mad shit," said Steven.

June was now dragging the three workmen back to the house. She pulled them along behind her like dead animals which I suppose is what they were or almost were. This seemed to require very little physical effort from her. As they came closer Steven noticed that although they were very badly injured and bleeding from their necks they seemed to still be slightly alive? Steven noticed that it had stopped raining now and was getting brighter. He noticed now that as always June had long sleeves, gloves and a long dress on. Suddenly it made sense that usually she had a lot of clothes on. He felt dense for only just making a now seemingly obvious deduction – that it allowed her to survive outside at least when it was overcast. Then again who really thinks seriously about such myths with no good reason?

Suddenly Steven felt that he had had ample reason.
Chapter 38

"At last," said Susan, "some decent food."

"Yes, indeed," said Jure Grando. "I feel like I haven't eaten in years."

"But you have just eaten?" said Steven thinking how full his stomach felt.

"He likes to cook for other people," explained Samuel Cimitere, "and goes through the motions of human consumption because it helps him feel that part of him is still human. But it isn't... I'm afraid that's just a grotesque pantomime they go through for the benefit of others. Their bowels don't even work anymore."

"Don't they?" asked Steven.

"No," said June.

"How do they go to the toilet then?" asked Steven.

"We've got bungs up our anuses like any other properly embalmed corpses," explained June.

Steven started to think about how long it had been since Susan told him off for not changing the toilet roll. He looked again and Samuel Cimitere who smiled.

"You too?" Steven asked Susan. He already knew the answer but felt it had to be said.

Susan said nothing and didn't return his gaze. For the first time he thought he saw something approaching fear in her eyes. She opened her mouth as if to answer. He saw fangs. She made a gurgling sound and while he was still contemplating this out of her throat came ... vomit?

Steven did a double take as a small trickle of sick splattered over her bottom lip followed by a slow but steady stream of puke. After this she heaved violently and larger blobs of sick emerged. Jure Grando and June Bottomley - who Steven now presumed must actually be a Grando too if names meant anything and if June was even her real name? – looked at each other as if to ask each other whether they should join in. Then they did so and soon all three of the vampires were filling the hallway with violent streams of vomit.

Steven had never considered that vampires might suffer from bulimia nervosa. Now he saw the reality of their lives it seemed obvious that they must do and he wondered why this had never been chronicled before in any vampire literature. Not that he'd read any much so perhaps it had. Before long they were all standing in a thick disgusting pool of what had been the food that the three vampires had just eaten or gone through the motions of pretending to eat. Steven looked at the strange yellow and brown lumpy concoction that slurped about his feet and tried subconsciously back extrapolate which bits of it might be Žganci, which bits were fish broth and which bits had been Cremeschnitte. He thought he could identify a few bits of what might have been puff pastry. They were soggy.

"A grotesque parody, aren't they?" said Samuel Cimitere.
Chapter 39

"You can talk," said Steven.

"Yes, I can," said Samuel Cimitere, "and not just your words."

"Are you really him?" asked Steven.

"Of course... What or who do you think was protecting you?" said Samuel Cimitere. He looked pointedly at a point below Steven's neckline. Steven touched the amulet beneath his shirt. He had always worn it but he'd often forgotten about it. He'd found slightly amusing and interesting when he'd purchased it on a holiday but he'd never really believed in vodou although now he thought about it he realised it was his religion or at least the one he'd grown up in. He seldom took the amulet off and of course he'd told himself this was because there was a problem with the catch but was that the real reason?

Having finished his regurgitations Jure Grando gasped for air. "That's better," he said.

"It always is," replied Samuel Cimitere, "when you stop pretending."

"We're just trying to fit in," said Jure. "I don't see why you have to persecute us."

"Yes, haven't we gone out our way," said Susan, "not to eat humans? To try to assimilate...? To try to fit in ...? ... to not make anybody unhappy? Harry's worked hard. He's started and run businesses. He's created employment. He's comforted the bereaved and still you hunt him like ...-"

"Yes, he has worked hard," replied Samuel Cimitere benignly. He looked the Jure Grando up and down as if he was a recruitment consultant. "I don't doubt that ... but really everything he does is just another form of sucking the life out of things, isn't it? It is his eternal problem. He cannot die himself so he kills everything else around him instead. Or drains it of life one way or another..."

"He doesn't!" shouted Susan.

"He does," said Samuel Cimitere.

"He doesn't," protested Susan.

"He does," said Samuel Cimitere. "Think about it. He sucked the life out of your relationship with Steven and made you his bride. He sucks the life out of other businesses by asset stripping them. He sucks the blood out of dead bodies and sells it to cattle farmers as blood meal poisoning the food chain. He sucks the life out of the farming industry by creating blood meal carried disease. He sucks the life out of the stock market by artificially inflating his company's stock market price so that instead of people investing in actually profitable companies they end up investing in him. And when, of course, the bankrupt owners of those companies fall on hard times he drives them to suicide and sucks their blood after they've died or killed themselves in abject despair to sate himself..."

"That's something of a character assassination," said Jure Grando. "I don't think my redundancies are any different from Mr Ambrose wanting to lay off the cast of "Misadventure"...-"

"It's not the same at all," said June reaching out but not seeming to be able to touch Steven.

"Why not?" asked Jure Grando.

"You sucked the life out of me, Jure," said June ignoring the question.

"You wanted to be my wife?" said Jure Grando.

"Yes, I wanted to be your wife in the same way that all the people who came to this house wanted you to take over their businesses but ... Did I - ...we ever have a choice?" said June. She turned to Samuel Cimitere as if he was in a position of authority.

"Everyone has a choice," said Samuel Cimitere. "At least at the start..."
Chapter 40

Samuel continued to talk but June was no longer listening. She was staring at the three workmen writing in pain on the floor in the huge pile of puke as were Jure and Susan. A shaft of sunlight glistened over the yellowy brown liquid. The three vampires seemed to be transfixed by the three slowly writing bodies. Without discussing it Jure Grando, June Grando and Susan Smith each grabbed a different workman, lifted them up and bit into a throat. Steven had previously thought of vampire bites as two dinky little red holes. Where he had got this idea from he did not know - Probably from Hammer Horror. In reality – if this was reality? - it was much more gruesome. It seem to involve chomping sounds, breaking ligament sounds and the kind of sucking noises some less cultured people make when "eating" hot soup off a spoon. Eventually each of them let go of their sucked dry cadaver and let it plop back into the vomit with Julia. It occurred to Steven that he had not even noticed what each of the men looked like individually and now they were dead the husks were strangely indistinguishable from each other. Finally they picked up Julia's corpse and shared that between them too. Then they dropped it on the floor. Apart from the clothes her husk was now indistinguishable from those of the men.

"... however, it the ends there is no redemption," Samuel Cimitere finally finished his thought as if there had been no interruption and anybody had listened to a word of his soliloquy.

"How do you know?" asked Steven.

"Because, I am the Guédé who stands in the doorway between the living and the dead," said Samuel Cimitere. "I keep the dead in the cemetery and the living outside. This fool however," he continued pointing at Jure Grando, "cannot decide whether to go in or out. He is like a bad cat. He doesn't want to belong to his owner and neither does he want to explore. So he lives outside but does not belong there."

"But what about me?" said June. "I'm just married to him. I'm not beyond...-"

"He sucked your life dry too and now you're trying to suck Steven's life dry. Once you were a woman. Now you are a succubus."

"I am not! I have free will!" shouted June. "And I want to be with him!" she added pointing at but not quite able to touch Steven.

Steven said nothing.

Susan made some kind growling sound.

"But does he want to be with you?" asked Samuel Cimitere.

"Of course he does!" both June and Susan shouted.

"As I suggested ... perhaps we could swap partners?" said Jure Grando.

"It's not a completely stupid idea," said Susan grudgingly.

"After all, it's me you want?" said June seductively to Steven.

"If he wants you then why has he never actually asked you in?" Samuel Cimitere asked June.

"He opened the door," said June, "but ...-"

"You couldn't go in because he didn't ask you in words?" said Samuel Cimitere. "There has to be a contract you see ... And unless you're asked over the threshold you can't go in? You see... there is choice. There is always a choice."

"So what? He can ask me in now ...can't you, Steven?"

Steven didn't know what to say but she stared into his eyes and he found himself emptying of thoughts and saying "Possibly..."

June looked away from him and glanced out of the open door toward's Steven's block of flats next door. It had stopped raining and the sun had come out a bit more now.

"How long do you think you can survive out there darling?" mocked Jure Grando retreating further inside the house.

"All we've got to do is get next door," she said to Steven. "They can't touch us there."

Steven was about to raise some protestations when he realised that June was already rapidly running down the garden path at an incredibly fast pace pulling him after her.

"Perhaps a hat!" Jure shouted.

For a moment Steven thought she would make it to the portico of his block of flats but then he saw the steam rising off of her. She had made it down her own garden path and half way up his when she stopped and turned to face him screaming and scratching at her crumbling face. Dry flesh was falling from it in clumps. For a moment Steven could see the lines of veins. Then her eyeballs plopped out. Her hair had already fallen off. Her skull fell off her neck and shattered in to pieces. The rest of her bones clattered to the floor and smashed. Those pieces of bones quickly disintegrated. Then the pieces of those pieces disintegrated.
Chapter 41

Steven stared a moment at June Grando/Bottomley's empty clothes. Then he ran back down his garden path and up the Bottomley's path again. After running up the steps to the Bottomley porch and rushing inside he grabbed both Susan and Jure – one in each hand. He would drag them into the sunlight too. Give them a taste of their own sadism he thought. However, he found he could not pull them anywhere. He could pull Susan a bit but he could not free her from Jure who was holding her arm. They seemed to be made of stone.

"People have tried that before," said Jure as Steven continued to achieve nothing except sliding around in the puke on the floor. "Many times since 1656... Unfortunately I cannot die. It is true if you could get us to stand in the sun we would crumble to dust but even then eventually the particles form themselves together again. They even cut off my head once but it reconnected its self again. It's a chore ... living forever."

"Bollocks," said Steven.

"It's true," said Samuel Cimitere, "I'm afraid and why vampires, like vermin, remain an insoluble problem for local authorities the world over."

"The kind of problem central government can't actually solve so they devolve it to the lowest possible political level," sneered Jure.

"There are very few practical solutions to the problem and little or no positives to the situation either for us or for them. Fortunately there are only actually a handful of them the world over. Jure's one of the very first."

" _The_ first," said Jure.

"As far as we know," said Samuel. "Of course he's never achieved the cult following of Vlad Dracula but they put considerably more effort into raising their profiles...-"

"Vlad Dracula's a tosser," said Jure.

"What about me?" interrupted Susan. "Am I a vampire forever now?"

"You drink blood now," said Jure. "You could try standing in the sunlight to prove to yourself you aren't but I wouldn't advise it. It isn't a release."

"What is?" said Susan.

"There isn't any," said Samuel Cimitere. "The likes of you and Jure just carry on till the end of the Universe. You are immortal. In one or two billion years, the solar luminosity will increase as the sun starts to die. The oceans will evaporate and the carbon cycle will end. The earth's magnetic field will also end and as the magnetosphere decays and the atmosphere will disappear. But even then when all other life on the surface is extinct you will carry on your undead existence. Even after the sun explodes you will inhabit the vast vacuum of space in some sentient form searching for blood plasma equivalents in other forms on other worlds. You are part of the entropy of the Universe. You are a first sign of the Universe's own death. A sign of the death of everything that will continue until the universe collapses to a singularity again. You are life its self gone wrong. That is why I am here to keep you like the dead when you don't want to be."

Susan and Jure retreated down the hall. They did not run and neither did Samuel Cimitere but there was clearly some kind of hunt on – albeit at a glacial pace. Samuel kept walking towards them slowly and they kept slowly retreating. Steven followed equally slowly. Eventually Jure and Susan retreated into the front room, from there to the dining room, to the kitchen and then to the kitchen door. Then Jure opened the kitchen door and they ran out into the garden sunlight. Before either could burn or start to smoulder Jure had pulled Susan down the steps to the "nuclear shelter" built underneath the now crazy paved patio. Steven ran after them but when he reached the top of the steps Samuel put a hand out to stop him following them. Together they looked down the stairs. The door to the shelter was large and iron. Steven looked at Jure and Susan's feet. He expected to see a flat concrete floor. What he saw was earth.

"It's not a shelter is it?" said Steven.

"No," said Samuel Cimitere. "It's a crypt. Vampires must have a place to rest and they must bring their native earth with them. Each needs at least 200 cubic feet of native soil to rest in."

"So all those packing cases and parcels ...- ?"

"Exactly," said Samuel Cimitere.

Steven looked again at Jure in what he now realised was his lair.

Jure was not laughing but he was definitely gloating. "It's furniture of a kind," he said.

"Are you going to go in after him?" Steven asked Samuel Cimitere.

"No," replied Samuel Cimitere. "Why? Should I?"

"I don't know. Should you?"

"I don't think I need to ...and to do what? ...he's immortal? He looks to me as if he is where he's supposed to be - In his grave."

"Isn't that a bit...-?" asked Steven.

"All we need to do is make sure he stays in there."

"Can't we get Susan out?" asked Steven.

"Why would you want to?" asked Samuel Cimitere. "She's immortally cursed too."

Steven was about to say he loved her when he glanced again at Jure and Susan in the doorway. Susan's eyes caught his. She stood quietly behind Jure slightly obscured by his shoulder. She said nothing but looked petrified. Steven took a step down the steps but an unseen force stopped him. It may have just been fear.

"I advise you not to," said Samuel Cimitere.

"Come," said Susan, "be with us."

"Yes, be with us, Steven," said Jure.

Steven hesitated for a moment. Then he ran down the rest of the steps and pushed the large steel door that opened outwards closed in their faces. The he leant against it with all his weight to keep it shut.
Chapter 42

Steven searched the door for a handle or something to keep it jammed shut but there appeared to be no handle of any kind on the outside which seemed odd and there were no tools nearby either.

"Will they stay in there?" he said.

"I think so," said Samuel Cimitere descending the steps and beckoning two figures who had appeared at the top of the steps to follow him. They were council workers in donkey jackets emblazoned with the words "Pest Control". They carried oxy acetylene welding equipment of some kind.

As the men descended the steps Samuel Cimitere took Steven by the arm and together they ascended the steps back to the safety of patio. Behind them sparks started to flash into the air.

"You can't seal Susan in there?!" protested Steven. "She's still alive."

"No," said Samuel Cimitere. "She isn't alive. She will just never die. But she can but be immured."

"Who are you really?" said Steven.

"You know who I am," replied Samuel Cimitere. He was illuminated by flying sparks. "I am Baron Cimitere – the guardian of the cemetery gate. I keep the dead in and the living out. You wear my talisman."

Steven felt his amulet. "It's just a piece of crap jewellery that I got on holiday...-"

"It is what protected you from Jure. It is how you syncretised with me and how I syncretised with this man and your fictions and the Council enforcement officer. We are all one but not one. One deity manifested in three separate aspects. We are different aspects of each other. For example in my aspect as a representative of the council it is my job to make sure that " _clinical or human waste is disposed of properly under the provisions of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 section 16._ ""

"I don't understand."

"Understanding is not necessary," said Baron Cimitere. He reached out his hand and undid Steven's top three shirt buttons. Then he lifted the amulet of his own veve that hung about Steven's neck and rested it on his palm. Then the Baron seemed to start to fade away into the air. First his head disappeared. Then his feet disappeared. Then his legs disappeared. Then his left arm disappeared. Then his torso disappeared. Then most of his right arm disappeared so that only his right hand remained. For a moment this glowed. Then the amulet of his veve glowed. Then the hand disappeared. Then the amulet of his veve glowed brighter. Then the amulet of his veve disappeared. Then Steven saw a concrete mixer filling in the steps down to Jure's home made crypt but he could not concentrate on it. Then Steven passed out.
Chapter 43

BBC Television Drama Department

Internal Memo

101 Wood Lane

London W12 7FA

13th December 1991

Dear Mr Powell,

Thank you for your internal memo of December 9th. As I explained in our meeting on December 5th I was unfortunately unaware that the character of Samuel Cimitere would be deemed so offensive to so many of Britian's Haitian community. Unfortunately as I stated at our meeting the creator of the character (Steven Ambrose) did not disclose to me the meaning or deviation of the name and personality of this character and therefore I did not fully comprehend the offensive nature of the depiction to followers of the Vodou religion.

This being said I fully accept your criticisms and hereby with submit my resignation as script editor of the drama series "Misadventure". I would point in our defence however that writer (Mr Ambrose) who created the character was himself Haitian.

I will, of course, continue in my role as script editor to the end of the next production block to allow yourself and the producers to find a suitable replacement. With regards to the role of Samuel Cimitere the actor concerned has let it be known to us via his agent that he refuses to reprise his role for any subsequent recordings. I do not think it would be wise to take any action against him for breach of contract in the circumstances. Our current plan is simply to remove the character without explanation. I believe this is common practice on other long running serials in the case of minor characters who generate extreme or unexpected negative audience reactions. We are busy planning the reshooting of future segments of past episodes awaiting transmission in order to minimise the screen time of "Samuel Cimitere". I hope we can make satisfactory progress in the matter quickly and I will keep you fully updated and apprised of the situation on an ongoing basis.

We have several times attempted to contact Steven Ambrose about this matter since it was first raised but unfortunately we have received no reply to telephone calls, letters, calls to his agent or even personal inquiries at his place of residence. He appears unfortunately to be completely incommunicado.

I will let you know if this situation changes.

Yours Sincerely,

Tony Fuller (Script Editor "Misadventure")
Chapter 44

Internal Metropolitan Police Report

On the 20th of August 1991 an IC3 male made an inquiry at the reception desk of Hornsey Town Hall. He insisted on speaking to a Mr Samuel Cimitere of the Planning Department. The receptionist told him that he was in the wrong building. He then said the person might be in the Health and Safety department.

Extensive inquiries between the Council's various offices and departments revealed that no person called Samuel Cimitere worked at or had worked for the Council in the past to the best of the Council's knowledge.

The inquiring person then claimed that his girlfriend had been murdered. Given this information and noticing that the man was staggering about and concerned that he seemed not to be able to remember the name of his girlfriend the receptionist called the police station for him.

The male whose behaviour was described by her as "aggressive" was taken into custody for drunk and disorderly behaviour. On his arrival at Highgate police station the duty officer tested the man's breath and urine but could find no evidence of alcohol or substance abuse. He became violent when asked to surrender his personal effects to the duty officer. He was put in a cell for his own security. A further medical examination by the duty nurse and on call general practitioner led to a psychologist being requested. The duty psychologist recommended that the male – eventually identified as a Mr Steven Ambrose of 68 Crescent Road Crouch End – should be sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983.

Mr Steven Ambrose seemed to be under the delusion that he was being persecuted by "vampires".

It is the view of the investigating officer that since no more information is available and the claims above are most likely the result of Mr Ambrose's disturbed mental state there should be no further investigation of this matter.

This file is now closed.

Detective Constable Vail – 10th December 1991
Chapter 45

The cause of Mr Ambrose's mental illness, sudden deterioration and death was not fully indentified at the time but it is now believed by researchers that he may indeed have been one of the early unidentified sufferers of variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Over 170 cases of vCJD have been recorded in the United Kingdom and around 30 cases in the rest of the world. For unknown reasons, those affected are generally under the age of 40.

About the Author

The Xuande Emperor (Chinese: 宣德帝; pinyin: Xuāndédì; 16 March 1399[1] – 31 January 1435), personal name Zhu Zhanji (朱瞻基), was the fifth emperor of the Ming dynasty of China, ruling from 1425 to 1435. His era name "Xuande" means "Proclamation of Virtue". He is not the author.

This is the author's website: http:\\\www.aemiller.net The author can also be found at <https://randomthoughtsofanalsoran.blogspot.com/>

