Beyond Black: A Novel

nine

It was about 2 A.M.; Colette woke in darkness, to the screeching of garden birds. She lay suffering under her duvet, till birdsong was replaced by the long swish of waves against a shingle beach. Then came some twitters, scrapes, and squeaks. What’s it called? Oh yes, rain forest. She thought, what is rain forest anyway? We never had it when I was at school.

She sat up, grabbed her pillow, and beat it. Beyond the wall the croaking and chirping continued, the twittering of strange night fowl, the rustling of the undergrowth. She lay back again, stared at the ceiling: where the ceiling would be. The jungle, she thought, that’s what we had; but they don’t call it the jungle now. A green snake looped down from a branch and smiled into her face. It unravelled itself, falling, falling … she slept again. A need to urinate woke her. Al’s sodding relaxation tapes had reached the waterfall track.

She stood up, dazed, passing her hand over her hair to flatten it. Now she could see the outlines of the furniture; the light behind the curtains was brilliant. She crept into her en-suite and relieved herself. On her way back to bed she pulled aside the curtain. A full moon silvered the Balmoral, and frosted its pent.

There was a man on the lawn. He was walking around it in circles, as if under an enchantment. She pulled back, dropped the curtain. She had seen him before, perhaps in a dream.

She lay down again. The waterfall track was finished, and had given way to the music of dolphins and whales. In the cradle of the deep she swayed, slept, and slept more deeply still.

It was 5 A.M. when Al came down. Her guts were churning; this happened. She could eat quite an ordinary meal, but her insides would say no-no, not for you. She raised the kitchen blind, and while her bicarb fizzed in a glass at her elbow she looked out over the larch-lap fences swathed in pearly light. Something moved, a shadow against the lawn. In the distance, a milk truck hummed, and nearer at hand an early businessman slammed with a metallic clatter his garage’s Georgian door.

Alison unlocked the kitchen door and stepped out. The morning was fresh and damp. From across the estate a car alarm whooped and yodelled. The man on the lawn was young, and had a dark stubble and a blueish pallor. He wore a woolly hat pulled down over his brow. His big sneakers bruised his footprints into the dew. He saw Alison, but hardly checked his stride, simply raising two fingers to his forehead in acknowledgement.

What’s your name? she asked him silently.

There was no reply.

It’s all right, you can tell Al, don’t be shy. The creature smiled shyly and continued to circle.

She thought, you can go under a false name if you like. Just as long as I have something to call you by, to make our life together possible. Look at him, she thought, look at him! Why can’t I get a spirit guide with some dress sense?

Yet there was something humble in his manner, that she liked. She stood shivering, waiting for him to communicate. A train rattled away in the distance, up from Hampshire, London bound. She noticed how it gently shook the morning; the light broke up around her, flaking into creamy fragments edged with gold, then settling again. The sun was creeping around the edge of a Rodney. She blinked, and the lawn was empty.

Colette, pouring her orange juice at eight-thirty, said, “Al, you cannot have two pieces of toast.” Colette was making her diet; it was her new hobby.

“One?”

“Yes, one. With a scrape—no more than a scrape, mind—of low-fat spread.”

“And a scrape of jam?”

“No. Jam will play havoc with your metabolism.” She sipped her orange juice. “I dreamed there was a man on the lawn.”

“Did you?” Alison frowned, holding the lid of the bread bin before her like a shield. “On the lawn? Last night? What was he like?”

“Dunno,” Colette said. “I almost came and woke you.”

“In your dream?”

“Yes. No. I think I was dreaming that I was awake.”

“That’s common,” Al said. “Those sorts of dreams, people who are Sensitives have them all the time.”

She thought, I dreamed there were trucks outside the house, and a blanket in the back of one, and under that blanket—what? In my dream I came inside and lay down again, and dreamed again, within my dream; I dreamed of an animal, tight and trembling inside its skin, quivering with lust as it wolfed human meat from a bowl.

She said, “I wonder if you’re becoming a Sensitive, Colette.” She didn’t say it aloud.

Colette said, “When I agreed to one slice of bread, I meant one normal-sized one, not one slice two inches thick.”

“Ah. Then you should have said.”

“Be reasonable.” Colette crossed the kitchen and barged into her. “I’ll show you what you can have. Give me that bread knife.”

Al’s fingers yielded it, unwillingly. She and the bread knife were friends.

It was gardening day. The new contractors had brought plans and costed out the decking. They were going to build a water feature; it would be more like a small fountain than a pond. By the time Colette had beaten down their estimate by a few hundred pounds, she had forgotten all about her disturbed night, and her mood, like the day, was sunny.

As the men were leaving, Michelle beckoned her to the fence. “Glad to see you’re doing something with it, at last. It was a bit of an eyesore, lying all bare like that. By the way—I don’t know if I should mention—when Evan got up this morning he saw a man in your garden. Evan thought he was trying the shed door.”

“Oh. Anyone we know?”

“Evan had never seen him before. He rang your doorbell.”

“Who, the man?”

“No, Evan. You must have been in the land of dreams, both of you. Evan said, they’re not hearing me. He said, all right for some.”

“The advantages,” Colette said, “of the child-free lifestyle.”

“Evan said, they’ve got no lock on their side gate. And them two women alone.”

“I’ll get a lock,” Colette snapped. “And seeing as the blessed gate is all of five feet high, and anybody but a midget could vault over it, I’ll get some barbed wire on top, shall I?”

“Now that would be unsightly,” Michelle said. “No, what you should do, come to our next meeting with community policing and get some advice. This is a big time of year for shed crime. Police Constable Delingbole gave us a talk on it.”

“I’m sorry I missed that,” Colette said. “Anyway, the shed’s empty. All the stuff’s still locked in the garage, waiting for me to move it. By the way, has Evan found any of those white worms?”

“What?” Michelle said. “White worms? Yuk. Are they in your garden?”

“No, they’re in Reading,” Colette said. “At the last sighting. A man was digging in his garden and there they were on the end of his spade, huge writhing clusters of them. Did Constable Wossname not mention it?”

Michelle shook her head. She looked as if she might throw up.

“I can’t think why he didn’t. It’s been in all the papers. The poor man’s had to board his property up. Now he’s asking for an investigation. Thing with worms is, they travel underground, they’ll be heading out in search of a food source, and of course being radioactive they won’t hang about, they’ll be scorching along like buggery. Excuse my language, but being the police he ought to have warned you really.”

“Oh God,” Michelle said. “Evan didn’t mention it either. Didn’t want to scare me, I suppose. What can we do? Shall I ring the council?”

“You ask for pest control, I think. And then they come out with very fine mesh nets, and fence all around your garden with them.”

“Are you having them?”

“Oh yes. Same time as we get the decking, to save digging up twice near the house.”

“Do you have to pay?”

“’Fraid so. But it’s worth it, wouldn’t you say?”

She went back into the house and said, “Al, I’ve told Michelle that gross poisoned worms are going to come and eat her kiddiwinks.”

Al looked up, frowning, from her tarot spread. “Why did you do that?”

“Just to see her shit herself.” Then she remembered. “By the way, that dream I had, it wasn’t a dream. When Evan got up this morning he saw some bloke messing around near the shed.”

Alison laid the cards down. Her situation, she saw, needed a rethink. I’ll have that rethink, she decided, when Colette goes out.

In the kitchen, out of Colette’s earshot, the breakfast dishes were chinking together; a little spirit woman was pushing them around on the worktop, wanting to help, wanting to wash up for them but not knowing how. “Excuse me, excuse me,” she was saying, “have you seen Maureen Harrison?”

Honestly, Al thought. A spirit guide is wasted on Colette. I ought to take time out and lay hold of Maureen Harrison and send her zinging to the next stage, out of Colette’s way, and then grab her poor little friend and catapult her after. It would be doing them a favour, in the long run. But she imagined their frail flesh shrinking inside the baggy sleeves of their cardigans (where their cardigans would be) as her strong psychic grip fell on their arms; she imagined the old pair weeping and struggling, snapping their feeble bones under her hand. Muscular tactics were seldom any use, she had found, when you needed to send a spirit over. You call it firm action and you think it’s for their own good, but they don’t think so. Especially not the older generation. She knows psychics who will call in a clergyman at the least excuse. But that’s like sending the bailiffs in; it shames them. It’s like dosing them with a laxative when they can’t get to their commode.

The telephone rang. Al lifted the receiver and said loudly, “Hello, and how’s Natasha this fine morning? And the Tsars? Good, good.” She dropped her voice confidingly. “Hi, Mandy, how are you, love?”

She smirked to herself. Who needs caller display? Colette, that’s who. She saw Colette scowl at her: as if she were taking some mean advantage.

When Colette left the room she said to Mandy, “Guess what? I thought Colette had seen a spirit.”

“And had she?”

“It seems not. It looks like it was a burglar.”

“Oh dear, anything taken?”

“No, he didn’t get in. Just walked about outside.”

“Why did she think he was a spirit?”

“It was last night. She thought she was dreaming. It was me who thought it was a spirit. When she said, I saw a man outside by moonlight, I thought I’d got a new guide.”

“No sign of Morris coming back?”

“None, thankfully.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

Only I have nightmares, Al wanted to say; but who doesn’t, in our trade?

“So did you ring the police?” Mandy said. “Because it’s awful down here on the coast. Your teeth aren’t safe in your head.”

“No, I didn’t bother. There’s nothing to tell them. I think I saw him myself. He didn’t look harmful. If it was the same man. Unless there are different men wandering around our garden. Which is possible, of course.”

“Don’t take any chances,” Mandy said. “Anyway, Al, I won’t take up your morning, let’s cut to the chase. There’s a new psychic supplier opened down in Cornwall, and they’ve got a very keen price list with some special introductory offers. Also, for a limited period they’re doing free postage and packaging. Cara put me on to them. She’s got some excellent runes and she says they’re going down very well with her regulars. You want a change, don’t you, from time to time? A change is as good as a rest.”

Alison scribbled down the details. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll pass it on to Colette. You’re a good mate, Mand. I wish I saw more of you.”

“Drive down,” Mandy said. “We’ll have a girl’s night out.”

“I couldn’t. I don’t drive anymore.”

“How hard can it be? Cut across to Dorking, then straight down the A24.”

“I’ve lost confidence. Behind the wheel.”

“Let me know what time you’re leaving, and I’ll chant for you.”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t stay out overnight. I couldn’t leave Colette.”

“Christsake! Get in the car and do it, Al! She doesn’t own you.”

“She says what toast I can have.”

“What?”

“How thick a slice. I can’t have butter. Not any. It’s awful.”

“God, she’s such a bossy little madam!”

“But she’s very efficient. She’s great with the VAT. I couldn’t do it, you see. So I have to put up with her.”

“Have you heard of accountants?” Mandy said scathingly. “What do you think an accountant is for? Toss your bloody receipts in a brown envelope and stuff them in the post box at the end of the quarter. That’s what I do.”

“She’d be hurt,” Al said. “She’s got so little in her life, really. She has this ex with a nasty aura, I only got a glimpse of it but it churns your stomach. She needs me, you see. She needs some love.”

“She needs a slap!” Mandy said. “And if I hear any more of this toast business, I’ll whiz up there to Woking and give it her myself.”

Over the course of the day, it became clear to Al’s sharp eye that they had a guest in the shed. Something or someone was lurking; presumably it was the young lad in the hat. Perhaps, she thought, I should take something to defend myself, in case he turns nasty. Hesitating in the kitchen, she had at last picked up the bacon scissors. The blades fitted snugly into her palm, and the bright orange handles looked playfully robust, in a rough-and-tumble sort of way; it was much the sort of weapon you’d choose to break up a fight in a primary school playground. If anybody sees me, she thought, they’ll just assume that I’m about some tricky little garden operation; that I’m notching a stem, nipping a bud, cutting a bloom, except there isn’t one to cut, we’re not up to flowers yet.

When she opened the shed door, she braced herself for the young man to rush at her, try to push past. It could be the best thing, she thought, if he did. I ought to step back and let him go, if it comes to that. Except that if someone’s been in my outbuilding I’d like to know why.

The shed was in gloom, its small window spattered, as if it had been raining mud. In the corner was a mournful bundle that barely stirred, let alone made a dash for it. The boy was drawn into a foetal position, arms around his knees; his eyes travelled upwards, and stuck when they reached her right hand.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. She peered down at him, perplexed. “Shall I make you a cup of tea?”

He had been living rough at the garden centre, the young man said. “I saw you with your friend, blond-haired lady, innit? You were looking at the Grace Road.”

“That’s right,” Al said.

“Thanks for this tea, by the way, this is good tea. Then after that you looked at Old Smokey, but you gave it the thumbs-down. You gave it the old heave-ho.”

As Al leaned back against the wall of the new shed, it shivered slightly, swayed. Not the most solid structure, she thought. “That’s where you were,” she said, “when I spotted you. You were hanging about inside Old Smokey.”

“I thought you saw me.” His head drooped. “You didn’t say hello.”

“I didn’t know you, how could I?” She didn’t say, I thought you were in spectral form.

“Any more of this tea?”

“Wait a minute.”

Alison took the mug from him. She inched open the door of the Balmoral, and peeped out to make sure there was no one in the neighbouring gardens, before she made a dash for the house. She couldn’t rule out, of course, being seen by spectators from an upper window. She thought, I’ve a perfect right to walk across my own lawn, from my own shed, with a china mug in my hand. But she found herself scuttling, head down.

She scurried into the kitchen and slammed the back door after her. She ran to the kettle and slammed down the switch. She rummaged in a cup-board. Better make him a flask, she thought. Can’t be running across the lawn, bent double, every time he wants a hot drink.

The flask was at the back of the cupboard, bottom shelf, skidding shyly from her fingertips into the corner. She had to bend deeply to fish it out. The blood rushed to her head and thumped at the back of her nose. As she straightened up, her head swam. She thought, he’s my visitor. I can have a visitor, if I want, I suppose?

His mug was on the draining board, marked with grimy fingerprints. He can make do with the top of the flask for his cup, she thought. I’ll take him some kitchen roll to wipe it round with. She tore some paper off, waiting impatiently for the kettle. Sugar, she thought, diving into a cupboard. I expect he’ll want lots of sugar, tramps always do.

When she got back, Mart—that was his name, he said—was crouching in the corner away from the light. “I thought somebody might look through that window,” he said, “while you was away.”

“I’ve been as quick as I could. Here.”

He shook as he held the flask top. She put her hand round his to steady it as she poured. “You not having one?” he said.

“I’ll have mine inside later.” She said gently, “You’d better not come inside. My friend wouldn’t like it.”

“I used to live in the Far Pavilions,” he said. “I lived there nice for two nights. Then they chased me out. They thought I was off the premises but I looped back and broke into Old Smokey. I was just hanging about wondering what I should do next, then I saw you. And later I saw your shed go. So I followed it.”

“Where did you live before that?”

“Dunno. One time I slept on me mate’s floor. But his floor got took up. They came from the council. The rat officer.”

“That was unlucky. People say—Evan, the man next door, he says—that you’re never more than three feet from a rat in Britain today. Or is it two feet?” She frowned. “So when the floor was taken up, was that when you went to the garden centre?”

“No, next I went in the park under the bandstand. With Pinto. My mate. Whose floor got took up. We used to go down Sheerwater, they had a drop-in centre. One day we get there and they’ve put steel shutters up. They said, it’s just a policy, don’t take it to heart.”

Mart wore a khaki jacket with lots of pockets, and beneath it a sweatshirt that was once a colour, and stained cotton pants with some rips in them. I’ve seen worse things, Alison thought, in the silence of the night.

“Look,” she said, “don’t misunderstand me, I have no right to ask you questions, but if you’re going to be in my garden for much more of today I would like to know if you’re violent, or on drugs.”

Mart lurched sideways. Though he was young, his joints creaked and snapped. Al saw that he had been sitting on a rucksack. It was a flat one, with very little in it. Perhaps he was trying to hatch something, she thought; some possessions. She felt a rush of pity; her face flushed. It’s not an easy life in a shed.

“You feeling all right?” Mart asked her. Out of his rucksack he took a collection of pill bottles and passed them to her one by one.

“Oh, but these drugs are from the chemist,” she said. “So that’s all right.” She peered at the label. “My mum used to have these. And these, too, I think.” She unscrewed the cap and put a finger in, swizzling the capsules around. “I recognize the colour. I don’t think she liked those ones.”

“Those are nice rings you’ve got,” he said.

“They’re my lucky opals.”

“That’s where I went wrong,” Mart said. “No luck.”

As she passed him the bottles back, she noticed that the surface of the stones had turned a sulky, resistant blue. Stuff you, she thought, I’m not going to be told what to do by a bunch of opals. Mart stowed the bottles carefully in his rucksack.

“So,” she said, “have you been in hospital recently?”

“You know, here and there,” Mart said. “On and off. As and when. I was going to be in a policy, but then they never.”

“What policy was that?”

Mart struggled. “A policy, it’s like … it’s either like, shutting down, or it’s like, admissions, or it’s … removals. You go to another place. But not with a removal van. Because you haven’t anything to put in one.”

“So when you—when they—when they get a new policy, you get moved to somewhere else?”

“More or less,” Mart said. “But they didn’t get one, or I wasn’t in for it. I don’t know if they put me down for it under another name, but I didn’t get moved, so I just went, after a bit I just went.”

“And this drop-in centre, is it still closed?”

“Dunno,” Mart said. “I couldn’t go to Sheerwater on the off-chance, with shoes like mine.”

She looked at his feet and thought, I see what you mean. She said, “I could drive you. That would save you wearing your shoes out any more. But my friend’s gone out in our car. So if you could just hide here till she comes back?”

“I dunno,” Mart said. “Could I have a sandwich?”

“Yes,” she said. She added bitterly, “There’s plenty of bread.”

Back in the kitchen, she thought, I see it all. Mother scooped into hospital at the last minute, the foetal heart monitor banging away like the bells of hell. Mama unregistered, unweighed, unloved, innocent of antenatal care, and turning up at the hospital because she believes—God love her—that her cramping needs relief: then sweat-streaked, panicked and amazed, she is crying out so hard for a glass of water that by the time they give it her, she prefers a glass of water to her newborn child. She would have sold him, new as he was, in his skin. She would have sold him to the midwives for an early relief from her thirst.

What can I give him? Alison wondered. What would he enjoy? Poor little bugger. You see somebody like that and say, well, his mother must have loved him; but in his case, no. She took out a cold chicken from the fridge and turned it out from its jellied, splintering foil. It was half used, half stripped. She washed her hands, opened a drawer, picked out a sharp little knife and worked away, shearing fragments from the carcass. Close to the bone, the meat was tender. So was the child Mart himself, picked out of the womb; as he was carried away, his legs kicked, the blood on his torso staled and dried.

And then the foster mother. Who stuck for a year or two. Till a policy moved him on to the next. I wish I’d had a foster mother, Al thought. If I’d just been given a break till I was two or three, I might have turned out normal, instead of my brain all cross-wired so I’m forced to know the biographies of strangers. And pity them.

By the time she’d thought all this, she was grilling bacon. As she whipped the rashers over with the tongs, she thought, why am I doing this? God knows. I feel sorry for the bloke. Homeless and down on his luck.

She made towering, toasted sandwiches, oiled with mayonnaise, garnished with cucumber, cherry tomatoes and hardboiled eggs. She made twice as many as one homeless mad person could possibly consume. She made what she anticipated would be the very best plate of sandwiches Mart had ever seen in his life.

He ate them without comment, except for saying, “Not very good bacon, this. You ought to get that kind that is made by the Prince of Wales.”

Sometimes he said, “Aren’t you having one?” but she knew he hoped she wasn’t, and she said, “I’ll have mine later.” She glanced at her watch. “Is that the time? I’ve got a telephone client.”

“I used to have a watch,” Mart said. “But Police Constable Delingbole stamped on it.” He looked up at her from the corner and begged, “Don’t be long.”

Lucky that Colette had gone to Guildford! Al could count on her to be away for some hours. In that time she could give the boy some advice and twenty quid, and set him on his way. Colette had things to do—pop into the occult shop on White Lion Walk with some flyers, etc.—but mainly she would be going shopping, trawling around the House of Fraser for that elusive perfect lip shade, and getting her hair cut into a white pudding-bowl shape. Colette’s hair never seemed to grow, not so that you noticed, yet she felt some sort of social obligation to have it trimmed and tweaked every six weeks. When she came home she would stand before the mirror and rage at the stylist, but it never looked any different—not that Alison could see.

Her telephone consultation ran the full hour, and after it Al was so hungry that she had to grab a bowl of cornflakes, standing up in the kitchen. A feeling, something like fellow-feeling, was hauling her back in the direction of Mart; she hated to think of him shrinking from the light, crouching on the hard floor.

“First I was a white-liner,” Mart said. “That’s where you paint lines on the road, excellent daily rate and no previous experience required. A truck picked us up every morning at the bandstand and took us to where we were lining that day. You see, Pinto was with me. He got bored of it. I didn’t get bored of it, I liked it. But Pinto, he started painting little islands in the road, then he said, go on, go on, let’s do a box junction. It took us an hour. But when they saw it, they weren’t all that keen. They said, you’re off the job, mate, and the ganger said, come here while I give you a smack with this shovel.” Mart rubbed his head, his eyes distant. “But then they said, we’ll give you another chance, you can go on roadworks. We got put on human traffic light. Twirling a sign: STOP__GO. But the motorists wouldn’t observe me. Stop-and-go when they fucking well liked. So the boss says, lads, you’re not in sync. He says that’s your big problem that you’ve got. You’re twirling, but you’re not twirling in sync. So I got took off that job.”

“And then?”

Al had been to the garage to fetch them two folding garden chairs. She didn’t feel she could keep standing, with her back to the shed wall and Mart crouching at her feet. It was natural for Mart to want to tell his life story, his career history, just to reassure her that he wasn’t an axe murderer; not that anything he had told her had actually reassured her of that, but she thought, I would have a feeling, my skin would prickle and I’d know.

“So then …” Mart said. He frowned.

“Don’t worry,” Al said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”

All Mart’s jobs seemed to have involved hanging about in public places. For a while he was a car park attendant, but they said he didn’t attend it enough. He was a park patroller, selling tickets for the attractions. “But some little lads knocked me down and robbed my tickets and threw them in the pond.”

“Didn’t the hospital give you any help? When you got out?”

“You see, I came through the net,” Mart said. “I’m an outloop. I’m on a list, but I’m not computerate yet. I think—the list I was on—I think they lost it.”

More than likely, Al thought. I dare say, when I was a kid, people put me on a list. I expect they made a list of bruises, that sort of thing, noticeable marks. But it never came to anything. I guess that list got put in a file; I guess that file got left in a drawer; “I’d like to know,” she said, “how you got in trouble with the police.”

Mart said, “I was at the zone. I was near the scene. I had to be somewhere. Somebody had to be there. Police Constable Delingbole beat the shit out of me.”

“Mart, ought you to be taking your pills? What time do you have them?”

“You see, we got some stickers and we put them on people’s cars, that were parked. We waited till we saw them leave and then we came with the stickers and put NO PARKING BY ORDER on their windscreen. Then we hid in the bushes. When they came back we jumped out and fined them a fine.”

“Did they pay?”

“No way. One geezer got on his mobile. Delingbole was round like a shot.”

“And where were you?”

“Back in the bushes. He didn’t catch us that day. It was a good idea, but it caused a description of us to be made and put in the local paper. Have you seen this distinctively attired man?”

“But you’re not. I wouldn’t call you distinctive.”

“You didn’t see the hat I had in those days.”

“No. That’s true.”

“By the time I came round your place, I’d got a different hat. I was down on the building site, sometimes they give us tea. I said to this Paddy, look mate, can I have your hat? Because it’s been in the paper about mine. He says, sure, I says, I’ll buy it off you, he says, no, you’re all right, I’ve another one at home, a yellow one. So when I came for mowing your garden, I said to your friend, does this hat make me look like a brickie? Because it belonged to a brickie. And she said, I’d take you for a brickie anywhere.”

“So you’ve met Colette,” Alison said. “I see. You’re the bloke from the gardening service.”

“Yes.” Mart gnawed his lip. “And that was another job that didn’t last. How about some more tea?”

Alison hurried back across the garden. Michelle’s kids were home from their nursery; she could hear their wailing, and the air was loud with their mother’s threats and curses. She brought out another flask, with a mug for herself, and a packet of Chocolate Digestives, which Colette allowed her to keep for nervous clients, who liked to crumble and nibble. This time she made sure she got some; she held the packet on her lap, and offered them to Mart one by one. “Missus,” he said, “have you ever been described in the paper?”

She said, “I have, actually. In the Windsor Express.” She’d had three dozen photocopies made: ATTRACTIVE FULL-FIGURED PSYCHIC, ALISON HART. She’d sent one to her mum, but her mum never said anything. She’d sent them out to her friends, but they’d never said anything either. She had plenty of press cuttings now, of course, but none of them mentioned her appearance. They skirt around it, she thought. She had shown the Windsor Express cutting to Colette. Colette had sniggered.

“You were lucky,” Mart said. “Windsor, you see. That’s outside Delingbole’s area.”

“I’ve never had any time for the police,” she said. I suppose I should have called them, when I was a kid. I suppose I could have laid charges. But I was brought up to be scared of a uniform. She remembered them shouting through the letter box: Mrs. Emmeline Cheetham? She thought, why didn’t my mum get one of her boyfriends to nail it shut? It isn’t as if we had any letters.

Just as Al had finished cleaning the kitchen and tidying away signs of Mart’s lunch, Colette came in with a handful of carrier bags and in a state of outrage. “I was putting the car away,” she said. “Somebody’s swiped our garden chairs! How did that happen? It must have been that man in the night. But how did he get in the garage? There’s no sign of forced entry!”

“You sound like Constable Delingbole,” Alison said.

“Been talking to Michelle, have you? I can tell you, I wish I’d been a bit more wide awake this morning. I should have rung the police as soon as I spotted him. I blame myself.”

“Yes, do,” Alison said, in such a commiserating tone that Colette didn’t notice.

“Oh well. I’ll claim it on the insurance. What have you had to eat while I’ve been out?”

“Just some cornflakes. And a bit of salad.”

“Really?” Colette swung open the fridge door. “Really and truly?” She frowned. “Where’s the rest of the chicken?”

“There wasn’t much left, I threw it out. And the bread.”

Colette looked knowing. “Oh yes?” She lifted the lid of the butter dish. Her eyes swept the worktops, looking for evidence: crumbs, or a slight smearing of the surface. She crossed the kitchen, wrenched open the dish-washer and peered inside; but Al had already washed the grill pan and dishes, and put everything back where it should be. “Fair enough,” she said grudgingly. “You know, maybe that bloke down at Bisley was right. If they can get into the garage, they could certainly get into the shed. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea. I won’t move anything in yet. Till we see. If there’s any recurrence, in the neighbourhood. Because I’ve laid out quite a lot. On forks, and so on.”

“Forks?” Alison said.

“Forks, spades. Hoes. Et cetera.”

“Oh. Right.”

Al thought, she’s in such a state of self-reproach that she’s forgotten to count the bacon rashers. Or even check the biscuit tin.

“Mart,” Al said, “do you hear voices? I mean, inside your head? What’s it like when you hear them?”

“My hands sweat,” Mart said. “And my eyes go small in my head.”

“What do they say?”

Mart looked at her cunningly. “They say, we want tea.”

“I don’t mean to intrude, but do you find the pills help?”

“Not really. They just make you thirsty.”

“You know you can’t stay here,” Al said.

“Could I just for tonight, missus?”

He calls me missus, she thought, when he wants to be extra-pitiful. “Don’t you have a blanket? I mean, I thought if you’d been sleeping rough you’d at least have a blanket, a sleeping bag. Look, I’ll sneak something out.”

“And a flask refill,” said Mart. “And a dinner, please.”

“I don’t see how I can do that.”

She felt ill already—she’d gone all day, on a bowl of cereal and a few biscuits. If she were to bring out her lo-fat turkey strips and vegetable rice to Mart, he would eat it in two swoops, and then she’d probably faint or something—plus, Colette would say, Al, why are you going into the garden with your Ready Meal?

“Suppose I give you some money,” she said. “The supermarket’s still open.”

“I’m barred.”

“Really? You could go to the garage shop.”

“Barred there too. And the off-licence, or else I could get crisps. They shout, Sod off, you filthy gyppo.”

“You’re not! A gyppo.”

“I tried to get a wash with the hose at the garage, but they chased me out. They said, you come round here again and we’ll run you over. They said I was disgusting the customers and taking their trade away. I blame Delingbole. I’m barred out of everywhere.”

Anger swarmed up from her empty belly. It was unexpected and unfamiliar, and it created a hot glow behind her ribs. “Here,” she said. “Take this, go down the kebab van, I’m sure they’ll serve anybody. Don’t set off the security lights when you come back.”

While Mart was away, and Colette was watching EastEnders, she crept out with a spare duvet and two pillows. She tossed them into the Balmoral, and sped back to the house. The microwave was pinging. She ate in the kitchen, standing once again. I am refused bread in my own house, she thought. I am refused a slice of bread.

For a day or two, Mart came and went by night. “If Colette sees you, you’re stuffed,” she said. “Unfortunately, I can’t predict her comings and goings, she’s a real fidget these days, always banging in and out. You’ll have to take your chances. Evan next door leaves at eight sharp. Don’t let him see you. Half-past nine, Michelle takes the kids to nursery. Keep your head down. Post comes at ten; keep out of the postman’s way. The middle of the day’s not too bad. By three o’clock it gets busy again.”

Mart began again, on the story of how PC Delingbole stamped on his watch.

“I’ll lend you one of mine,” she said.

“I don’t want your neighbours to see me,” Mart said. “Or they’ll think I’m after their kids. Pinto and me, when we lived down Byfleet, some blokes came kicking on the door, shouting, pedos out!”

“Why did they think you were pedophiles?”

“Dunno. Pinto said, it’s the way you look, the way you go around, your toes coming out of your shoes, and that hat you have. But that was when I still had my other hat.”

“So what happened then? After they kicked the door?”

“Pinto called the police. He had his mobile on him.”

“Did they come?”

“Oh, yes. They came in a patrol car. But then they saw it was me.”

“And then?”

A slow smile crept over Mart’s face. “Drive on, Constable Delingbole!”

She went through her jewellery box for spare watches, and discarded the diamanté ones, which were for onstage. I’d better buy him one, she thought, just a cheap one. And some shoes, I’d have to ask his size. Maybe if he had new shoes he’d move on, before Colette noticed. She had to keep diverting Colette, attracting her attention to spectacles at the front of the house, and chatting to divert her whenever she went into the kitchen. He’ll have to be gone, she thought, before she decides to implement any shed security, because as soon as she goes down there she’ll see signs of occupation; she imagined the screaming Colette jabbing with her garden fork, and the panic-stricken visitor impaled on its tines.

“Do you think we’d get a bed in here?” Mart asked, when she took him down his flask.

Al said, “Maybe a futon,” but then she could have bitten her tongue.

“I should of thought to bring a sun lounger, from the garden centre,” Mart said. “I know!” He struck his hat with the flat of his hand. “A hammock! That would do me.”

“Mart,” she said, “are you sure you haven’t got a criminal record? Because I couldn’t be responsible, I couldn’t take a chance, I’d have to tell somebody, you see. You’d have to go.”

“My dad beat my head in with a piece of pipe,” Mart said. “Does that count?”

“No,” she said. “You’re the victim. That doesn’t count.” Severe blows to the skull, she thought. Colette thinks they’re very significant. She asked me about them once, on tape. I didn’t know why at the time. I realize now she thought they might have been the beginning of my abnormality.

“Though it was my step-dad, you know? I always thought it was my dad but my mum said not. No, she said, he’s your step.”

“How many step-dads did you have?”

“A few.”

“Me too.”

It was a warm day; they were sitting on the garden chairs, the door propped open slightly to give them some air. “Good thing we went for one with a window that opens,” Al said. “Or you’d be stifled.”

“But then again, not,” Mart said. “For reasons of them surveying me, peeking in and tipping off the Big D.”

“But then again, not,” she agreed. “I thought of getting curtains, at one time.”

One of the next-door children darted out of the playhouse, shrieking. Al stood up and watched her scoot across the lawn, skid to a halt, and sink her teeth into her brother’s calf. “Ouch!” Al said; she winced as if she had felt the wound herself.

“Mummy, Mummy!” the infant yelled.

Mart banged the shed door and dropped on all fours. Michelle’s voice rang out from the kitchen. “I’m coming out there, by God I am, and there’ll be slaps all round.”

“Get down,” Mart pulled her skirt. “Don’t let her see you.”

“Bite him,” Michelle roared, “and I’ll bloody bite you.”

They knelt on the floor together. Mart was trembling. Al felt she ought to pray.

“Oh Jesus!” Mart said. Tears sprang out of his eyes. He lurched into her. She supported his weight. Sagging against her, he was made of bones and scraps; his flesh breathed the odour of well-rotted manure.

“There, there,” she murmured. She patted his hat. Michelle shot across the scabby turf, the baby on her arm and her teeth bared.

Colette answered her cell phone, and a voice said, “Guess who?”

She guessed at once. What other man would be phoning her? “Haven’t seen you since we ran into you coming out of Elphicks.”

“What?” Gavin said. He sounded dumbstruck, as if she had cursed him.

“The shop,” she said. “In Farnham. That Saturday?”

“Out of what?”

“Elphicks. Why do you have such trouble, Gavin, with the ordinary names of things?”

A pause. Gavin said uneasily, “You mean that’s what it’s called? That department store?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

She said, “God give me strength.” Then, “Perhaps you should end this call and we could start again?”

“If you like,” Gavin said. “Okay.” His line went dead. She waited. Her phone buzzed. “Gavin? Hello?”

“Colette? It’s me,” he said.

“What a nice surprise.”

“Is it okay to talk to you now?”

“Yes.”

“Were you busy, or something?”

“Let’s just forget you called me before. Let’s just have another go, and I won’t mention where I last saw you.”

“If that’s what you want,” Gavin said airily. His tone showed he thought her capricious in the extreme. “But why couldn’t you talk, was it because she was around? You know, Fat Girl?”

“If you mean Alison, she’s out. She’s gone for a walk.”

Even as Colette said it, it sounded unlikely to her, but that was what Alison had said she was doing.

“So you can talk?”

“Look, Gavin, what do you want?”

“Just checking up on you. Seeing how you’re doing.”

“Fine. I’m fine. And how are you doing?” Really, she thought, I’m losing patience with this.

He said, “I’m seeing somebody. I thought you should know.”

“It’s no concern of mine, Gavin.”

But she thought, how odd of him to get it right for once. I may not need to know, but I want to know, of course I want to know. I want her CV, her salary details, and a recent full-length photograph with her body measurements written on the back, so that I can work out what she’s got that’s so much better than me.

“What’s her name?”

“Zoë.”

“That won’t last. Far too classy for you. Is it serious?” It must be, she thought, or he wouldn’t be telling me. “Where did you meet her? Is she in IT?” She must be, of course. Who else did he meet?

“Actually,” he said, “she’s a model.”

“Really?” Colette’s voice was cold. She almost said, a model what? She stood up. “Look, I can see Alison coming back. I have to go.”

She cut off the call. Alison was lumbering up the hill. Colette stood watching her, the phone still in her hand. Why’s she wearing that big coat? Her temperature control must be shot again. She says it’s spirits but I bet it’s just an early menopause. Look at her! The size of her! Fat Girl!

When Al came in Colette was standing in the hall waiting for her. Her face was savage. “I suppose it’s something, that you’re taking a bit of exercise!”

Alison nodded. She was out of breath.

“You were practically on your knees, by the time you got halfway up the hill—you should have seen yourself! How far have you waddled, about a mile? You’ll have to be sprinting that distance, with weights attached to you, before you see any improvement. Look at you, puffing and sweating!”

Obedient, Al glanced at herself in the hall mirror. There was a flicker of movement; that’s Mart, she thought, scooting out of the side gate.

Alison went into the kitchen and out of the back door. She unbuttoned her coat, and—listening out all the time for Colette—disentangled herself from the two supermarket carrier bags that were swinging like saddlebags at her sides. She placed her surreptitious groceries behind the wheelie bin, came in, and shrugged off the coat.

It’s like being a reverse shoplifter, she thought. You get to the checkout with your cart and you pay for everything; then, when you get outside, you open your coat and start concealing the bags about your person. People stare at you, but you stare back. If they asked you why you were doing it, what would you say? You can’t think of a single good reason, except that you want to do a good action.

It had come to this: either she ate, or Mart did. I’ll have to explain to him, she thought. How Colette checks up on me all the time. How she controls the groceries. How she shouted, the day you came, when she finally stock-taked the fridge and realized two eggs were missing. How she accused me of eating them boiled and made me ashamed, even though I never ate them, you did. How she supervises every minute of my day. How I can’t just go freelance shopping. How, if I took the car, she’d want to know where. And if I drove off by myself, she’d want to know why.

She thought, on Friday at Sainsbury’s they have twenty-four-hour opening. So I could sneak out when she was asleep. Not ordinary asleep, that wouldn’t do. I’d have to get her drunk. She imagined herself wedging a plastic funnel into Colette’s open throat, and pouring chardonnay through it. I could take the car, she thought, if backing it out of the drive wouldn’t wake her. Probably that would only work if I drugged her. Beat her into insensibility. Come here, she thought: would you like a slap with this shovel?

But really, he must be gone by weekend. I’ll tell him. Even if she doesn’t form the ambition to rehone the forks and the hoes, those water-feature people will be around again early next week.

She locked the back door. She crossed the kitchen, stood at the sink and downed a glass of water. All quiet on the shed front; the door was closed, the ground undisturbed. She refilled her glass. Quick, quick, she thought, before she comes in and says tap-water can kill you, quick, before she says drinking too fast is a notorious cause of death in the obese.

She was aware that the Collingwood was silent.

She went into the hall. “Colette?”

No answer. But from above she heard a bleating, a little trail of bleating that grew louder as she followed it upstairs.

She stood outside Colette’s door. She is lying on her bed sobbing, she thought. But why? Can she have regretted what she said to me, about my personal fatness? Has a lifetime of tactlessness flashed before her eyes? This didn’t seem likely. Colette didn’t think she was tactless. She thought she was right.

Whatever, Al thought. Now is my opportunity. While her emotions are detaining her, I will just sneak down the garden and distribute my haul to Mart. Or, as he’s gone out, I will leave it inside his door, for him to find as a happy surprise when he returns.

Yesterday she had taken him three oranges. He had not been impressed when she had explained that she could get away with oranges, by claiming to have juiced them. He had hinted that he preferred a steak, but she couldn’t see her way to setting up cooking facilities. So he was getting tinned tuna, that sort of thing. She hoped he would appreciate that tins were extremely heavy.

She creaked down the stairs, away from Colette and her grief: whatever that was. At the foot of the stairs, she saw herself, unavoidably, in the glass. Her face looked as pink as a ham. She thought, I could have got him sliced cold meat, I bet that would have been lighter, though of course it being warm weather he’d have to eat it all the same day. At least, this way, I’ve built him up a little store that he can put in his rucksack, when he leaves.

She opened the back door, tottered out, reached behind the wheelie bin. The bags had gone. Mart must have darted back, crouching low, and swooped them up on his way in. In which case I hope he’s got strong teeth, she thought, as I didn’t buy him a can opener.

By close of day, Colette had not come down; but all it would take, Al thought, is a casual glance from her bedroom window, as Mart flits across the lawn by moonlight. Why don’t I just give him some money to set him on his way? I can’t afford more than, say, a hundred pounds, or Colette will want to know where I drew it out and what I spent it on. She will be quite pleasant about it, knowing I have the right, but she’ll be curious all the same.

When it was almost dark, she stepped out of the sliding doors.

“Alison? Is that you?” Michelle was waving.

Who else did she think it was? Reluctantly, she moved towards the fence.

“Lean over,” Michelle said. “I want to whisper to you. Have you heard about this plague of rabbit deaths?”

She shook her head.

“It’s very strange, you see. Not that I have any time personally for rabbits; I wouldn’t have any pets near my kids because they spread all sorts of toxicosis. But these little ones at the nursery, they’re crying their eyes out. They go down the garden to feed it and it’s keeled over in its hutch with a horrible trickle of black blood coming out of its mouth.”

I suppose, Al thought, me keeping Mart in the shed, it’s like being a kid again, doing things behind people’s backs, stealing food, all that stuff I used to do; running to the corner with any money I got. It’s a game really, it’s like that dolls’ tea party I wanted. We have a lot in common, she thought, me and Mart, it’s like having a little brother. She had noticed that Mart was always falling over; that was because of his medication. She thought, my mum, too, she was always falling over.

“So what do the vets say?” she asked Michelle.

“They just say, oh, rabbits, what do you expect? They try to put it on what they’ve been eating, a bad diet. They blame you, don’t they, the owner? That’s how they get around it. Evan says personally he has no time for rabbits either, but it’s very worrying, in the light of what’s going down with the playground. And the vets denying it, you see. He wonders if they know something we don’t.”

Oh dear, she said. They ought to hold postmortems, maybe. She couldn’t think what else to say. Got to go, she said; as she limped away from the fence, Michelle called, will the warm weather last till weekend?

By eight o’clock Al was beginning to feel very hungry. Colette didn’t show any sign of coming down and supervising her dinner. She crept upstairs to listen. More and more, this evening reminded her of her youth. The need to tip-toe, listen at doors: sighs and groans from other rooms. “Colette?” she called softly. “I need you to do my calories.”

No reply. She eased the door open. “Colette?”

“Go and eat yourself to death,” Colette said. “What do I care?”

She was lying face down on the bed. She looked very flat. She looked very out-of-it. Alison drew the door closed, in a manner so quiet that she hoped it showed her complete respect for Colette’s state of mind, so quiet that it offered condolences.

She crept down the garden. The moon had not yet turned the corner above the Mountbatten at the curve of the road, and she wasn’t clear where she was putting her feet. She felt she ought to knock, but that’s ridiculous, she thought, knock at your own shed?

She inched open the door. Mart was sitting in the dark. He had a torch, and batteries, but they were the wrong size; something else for my shopping list, she thought. She could have fixed him up with a candle, but she didn’t trust him not to start a fire.

“Get your shopping?”

“What shopping? I’m ravenous in here. Fainting.”

“I’m giving you fifty quid,” Al said. “Sneak off into Knaphill, will you, and get a takeaway Chinese? Get me a set menu for two, and whatever you want for yourself. Keep the change.”

When Mart left, diving low under the light sensors, she tried to make herself comfortable in the canvas garden chair. The earth was cooling, beneath their hardstanding; she lifted her feet and tried to tuck them beneath her, but the chair threatened to overbalance; she had to sit up straight, metal digging into her back, and plant her feet back on the ground. She thought, I wonder what happened to the shopping?

When Mart came back they sat companionably, licking spare ribs and tossing down the bones. “You’ve got to take the cartons away,” she said. “Do you understand that? You mustn’t put them in our wheelie bin. Or Colette will see them. You have to be gone soon. The garden design will be coming. They’ll probably say, take down that shed, it’s an eyesore.” She chewed thoughtfully on a sweet-and-sour prawn. “I knew we should get a better one.”

“It’s late,” Mart said, consulting his new watch. “You ought to go in.”

“Oh, just so you can finish everything off by yourself!”

“I’m more hungry than you,” Mart said, and she thought, that’s true. So in she went. Up to bed. All quiet from Colette’s room. She didn’t dream, for once; or not of being hungry.

It couldn’t last, of course. Previously there had been an element of camouflage about Mart, his dirty clothes blending into the earth tones of the gardens, but you noticed his feet now, in the big clean navy and white shoes, seeming to come around the corner before him.

When he saw Colette approaching, he slammed the door of the shed and wedged his rucksack against it; but Colette defeated him with one push. Her yodel of alarm drove him back against the wall.

Al galumphed down the garden, shouting, “Don’t hit him! Don’t call the police, he’s not dangerous.”

Mart laughed when Colette said she had seen him on the lawn.

“I bet you thought I was from space, did you? You said, oops, there goes an extraterrestrial! Or did you think I was a brickie from off the building site?”

“I didn’t form any opinion,” Colette said coldly.

“She thought she was dreaming,” Al said.

“Alison, I’ll deal with this, please.”

“In fact, my troubles started with an alien encounter,” Mart said. “Aliens give you a headache, did you know that? Plus they make you fall over. When you’ve seen an alien, it’s like somebody’s drilled your middle out.” He made a gesture—a gouge and a twist—like someone plunging a corer into an apple. “Pinto,” he said, “when we was white-lining up near Saint Albans, he got taken up bodily into an alien craft. Female aliens came and pulled off his overalls and palpitated his body all over.”

“He was dreaming,” Colette said.

Al thought, she doesn’t know how lucky we are, we could have been playing host to Pinto as well.

“He wasn’t asleep,” Mart said. “He was carried off. The proof of it is, when he got back, he took his shirt off and they’d erased his tattoo.”

“You can’t stay here any longer,” Colette said. “I hope that’s perfectly clear to you?”

“A shed wouldn’t do for everybody,” Mart conceded. “But it’ll do nicely for me. Less bugs in a shed.”

“I should have thought there’d be more. Though I’m sure you’ll find that it’s perfectly clean.”

“Not crawling bugs. Listening bugs.”

“Don’t be silly. Who’d want to listen to you? You’re a vagrant.”

“And there’s cameras everywhere these days,” Mart said. “Blokes watching you out of control towers. You can’t go anywhere without somebody knows about it. You get post from people that don’t know you, how do you do that? Even I get post, and I don’t have an address. Constable Delingbole says, I’ve got your number, mate.” He added, under his breath, “His is written on him.”

“I expect you out of here within ten minutes,” Colette said. “I am going back to the house and I shall be counting. Then, whatever you say, Alison, I shall call the police and have you removed.”

Al thought, I wonder if Delingbole is real, or in a dream? Then she thought, yes, of course he’s real. Michelle knows him, doesn’t she? He gave a talk on shed crime. She wouldn’t have dreamed that.

It was some hours before Colette was speaking to her again. There were interactions, chance meetings; at one point Colette had to hand her the telephone to take a call from a client, and later they arrived in the utility room at the same time, with two baskets of washing, and stood saying coldly, after you, no, after you.

But the Collingwood wasn’t big enough to keep up a feud.

“What do you want me to say?” Al demanded. “That I won’t keep a vagrant again? Well, I won’t, if you feel that strongly about it. Jesus! It isn’t as if there was any harm done.”

“No thanks to you.”

“Let’s not start again,” she said.

“I don’t think you realize the kind of people who are out there.”

“No, I’m too good,” Al muttered. “You don’t realize half the evil that is in the world,” she told herself under her breath.

Colette said, “I saw Michelle earlier. She says, guard your shopping.”

“What?”

“In the boot of the car. In case it vanishes while you’re unlocking the front door. Don’t leave the boot lid open. There’s been a spate of grocery theft.”

“I don’t go shopping by myself, do I?”

Colette said, “Stop muttering like that.”

“Truce?” she said. “Peace talks? Cup of tea?”

Colette did not answer but she took it as a yes, standing at the sink filling the kettle, looking down the garden towards the now-deserted Balmoral. Colette had accused her of harbouring Mart, but not of actually feeding him; not of actually buying supplies and smuggling them in. She had not actually slapped her, but she had screamed in her face, asked her if she was insane, and if it was her intention to bring into the neighbourhood a gang of robbers, child molesters, terrorists, and would-be murderers.

I don’t know, she’d said, I don’t think so. I didn’t have an intention, I just wanted to do a good action, I suppose I didn’t think; I just felt sorry for him, because he’s got nowhere to go and so he has to go in a shed.

“Sometimes,” Colette said, “I think you’re retarded as well as fat.”

But that’s not true, Al thought. Surely not? She knows I’m not stupid. I might be temporarily muddled by the ingress of memory, some seepage from my early life. I feel I was kept in a shed. I feel I was chased there, that I ran in the shed for refuge and hiding place, I feel I was then knocked to the floor, because in the shed someone was waiting for me, a dark shape rising up from the corner, and as I didn’t have my scissors on me at the time I couldn’t even snip him. I feel that, soon afterwards, I was temporarily inconvenienced by someone putting a lock on the door, and I lay bleeding, alone, on newspapers, in the dark.

She couldn’t see the past clearly, only an outline, a black bulk against black air. She couldn’t see the present; it was muddled by the force of the scene Colette had made, the scene which was still banging around inside her skull. But she could see the future. She’ll be forcing me out for walks, hanging weights—this is what she threatens—on my wrists and ankles. She might drive alongside me, in the car, monitoring me, but probably only at first. She won’t want to spare the time from sending out invoices, billing people for predictions I have made and spirits I have raised: To Your Uncle Bob, ten minutes’ conversation, £150 plus VAT. So perhaps she won’t drive alongside me, she’ll just drive me out of the house. And I’ll have nowhere to go. Perhaps I, too, can take refuge in someone’s outbuilding. First I can go by the supermarket and get a sandwich and a bun, then I can eat them sitting on a bench somewhere, or if it’s wet and I can’t get into a shed I could go to the park and crawl under the band-stand. It’s easy to see how it happens, really, how a person turns destitute.

“So who’s stealing the shopping?” she asked: thinking, it could soon be me.

“Illegal immigrants, Evan says.”

“In Woking?”

“Oh, they get everywhere,” Colette said. “Asylum seekers, you know. The council is taking the benches out of the park, so that no one can sleep on them. Still, we’ve had our warning, haven’t we? With the shed.”

She drank the tea Alison had made her, leaning against the work surface as if she were in a station buffet. I moved him on smartly, she thought, he knew better than to mess with me, one look at me and he knew I wasn’t a soft touch. She felt hungry. It would have been easy enough to dip into the clients’ biscuit tin, when Al wasn’t looking, but she denied herself. Michelle had said their wheelie bin had been crammed with takeaway cartons, and she now realized the homeless person must have been responsible for these. Food is over, as far as I’m concerned, she thought. Pictures of Zoë were gnawing at her brain, like rats in a cage with no door.