Beyond Black: A Novel

ten

That summer, black slime came up through the drains of a Frobisher just down the hill. There was a heat wave, with temperatures creeping toward the upper nineties. Animals crawled into the shade. Children turned lobster-red inside their playsuits. Fragile citizens bought charcoal masks to protect against the excess ozone. Sales of ice cream and lager doubled, as did sales of cold and flu remedies. The lawns at Admiral Drive baked until they cracked, and the grass turned to patchy straw. Colette’s water feature had to be turned off: as all water features were turned off, by order. Fountains dried, reservoirs dwindled. Hospitals filled. The elderly expired. A plague of psychic shows broke out on TV, crawling all over the schedules.

Colette sat watching them with a sullen expression, denouncing the transparent cheating, the collusion, the simplemindedness of the studio audiences. It’s totally irresponsible, she said, to encourage people to think that’s the way you go about dealing with the dead. In the days when she and Al first got together, the days when the princess passed, the punters squirmed when they were fingered; they twitched in their seats, desperate to foist the message off on the person next to them or the person in front or just behind. But now, when they came to a dem, the TV shows had tuned up their expectations, they couldn’t wait for their messages. When a Sensitive asked, “Who’s got a Mike in Spirit World?” fifty hands would shoot into the air. They yelled, cheered, embraced each other, made faces for the camera even though there wasn’t one. They shouted, “Oh, my gahhd!” when a message came though, and burst into grating sobs and doggy howls.

I find it exhausting, Al said, just to watch. And I couldn’t do television myself, she said. If I were there in the studio something would malfunction. The picture would blank out. The network would go down. Then they’d sue me.

And you’re too fat for television, Colette said.

To think I used to blame so much on Morris! Al said. If the lightbulbs started flickering I’d shout, “Oi, Morris!” and if the washing machine over-flowed I would just give him a piece of my mind. But even now, your computer goes on the blink whenever I come near it, and we’re still not getting anywhere with the recordings, are we? The machine plays back tapes that aren’t even in it; we get material coming through from the year before last. All the tapes are speaking on top of each other, it’s like a compost heap.

And you’re too fat, Colette said.

So I think it’s my electromagnetic field. I think it’s hostile to modern technology.

They had got all the satellite channels, because Alison liked to home-shop; she often felt shy when she was out, and she complained that people looked at her in a funny way, as if they knew what she did for a living. “It’s not shameful,” she said. “Not like being a sex worker.” Still, it was a comfort to be able to buy some chunky gold chains and glittery earrings, low-taste stuff she could wear onstage.

Once, when they switched on their TV, Cara’s pixie face appeared on-screen; another time, Mandy’s sharp foxy features bobbed up. Colette said, “Natasha, huh! She doesn’t look a bit Russian.”

“She’s not.”

“They could have made her up to look Russian, that’s all I’m saying.”

When the credits came at the end of the show, the producers put a disclaimer notice on the screen, to say that the programme was “For entertainment purposes only.” Colette snorted and stabbed the OFF switch. “You should tell them straight, at your next dem. Tell them what it’s really like in Spirit World. Why do you have to be so soft on them? Tell them what Morris used to do to you.” She sniggered. “I’d like to see their faces then. I’d like to see Mandy’s face, when she’s on camera and Morris puts his hand up her skirt. I’d like to see them burbling on about the world beyond, if Morris came back and he was in one of his moods.”

“Don’t say that,” Al begged. “Don’t say you’d like to see Morris.”

She had never been able to teach Colette the art of self-censorship; never been able to make her understand how simple and literal-minded the organizers of Spirit World could be. You had to guard the words that came out of your mouth and even the words as they formed up in your mind. Wasn’t that simple enough? Sometimes she thought Colette couldn’t be such a slow learner. Surely she was doing it on purpose, tormenting her?

Gavin rang. He asked for Colette, and Al passed the phone over without speaking to him. She hung about, overhearing; though proximity wasn’t really necessary to her. She could tune in to Gavin any time she liked, but the thought tired her. Quite clearly she heard him say, “How’s the fat lesbian?”

Colette said, “I’ve told you, Alison is not a lesbian. In fact, there are several men in her life.”

“Who?” Gavin demanded.

“Let me see.” Colette paused. “There’s Donnie. There’s Keith … she and Keith go way back.”

Al stood in the doorway. “Colette … don’t.”

Colette gestured to her angrily, to go away.

Don’t make a joke out of the fiends, Al pleaded; but not out loud. She turned and left the room. You should know better, Colette, but how can you know better? You believe and you half-believe, that’s the trouble with you. You want the frisson and you want the money, but you don’t want to alter your dumb view of the world. She heard Colette say to Gavin, “There’s Dean. Dean really fancies me. But he’s quite young.”

“What do they do, these blokes?” Gavin said. “Are they fortune-tellers as well?”

“There’s Mart,” she said “Oh, and our neighbour, Evan. Plenty of men in our lives, you see.”

“You’re carrying on with a neighbour?” Gavin said. “Married, is he?”

“That’s my business.”

Colette had that fizzing, crawling feeling you get when you’re lying. When she heard what was coming out of her mouth she was frightened. It was quite natural that she should want to put the best face on things, with Gavin, but stop, stop, she said to herself, Donnie and Keith aren’t real and Evan is a wanker and Mart lives in the shed. Or used to.

“Fair dos,” Gavin said. “I mean, I can’t see anybody leaving his wife and kids for you, Colette, but then I’ve no right to an opinion, have I?”

“Damn right you haven’t.”

“No, you see who you like,” he said—still, she thought, with that lordly air, as if he were giving her permission. “Look, what I called about—they’ve been having a bit of a shakeout at work. They’ve let me go.”

“I see. When did this happen, this shakeout?”

“Three months back.”

“You could have said.”

“Yes, but I thought I’d get fixed up. I called a few people.”

“And they were out, were they? In a meeting? On holiday this week?”

“There’s a downturn, you know?”

“I don’t think it’s a downturn. I think they’ve finally rumbled you, Gavin.”

“No, it’s happening everywhere, all the big consultancies are shedding.”

“So how are you managing? Money must be tight.”

“It’s just a cash-flow problem.”

“I’m sure Zoë can help you out.”

He seemed to hesitate—so Colette said sharply, “She is still with you, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, she’s very loyal. I mean, she’s not the sort of girl to chuck you if you had a temporary setback.”

“Not like me, eh? I’d be out of there like a shot.”

“So I have to ask you about the payments, for the flat. I have to cut down my outgoings. Just till I get sorted.”

“So is there a downturn in the modelling business too? Or is she in hock for her tit lift and her bum suction? Oh, it’s all right, Gavin, I can afford to carry you for a while. Alison and I are doing really, really well.”

“Yeah, it’s all over the TV, psychic shows.”

“Yes, but that’s fraud. We’re not fraud. And we’re not dependent on the whims of schedulers, thank you.” Something touched her, a small hand on her sleeve: compunction. “So how are you,” she said, “apart from poor? How’s your car running?”

There was a short silence. “I have to go,” Gavin said. “Zoë wants me.”

“Probably some bit of her fallen off,” Colette said. “By-eee.” As she put down the phone she chuckled. Gavin had always lived in anticipation of his next salary cheque, and with his credit cards charged up to their limit. He’ll be wanting a loan soon, she said to herself. She sang out to Alison, “Guess what? Gavin’s got the boot.” But Al was on the other line.

Mandy said, “It’s time we started offering something to the punters that they can’t get from satellite TV. It’s all very well, but who’s making money out of it? Not us, for sure. It’s three hours hanging about in a back room with a plate of stale biscuits, an hour in makeup with some snooty cow drawing your eye-brows in the wrong place, and then when you see yourself you’re edited down to the blink of an eye and you’re supposed to be bloody grateful.”

“I thought it would be glamorous,” Al said wistfully. “Colette says I can’t go on because of my size, but I thought it would be nice for you.”

“In my view,” Mandy said, “we have to reinstate the personal touch. Silvana’s been advertising psychic hen parties, and she’s getting a very good response. You need to be able to provide one reader to about every six ladies, so I said I’d see if you were willing.”

“Be a change, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s what I think. A change for the guests, too. It’s a bit more upmarket than going on the razz and sicking up vodka outside some club. What with date-rape drugs, all that, you wouldn’t want to venture out.”

“No men,” Al suggested. “We don’t want Raven droning about ley lines.”

“Definitely no men. That’s what they’ve come to get away from.”

“And we’re not including Mrs. Etchells, are we? We don’t want her twittering on about the joys of motherhood.”

“Or telling them they need a little op. No, definitely no Mrs. E. I’ll sign you up, Al. You know those people in Cornwall, those new suppliers? They offer party packs, sort of goody bags for the clients to take away, minisizes of aromatic oils, three-pack of incense sticks, candle in tin, you know the sort of thing, presented in a velvet-look pouch. We can put a markup on them and sell them to the party organizer and we can bring along our own stocks of angel cards and spiritual CDs. Gemma’s got a cash-and-carry card so we could supply the champagne and party snacks. Ideally we’ll make it an evening of pampering and relaxation, as well as prediction. We can give nutritional advice—perhaps not you, Al—and we need somebody to do massage and reflexology. Silvana does Reiki, doesn’t she? And Cara’s got this new therapy she’s going in for, I forget what they call it. Anyway, you rub their feet and it brings back memories of life pre-birth.”

“Really?” Al said. “Have you tried it, Mandy?”

“Mm. Quite intriguing. Peaceful.”

“What was it like?”

“Darkness. Sort of swishing.”

She thought, I wouldn’t like to have access to my thoughts, before I was born. An image came to her of her mother, patiently fishing for her with a knitting needle.

“Anything else? Besides swishing?”

“Yes. Now you mention it. I think I got reverted to my past life. The closing moments, you know. Bloody great hoof coming down on my head. I could hear my own skull cracking.”

At the hen parties, through the summer evenings, Colette sat in other women’s kitchens, perched on a stool, frowning as she inputted data into her palm-top organizer. She was cool and neat in her little beige skirts and tiny T-shirts, an inch of flat midriff showing, as fashion decreed. She sat with legs crossed, a sandalled foot swinging, as she squared up Alison’s autumn schedule and calculated her expenses. When the Sensitives in their floaty scarves slid away for a break, when they leaned against the fridge and tried to engage her in conversation, she would give them her flat-eyed stare and, with an irritated twitch of her lips, go back to her sums. When they were called back to the party, she would take a long breath, finding herself alone, and look about her. They were working some upmarket locations—Weybridge, Chobham—and there were state-of-the-art kitchen fittings for her to admire: granite worktops like dark mirrors, and brushed steel in which she saw, faintly, her slight and wavering form as she crossed the room to pour herself a glass of San Pellegrino. When the door opened, New Age music wafted towards her, and dreamy half-clad girls, slippery with aromatic oils, drifted past and sometimes offered her a carrot baton or a bite of sushi.

“Ironic,” she said to Al. “You lot, giving advice on love and marriage. There’s not an intact relationship between you.”

She heard the psychics muttering about her presence, heard herself referred to by Silvana as “that hanger-on.” She knew Silvana was jealous, because she herself couldn’t afford a manager. She pictured herself hitting back: I’m really the core to the heart of this enterprise. You ask my ex, Gavin. I keep him, these days. I’ve made this business boom. I have many skills and talents. I could tell the punters what’s going to happen in their love lives. You don’t need psychic powers.

Alison came into the kitchen looking hot. “I’m just slipping out. Tell the clients I’ll be ten minutes. Or shift some of mine over to Cara.”

“Certainly.” Colette opened the chart on which she kept track of the evening’s proceedings.

“Skivving off, eh?” Gemma said, following Alison into the kitchen. “I’m needing some matches, the moon candles keep going out.” She cast her eyes around. “There’s nothing that needs lighting, is there, in a house like this? And they all don’t smoke. Or claim they don’t.”

Colette opened her bag, and took out a box. She rattled it, looking smug. “Don’t,” said Al, flinching. They stared at her. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t like people rattling a box of matches. It reminds me of something.”

“You were probably burned at the stake,” Gemma said. “In a previous existence. You were probably a Cathar.”

“When were they?” Colette said.

Gemma frowned. “It’s medieval,” she said.

“Then I don’t think they had matches.”

Gemma flounced out. “It’s a presence in there,” Al said, “blowing out the candles. Cara tried to get it in a corner, but we don’t want to be frightening the punters. I’m just popping over the road, because there’s a bunch of grannies standing by the hedge.”

“Where?” Colette went to the window.

“Spirit grannies. Great-grannies. Great-greats.”

“What do they want?”

“Just to say hello. Congratulations. To have a look at the décor. You know how it is.”

“You’re too soft,” Colette said. “Let the grannies stand there, and you get back to your clients.”

“I have to explain to them,” Al said, “that they’re not wanted. I have to put it so as not to cause pain.”

As she went out towards the lift, the little woman followed her, saying, “Excuse me, miss, have you seen Maureen Harrison?”

“You again?” Al said. “Haven’t you found her yet? Stick around, ducks, follow us home.”

Gemma came back into the kitchen with a girl leaning on her shoulder: pin-thin, teetering on high heels, wailing and dripping tears. “Get up, Colette,” she said. “This is Charlotte, our hostess. Let Charlotte sit down.”

Colette vacated her stool, Charlotte hopped up on it; it wasn’t the sort of stool you could sink onto. Her bleating continued, and when Gemma tried to hug her she squealed, “No, no,” and beat her away with little flapping motions of her hands. “He just texted her,” Gemma said. “The bastard. It’s off.”

Hens filled the doorway; their mouths were ajar. “Come on back, ladies,” Silvana urged, “don’t all crowd around, let her get over the shock.”

“Christ,” Colette said. “She’s the bride?”

Cara pushed the hens aside. She looked little and fierce. “Text him back, Charlotte.”

“Can you pretext?” Gemma asked. “Is that possible? Would you know, Colette? If she made it look as if she sent a message before he sent his, then she could be the one to call it off.”

“Yes, do that,” Cara urged. “Your self-esteem’s at stake here. Pretend you never got it.”

“Now look, darling.” Gemma squatted on the ground before Charlotte. Charlotte keened and flapped at her, but Gemma took her hands and squeezed them tight. “Now look, you think the world has stopped turning, but it hasn’t. You’ve had a shock but you’ll get over it. This is your lowest ebb and now the only way is up.”

“That filthy scumbag,” wailed the girl.

“That’s the spirit,” Gemma said. “You’ve got to put it behind you, sweetheart.”

“Not till she’s billed him,” Colette said. “Surely. I mean, there’ll be deposits. On the venue. And the honeymoon, air tickets paid for. Unless she goes anyway, with a girlfriend.”

“At least she’s got to text and ask him why,” Cara said. “Or she’ll never achieve closure.”

“That’s right,” Gemma said. “You’ve got to move on. I mean, if you’ve had bad luck in your life, what’s the use of brooding?”

“I disagree,” Colette said. “It wasn’t bad luck. It was bad judgement.”

“Will you shut it?” Gemma said.

“There’s no point in her moving on until she’s sure she’s learned something from it.”

She glanced up. Alison was wedged in the doorway. “Actually I agree with Colette,” she said. “Just on this occasion. You have to think about the past. You ought to. You can work out where it went wrong. There must have been warning signs.”

“There, there,” Gemma said. She patted the girl’s bare bronzed shoulder. Charlotte sniffed, and whispered something; Gemma said, “Witchcraft, oh no!” But Charlotte continued to insist, blowing her nose on a piece of kitchen roll that Al handed to her; until at last Gemma whispered back, “I do know someone in Godalming. If you really want to make him impotent.”

“I expect that will cost you,” Colette said. She thought, I wonder, if I went in for it, could I get a trade discount? That would be one in the eye for Zoë. She said, “Some girls in your position would go the direct route. What do you need a witch for, when you could go around there with a carving knife? More permanent, isn’t it?”

She remembered her own moments of temptation, the night she left Gavin. I can be reckless, she thought, at secondhand.

“You’d go to jail,” Gemma said severely. “Don’t listen, sweetheart. What do they say? Revenge is a dish best eaten cold?”

Al moaned and clasped a hand to her belly. She made a dash for the kitchen sink, but it was too late. “Oh, that’s all I bloody need,” said the bride-to-be. She jumped from her stool to fetch a mop and bucket.

Afterwards, Colette said, “I told you prawns were dodgy in weather like this. But you can’t curb your appetite, can you? Now you’ve embarrassed yourself.”

“It wasn’t the prawns.” Hunched in the passenger seat, Al sounded snuffly and depressed. “Prawns are protein, besides.”

“Yes,” Colette said patiently, “but you can’t have the extra protein and the carbohydrates and the fat, Al, something has to give. It’s a simple enough principle to get into your head, I’ve explained it a dozen times.”

“It was when you rattled the matches,” Al said. “That’s when I started feeling sick.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Colette said. She sighed. “But I’ve ceased expecting sense from you. How can you be frightened of a box of matches?”

Between the bride’s sudden jilting and Al’s sudden vomit, the hen party had broken up early. It was not quite dark when they let themselves into the Collingwood. The air had cooled, and the cats of Admiral Drive tiptoed along the garden fences, their eyes shining. In the hall, Al put her hand on Colette’s arm. “Listen.”

From the sitting room came two gruff male voices, rising and falling in amicable conversation.

“A tape’s playing,” she said. “Listen. Is that Aitkenside?”

Colette raised her eyebrows. She flung open the double doors from the hall; though as they were glass, the gesture was superfluous. No one was within; and all she could hear, from the machine on the table, was a faint hiss and twitter that could have been the machine’s own workings. “We ought to get some more sophisticated recording equipment,” she said. “I’m sure it must be possible to cut out these blips and twitters.”

“Shh,” Alison said. “Oh dear, Colette.”

AITKENSIDE: Here, Morris, you don’t get a good gherkin these days. Not like you used to get. Where would you go for a good gherkin?

MORRIS: You don’t get a good pickled onion. You don’t get a good pickled onion like we used to get after the war.

“It’s Morris.”

“If you say so.”

“Can’t you hear him? Maybe his course is finished. But he shouldn’t be back.” Al turned to Colette, tears in her eyes. “He should have moved on, higher. That’s what happens. That’s what always happens.”

“I don’t know.” Colette threw her bag down. “You said yourself, you get these cross-recordings from the year before last. Maybe it’s old.”

“Maybe.”

“What’s he saying? Is he threatening you?”

“No, he’s talking about pickles.”

AITKENSIDE: You don’t get a mutton pie. Whatever happened to mutton? You never see it.

MORRIS: When you go on the station for a samwidge you can’t get ham, you can’t get a sheet of pink ham and some hot mustard like you used to get, they want to go stuffing it with all this green stuff—lettuce—and lettuce is for girls.

AITKENSIDE: It’s all wog food, pansy food, you can’t get a nice pickled egg like you used to get.

MORRIS: Could have some fun with a pickled egg, see a pickled egg and Bob Fox he would start up without fail. Pass it round, lads, he’d say, and when MacArthur comes in you just drop it on the table, say aye-aye, MacArthur, have you lost something, old son? I seen MacArthur turn pale. I seen him nearly drop in his tracks—

AITKENSIDE: I seen him clap his hand to his empty socket—

MORRIS: And Bob Fox, cool as you like take up his fork and stab the little fucker then squeeze it up in his fingers—

AITKENSIDE:—all wobbling—

MORRIS:—and take a bite. Tee-hee. I wonder what happened to Bob Fox?

AITKENSIDE: Used to knock on the window, didn’t he? Tap-tap, tap-tap . That was Bob.

Towards dawn, Colette came down and found Al standing in the kitchen. The cutlery drawer was open, and Al was staring down into it.

“Al?” she said softly.

She saw with distaste that Al had not bothered to tie up her housecoat; it flapped back at either side to show her round belly and shadowy triangle of pubic hair. She looked up, registered Colette, and slowly, as if half asleep, pulled the thin cotton wrap across her; it fell open again as her fingers fumbled for the ties.

“What are you looking for?” Colette said.

“A spoon.”

“There’s a drawer full of spoons!”

“No, a particular spoon,” Al insisted. “Or perhaps a fork. A fork would do.”

“I should have known you’d be down here, eating.”

“I feel I’ve done something, Colette. Something terrible. But I don’t know what.”

“If you must eat something, you’re allowed a slice of cheese.” Colette opened the door of the dishwasher and began to take out yesterday’s crockery. “Done something terrible? What sort of thing?”

Alison picked out a spoon. “This one.”

“Not cornflakes, please! Unless you want to undo all the good work. Why don’t you go back to bed?”

“I will,” Al said, without conviction. She moved away, the spoon still in her hand, then turned, and handed it to Colette. “I can’t think what I did,” she said. “I can’t quite place it.”

A shaft of rosy sunlight lay across the window ledge, and an engine purred as an early Beatty backed out of his garage. “Cover yourself up, Al,” Colette said. “Oh, come here, let me.” She took hold of the housecoat, wrapped it across Al, and tied a firm double bow. “You don’t look well. Do you want me to cancel your morning clients?”

“No. Let them be.”

“I’ll bring you some green tea at eight-thirty.”

Al moved slowly towards the stairs. “I can’t wait.”

Colette opened the cutlery drawer and slotted the spoon among its fellows. She brooded. She’s probably hungry, considering she sicked up all the party snacks. Which she shouldn’t have been eating anyway. Maybe I should have let her have some cereal. But who is this diet for? It’s not for my sake. It’s for her sake. Without me behind her, she goes right off the rails.

She stacked some saucers into the cupboard, tip-tap, tip-tap. Did Al have to look so naked? But fat people do. Laid open to the morning shadows, Al’s white belly had seemed like an offering, something yielded up; a sacrifice. The sight had embarrassed Colette. Colette disliked her for it.

The summer heat took its toll on Al. In the week that followed, she lay awake through the nights. In the heat of the day her thighs chafed when she walked, and her feet brimmed over the straps of her sandals.

“Stop moaning!” Colette said, “We’re all suffering.”

“Sometimes,” Al said, “I have a sort of creeping sensation. Do you get that?”

“Where?”

“It runs down my spine. My fingers tingle. And bits of me go cold.”

“In this weather?”

“Yes. It’s like, my feet won’t walk properly. I want to go one way, and they want to go a different way. I’m supposed to come home, but my feet don’t want to.” She paused. “It’s hard to explain it. I feel as if I might fall.”

“Probably multiple sclerosis,” Colette said. She was flicking though Slimming magazine. “You ought to get tested.”

Al booked herself in at the health centre. When she rang up, the receptionist demanded to know what was the matter with her, and when Al explained carefully, my feet go different ways, she heard the woman sharing the news with her colleagues.

The woman’s voice boomed down the phone. “Do you want me to put you in as an emergency?”

“No, I can wait.”

“It’s just, you need to be sure you don’t wander off,” the woman said. There were cackles in the background: screeches.

I could ill-wish them, Al said, but I won’t, on this occasion. She thought, are there occasions when I have ill-wished?

“I can fit you in Thursday,” the woman said. “You won’t get lost on the way here?”

“My manager will drive me,” Al said. “By the way, if I were you I should cancel your holiday. I know you’ll lose your deposit, but what’s a lost deposit compared to being kidnapped by Islamic terrorists and spending several months in leg irons in a tin shack in the desert?”

When Thursday came, Colette did drive her, of course. “You don’t have to wait with me,” Al said.

“Of course I do.”

“If you leave me your moby, I could call a cab to take me home. You could go to the post office and post off my spells. There’s one going airmail that needs to be weighed.”

“Do you really think I’d leave you, Alison? To get bad news by yourself? Surely you think more of me than that?” Colette sniffed. “I feel devalued. I feel betrayed.”

“Oh, dear,” Al said. “Too many of those psychic hens. It’s bringing your emotions out.”

“You don’t realize,” Colette said. “You don’t understand how Gavin let me down. I know what it’s like, you see. I wouldn’t do it to someone else.”

‘There you go again, talking about Gavin.”

“I am not. I never mention him.”

When they got into reception, Al scrutinized the practice staff behind their glass screens. She couldn’t see the one who had laughed at her. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but when I saw she was booked on a Nile cruise I just couldn’t resist. It’s not, it’s really not, as if I wished her any ill. I only told her.

“This is interesting,” she said, looking around. It was just like the doctors’ waiting room that the punters always described: people sneezing and coughing on you, and a long long wait. I’m never ill, she thought, so I don’t know, first-hand. I’m ailing, of course. But not in ways doctors can cure. At least, I’ve assumed not.

They waited, side by side on stacking chairs. Colette talked about her self-esteem, her lack of it, her lonely life. Her voice quavered. Al thought, poor Colette, it’s the times we live in. If she can’t be in a psychic show, she fancies her chances on a true confession show. She pictured Gavin, stumbling over the cables, drawn from dark into dazzling light, from the dark of his own obtuse nature into the dazzling light of pale accusing eyes. She heard the audience groaning, hissing; saw Gavin tried, convicted, hung by the neck. It came to her that Gavin had been hanged, in his former life as a poacher. That’s why, she thought, in this life, he never does up the top button on his shirt. She closed her eyes. She could smell shit, farmyard manure. Gavin was standing with a noose round his neck. He wore sideburns, and his expression was despondent. Someone was bashing a tin drum. The crowd was small but keen. And she? She was enjoying her day off. A woman was selling mutton pies. She had just bought two.

“Wake up, Al,” Colette said. “They’re calling your number! Shall I come in with you?”

“No.” Al gave Colette a shove in the chest, which dropped her back in her chair. “Look after my bag,” she said, throwing it into her lap.

When she walked in, her hand—the palm burning and slightly greasy from her second pie—was still outstretched. For a moment the doctor seemed to think he was expected to shake it. He looked outraged at the familiarity, then he remembered his communication skills.

“Miss Hart!” he said, with a smile that showed his teeth. “Sit ye down, sit ye down. And how are you today?”

He’s been on a course, she thought. Like Morris. There was a stained coffee mug by his elbow, bearing the logo of a popular pharmaceutical company.

“I take it you’re here about your weight?” he said.

“Oh no,” she said. “I can’t help my weight, I’m afraid.”

“Huh. I’ve heard that a time or two,” the doctor said. “Let me tell you, if I had a pound for every woman who’s sat in that chair and told me about her slow metabolism, I’d be a rich man now.”

Not that riches would help you, Al thought. Not with a liver like yours. Slowly, with a lingering regret, she pulled out her gaze from his viscera and focused on his Adam’s apple. “I have tinglings down my arms,” she said. “And my feet, when I try to go home, my feet take me somewhere else. My fingers twitch, and the muscles in my hands. Sometimes I can’t use my knife and fork.”

“And so?” said the doctor.

“So I use a spoon.”

“You’re not giving me much to go on,” the doctor said. “Have you tried eating with your fingers?”

It was his little joke, she saw. I will bear it, she thought. I won’t abuse my powers by foreseeing about him. I’ll just be calm, and try and be ordinary. “Look, I’ll tell you what my friend thinks.” She put Colette’s theory to him.

“You women!” the doctor exclaimed. “You all think you’ve got multiple sclerosis! It beats me, why you’re all so keen to be in wheelchairs. Shoes off, please, and step on these scales.”

Al tried to ease her feet out of her sandals. They were stuck, the straps embedded in her flesh. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, bending down to unbuckle them, peel the leather away.

“Come on, come on,” the doctor said. “There are people waiting out there.”

She kicked away her shoes and stepped on the scales. She stared at the paint on the wall, and then, nerving herself, she glanced down. She couldn’t see past herself, to read the figure.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” the doctor said. “Get the nurse to test your wee. You’re probably diabetic. I suppose we ought to get your cholesterol checked, though I don’t know why we bother. Be cheaper to send a patrol officer to confiscate your crisps and beer. When did you last have a blood-pressure check?”

She shrugged.

“Sit here,” he said. “Never mind your shoes, we haven’t time for that, you can get back into your shoes when you get outside. Roll up your sleeve.”

Al touched her own warm skin. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt. She hardly liked to draw attention to it. “It is rolled up,” she whispered.

The doctor clasped a band around her arm. His other hand began to pump. “Oh, dear, oh, dear. At this level I would always treat.” He shot a glance upward, at her face. “Thyroid’s probably shot, come to that.”

He turned away and tapped his keyboard. He said, “We don’t seem to have seen you before.”

“That would be right.”

“You’re not registered with two doctors, are you? Because I should have expected a person in your state to be in here twice a week. You’re not moon-lighting? Signed up with another practice? Because if you are, I warn you, the system will catch up with you. You can’t pull that stunt.”

Her head began hurting. The doctor typed. Al fingered her scalp, as if feeling for the lumpy thread of an old scar. I got that somewhere in my past lives, she thought, when I was a labourer in the fields. Years passed like that, back bent, head down. A lifetime, two, three, four. I suppose there’s always a call for labourers.

“Now I’m going to try you on these,” the doctor said. “These are for your blood pressure. Book in with the nurse for a three-month check. These are for your thyroid. One a day. Just one, mind. No point you doubling the dose, Miss—er—Hart, because all that will do is ensure your total endocrine collapse takes place sooner than scheduled. Here you are.”

“Shall I come back?” she asked. “To see you personally? Though not too often?”

“See how it goes,” the doctor said, nodding and sucking his lip. But he was not nodding to her in particular. He was already thinking of the next patient, and as he wiped her from the screen, he erased her from his mind, and a well-drilled cheeriness overtook him. “Oh, yes,” he said, rubbing his fore-head, “Wait, Miss Hart—not depressed at all, are you? We can do a lot for that, you know.”

When Colette saw Al shuffling down the passage into the waiting area, trying to keep her unbuckled sandals on her feet, she threw down her magazine, drew her feet from the table, and leaped up, balancing sweetly like a member of a dance troupe. It’s nice to be lighter! she thought; Al’s diet was working, though not for Al. “Well? So have you got MS?”

“I dunno,” Al said.

“What do you mean, Al, you don’t know? You went in there with a specific question, and I should think you could come out with an answer, yes or bloody no.”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Al said.

“What was the doctor like?”

“He was bald and nasty.”

“I see,” Colette said. “Fasten your shoes.”

Al bent at the waist: where her waist would be. “I can’t reach,” she said pitifully. By the reception desk, she put one foot on a vacant chair and bent over. A receptionist tapped the glass. Tap-tap, tap-tap. Startled, Al wobbled; her body trembled; Colette leaned against her, to prop her upright. “Let’s go,” Al said, limping faster. When they reached the car she opened the door, plopped her right foot on the doorsill, and fastened her sandal.

“Just get in,” Colette said. “In this heat, doing up the other foot will kill you.”

Al heaved herself into her seat, scooping up her left shoe with her toe. “I could have made him a prediction,” she said, “but I didn’t. He says it could be my thyroid.”

“Did he give you a diet plan?”

Al slammed the passenger door. She tried to worm her swollen foot into her shoe. “I’m like an Ugly Sister,” she said. She took out a cologne tissue and fumbled with the sachet. “Ninety-six degrees is too much, in England.”

“Give it here.” Colette snatched the sachet and ripped it open.

“And for some reason, the neighbours seem to think I’m responsible.”

Colette smirked.

Al mopped her forehead. “That doctor, I could see straight through him. His liver’s beyond saving. So I didn’t mention it.”

“Why not?”

“No point. I wanted to do a good action.”

Colette said, “Oh, give over!”

They came to a halt in the drive of number twelve. “You don’t understand,” Al said. “I wanted to do a good action but I never seem to manage it. It’s not enough just to be nice. It’s not enough just to ignore it when people put you down. It’s not enough to be—forbearing. You have to do a good action.”

“Why?”

“To stop Morris coming back.”

“And what makes you think he will?”

“The tape. Him and Aitkenside, talking about pickles. My feet and hands tingling.”

“You didn’t say this was work-related! So we’ve been through this for nothing?”

“You haven’t been through anything. It’s only me had to listen to that stinky old soak criticizing my weight.”

“It can stand criticism.”

“And though I could have made him a prediction, I didn’t. A good action means—I know you don’t understand, so shut up now, Colette, you might learn something. A good action might mean that you sacrificed yourself. Or that you gave your money away.”

“Where did you get this stuff?” Colette said. “Out of RE at school?”

“I never had religious education,” Alison said. “Not after I was thirteen. I was always made to stand in the corridor. That lesson, it would tend to lead to Morris and people trying to materialize. So I got sent out. I don’t seem to feel the lack of it. I know the difference between right and wrong. I’m sure I always did.”

“Will you stop this drivel?” Colette said, wailing. “You never think of me, do you! You don’t seem to realize how I’m fixed! Gavin’s going out with a supermodel!”

A week passed. Al had filled her prescriptions. Her heart now beat slowly, thump, thump, like a lead weight swinging in space. The change was not disagreeable; she felt slower, though, as if her every action and perception were deliberate now, as if she was nobody’s fool. No wonder Colette’s been so spiteful, she thought. Supermodel, eh?

She stood at the front window, looking out over Admiral Drive. A solitary vehicle ploughed to and fro across the children’s playground, turning up mud. The builders had put down asphalt at one stage, but then the surface had seemed to heave and split, and cracks developed, which the neighbours stood wondering at, leaning on the temporary fence; within a week or two weeds were pushing through the hard core, and the men had moved in again to break up what remained with pneumatic drills, dig out the rubble, and reduce it back to bare earth.

Sometimes the neighbours accosted the workmen, shouting at them over the noise of their machines, but none of them got the same story twice. The local press was strangely silent, and their silence was variously attributed to stupidity and bribes. From time to time the knotweed rumour resurfaced. “You can’t keep down knotweed,” Evan said. “Especially not if it’s mutated.” No actual white worms had been spotted, or none that anyone had admitted to. The residents felt trapped and baffled. They didn’t want public attention, yet they wanted to sue somebody; they thought it was their entitlement.

Al caught sight of Mart, down at the children’s playground. He was wearing his brickie’s hat, and he appeared so suddenly in the middle distance that she wondered if he’d come up through one of the secret tunnels the neighbours were speculating about.

“How are you doing?” he yelled.

“Okay.” Her feet were moving sideways and every which ways, but by tacking to the left then abruptly changing course she managed to manoeuvre herself down the hill towards him. “Are you working here, then, Mart?”

“I’ve been put on digging,” he said. “We’re remediating, that’s the nature of it and the job description. Did you ever have a job description?”

“No, not me,” she said. “I make it up as I go along. So what’s remediating?”

“You see this soil?” He pointed to one heap. “This is what we’re taking off. And you see this?” He pointed to another heap of soil, very similar. “This is what we’re putting down instead.”

“So who are you working for?”

Mart looked wild. “Subcontracting,” he said. “Cash in hand.”

“Where are you living?”

“Dossing at Pinto’s. His floor got put down again.”

“So you got rid of the rats?”

“In the end. Some pikey come round with a dog.”

“Pikey?”

“You know. Gypsy fella.”

“What was his name?”

“He didn’t say any name. Pinto met him down the pub.”

Al thought, if a man is always no more than three feet from a rat—or is it two?—how does that feel from the rats’ point of view? Do they spend the whole of their lives in trembling? Do they tell each other nightmare stories about a gypsy with a terrier on a rope?

“How’s the old shed?” Mart said. He spoke as if it were some foolish indulgence of his youth.

“Much as you left it.”

“I was thinking I might get the odd night there. If your friend had no big objection.”

“She does have a big objection. So do the neighbours. They think you’re an asylum seeker.”

“Oh, go on, missus,” Mart said. “It’s just for when Pinto says, Mart, take a walk. Then we could have a chat again. And if you’ve got the money we could get a takeaway.”

“Are you remembering your pills, Mart?”

“On and off. They’re after meals. I don’t always get a meal. It was better when I was living in your shed and you was bringing a tray and reminding me.”

“But you know that couldn’t go on.”

“Because of your friend.”

I will continue to do a good action, she thought. “Wait there, Mart,” she said. She went back into the house, took a twenty out of her purse. When she got back, Mart was sitting on the ground.

“They’re going to be water-jetting the sewers soon,” Mart said. “It’s due to complaints and concerns.”

“You’d better look busy,” she said. “Or you’ll get the sack.”

“The lads have gone on their lunch,” Mart said. “But I don’t have a lunch.”

“Now you can get one,” she said, handing over the bank note.

Mart stared at it. She thought he was going to say, that’s not a lunch. She said, “It represents a lunch. You get what you want.”

“But I’m barred.”

“Your mates will go for you.”

“I’d rather you made me a lunch.”

“Yes, but that’s not going to happen.”

She turned her back and plodded away. I want to do a good action. But. It won’t help him to hang around here. On the doorstep of the Collingwood she turned and looked back at him. He was sitting on the ground again, in the freshly dug soil, like a gravedigger’s assistant. You could spend your life trying to fit Mart together, she thought. There’s no cause and effect to him. He feels as if he might be the clue to something or other, made up as he is out of bits and pieces of the past and the fag end of other people’s phrases. He’s like a picture where you don’t know which way up it goes. He’s like a walking jig-saw, but you’ve lost the box lid to him.

She was closing the front door, when he called out to her. She stepped outside again. He loped towards her, his twenty screwed up in his fist.

“Forgot to ask you. If in case of a terrorist outrage, could I come in your shed?”

“Mart,” she said warningly, and began to close the door.

“No, but,” he said. “It was at the Neighbourhood Watch last week.”

She stared at him. “You went to the meeting?”

“I sneaked in the back.”

“But why?”

“Keep my eye on Delingbole.”

“I see.”

“And the message was, in case of terrorist outrage or nuclear explosion, go indoors.”

“That seems sensible.”

“So if there’s one of those, can I come back and live in the shed? You’re supposed to stock up with a first-aid kit to include scissors, a wind-up radio—but I dunno what one is—and tins of tuna fish and beans, which I have, plus a tin opener to open them with.”

“And then what do you do?” She thought, I wish I’d gone to this meeting.

“Then you sit tight, listen to the radio, and eat your beans.”

“Till such time as?”

“What?”

“I mean, when is it safe to come out?”

Mart shrugged. “I suppose when Delingbole comes round and tells you. But he might not ever tell me because he hates me. So I’d just starve to death.”

Alison sighed. From under his brickie’s hat, Mart rolled a fallow eye at her. “Okay,” she said. “How about this? In case of terrorist outrage or nuclear explosion, never mind the shed, you can come and live in our house.”

“But she won’t let me.”

“I’ll tell her you’re my guest.”

“That won’t make no difference.”

He shows sense, Al thought.

“A bloke was here,” he said, “looking for you. Yesterday. In a van.”

“Oh, that would be the courier,” she said. They were expecting some more party packs from Truro.

“You was out.”

“Funny he didn’t leave a card. Unless Colette picked it up and didn’t say.”

“He didn’t leave a card, he didn’t leave a trace,” Mart said. He clapped his belly. “How about tea?”

“Mart, get back over there and start digging. These are testing times. We’ve all got to put a bit of effort in.”

“You wouldn’t give me a hand, would you?”

“What, with the digging? Look, Mart, I don’t do outdoors, horses for courses, I’m in here earning a twenty so I can give it you. What would your mates say if they came back and found me doing your job for you? They’d laugh at you.”

“They laugh at me anyway.”

“But that’s because you don’t get on with the job. You should have self-respect! That’s what’s important to all of us.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. That’s what people used to call it, now they call it self-esteem, but same difference. People are always trying to take it away from you. Don’t let them. You have to have backbone. Pride. So! You see! Get digging!” She stumped away, then stopped and turned. “This man, Mart, this courier. What did it say on the side of his van?” As an afterthought, she added, “Can you read?”

“I can,” Mart said, “but not a plain van with no writing. It didn’t say his name or anything. There was mud up the side of it, though.”

“So did he speak to you? I mean, did he have a box that he was wanting to leave, did he have a clipboard or one of those computers that you sign on, you know?”

“He had boxes. He opened the back doors and I looked in. He had boxes stacked up. But he didn’t leave any.”

A terrible uprush of fear swept over her. She thought her new heart pills prohibited such a feeling. But seemingly not.

“What type of bloke was he?” she said.

“He was one of them type of blokes what always hits you. The kind that, you’re in a pub, and he says, oi, mate, what you looking at? and you say, nothing, mate, and then he says—”

“Yes, I get the picture,” Al said.

“—and then the next thing you know is you’re in the hospital,” said Mart. “Having yourself stitched together. Your ears all sliced and blood down your jersey, if you have a jersey. And your teef spitting out of your head.”

In her own room, Alison took an extra heart pill. For as long as she could endure, she sat on the edge of the bed, hoping it would take effect. But her pulse wouldn’t slow; it’s remarkable, she thought, how you can be both bored and frightened at the same time. That’s a reasonable way, she thought, to describe my life with the fiends: I lived with them, they lived with me, my childhood was spent in the half-light, waiting for my talent to develop and my means of making a living, knowing always, knowing always I owed my existence to them; for didn’t a voice say, where d’you fink your mum gets the money to go down the shop and get instant mash, if it ain’t from your uncle Morris; where d’you fink your mum gets funding for her little bevvy, if it ain’t from your uncle Keef?

She took off her clothes: peeling them wetly from her body, dropping them on the floor. Colette was right, of course; she should be on a diet, any diet, all the diets at once. If TV, as people said, put extra weight on you, then she would look like—she couldn’t think what she would look like, something ridiculous, perhaps faintly menacing. Something from a sci-fi channel. She felt her aura wobbling around her, as if she were wearing a giant’s cape made of jelly. She pinched herself. The thyroid pills had not made any instant impact on her flesh. She imagined how it would be if she woke up one morning, to find she had shed layers of herself, like someone taking off a winter coat—then two coats, then three … . She took handfuls of flesh from here and there, repositioned and resettled them. She viewed herself from all angles but she couldn’t produce a better effect. I try my best with the diets, she said to herself; but I have to house so many people. My flesh is so capacious; I am a settlement, a place of safety, a bombproof shelter. “Boom,” she said softly. She swayed on her feet, rocked back on her heels. Through the long mirror she watched herself, rocking. When she was accustomed to her reflection, inured to it, she turned her back; craning her chin over her shoulder, she could see the raised, silver lines of her scars. In hot weather like this they seemed to puff and whiten, whereas in winter they seemed to shrink, redden, and pull. But perhaps that was her imagination. In her imagination, someone said, “The tricky little bitch. We’ll show her what a knife can do.”

Cold sweat sprang out across her back. Colette was right, Colette is right, she has to take me in hand, she has to hate me, it is important someone hates me. I liked it when Mart came and we got the takeaway, but I should have left it all to him. Though in all conscience I didn’t do it for the sake of the spare ribs. I did it because I wanted to do a good action. Colette never does a good action because she is being thin; it is what she does instead. See how she has starved herself, just to teach me, just to shame me, and see how impervious I am to example. In the last week or two, Colette’s wheat-coloured clothes had hung on her like bleached sacks. So cheer up, Al thought, we can go shopping. We can go shopping, me for a bigger size and Colette for a smaller. That will put her in a good mood.

The phone rang, making her jump. She sat down, naked, to take the call.

“Alison Hart, how may I help you today?”

“Oh, Miss Hart … is that you in person?”

“Yes.”

“So you are real? I thought you might be a call centre. Do you offer dowsing?”

“It depends what for. I do missing jewellery, old insurance policies, concealed wills. I don’t do lost computer files or any type of electronic recovery. I charge a flat-rate call-out fee, which depends on your area, and then after that I work on a no-find no-fee basis. I do indoor work only.”

“Really?”

“I’m not suited to distances, or rough terrain.”

“But it’s the outside that’s worrying us.”

“Then you need my colleague Raven, who specializes in earth energies, neolithic burials, mounds, caverns, burrows, and henges.”

“But you’re in my area,” the woman said. “That’s why I rang. I’m going by your telephone code in your ad.”

“What is it you’re actually looking for?”

“Actually, uranium,” the woman said.

Al said, “Oh, dear. I do think it’s Raven you want.” I expect he’ll be branching out, she thought, if these poisonings continue: knotweed, the bad drains. He’ll be branching out into sludge and toxic seepages, and detecting the walls of underground installations. If there were walls beneath my feet, she thought, if there were occult silos and excavations, cavities blasted in the earth, would I know? If there were secret chambers and bricked-in cul-desacs, would I sense them?

“Are you still there?” she asked the client. She imparted Raven’s details: his e-mail, and so on. It was hard to get the woman off the phone; she seemed to want some sort of free extra, like, I’ll throw you in a tarot reading, pick one card of three. It’s a while since I unwrapped the cards, Al thought. She said to the woman, “I really ought to go, because I have, you know, another client coming in—well, fifteen minutes, and—oh, dear, what is that smell? Oh, dear, I think I’ve left something on the stove … .” She held the phone away from her ear, and still the woman talked, and she thought, Colette, where are you, get this woman off the line … . She threw the receiver down on the bed and ran out of the room.

She stood on the landing, naked. I never did any science at school, she thought, any chemistry or physics, so I can’t advise these people about the likelihood of aliens or rabies or uranium or knotweed or anything at all really. Imagine, she said to herself, Morris let loose in a laboratory, all his friends trapped in a test tube, amalgamating and reacting against each other and causing little puffs and whiffs. Then she said to herself, don’t imagine, because it is imagining that gives them the door to get in. If you were thinner they would have less space to live. Yes, Colette was right and right again.

She knelt down, leaned forward, and tucked her head down by her knees. “Boom!” she said softly. “Boom!” She crunched herself down as small as she could go and said to herself a phrase she did not know she knew: Sauve qui peut.

She rocked her body, back and to, back and to. Presently she felt stronger: as if a shell, as if the back of a tortoise, might have grown over her spine. Tortoises live for many years, she thought, they outlive human beings. No one really loves them for they have no lovable qualities, but they are admired just for lasting out. They don’t speak, they just don’t utter at all. They are okay as long as no one turns them upside down and shows their underside, which is their soft bits. She said to herself, when I was a child I had a tortoise for a pet. The name of my tortoise was Alison, I named it after me because it is like me, and with our slow feet we walk in the garden. With my tortoise at week-ends I have many enjoyable times. The food of my tortoise is bollocks grass and blood.

She thought, the fiends are on their way, the question is how fast and who is first. If I cannot enjoy a nice childhood thought about a tortoise I might have had but didn’t, then I can expect Morris will shortly be limping in my direction though I believed he had gone on to higher things. Unless I am the higher things. After all, I tried to do a good action. I try to be a higher thing myself, but why does something inside me always say, but? Thinking but, she squashed herself down hard. She tried to put her chin onto the carpet, so she could look up, as if she were emerging from her shell. To her surprise—she had not tried this sort of thing before—she found it anatomically impossible. What came naturally was to tuck her head into her shielding spine, her plaited fingers protecting her fontanel.

In this position Colette found her, as she scampered lightly up the stairs, coming back from a meeting with their tax advisor. “Colette,” she said to the carpet, “you were right all along.”

These were the words that saved her; protected her from the worst of what Colette could have said, when she extended a cool hand to help her up and finally, admitting the task beyond her, brought a chair upon which Alison could place her forearms, and from there, lever herself into a position that seemed like an undignified sexual invitation, and from there, upright. One hand was spread across her heaving diaphragm, another crept down to cover her private parts—“which I’ve seen, already, once this week,” Colette snapped, “and once too much, thank you, so if you don’t mind getting dressed—or at least covering yourself up decently, if the idea of getting dressed is too challenging—you might come down when you’re ready and I’ll tell you what Mr. Colefax has to say about short-term savings rates.”

For an hour, Alison lay on her bed to recover. A client called for a tarot reading, and she saw her cards so clearly in her mind that really, she might as well have jumped up and done it and earned the money, but she heard Colette making tactful excuses, taking the client into her confidence and saying that she knew she would understand, the unpredictable demands placed on Alison’s talent meant that she couldn’t always give of her best, so when she said she needed rest that must be respected … she heard Colette book the woman in for a callback, and impress on her the fact that she must be standing to attention when it came, ready for Alison, even if her house were on fire.

When she felt able, she sat upright; she ran a tepid bath, dipped herself in and out of it, and felt no cleaner. She didn’t want hot water, which would make her scars flare. She lifted her heavy breasts and soaped beneath them, handling each one as if it were a weight of dead meat that happened to adhere to her chest.

She dried herself, put on the lightest dress she owned. She crept down-stairs and, by way of the kitchen, into the garden. The weeds between the paving had withered, and the lawn was rock-hard. She looked down; snaky cracks crossed the ground.

“Ali!” came the cry. It was Evan, out poisoning his own weeds, his spray gun slung like a bandolier across his bare chest.

“Evan!” She moved stiffly, patiently, towards the fence. She was wearing her fluffy winter slippers, because her swollen feet wouldn’t go into any other shoes; she hoped Evan wouldn’t notice, and it was true he didn’t notice much.

“I don’t know,” he said, “why did we ever pay the extra five K for a garden due south?”

“Why did we?” she said heartily, buying time.

“Personally I did it because I was told it would boost the resale value,” Evan said. “And you?”

“Oh, the same,” she said.

“But we couldn’t have known what climate change had in store, eh? Not the most of us. But you must have known?” Evan giggled. “What’s tomorrow, eh? Ninety-eight and rising?”

She stood in the doorway of Colette’s room, where she did not usually intrude: she stood and watched Colette, who was gazing into her computer screen, and talked to her, in a good-humoured, light sort of way. She said, the neighbours seem to think I have supernatural knowledge of what the weather’s going to be, and some of them are ringing me up to search for uranium and dangerous chemicals. I’ve had to say I don’t do that, I’ve handed them on to Raven, but today’s been quite good and quite busy, I’ve got lots of repeat telephone business, I know I always say to you I prefer face-to-face, but you always said, it limits you, it really limits you geographically and basically you can do it fine over the phone if you learn to listen hard, well you’re right, Colette, I have learned to listen hard and in a different way, you were right about that as you have been right about everything. And thank you for protecting me today from my client, I will phone her back, I will, you did the right thing, you always do the right thing, if I took notice of you, Colette, I would be thin and rich.

Colette saved her screen, and then, without looking at Al, she said, “Yes, all that is true, but why were you naked and curled into a ball at the top of the stairs?”

Al padded downstairs in her furry slippers. Another red, blazing evening had come; when she went into the kitchen, it was filled with a hellish light. She opened the fridge. To her knowledge, she had not eaten that day. Can I please have an egg? she asked herself. In Colette’s voice, she said, yes, just one. There was a sound behind her, a little tapping noise. Painfully—every bit of her was stiff and aching—she moved herself around, to look behind her; around again, to take in the whole room. “Colette?” she said.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap. It was coming from the window. No one was there. She crossed the room. She looked out into the garden. It was empty. Or seemed so.

She unlocked the back door and stepped out. She heard the train rumbling through Brookwood, the distant background roar of Heathrow, Gatwick. A few drops of rain fell, hot swollen drops. Lifting her head, she called out, “Bob Fox?”

The rain plopped onto her face and ran backwards into her hair. She listened. There was no reply.

“Bob Fox, is that you? “She gazed out into the milky darkness; there was a fugitive movement, towards the back fence, but that could be Mart, seeking shelter from some civic catastrophe. I could have imagined it, she thought. I don’t want to be premature. But.