A seven month project for our 2005 Assignments

You can read a particular members work by clicking on the author's name:

by Mark Beach      by Mark Beach      by Mark Beach            

by Anita Loughrey       by Geoff Rush   

by Mark Beach      by Mark Beach    

WEDNESDAY

It was Wednesday. Ann zipped the bag shut and took a look around the room. Her poster of Che Guevara was carefully rolled up and stuck out of the cardboard box by the door, next to her teddy.  There were little white patches on the wallpaper where the bluetack had stuck, but apart from that, the room bore little sign of previous occupation. ‘This is it.’  She thought. ‘I’m finally going to get laid.’

She picked   the bag off the bed, then walked out of the room and down the stairs to the hall.

‘Daddy, the last cardboard box is too heavy for me. Would you be able to manage it?’

‘Of course Princess,’ her father replied, beginning the climb to her room.

Ann went through the already open door and sat in the car. Her mother, dressed in slacks and strapless shoes, was sitting in the front seat listening to Any Questions on radio 4. Her father emerged and thrust the cardboard box into the last remaining space in the back of the Volvo estate. The back end hardly deflected at all.

‘Don’t crease my poster!’ Ann cried.

‘Sorry Princess.’ Her father closed the boot, but a hairbrush had fallen out of one of the cardboard boxes and was wedging the door open. Cursing, he threw the hairbrush into the car and slammed the door down hard against the lock.

‘Nigel, You should be more careful with that boot. You’ll wreck the car!’

‘Listen Muriel. Who paid for the bloody thing?’

Starting the car, he released the clutch and drove Ann and her possessions down Cherry Tree Road for what she hoped was the last time.  Ann noticed how the sun reflected off the garage doors of the executive houses onto the otherwise uniform green of their lawns. They turned left into Blossom Drive, then right into Shearwater Street, passing the row of shops as they left the estate.

The journey itself was uneventful. Junction 11 of the M4. Infamous for its queues, was for once free flowing, and the University was well signposted. They got lost once on the campus but arrived at Palmer Hall  at 5pm. Just as anticipated.

Her room was on the second floor, and the lift was in constant use by fathers clutching large cardboard boxes full of posters and hairdryers., but by a quarter past six, Ann was saying her good-bys.

Her father hugged her ‘Look after yourself Princess!’  He pressed twenty quid into her hand.

‘Goodby Daddy.’ Ann kissed him on the cheek and turned to her Mum.

‘Goodby Darling.’ Muriel offered her cheek and her daughter dutifully obliged with a peck.

Ann waved them off. She was not sorry to see them go. They were after all, pampered products of the oppressive capitalist system she had sworn to bring down.

Ann was making her bed when there was a knock on the door.

‘Hi. I’m Sally. Some of us are going to the Union. Do you want to come?’

‘Brilliant.’ Ann replied. ‘I’m Ann by the way. When are you going?’

‘We agreed to meet in the kitchen in half an hour.’

 ‘Cool. Don’t leave without me!’

When Sally left, Ann considered her options. She hadn’t finished making the bed, but on the other hand, she could really do with a shower. ‘Sod it,’ she thought. ‘I’m not going to need the bed anyway!’

Clean and smelling of perfume, Ann locked the door of her room and headed for the kitchen, which was in the middle of the block of flats by the lift.  Seven pairs of eyes met hers.

‘I’m Ann.’ She blurted out. ‘ ‘I know Sally. What are the rest of you called?’

‘I’m Jane,’ the redhead on the end shouted.

‘Jane as well’

‘Kellie’

‘Natasha’

‘Sheila’

‘Jenny’

‘We’re all here.’ Sally said. ‘Let’s go!’

They filed through the door and called the lift. There was an awkward silence until the lift door opened. They could only just fit in. It was Sheila who broke the ice

‘Nobody fart!.’ They all giggled.

Ann fell in beside Jenny as they left the lift..

‘Where are you from?’ Ann asked.

‘Frome.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Deepest Somerset.’

[back to top]

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday morning.  Mum’ll already be getting stinking at the foundry canteen.  It’s the only saving grace about working at McDonalds full time.  Some shifts don’t start ‘til late morning or early evening.  Today, I start at eleven.  I love being able to have a lie-in.

Trudge to work.  The weather’s cold, the streets are bleak, but at least I’ll be on time.  Still, there’d be no excuse for lateness on an eleven o’clock shift.  The smell of burnt fat from the rear of the kitchens wafts around the corner even before I can see my work place, invading my nostrils and adding more inches of grease to my already greasy hair.

Another shift over.  Eleven hours of stinking drudgery.  Eleven hours of another day gone forever.  “Don’t think backwards.  Think about what you’re striving for.  Financial security, that’s what I’m after.”  Her last thoughts as she turns out the light on another day.

THURSDAY

Tossing and turning all night, Wendy didn’t achieve much in the way of rest during the dark hours.  Drifting into fitful sleep around four a m, she was just in time to miss out on the ever-increasing crescendo of the dawn chorus.

As she staggered, bleary eyed and tousle haired, down the threadbare stair carpet to the kitchen, a resolve formulated in her mind.  She didn’t want this.  This job, this future, this life!  She knew now that she wanted more.  More job satisfaction, more promise for the future, more out of life.  And how would she achieve this?  The reality was, she didn’t have a clue.  What she did know was she would need a change of scene to kick things off.  That was it!  She’d go away!

Snatching a slice of toast and a cup of Tesco instant, Wendy scribbled a hasty note for her mum, just so’s she wouldn’t worry, telling her she was taking a ‘holiday’.  Then, throwing a few essentials into a scuffed overnight bag, she made her way briskly down the street, heading in the general direction of the bus station.

On the way, she stopped off at the ‘hole in the wall’ to withdraw some cash.  At least she had some savings, because she had been saving for months for a little run-around.  Nothing flash, just something that would get her from a to b.  That’d have to wait now!

Because she hadn’t a clue about where she wanted to go, she formulated a plan.  Today, she would climb aboard the first coach that pulled up after she arrived at the bus station.  That would determine the first stage for her.  But to make things even more intriguing, wherever she landed, she would make her way to the nearest rail station and do exactly the same there, allowing the imminent surprise arrival to determine her direction and final destination.

What then?  She was buggered if she knew.  Maybe a job search, maybe not.  Let destiny settle the next step.

Wendy didn’t even look to see what the electronic legend on the front of the coach said, and therefore had no idea even in what direction she was headed.  But it didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that she was doing something.  Hopefully constructive, certainly exciting, definitely scary.

And as the coach rumbled into the future carrying with it it’s precious cargo, Wendy drifted in and out of sleep, thankfully helping to catch up on the lack of sleep she had experienced from the previous night.

The monotonous drone of tyres on tarmac and whistling windows had a soporific effect.  Wendy was out cold when the coach careered to a swerving halt a few hundred miles from her home.  And thanks to a tired, weary driver who failed to see her slumped uncomfortably along one of his rear seats, that was where she would stay until early the following morning!

FRIDAY

Wendy stirred, opened one eye and yawned. Stretching arms and legs, she looked around. Where the hell? Dawning came with a mixture of both horror and relief. Horror at realising she’d slept the night uncomfortably on a coach seat, relief to realise she was ‘holidaying’ and therefore didn’t matter where she was or what she was doing.

            Yawning her way down the aisle, past empty seats and dirty windows, Wendy pushed the button which carried the legend ‘exit’, and stepped down onto tarmac in the cold light of an early morning September chill. Three deep breaths later and Wendy hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, and set off in search of a train.

            The sign indicated a railway station off to the right. That’s the way she walked, not knowing, at this present moment in time just exactly where she was. Enroute, she knew she needed to find breakfast. Wendy was starving. All the shops she passed were closed, it was still so early in the morning. Then, she came upon the exception. Standing on a distant corner was an all-night Esso Station. The thought of ‘fresh’ packaged sandwiches and muffins activated the taste buds and Wendy spat sideways into the gutter. Caught by a gust of early morning breeze, the gob of sputum arced round until it splattered across her chest and thighs in a snail trail of slimy wetness.

            “Oh bugger!” She exclaimed, and vigorously rubbed it in until it took the appearance of just a dark patch. Wendy entered through the automatic doors and scanned the shelves for breakfast.

            Having satisfied the pangs, and pocketed a Mars and a bottle of cola for later, Wendy continued on her way. Rounding one final corner, she was confronted with the railway station. At least she now knew where she was. The sign over the station entrance read ‘KELSO’.

            Now, Wendy wasn’t the brightest crystal in the chandelier, but she had always wanted to travel, and had therefore pawed over maps and looked for all the place names, in the hope of finding somewhere weird sounding. In her British atlas, she had discovered places like Clun in South Wales, Tutts Clump in Berkshire, and Troon in Cornwall. However, the process had enabled a host of names to be imprinted in the back of her memory. And she was fairly sure Kelso was up in Scotland, somewhere south of Edinburgh.

            It was as she attempted to enter the ticket office that she discovered another sign. This one read ‘CLOSED 9 – 16 SEPTEMBER FOR ESSENTIAL REPAIR WORK. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.’

            “Sorry for any inconvenience? Jeez, how the hell am I supposed to catch a train if there ain’t none?” As exasperation and annoyance set in, Wendy sat on the station bench, put her head in her hands and breathed deeply in an attempt to prevent depression.

            “What the heck,” she thought, “I’ll hitch a ride. Can’t be that difficult.” So, with a resolve bordering on enthusiasm, Wendy emerged onto the dual carriageway, stuck out her chest and her thumb, and smiled at the passing motorists.

            Three hours later, disillusioned, cold and tired, Wendy decided to call it a day, maybe find somewhere to stay overnight. Picking up her bag, she stepped away just in time to miss being caught by the nearside wing of a dirty, red Escort, as its tyres squealed in complaint at being subjected to such harsh braking.

            The profuse apologies poured out of the mouth of the culprit as he scrambled out of his door and around the bonnet.

            “Where the hell did you learn to drive? You’re a bloody maniac!”

            “I know, I’m sorry, I was changing the tape see, and I weren’t lookin’.”

            “People like you want lockin’ up!”

            “The road bent and, well, here I am!”

            “Thank God you did stop when you did.”

            “Anyway, what were you doing so close to the kerb?”

            “Trying to hitch a lift, if you must know.”

            “Where you going?”

            “South.”

            “This could be your lucky day…”

----

Fifteen minutes later, Wendy was ensconced comfortably in the passenger seat of Tom’s Escort. She knew his name but nothing else, and spent the next hour chatting, questioning, answering, and eventually, having satisfied her curiosity, dozing.

            The vehicle sped south. Minutes became hours, and as hours passed, both inhabitants became hungry. Picking up sandwiches and drinks, they left the main road and headed into the less charted countryside of Southern Yorkshire.

            Tom had been watching Wendy’s legs and chest out of the corner of his eye, on and off, for miles. As they pulled in to a secluded lay-by, apparently to have lunch, he could hold back no longer. Making a grab for Wendy’s left breast, Tom leant in for a kiss and pushed her jumper up, exposing soft, warm flesh. He rammed her back against the passenger door, taking Wendy totally by surprise! Wendy shouted something incoherent as his hand clamped firmly over her mouth, fingers digging into her cheeks.

            “Shut up, bitch!” he shouted. “You teasing cow!” as he unclipped the door latch and shoved her roughly out onto the damp grass. Climbing over the passenger seat, Tom practically leapt onto Wendy’s prone body, pinning her to the ground. Straddling her torso, and holding her arms down with a vice like grip, he reached under her skirt, grabbed a handful of knickers and simply tore them painfully off, whilst attempting to remain seated on the bucking Wendy.

            One brutal slap sent her head sideways and she lay still, quiet, unconscious.

----

When she came to, about an hour later, she was alone. Alone, cold, and in great pain and discomfort. She felt she’d been torn apart, covered in blood and other bodily fluids as she was! The tears wouldn’t come, but inside, her whole being was screaming!

            Wendy remained in this state until, a few hours later, wrapped for comfort and warmth in a blanket in the interrogation room, she totally broke down into the shoulder of W.P.C. Williams. She remained in protective custody that night, only because she had nowhere else to go. Thankfully, by the following morning, she had accepted the inevitable, and hopefully put the sexual encounter behind her.

SATURDAY

Having spent the night safely in a Wetherby police cell, Wendy was deposited safely onto the Euston express. It was not until she was safely ensconced into her window seat, did WPC Williams say, “Good luck, and keep safe,” and stepped onto the platform, leaving Wendy to wend her way south on the next leg of her journey home.

            Left alone with her thoughts, it was all Wendy could do to keep the events from the previous twenty-four hours from edging into her consciousness. She watched the fields, the trees and the cows whip past, as the train hurtled on its way. So desperately trying to occupy her mind with today’s scenery and tomorrow’s surprises, yesterdays encounter with Tom kept creeping in from the secret depths of her eighteen year old brain.

            Like the ramblings of a demented old woman, Wendy’s imagination wouldn’t let up. No sooner had she escaped to some fantasy world where everything was pink, sunny and ‘nice,’ she would have her thoughts snatched up and dragged back to the reality of stormy happenings and violent incidents.

            “Why did it happen to me? I didn’t ask for it, didn’t egg anybody on. All I did was accept a lift.”

            Her alter ego answered back.

            “Ah, but the lift was from a stranger!”

            “But he was such a nice stranger. Well dressed, clean, polite.”

            “Not polite enough.”

            “I’ve never done nuffing wrong, nuffing to ask for that!”

            “That’s what you think.”

            “Mum knows I’m not like that. She understands. She’s experienced life. She’ll know…”

            “She knows jack! If bad can happen, it will!”

            This internal conversation went on and on, and Wendy was becoming more and more agitated as the miles rumbled away beneath her. It was almost as if she was being carried towards her Nemesis, rather than away from Kelso, Yorkshire and the reality of the nightmare.

            As the train sped passed Grantham, Wendy re-lived the first assault on her body. A sharp intake of breath was the only giveaway to the groping hands fondling her upper torso. She wrestled her thoughts back to the present.

            Passing Stevenage, Wendy’s dream took her to the dreadful landing on the grass as Tom pushed her roughly out of the car. As the cold engulfed her, the rumble of the train over ill-fitting points brought her back to reality.

            Wendy tried reading the newspaper she had picked up before boarding the express. Concentrate! Could she hell! She saw the hand raise, and as it landed, the jerk of her head as it lolled against the cold, vibrating carriage window did more than bring her fully alert. She actually relived the final moment of Tom’s assault, something she hoped would never happen, considering her unconscious state at the time of the attack.

            Her involuntary scream turned a few heads. Wendy buried her face in her hands, successfully hiding the stream of tears, as her body was racked with sobs, and her shoulders hunched in submission of the inevitable. She was to stay like this, drifting in and out of fitful sleep for the remainder of the journey to London.

            As the ten carriages eased to a standstill at the end of the line, alongside platform three, Wendy was a total, nervous wreck. She needed therapy, and she needed it fast. But what would be the best therapy for this. She had thought of counselling. The Yorkshire Police had recommended that. How about losing herself in booze? Its never really done her any good in the past, so why would it now? That leaves food and shopping. She’d never been a big eater, so shopping it would be. A new outfit or two, something feminine but full. Don’t be too provocative. It’d attract less attention on the streets.

            That has sorted tomorrow, a Sunday shopping spree to take her mind off things could be just what Wendy needs right now. Roll on tomorrow.

SUNDAY

Sunday morning crept slowly from the dark to the not-quite light. Wendy drifted from one hour to the next, and nothing much changed. But she was looking forward to her shopping therapy.

            On waking fully, Wendy, for the first time in her life, climbed out of her bed, knelt by its side, placed her palms together, closed her eyes, and prayed. She didn’t know what made her do it. Maybe it was what had been said at her police interview, maybe it was her conscience, following another nights sleep. But it happened!

            Wendy soaked for almost an hour in a foam-filled, steamy bath into which she submersed herself fully. Lying as she was for all that time, she was able to reflect on many things.

            Things including her relationship with her mother; never ideal, often strained, always conflicting to a point.

            Things including her ambitions; never over-stretching, often shallow she realised, always changing.

            Things including her outlook on life; never personally enhancing, rarely varied, always selfish.

            All this seemed to emanate from the curling, swirling steam, which enveloped her reclining form. The eeriness of the almost ghostly surroundings in which she was the centrepiece, lent themselves to many such thoughts over that hour. And as the water cooled, the steam dispersed or condensed, and her fingertips wrinkled, Wendy knew that she must change, or had changed, and that her next destination that day, after breakfast, would be Church.

---

            Entering the cold, dimly lit, vaulted emptiness of the local Baptist Church, Wendy had strange churning feelings of almost hypnotic and trance-like numbness. She sat.

The service started.

The service ended.

Wendy had apparently heard not a word, being, as she was, engulfed in a feeling of self-guilt and shame, and submerged in her own deep feelings of her recent trauma.

It would, however, inevitably become apparent that the Reverend Matthews’ words had sunk in on a subconscious level. Reverend Matthews’ words were like that. Subconsciously or not, he had a manner about him that endeared him to anyone who happened to be within earshot.

Shaking his hand as she stepped out into the ‘warmth’ of a chill September morning, the pleasantries that were exchanged were to shape her life yet again. The simple “Good morning, I haven’t seen you here before, have I?” breathed in hushed, caring tones by the minister, brought immediate tears to Wendy’s eyes, and her countenance collapsed as she broke down on the steps of the Church.

Two hours later, hands cupping her third mug of Reverend Matthews’ tea, Wendy continued to pour out her tale of rail, road and rape to the wonderfully sympathetic preacher. By mid afternoon, she had been invited to a bible study class on the following Thursday evening, to which she had given a tentative yes, and had also agreed to attend next Fridays coffee morning, in the hope that meeting others with more faith than she, might help to overcome some of her inner demons that raged on unhindered in her mind.

Sunday hadn’t gone according to plan. But it had gone, and gone well. Maybe some shopping therapy tomorrow.

MONDAY

Monday morning dawned bright and cold. Wendy yawned, stretched and pondered her busy week’s schedule whilst perched on the pan, taking a long, leisurely dump.

            Today she’ll be shopping. She was certainly looking forward to that.

            Tomorrow, she is to be therapeutically questioned by a new shrink, the arrangement of which had been made up in Yorkshire.

            Thursday evening, Bible study! What was she thinking about?

            Friday morning, coffee morning. What was she really thinking about?

            Still, a busy week, and it starts right here, right now. Cleaning herself off, Wendy carefully selected warm clothes and prepared herself for the High Street onslaught.

 ---

Dodging the crowds and the crowding individuals, Wendy side-stepped from one collision course to another in an effort to avoid collision. It felt busier than it should for a September Monday.

            The crowds encroached, more than she realised, closer than she expected. But the oppression was actually lost on Wendy, who only had eyes for the windows. She was being shadowed, secretly, expertly. Totally unaware of the proximity of the stalker, Wendy continued to meander from window to window, shop to shop, street to street. As time passed, her burden grew heavier as from each shop, she acquired yet another package or carrier bag. Her purse, however, was growing thinner.

            And still she was aware of nothing, of no-one keeping tabs on her, of no-one boring into the back of her head with steely eyes intent on reading her inner-most thoughts, trying desperately to become one with her soul, but from afar.

            Feeling satisfied with her purchases, Wendy made her very long, weary way home. She let herself in through the front door, dropped her bags in the hallway, and after flexing ten very sore digits, shrugged off her coat, kicked off her shoes, and ascended the stairs, with the intention to fill a bath for a relaxing soak.

            Emptying her bags across the bed, Wendy slipped out of her clothes, sauntered naked along the hall to run the bath, and returned to the bedroom. Picking up her hairbrush, Wendy stood in front of the mirror and before running the bristles through her tresses, inspected her body, boobs and other bits. She had to admit her struggle to look at her pubic region must have had something to do with the atrocities to her cunt she had so recently had to endure! It had certainly left her almost afraid to consider intimacy ever again.

            Her tits were a different matter altogether. She was proud of them. Small but firm. Pert brown nipples, which puckered readily in the light draught from the slightly open window. She shivered. The window must be closed. Reaching up to stem the flow of cool air from outside, Wendy stood, unwittingly in full, naked view of the street below.

            In the street below, with a clear view of Wendy’s window, stood a shadowy figure, with a sneer on his face, with half closed eyes, with his hand closed around his rigid member. Leering! Wanking!

            Turning away from the drawn curtains, Wendy bathed and retired for the night, ready for tomorrows psycho meeting, unaware of her sated voyeur as he made his way down the road.

TUESDAY

The day arrived. Wendy was half dreading it, yet half hopeful of the day’s outcome. She had accepted the offered help, and would be attending the first appointment with a counsellor later that morning. She knew it was necessary, and believed it would help. Help her and, who knows, maybe in the long term, help many others.

            Wendy had appreciated all the help, advice and guidance she had so far been given. So much so, she had begun to wonder if, given enough, would she be able to become one of the givers? It wasn’t that Wendy was complex. In fact, she was the most uncomplicated person one could meet. It was this trait that could help Wendy into a new job, a job unparalleled by anything she had ever done, or even considered doing, before. After all, who better to counsel victims, than a victim, one who truly understands. The first step was to be her counsellor, just a train ride away.

            Entering the underground system at East Finchley, Wendy jostled with the multitude of commuters for a place on the escalator, and a place on the platform.

            Edging along with the crowd was another passenger. A passenger who seemed determined to gain access to the same carriage as Wendy’s. He had dark hair, brown eyes. His name was Tom!

            Tom’s obsession had started five days ago. Having perpetrated a totally illegal sexual encounter, Tom left the crime scene but soon realised how much he actually liked everything about her, little realising that he actually knew nothing. Although he had burned his bridges, he became determined to make further contact. However, by the time he had returned, Wendy was with the police, so following at a discreet distance, hiding where necessary and where possible, Tom stalked to the police station, Kelso railway station, and eventually, Euston. It wasn’t easy, but by pre-empting her every move, and driving like a maniac, Tom discovered where she lived, and leaned of some of her daily routines.

            The waiting commuters stood shoulder to shoulder, staring across the tracks at adverts for last year’s show, or the latest album by Katherine Jenkins, or at thirty-seven ‘EAST FINCHLEY’ signs stretching into the darkened distance.

            A welcome breeze blew up from that same distance, wafting hair across brows. As the train approached, the air ahead of it was pushed forcibly along the tunnel until, with a loud sigh, the 10.16 breezed to an abrupt halt and opened its doors. Without waiting for full evacuation, the congregation crowded forward, funnelling into the carriage like sheep.

            The underground resembled its usual self. Multi-racial, multi-national, multi-nauseous! A large group of Japanese tourists hustled along the platform and in through the train doors. The only difference that made it London underground rather than the Tokyo bullet was the lack of passenger pushers. The carriage became more and more cramped, people squeezing in through little gaps between adjacent passengers, claustrophobic spaces getting more claustrophobic with every passing second.

            With a ‘Mind the gap’ and a ‘Stand clear of the doors’, all doors hissed together, sealing the passengers in like sardines. One of those sardines was Wendy.

            Squashed into the narrow seats, the passengers wobbled and rocked in unison, as the carriages swayed and vibrated around bends and over points. Wendy tried to read the underground map route opposite. She couldn’t. All movements, vibrations, and fluctuating lighting made sure of that. Thank God for tannoy announcements. At least she now knew the next station was hers.

            Preparing to disembark, Wendy gathered her belongings together. Looking around her, searching the crowd for a space to move into, she started to stand. Within a matter of seconds, a number of things happened. Firstly, all the lighting flashed off and on rapidly before reverting to a dim emergency glow. Simultaneously, Wendy saw a reincarnation of a living nightmare!

            She would have recognised that face, hair, voice, anything about him. Anytime, any place. Her experience had imprinted itself indelibly on her consciousness, and there was no escaping it. Standing opposite her was Tom!

            Coincidence or planned stalking? She liked to think it was pure coincidence, but would never be sure, because finally, the scream of metal on brick, plastic on concrete, leather on wood, flesh on glass, accompanied the sound of wheels jumping the tracks, sending sparks spraying in all directions, lighting the dimmed scene with a stroboscopic kaleidoscope of colour and noise she had never before experienced.

            No sooner had it started, it was over. For a moment, there was silence. An eerie silence that always follows. First a moan here, a scream there, a window gave up and tinkled to the tracks. The incongruous ringing of a crushed mobile phone brought Wendy back to reality!

            Trapped. Pinned fast where she sat, and there, facing her, not four feet away, was Tom; motionless, leering, glazed eyes staring straight ahead, seeing nothing. It was then her fear and loathing collapsed along with her control, and her anal muscles involuntarily relaxed too much! As Wendy defecated into her knicker gusset, the sour stench of shit began to mingle with the unmistakeable, and irreversible aroma of death!

            The minutes that followed seemed to last for hours. It was the quietest, noisiest silence anyone could imagine. The stillness was absolute. Even the floating, settling dust appeared not to be moving. A stationary movement of everything, of nothing, of time-lapse, time lapsed. Time stood still. The eerie silence was too absolute, and yet! And yet, it wasn’t silence. The noise all around was actually deafening. The screams, moans, breaking glass, falling masonry, the noise of a multitude of death-throws as another piece of humanity falls. Or fails. Another one who couldn’t hold on any longer!

            And sirens! Yes, there were sirens, and shouts. Shouts of encouragement, shouts of despair, shouts of discovery, of relief, of overwhelming joy.

            Rescue was at hand!

            For those who were already dead, what would it matter? And for those who were dieing, what would it really matter? But there were people, victims, who weren’t dead, who would survive, who would have the opportunity to tell the tale to their grandchildren forty years from now.

            It was for those poor survivors that the rescuers were fighting. Minute by minute, brick by brick, limb by bloody limb, they laboriously freed one after another, until it was Wendy’s turn.

            Wendy was trapped fast, but was soon freed. Surprisingly, and luckily, she escaped with barely a scratch to her bleach-white skin. Alas, it was not so for her soul. Some might say it wasn’t surviving, but survive she did. Scarred for years, if not her whole life, thanks to not only the gross, sexual encounter with Tom in Yorkshire, but also to the totally non-sexual re-encounter with Tom on the train, at the point of impact.

            His demeanour, the eyes, the leer, would probably be with her forever!

            She would have to fight it!

[back to top]

WEDNESDAY

Get out! Come on, man! You gotta get out!

      Fumbling for the door catch. Something sticky in his eyes. Blood! The pounding in his head like it’d been split open with an axe.

      Senses dulled by … The pungent smell of hash in his nostrils, the inside of the Porsche thick with it. And something else.

      Jesus Christ! Gotta get out!

      Hands flapping uselessly like the wings of a stricken bird at the licks of flame nipping at his legs. Panic!

      Help me! For fuck’s sake, help me!

      Then the door was open and he was thrashing about on the ground. Arms and legs working overtime, scrabbling clear.

      The fierce whump! as the fuel lines caught and the petrol tank went up, heat scalding his face. Still thrashing, beating at his smouldering jeans.

      Darren Pinder’s eyes shot open. The bed was a mess and he was drenched in sweat. The same dream. He gently fingered the puckered scar tissue above his left eye. Proof that it’d really happened. Living proof, actually, that there was no turning back the clock, that the other scars, the ones he couldn’t touch and which would never heal, were equally real.

      “’s alright, girl.”

      Skelly was crouched on the floor, thin body quivering, eyes wide with fear. Darren stretched out a hand, fondled her head.

      “Come ‘ere.”

      Back on the bed, Skelly arched into the curve of his body. They lay watching the dawn come up, the first hazy rays of light probing at the grime-smeared glass, while Darren sniffed back the tears as the misery took hold of him, sobbed his anguish for what had been taken from him.

      The squat was midway along a terrace of jerry-built sixties dwellings, boarded up and empty, waiting in drab silence for the contractors to turn up and flatten them. Fresh out of nick and restored to his old stamping ground, Darren’d chanced on them three months earlier. On a tour of inspection, he’d come across a drooping figure moping in one of the bedrooms. Whether she’d been dumped or her owners moved away, he didn’t know. He’d fed her up, brought her back to health, lavished what love he had left to give on her.

      They left via the back door and slipped through a gap in the fence at the bottom of the tangled mass of vegetation that had once been a garden.

      Cutting through the council estate, Darren couldn’t help but notice the brace of red-stripes and the anonymous white Transit parked outside the main block of flats. Drugs raid, he reckoned. He imagined heavy boots pounding up the concrete stairwell, doors stoved in, flats ransacked. They might get lucky, but he doubted it. Soon as they’d gone it’d be business as usual.

      He passed a group of youths kicking a football around on a patch of waste ground. At their age, he’d been out nicking cars, turning a tidy profit. And a shitload of trouble it’d got him into. Fragments of the dream flickered in his head – afterwards, in the hospital ward, policemen round his bed, then the three-stretch. He shut it off there, couldn’t face the rest.

      “Oi, mate. What’s a nice dog like that doing with an ugly sod like you?” One of the youths called out to him. The group dissolved into raucous laughter.

      Darren felt the tremors welling up red-hot inside him, bubbling close to the surface. They’d taught him how to handle it in prison, after the nonces and hardmen’d finished with him. Lowering his head, he quickened his pace, away from the danger zone.

      Duane had already opened up when he arrived at the workshop, a radio blaring out an R and B number from inside.

      A Mondeo with mock leopard skin seat covers and no hubcaps stood half-mounted on the pavement, nosed up to the rear-end of a rust-ridden Corsa.

      Duane grinned a mouthful of Daz-white teeth. “Mornin’, ma man.”

      He bent down to stroke Skelly’s head. “You puttin’ on weight, girl.”

      Darren tentatively asked the question. Any work?

      Duane jerked a thumb at the open workshop door. “Subaru. Up on the ramp. She all yours, man.”

      Darren’s brow arched. “What’s the problem?”

      Duane was already climbing into the Corsa. “Fuck do I know? You the mechanic.”

      It was an arrangement that suited the pair of them – Duane, because it helped him out of a bind when he had more cars than he could manage on his own, and it put a few quid in Darren’s pocket.

      When he’d pitched up one day looking for work, Duane’d listened then given him the steely eye. “Sure, I could use some of that expertise you have with motors. But on the right side of the law. You hear what I’m saying?”

      Shrugging into a set of oil-stained overalls, he started checking out the Subaru.

      By mid-afternoon, he’d done for the day. Duane slipped him a few notes, told him that Thursday and Friday both looked good. He stopped off at a phone booth to make a call, then spent half an hour killing time over a pint of lager in a spit-and-sawdust dive off the high street.

      He retraced his steps through the council estate. The red-stripes had gone but there were several uniforms dotted about and, in the distance, he spotted a posse in dark overalls, line abreast, scouring a large area of open ground.      Avoiding them, he headed for the hump of a skateboard ramp standing on a patch of concrete littered with empty vodka bottles and discarded syringes. A girl in her early teens was leaning nonchalantly against one of the supports. She held out her hand. He knew the rules – cash first, then the goods.

      “Where’s Luke?”

      The girl shrugged like she couldn’t care less. “Fuck knows, but he ain’t around. Bin missing since yesterday. ‘is mum’s reported it.” Her eyes took in the scattered police presence.

      Darren nodded. Luke and the girl were mules. The punter called the dealer and they did the carrying. Less risk to the dealer. They were expendable, he wasn’t.

      He parted with his earnings from Duane, palmed the tiny foil package.

      On his way back to the squat, he began to plan his evening. Something to eat, then out again. Skelly needed to run, to stretch out those long legs of hers. And he needed to watch her go, to marvel at the power and speed.

      After that, oblivion.

[back to top]

WEDNESDAY

Sandy flicked a strand of black hair away from her eyes and stretched out on the sofa. She should have been dressed and ready for work ages ago. As she moved a photograph slipped to the floor. She immediately bent down to pick it up. She propped it up against her knees so she could look at it once more. The photograph had only been in her possession since the previous night but despite that, and staring at every inch of it for hours she was still mesmerised by it.

The photograph was taken by a disposable camera and then quickly developed using the kiosk available at Tesco. Despite the simplicity of the camera, the picture in front of her was perfectly developed. A young man occupied the fore of the picture. He had long dark hair, similar to hers, which was tied back in a ponytail. Unlike long hair on most men, which usually looked wispy and frankly silly, this looked lusciously thick and suited him. As she continued to scruntinize the photograph her stomach did a sudden flip, as it had done last night when she had looked at the photograph for the first time. She had learned that his name was Tam and decided that this suited him as well.

The phone ringing brought her back to the present.  The answer machine clicked in, it was Jon, her colleague asking if she was ok. It was gone 10.00pm and as a rule Sandy never missed work. She was never really poorly enough to warrant a day off and although there were times when she felt like simply skiving, she was far too conscientious for all of that. But today was different and Sandy knew she wasn’t going to go into work. Hauling herself from the sofa she made a couple of quick phone calls. Deciding against returning Jon’s call, she followed the formal procedure of calling in sick and rang both her manager and personnel. Fortunately the call to her manager went onto voicemail and she didn’t have to go through the effort of relying fake symptoms.

Picking up a pad, she returned back to the sofa. She needed a way of introducing herself to the man in the photo. But she wasn’t sure of the approach. She had been separated at birth from her twin brother and had never set eyes on him until now. She couldn’t be sure that he knew she existed. She wasn’t sure that he would want to know that she existed. But for Sandy she was desperate to recognise him as her family, to at last feel belonged.

She had spent years looking for her twin brother. She knew she had one, without ever really been told about him. It was just instinct. She had after all shared a womb with him for 9 months. She couldn’t really remember her earliest years but subsequent foster carers told her that she had been in a children’s home. Her foster carers had in the main been nice but weren’t any substitution for a real family. She emerged from adolescent into a capable woman, but not really having the confidence in herself that she exuded to others. She had gone to college to study finance, standing on her own two feet all the way, and had never looked back. It was as if life had dealt her a harsh blow when she was just a baby decided to compensate by providing her with a blessed life when she was an adult.

Indeed at 28 she had made considerable inroads into the mortgage of the house that she owned and did have a very comfortably lifestyle. But despite all that she craved to know where she had come from. Her birth certificate provided a few clues and the internet when it came enabled her to post details on notice boards. She had one thing in her favour thought. She belonged to a very rare blood group, which made it easy for her to eliminate any false hopes. But for all that frantic energy, in the end she had just stumbled across him, pure and simple by accident, all that happening the previous day.

She was in too much turmoil to think of a cohesive plan and when darkness fell that evening, Sandy had fallen into an exhaustive sleep on the sofa without any firm ideas. Unfortunately for Sandy when she awoke Thursday morning there wasn’t any question of not going into work. The auditors were in today and she needed to be there.

[back to top]

WEDNESDAY

I don’t know what he was. A kind of double-cousin, I think. As close in blood to my mother as a brother because they were linked through both parental lines. Jacob’s parents married my mother’s parents. The two pairs of siblings hit it off and married on the same day - and their joint matrimony would have stayed ideal for at least a year, I imagine, apart from Jacob’s father being killed inside a month of the wedding. That was in 1914, when a sniper chipped off the side of his head.

Perhaps not a double-cousin then, but a second-cousin twice over. I could think of him as a first cousin. This first cousin, blessed with a horde of equidistant relatives, cast off the egalitarian mode and drew lots for his heir. He left everything to me.

I haven’t been to Herefordshire that often. Jacob’s home sits above the Wye, nestled between trees like a man between accustomed legs, erect and hard, untroubled at being squeezed by beauty. There are wooded slopes in front, crossed by tracks and clearings. And through them, a whole mile and three-hundred feet down, lies the river coiling like a silver snake. Sunlight – burdened with a sagging belly of cloud – peeks beneath like the skin of a girl’s midriff under her top.

I’ve looked around. Jacob had enough tools here to fill a machine shop, and sufficient beer to stock an off-licence. There’s a surfeit of polished wood; the furniture and wainscoting are simply oiled gloom. A chemical toilet stinks, and the sink is made of stone.

What was it he did here, except write letters to the high and mighty, and decline in health with no need for grace? Those letters, perhaps, were enough, though I don’t imagine he intended to be caught in the act of composition. There’s one in a typewriter which, no doubt, he intended to finish except that he haemorrhaged halfway home; liver bleeding into his stomach – paying him back for all that beer. From a liver’s material point of view no good comes of drinking, but Jacob must have known that in vino lies veritas – or possibly for him it lay in several good pints. Most tragic piss-heads end up confessing to friends in some dark and blurred corner, weakened by alcohol into showing more weakness still. But Jacob wanted to confess on paper. Not to sins. No. To passions!

Thursday

London’s dreary as a prison today. I have an attic apartment with picture windows which, fashion accessory as they are, offer mere dirty runnels of water during rain. The glass can’t be cleaned outside without some jerry-rigged platform on ropes, sliding up and down the building like a dumb-waiter stupidly built outdoors.

I’ve been in prison myself, so have some sensible understanding of my analogy. I didn’t enjoy the sweat-stained stillness and moribund incapacity of being forcibly enclosed.

To be like him, to be like Jacob living above the Wye – drunk on sentiment, words and beer – seems to me both desirable and to be another kind of theft – the act which sent me to jail. You can’t live another man’s life, not even with the tools he had to hand. Jacob lived poised between pairs of forces. His writing expressed always one view then the other: problem and resolution. He seems to have lived for balance when all I want is excess.

I remember one diatribe on Loss. Writing to The Times, I think, his regret was for the green fields of England which, Jacob claimed, were an illusion of fecundity because everywhere it’s the same kind of green. But his second letter wasn’t correspondingly about Profligate Nature, but on Epiphany. He weighed against all that lost bio-diversity the mitigation of a single water meadow which he’d found, and had spent a day there watching and listening. Jacob wrote that large scale homogeneity can’t destroy us altogether because it’s the small things, it’s single places that truly resonate and we couldn’t possibly lose them all. Just pick one blade of grass and you’ll be redeemed, he said. Hold it, sweet in the palm of your hand.

It’s all shit, of course. Jacob had plenty of the outdoors and it was that which allowed him to value one blade of grass. Pick a single blade in a dusty prison yard and it’s no escape you’re holding, it’s a beacon shining on what you haven’t got. A penny to a rich man will remind him of wealth. For a poor man, it’s a symbol of paucity. But I’m less poor since inheriting. And I need to consider what I’ve gained.

Therefore I sit, in this eyrie of a flat, where I’m wont to hold parties for the artistic, who themselves are wont to spill wine on the carpet or to become atrociously precious like Camille, who’ll probably beg me to move.

Darling, Camille might say, it would be so perfect, by which she’ll mean, not my getting away from London, but the ease with which we’ll manage surreptitious little fucks while her husband stays in Paddington. She’s always going off for weekends but, as things currently stand, when abandoned he’s as likely to turn up here for a drink and catch us in flagrante as to search further afield for her lover. Camille’s husband is a Londoner through and through. Bed with her in Herefordshire would probably be as safely hidden as if we could have sex in Melbourne for an afternoon.

Friday

Actually, bed with Camille in Herefordshire has proved unusually exhilarating. Not much need for being surreptitious nor for the fuck to be little here. There's nothing rushed about a night together out in the country, nor about the light that's climbed slowly up the hill this morning, like floodwaters rising. Camille has proved something of a revelation.

Let me describe her - as I see her now - framed in the doorway of the bathroom. There's never been anything modest about Camille and, between us after a year of sex, one would have thought no need. But I am moved. The towel circles only her waist, as if she's a man and breasts don't matter. It's a honey-coloured material, and she has that way with it girls learn early but men never learn at all, of fastening the edges so securely she can swing her waist and swirl it like a skirt and you'd never see it drop - not however so much you yearned.

Her breasts are not a girl's. Weight and age have done just enough to make it clear she's mature, but nothing like enough to make her unattractive. The hair under her arms, if she let it grow which she hasn't done for months, is an oddly soft brown, tufted rather than curled. It's lighter than the hair of her head, which is long and straight and so close to black it has to be seen in sunlight to convince you it's brown at all.

That thing about women and their never-ending need for love: in her it's balanced by a fluid grace. What she takes is only what she deserves. And I have allowed myself to be taken, like a chess-piece enjoying the capture, not expecting the relationship to last more than a month but she - finding something unexpected in me - has stayed around. So now we'll be confronted by choices.

As I said, Camille and I came down here last night. She turned up at the flat - my high, attic paradise - and asked to be whisked away. I think she must have been enchanted by my stories about Jacob. I did phone her when I was here on Wednesday, and gave out the whole picture. I can imagine how it worked. She's not exactly un-bereft in her main relationship, so I was a trigger - like a slice of sunlight under her door - and she saw a means of escape. Almost forced me down here. Fucked me with determination. Told me, just before she went for that shower, that she wants to remain.

I do not, of course, quite imagine that she means with me. It appears that I am the owner of a bolthole. Not for myself, but for Camille.

Saturday

Ian was waiting when I got back - bum firmly on the floor, back to my door, wrapped in a long black coat that I swear he's had since we were students. Someone would have called the police if mine wasn't the only flat up here on the final layer of this tower of Babel, reaching one inch toward Heaven.

"She's gone again," he said.

Ten o'clock, and the sun was shining through a thin, vertical window onto the landing. I'd already had my keys out as I walked the last flight - because the lift stops under here - ready for bed after a night spent mostly not asleep. But here was Camille's husband, asking me for comfort.

"Oh where, oh where has your little wife gone, " I said, in nursery rhyme tones. Uncharitable I know, but I made up for it by offering him an early morning snifter. Brandy is Ian's thing. He's an expensive bugger to have around and, if he wasn't unknowingly paying for it by sharing Camille, I'd be less sharing myself but probably more good to him.

He lay down on the settee, as if it was him who'd been up all night though, to be fair, he probably had been with less good reason than me. Ian's in his mid-thirties but looks just the bad side of fifty. He doesn't shave. His washing is perfunctory, especially when he's got the blues on, and I'd swear from the smell of him that all he's done this morning is roll deodorant over sweat.

If I could remember how to feel guilty, I'd be doubled-up with remorse. But there's the rub - the centre of being me - if someone has fucked you over you don't learn empathy for other poor victims, you learn how to be cruel yourself. I remember hearing once about how the Jews behaved in Auschwitz. At roll call, each had to wear a little red cap or be shot without it. If a Jew didn't like someone, he'd steal his cap. And if your cap was stolen, the only way out was to steal another man's - so the process went like a wave rolling around the barracks until dawn. And the last man without a cap was out, so to speak.

Being cruel to Ian isn't what I want to do. We were friends before he became pathetic, and he wasn't pathetic until Camille started being independent. But women have this power, you see, to pull male bonding apart like picking the petals off a daisy.

"Know where she is?" he asked.

"Camille's a mystery."

"Does she ever," he said, arms like a folded breastplate, eyes on the ceiling like a statue of a knight on the cover of a tomb, "come to you? When she needs help, I mean. Comfort. You know the kind of thing."

Despite my cruelty, I'm not good at lies. Silence is something I can manage, but when I find myself in situations where silence is as good as confession, it short-circuits my brain and I hesitate, then sound unconvincing, then I'm lost.

He swivelled onto his arse and planted both feet on the floor. In the process, his half-full third Brandy ended up on my poor abused carpet because, as I said days ago, the artistic are wont to spill drinks in this room. And Ian fixed my eye and lost some of his despairing look and told me, really quiet calm:

"You old cunt. I thought she'd be here, but evidently not. Do tell," he said. "Where or where has my little wife gone?"

Sunday

On Sunday, I took Ian's little wife to church. It's not much my kind of thing, but Camille was spooked by a night alone with old Jacob and I wanted to show her the sensible bugger that he was. The truth is, too, that there's not much to do in walking distance of the cottage - even if walking distance is a half dozen miles - so the back pew of a low, whitewashed, un-steepled church seemed a decent bet. It is where Jacob attended, so his ghost should be mollified that we'd been there, except for I don't believe any of that shit and nor does Camille. It was a kind of game we were playing, comforting just for being a game.

I told her Jacob always sat at the back so he could heckle. In truth, I've no idea where he sat. And the priest seemed only marginally impressed by two new members in the congregation. Himself a comfortable, heavy fellow, he smoked a pipe and wore a full black cassock. His sermon was not conducted from a pulpit, but while pacing up and down the aisle between the thirty or so congregation who still had religion but wanted to be told what, exactly, religion was for. For him, apparently, it had something to do with the goodness of humanity trying to save a whale stranded in the Thames.

Camille had hysterics after we left. "What happened to original sin?" she asked.

"Oh, you've got all of that," I replied. "The rest of us only want to rescue whales."

"Isn't the other kind of Whales over there?" She stood pointing. "Do you think we'd be safe over the border?"

Her words stymied me for a moment.

"Ian doesn't know where we are," I said. "And, anyway, from where is this We that's suddenly entered into things?"

The two of us had reached a crossroads. A pair of bridleways, one descending steeply, intersected the other along which we'd walked. Camille turned to face me, huge loop earrings stirring in the breeze, face elfin, eyes appealing and a hand on my lapel which she started to rub with her thumb. "I don't want to go back," she said.

I took the hand and pretended to bite it, but she whispered: "Please."

"It's ok, you can stay here."

She asked: "In return for weekend bonks?"

In the past, from her that would have been a perfectly bald transaction. An agreement of gain for gain, marked perhaps only by a wicked flash of her eyes. But she was going offended on me, as if I should offer more or, possibly, should want more. The We of it hovered in my sight like a migraine. And like many Migraines it didn't hurt, only disturbed my vision.

"What shall we do about Ian?" I asked.

Looking skyward, Camille appeared to search for solutions in the silver-blue dome above. There were two swifts and way, way off, so that it seemed to be rising from the horizon, a lark ascending. His song poured out like the Ralph Vaughan Williams piece, but I thought - Oh God - don't ever let me get romantic again.

Camille said: "Ian does know, actually. I called him last night. He'll be here tomorrow."

Monday

So he came. My old friend Camille's husband flew down to darken us both. I'm not sure when partners and friends become baggage but that's what he was: a weight to be discarded; a song to be forgotten. Consider him, in a wooden chair Jacob had owned, almost medieval in style. It had a crown engraved in wood behind Ian's head. Was it royal? Like a majesty he sat in judgment at Jacob's wooden table, and we just hung around like courtiers, waiting for the king to depart, or his judgment to be passed.

"I'm not entirely displeased," Ian said. "After all..." His voice appeared curiously disturbed, as though he were acting his real life, as though he spoke to make an impression. "...a thief and a tart do deserve one another."

"I lack sympathy," Camille replied.

He wanted to know why she thought he wanted any. Ian explained that sympathy from a tart was like the smell from a fart: unpleasant for a moment but soon it went away. I was keeping silent at one corner of Jacob's table; drinking a bottle of Merlot and distractedly cursing my benefactor for lack of vineyard taste. Ian's rhyming had offended me too. I knew what he was doing. The man was a stream of consciousness. One shouldn't look for structure in Ian's speech, merely filter meaning out of it like filtering water from slime. Camille hadn't loved him for years. I thought I should say that out loud, and I did. Ian didn't seem to mind.

"What I think," he said, turning his eyes on me and raw in his honesty, "is that she wants dishonesty. Camille is chained to a vagrant, can't you feel the chains?" He toasted her, wine glass high to the ceiling so that it caught the rays of Jacob's dull bulb and turned translucent like rose petals in the sun. "She likes the possibility of being absent. Camille enjoys never coming home."

Outside the moon had risen. I sensed it over us, over the house: a ball, or a weight, a fist down-falling. It could smash and fragment us. It could render flesh as bloody pulp. Would Ian be violent? His hands were shaking. The thumbs stroked upward on the bowl of his glass. He was looking at his wife, waiting for some response. Ian is something I'm not: he has the Power of Words. What would one expect from an actor? Ian's got words down so pat he speaks with precision when the rest of us would scream.

"I'm going to bed," he said, and looked at Camille. "I don't suppose you're coming my way?" She stood up and stared at me. I waved my hand to Ian. "After tonight," I said, "Let's forget everything."

He smiled, and I imagined we might still be friends. "How about a picnic?" he asked. "There's a tube from East Finchley at 2pm. I'll tell you where to get off."

Tuesday

Ian spent the night fucking Camille. Somebody tell me how I can resent a man for sleeping with his wife? Then we departed at nine, which is pushing it fine for East Finchley at 2pm. Camille went in his car, and I failed to know what to think. I didn't want to consider. That falling moon had crushed my skull, and the only thought my bleeding pulp of a brain could manage was that the wave of my hand at Ian had given him back his wife.

I remember that the lines of the road seemed to have a brilliant luminosity, like snow at noon, or silver in a jewellers' window. I drove at a hundred or more when I could. I was hoping some cunt of a policeman would stop me. And I'd have kissed his boots if he did.

London's a cesspit of whirling turds. Cars randomly accompanied me in a viscous landscape, chaotic as sewers but streamlined as a jet. I inched forward in queues. Randomly I jumped lanes. I did know my way, but I'd forgotten. My memory had overfilled with the night before, and its overflow dripped onto the road. She'd gone his way, not mine. She opened her legs and in he went – did he? Or maybe they spend the night talking? If so, what did they say? Was I actually mentioned?

The tube at East Finchley is mythical. I couldn't find it on the map, so I parked on some double-yellow, twice accursed line and walked in ever increasing circles until it appeared, halloed, a silhouette of empty, un-dreaming truth.  Camille was already there, standing with Ian by the ticket station, waiting for me to appear. Did they drive faster than my hundred? Was I being outdone, done over, done in?

Fuck them oh fuck it oh God fuck you!

I bought a ticket and went to kiss Camille on the lips. She turned her head so that I caught her cheek. Her skin felt hard.

In the carriage.  In the carriage she sits by me. It's not clear what's happening. Ian's got some kind of basket of food on the seat at his side but when did he find that? How could he achieve the goal of a mythical last meal? Camille is sitting close enough for the side of her body to touch mine. The train rattles. It clacks. It thumps up through the floor. It's a grooved machine running on grooves greased like a pig. No-one catches the pig. No-one holds onto the girl. She's a bloom: blossoming: banging those who call for her. If Superman came to save us, would he choose me or Ian? I find that I hope it would be Ian.

The train has been above ground, sunlight horizontal through its windows before the world ceases to turn. I feel it coming as a creeping power, a sense of light, a red tinge to the orange of the coming night. It takes Camille like a lion's mouth. Bites off her face but makes me love her more. Have you seen a girl without her face? Ever understood that men give women their face?

The moon's fallen like a fist on me. It's like a fist on Ian too.

Neither of us knows. Not one of us knows what to do.

WEDNESDAY

David stared into the mirror and looked at the expensive, Baroni, 2-button jacket. It suited his dark complexion and chiselled features. He looked like he’d stepped out of a catalogue.

“How much?”

The shop assistant frowned beneath his bushy eyebrows and flicked the end of the tape measure, hanging around his neck. Dave knew he shouldn’t have asked. People with money didn’t bother with prices. Unfortunately, he was not a person with money. The agency wasn’t doing as well as he hoped.

He’d left his well-paid job on the police force and set up his own Private Investigation Company just over a year ago. In that time, he’d built up a good reputation. Pity the jobs were all small adultery cases or missing persons that didn’t want to be found. He would love a big high-profile job. A nice, juicy murder case would be great.

David made his excuses to the increasingly impatient shop assistant removed the Italian jacket, slung his tatty, olive green corduroy coat casually over his shoulder and left the designer shop. He strolled down the high street back to his small office above the Post Office.

Even though it was mid-afternoon the staircase up to his office was dark and dingy. Dave pressed the light switch. It gave him five seconds to get to the top. He took the stairs two at a time and came to an abrupt halt at the glass-panelled door.  Someone was in the office. The light went out pitching him into darkness. The sultry silhouette moved toward the door.

He watched her reach for the door handle. Took a deep breath and swung the door open.

“How did you get in?”

“Mrs Duckworth from the Post Office downstairs let me in.”

Dave nodded. He was going to have to do something about Mrs Duckworth. She may rent him the office but that didn’t give her permission to let all and sundry in without even asking. What if he’d been out on location working undercover? This woman would have had the run of the office all day, and there were highly confidential files in here. He stared at the woman’s short denim skirt, red fishnet tights and furry pink boots.

 Dave hoped he’d locked the filing cabinet. He shut the door, threw his coat on the coat rack in the corner, put his hand in his trouser pocket and nonchalantly walked over to the filling cabinet. He tried the top draw. Good. It was locked. He retrieved the key from his desk and put it in his pocket, making a mental note to himself not to leave it in the office again. The woman watched silently. Dave sat down.

“Take a seat.” He waved at the plastic blue chair behind her.

The woman put her gold sequined handbag on his desk, dragged the chair closer, sat down and crossed her legs.

Dave reckoned she must be in her early twenty’s, probably worked in a bar, as she stunk of fags and stale beer.

“So, How can I help you?”

“Are you David Kingsley, Private Investigator?”

“That’s what it says on the door.” He pointed to the backward gold lettering that could be visibly seen through the frosted glass.

“I need to hire a P. I.”

“I thought as much,” Dave nodded. “Your husband’s having an affair.”

The woman giggled. “No. I’m not married.”

Dave watched, as her heaving cleavage bounced up and down in her fuchsia top, like a Mexican wave. He frowned. She wants him to check out her pimp.

“What exactly is your problem?” Dave picked up a notebook, slid the pen out of the spiral binder and leant back in his extravagant, black leather swivel chair.

“The police suspect my Mum of murder. She’s been arrested.”

Dave sat up. “I need to take a few details. Let’s start at the beginning. What’s your name?”

“Suzie McClain but my friend’s call me ‘Fluffy’.”

She giggled again and Dave waited for her breasts to subside.

Dave wrote in his notebook, ‘Suzie ‘Fluffy’ McClain.’

“Your mother’s name?”

“Kate McClain.”

“When was she arrested?”

“Yesterday.”

Dave stared at Suzie’s face. Beneath the thick layer of make-up and false eyelashes, she had puffy eyes, as though she’d been crying all night. And the water works were about to start again. He pushed the box of tissues toward her. She took one and blew her nose loudly.

“Mum was the last to see Aunt Hilda alive and she was the one who discovered her battered body,” sniffed Suzie. She wanted to help them as much as she could. She trusted them. But then you can’t trust the bloody pigs.” She blew her nose again and looked for a dustbin to throw away the soggy tissue.

Dave indicated the rusty, metal dustbin beside the desk with a nod of his head. She disposed of the tissue and helped herself to another one.

“Three days later she’s arrested for Aunt Hilda’s murder. Her own sister. Mum wouldn’t murder her sister. She wouldn’t murder anyone. They’ve made a terrible mistake. Meanwhile, the killer’s still out there and they might do it again.”

“How’s she pleading?”

“Innocent of course. She’s not going to bleeding confess to a crime she didn’t commit.”

“I will agree to take the case. We’ll have to arrange an interview with your mother at the police station and I’ll need to know who’s dealing with the situation.”

“O.K.”

“Now my prices are £100 per hour plus expenses, non-negotiable and although this initial consultation is free. If you wish to continue I need the first £100, cash upfront.”

Suzie took a roll of twenty pound notes out of her gold sequined bag, counted out five and handed them to Dave. I’ll see you here tomorrow, ten thirty to discuss what I’ve found so far.

When Suzie had left, Dave picked up the phone and rang his sister, Lucy. She worked for the local paper and may be able to shed some inside information on the McClain case. Tonight, he also had to stake out a client’s husband whose wife was worried he was having an affair.

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WEDNESDAY

Dick awoke with a start.  Where was he?  He sat up in his bunk and banged his head on the deck beam above. He swore, and only then did he begin to put two and two together and realise that he was back again in his home for the summer.  His uncle had more or less kicked him out of his mother’s council house in Henley and now he had to suffer the ups and downs, cold and heat, of kipping below decks on one of the large pleasure boats that ply the Thames. In reality it was much more convenient staying on-board. It avoided a five mile cycle ride twice a day and kept him in his own company which he loved. It was other people who were the problem – always other people.

He stumbled out of his sleeping bag and went to the galley to find breakfast.  This was one of the perks of living on board; being able to cook pretty much what he liked. Today he thought about bacon sarnies, one of his favourites, though all he could actually face was a large mug of tea. The silence told him that no-one else was aboard yet, though his head throbbed away wildly.  That was pretty much usual early in the morning. He couldn’t remember how much he’d drunk last night, or even where he had been drinking.  As for whether it was Wednesday or Thursday – well that would have been a very difficult question, even if it had entered his head.

Dick felt a bit better after breakfast, and soon the skipper and mate arrived and getting the boat ready for its day’s work commenced. Dick was the most junior person on board, the maker of cups of tea for the other two, the server of drinks and food to punters, and chief boat tying up and untying person. It gave him some money to buy beer in the evenings and kept him away from his uncle and his family’s life of petty crime.  Dick’s uncle was in and out of trouble with the law, and had been inside a couple of times. Although Dick wasn’t sure how, he wanted to get away from this life. He certainly wanted to stay away from his uncle. He wasn’t a particularly intelligent young chap, and couldn’t concentrate for very long. He also had a tendency to fall out with people, which meant he didn’t keep a job for very long. A liking for beer probably didn’t help either.

Dick soon realised that it was Thursday, because, once a week, on Thursdays, the boat did a trip upstream and stopped to let people spend a few hours exploring before picking them up again on the return journey.  They got the boat ready and soon people were arriving and coming on board. The outward journey was uneventful and Dick sat on deck at lunchtime talking to the skipper. Skipper, never known by his actual name, looked the ancient mariner. He’d never been to sea, not even on a cross channel ferry.  There was a joke going round that he’d once been seasick on the Isle of Wight ferry to Cowes though he never gave any clues whether this as true or not.  Dick thought it more likely that he’d never actually been on the Isle of Wight ferry at all.  The skipper knew the Thames all right though. He’d once been a lad like Dick, serving his time and eventually getting his certificate to command a pleasure craft.  Dick had no such aspirations, just wanting to get the day over so he could relax with a few, or rather several, beers with his mates. 

On the way back, though before picking up the previously dropped off passengers, they came across a rowing boat that looked about to sink. Two rather large people who should never have been in a rowing boat in the first place had got themselves into a fast flowing part of the river and had managed to get a lot of water in their boat. There was hardly any distance between the water level and the top of the boat.  Skipper decided he ought to do something and slowed right down. If he’d continued at the same speed the wash would have swamped the small boat.  “Very wet fat people” thought Dick.   Having slowed down Skipper steered close by and shouted across “You alright?” It was a silly question as it was obvious even to a landlubber like Dick that they were not alright at all. They were on the verge of sinking. Dick had to throw a rope to them and pull their boat alongside.  He took a kind of perverse pleasure in helping the couple out of their boat; very gently so as to avoid tipping it and getting even more water in.

They were indeed two very wet fat people who waddled onto the deck a few minutes later. They were an overweight couple, who’d been trying to row across to an island in the river.  Dick wondered why they had got into difficulty as, despite their size, their boat seemed to float perfectly OK now it was empty of water and did not take on water while being towed along.

Dick thought of his girlfriend Jane, a nice girl who was good in bed and also cooked nice food but had some strange ideas about Dick drinking less and maybe going to college and learning something.  Dick had no thoughts of ever learning anything. School had been a disaster; most of the time he hadn’t been there anyway, often going shoplifting with his brother and others from the estate where he lived.

The two fatties were given tea and joined the rest of the passengers for the trip back. 

Once they were all properly tied up, Dick found out to his dismay that it was still actually Wednesday. For some inexplicable reason they’d done the Thursday trip on Wednesday this week. This meant he had to do Thursday again, what a damn pain in the arse. That meant an extra day to payday.

It also meant another trip that day as well as now it was declared to be summer they did an evening cruise on a Wednesday.

Not everything was bad.  Jane was waiting for him as he finished work at 11pm. Jane brought food and they sat on the grass in the park talking, and doing a few other things that are only possible in the park once it has got dark and only if you are young.  Jane also told him that it might be possible for him to stay at her house soon, and then not have to sleep on the boat.  It all depending on persuading her mother he was a deserving case.

Finishing work late and then staying up until the small hours had the positive side that Dick was not drunk when he went to bed. He was still tired in the morning as he ate his breakfast of boiled eggs and contemplated his second Thursday that week. They had a special trip that Thursday; a whole group of pensioners on a day out. Dick hated pensioners. They were slow. They talked incessantly. They drank lots of tea and then spent all their time in the toilets. They also didn’t spend very much on board, nor give much in the way of tips.

One particular pensioner, a chap called Jim was there with at least three of his friends. Dick wondered why old people had friends while young people had mates. They’d gone down in two locks and were going downstream towards Henley on a dampish sort of day, the sort of day that makes up most of the English summer these days.  They’d served a lot of tea that day already, though not much else.  Unfortunately, Dick managed to slightly push Jim while going to the bow to retrieve a rope that was trailing in the water.  It was a totally accidental little push, though probably wouldn’t have happened if he’d not been rushing about. He could also have apologised but it was not really in Dick’s nature to apologise, especially to some old prat. So Dick said nothing and carried on his way towards the recalcitrant rope.  Jim called out, “hey, mind out where you’re going”. Dick just carried on walking. Jim said again “be careful where you are going”. Dick got annoyed, and muttered back “you mind yourself”.  Now old people are often quite deaf, and normally Dick might have got away with it. On  this occasion though he’d managed to push one of those pensioners, quite ancient he looked too, who had great flappy ears and  these massive organs collected all the words Dick had said and delivered them into Jim’s brain.

Jim’s brain reacted.  It told Jim that this young oik was out of order, was rude and didn’t care about customers.  It then told Jim’s mouth to yell “I heard that. You’ll be sorry you did that”.  Dick swore.   He was not sure exactly what happened next, though it ended up with Dick and Skipper having words and Skipper telling Jim that he would make sure it would never happen again.

The rest of the trip went slowly. Dick kept out of the way and Jim and his friends kept out of the way of Dick. 

Back at base Skipper told Dick that he need not come back the next day.  He paid him his pay for the days he had worked and that was it.  He had some money but no job.  He also had no place to sleep apart from back at his mother’s.  “Shit”.

He met Jane that night.  He told her that Skipper had taken against him for no good reason and had sacked him. Jane of course took Dick’s version of events, and said she hadn’t had the right opportunity to approach her mother about Dick moving in. They talked deep into the night, into Friday in fact, and then Dick had to walk back to Henley. His second row of the day was with his mother. 

Friday

When Dick awoke the house was eerily quiet.  The sun shone in though his bedroom window and the room was warm. Dick turned over in bed and dozed for a while. It was close to eleven o’clock when he pulled on his trousers and shirt and went downstairs to get some food.  As usual, there was little to be found.  There was tea and milk and an almost empty cornflake box.  He ate the cornflakes, complete with lots of little bits of cornflakes and then decided he’d go and see what was doing on the boat. 

Cycling along his mind wandered.  He thought of Jane and whether her mother would let him move in. He had no money and wondered if he could scrounge some from her. He was lost in his daydreams, somewhere in between being in bed with Jane and getting drunk, when he was brought abruptly to his senses by his phone ringing.  As everyone in Britain, Dick had a phone first and money afterwards. It was Jane, and the real Jane was rather different from his daydream. In fact she was not like the Jane he knew at all. She was going on about his lack of a job and how wonderful it would be if he had a trade and a full time reliable job and . . and . . .and . . .he lost count of all the things it would be wonderful if he had.  She said she’d been on the internet from work and found a course at a college in London he would be good at and would help him get this great job.  Why was it that women always wanted him to be something else? He wondered.  For the first time he remembered he wanted her to put the phone down and go back to her work.  She was alright of course, she had GCSEs and had a full time job and money and  . . and . .  .and lots of those things she wanted him to have. His head hurt. 

Eventually, after what seemed an age, she said she wanted to see him as soon as she got out of work.  Then, at last, she put the phone down and he could continue on his ride. 

When he reached the boat’s mooring there was no boat there.  “Minging bitch” he said out loud. She’d made him miss its departure.   Dick didn’t know if but it was actually a good thing he’d missed its departure. Skipper was in a foul mood that morning, and Dick would have been even further from the job he’d had if he’d been there. Also unknown to Dick his uncle had been at the boat earlier this morning looking for him, not realising he’d been asleep at home all the time.  Dick’s uncle wanted to get Dick to help him on a scheme to rob tourists visiting Henley. There ware always rich people visiting Henley and they were always less than careful with their belongings. It was relatively easy to snatch a purse or a wallet left carelessly in a back pocket or bag.  It needed several people as a group. Dick’s uncle never did it himself but would get the group together on a day like today.  He was most upset to find Dick not there and he was in a bad mood too.

The afternoon passed slowly. Dick found a few of his mates and they had a couple of jars. Then Dick went off to meet Jane at 5pm when she came out of her job. They walked to the river and talked about “his course” some more. Why wouldn’t she leave it alone?  She said losing his job was just the chance he needed to get moving doing something else.

The conversation went on like this for a time and then she slowed down her speech and talked very quietly.   Dick thought there was something the matter and she seemed to not want to tell him something.  She was no longer the woman wanting him to be this that and the other – she was quiet and thoughtful and unsure of herself.    She talked quietly for a while not saying very much, and then told Dick there was something she had to tell him.  She was pregnant.   “Aaaarrgggghhhhh”  Though very wisely Dick kept this thought to himself.

Once she’d got her news out she got some of her normal self back.  She had all sorts of plans to have time off work and then go back and they’d find a place to rent and . . . and . . . and . . . .lots of all that stuff again. Dick’s head hurt more and more the more she went on and on. She made him promise to go to London one day next week to see the college. It had to be next week before they closed for the summer.

There was one piece of good news for Dick that day: Jane’s mother was going away for the weekend and they could be together for Friday and Saturday night and do just as they wanted.

Now it should have been clear to an intelligent girl like Jane that it was going to be difficult to get Dick to go to college and make something useful out of him, however love is blind (or should I say blond) and all she could think of that night was the weekend they were going to have together. Dick could not really comprehend the implications of what Jane had told him, though he didn’t feel like running away as some of his mates might have done. 

They walked back to Jane’s mothers place, and there we shall leave the more or less happy couple to have their evening in peace.

Saturday

Jane was happy. Maybe a bit deluded but happy.  She’d got her baby, her man and she was sure she’d make something of him so he’d be a good father to their child.  

They had fun that Saturday morning with the run of the house to themselves. They stayed in bed late, spent a lot of time teasing each other, running around with no clothes on and making love in different rooms, on the floor, on the dining room table, in her mother’s bedroom.  They’d have been killed if she’d known what they got up to in her house. Not that they cared of course, being young and in the transition stage between being children and being forced into responsible adulthood by this new child they had created themselves.

They ate breakfast somewhere in all that time, using up food they found in the fridge. Jane’s mother had, well did have before they ate, bacon, sausages. Eggs, baked beans, mushrooms and left over mashed potatoes which they fried. 

This huge meal left them satisfied in the hunger department too and it was getting towards late afternoon by the time they had reached the end of the morning. Even playing games like these got boring eventually, plus they had no food for the evening or the next day, no alcohol in the place at all. Dick was starting to wonder how Chelsea were doing in the football and had slumped in the lounge in front of the tv – one of his favourite places along with bed and the pub.

At this point Jane could have got exasperated with him, though there was no time for that. Before she had got as far as being even slightly cross she heard noises outside that could only mean one thing. Her mother was coming up the driveway and she had people with her.

Jane panicked though it made little difference. The key was turning in the lock before she could do much more than swear and Dick hadn’t realised what was going on until the door swung open. The larger noise made by the door distracted him from the football scores and he looked across the lounge at the huge bulk of Jane’s mother squeezing through the half open front door. She turned round and saw him  - fortunately decently dressed if rather scruffy – at the same time as Jane appeared from the kitchen where she was doing some rapid tidying.  Close behind Jane’s mother was Jim. Dick froze. If he’d encountered Jim on a dark night walking beside the Thames, Dick could have at least punched him, and maybe worse.  As it was he could do nothing, so just tried to ignore the general goings on and set his gaze back to the tv.

Jane’s mother did a lot of finding out in a short space of time.  She found out that her daughter had a boyfriend, that the said boyfriend had no job and no place to live, that her brother-in-law Jim hadn’t a good word to say for him. It was not the most auspicious way for Dick to meet the future grandmother of his child.  That little fact did not emerge that day.

Sunday

Eeeeeeeeee.e.e.e.e……..   The car lurched and skidded as Dick trod firmly on the brake pedal.  He wrestled with the steering wheel and somehow managed to avoid hitting the car in front or the car in the next lane.  Actually this was more luck than judgement as Dick had never been in a skid before, and had no clue what to do. It was as much as he could do to operate the brake and clutch pedal at all.

No harm was done and after a short period, as if by magic, the M3 cleared itself and everyone went on their way as if nothing had happened.

Dick and Jane were having fun. Dick had somehow persuaded his brother Brian to lend him a car for the day. Buying and selling cars was one of Brian’s more respectable habits, though it did mean that his mother’s house was often surrounded by cars; maybe a couple being worked on and tidied up and one or two actually for sale. Brian was not really a car trader, though he did trade in cars, a fine legal point that Brian knew more about than you’d first think.  Anyway, Dick had a car for the day and they were off to the seaside. He had had a few driving lessons and his uncle had taken him out a bit as well, so he was not totally clueless about driving, though he’d never have passed even the theory test let alone the practical. 

Dick thought about the events of the past few days and concluded that it had been fun. Sure there had been some bad moments, but it was not dull, and Jane was someone he was really lucky to have, but it never crossed his mind why.  His mind wandered to yesterday and to Jane’s mother. What an old battleaxe she was. Of unimaginable age (actually not quite 50) and bad mood, Dick bet she’d never had a man for ages.

They carried on, laughing and joking with one another, and were soon touching and stroking each other in the way that lovers often do.  After a bit of time this started to interfere with the driving, making an inexperienced driver behave in very strange ways.  Fortunately, and this was one of Dick’s luckier days, the Motorway Services hove into view at just at the right moment.  They selected a remote corner of the car park, helpful for Dick’s parking as well as being more or less out of view for the subsequent activities that took place on the back seat.

Suitably refreshed and slightly calmed down they continued on their way. Jane was driving this time though as between them their driving documents amounted to one provisional licence, the quality of the driving did not improve.  They were not quite sure how they arrived on the seafront at Southsea but they did, and were reasonably well parked too.  It was indeed their lucky day.   

They soon found themselves in the funfair on the Pier. They went on the dodgems, the strange sudden turning small roller coaster and tried to win goldfish. They had burgers for lunch and then walked along the beach.

It was on the beach that it happened.  No, it wasn’t sex this time, though it would be easy to imagine this young couple indulging on the beach somewhere, and it was the kind of thing they were prone to do. This was very strange.  They saw someone walking the other way, towards them. First he was a long way off, but he soon got closer. As he approached their feelings intensified; it looked just like Dick walking towards them.  He wasn’t dressed like Dick, wearing smart clothes, somehow too smart for the beach, but he looked like Dick.  They all three said “hello” at more or less the precise same moment, and this caused them all to smile and laugh, and instead of walking by they paused long enough for Dick and his image to recognise the similarity and become intrigued by each other.

They got talking and discovered the other chap was called Richard. He was rich, came from a good stable family, worked in IT in the city and was down at the seaside on his day off.  In fact Richard’s life was good, and he was in many ways the opposite of Dick: Fortunate where Dick was unfortunate and rich and happy where Dick was poor and often not happy.  Recently though, things had not gone Richard’s way. He’d fallen out with his girlfriend and that very day he’d driven to the seaside to muse on life. Also that very day his pride and joy, his lovely Porsche, had been broken into and his collection of CDs and lots of other nice things stolen.  All in all, today was not Richard’s day.

Soon Jane got tired of listening to this chap’s life story and just wanted to be alone with her own Dick.  They continued their walk, but the incident unnerved them and they were rather more subdued for the rest of the day. 

The young couple’s luck held till they got back to Reading, where Dick dropped Jane off at her mother’s and drove back to Henley to face his brother and mother and the usual bad atmosphere that there was at “home”.   Dick and Jane had by then agreed they were going to move in together, and as it was unlikely this would be at either of their respective mothers’ homes they would need to start a search for a place to rent.

Monday

Monday passed as Mondays often do. 

Dick was not working now so he had the whole day to himself.  Jane was at work, earning money for their new life together and their soon-to-be baby.  Before she arrived at work she called Dick on her mobile and they had a long conversation, lasting most of Jane’s slow bus journey through the Monday morning Reading traffic.   This conversation contained all sort of communication between the two, though mostly in the direction of Jane to Dick.  They’d talked about their night apart, reinforced plans for the future and so on, and then got into what Jane thought Dick should be doing that day.

She wanted Dick to find out more about the courses on offer for next September. She told him several web addresses to look at and suggested he applies for some of the courses if there was an online application form.  Jane had found quite a few that she thought would suit him, though she wanted him to find them himself.

It was mid afternoon by the time Dick got to the library to start his search.  He wasn’t sure what he needed to look at and had a fuzzy head.  It had all seemed so easy when Jane explained what to do, but now it seemed very difficult to remember.  He’d left home at around 11, go into town and found a couple of mates who were off work that day. They’d played a couple of games of pool, downed more than a couple of pints of beer and put the world to rights.

The assistant in the library wasn’t very helpful. She seemed to think it was all-

 Very obvious – you booked a PC, paid your fee and went and sat down, and started.  After a small argument, coming closer to Dick being thrown out than he realised, Dick was up and running.  The piece of paper with the addresses on was still in his pocket and he typed the first one in.  The dratted machine came back with “page not found”. Dick cursed under his breath.  He knew Jane would have got the address right though he wasn’t sure if he’d written it down correctly or if the page he wanted really didn’t exist.

Unbeknown to Dick, in another place not very far from Reading, a guy called Richard was also on the web. Richard was not in the public library – he was sitting in his lounge accessing the internet from his laptop via a wireless network in his home.  For every page that Richard accessed Dick got another “page not found” message.   Dick was having no luck at all and after a while his fee ran out and the assistant came over to tell him that he had to pay more money to continue his access.

Jane rang to find out how he was and how he was getting on. On hearing his story she said she’d find him after work and help.  As soon as the phonecall ended Dick clicked on “refresh” and the page sprang into life.  He wasn’t sure if it was the virtual help Jane’s voice had given him, the internet suddenly becoming freer as people left their offices to go home or whether the college he’d been trying to access had fixed a problem with their web.  In fact it was none of those things. It was Richard getting tired of accessing the Internet and going to do something else – something else quite different to Dick’s activities.  Dick found the course he wanted and was in the middle of filling in the online application form by the time Jane came and sat beside him.   She was very happy, though soon got on the wrong side of the assistant by making too much noise.  Jane was impervious to stroppy assistants and simply told her that this was a public library and she was supposed to help, and she’d report her to her supervisor for not helping Dick, and inexperienced internet user to operate the system.

Things were going well again, and by the time this debate had calmed down Dick’s phone rang. It was the college to confirm they’d received his application and could he come tomorrow afternoon.  Dick was gobsmacked to get this call, only twenty minutes after sending the form in. The lady at the college explained they were having an open day and she had just received Dick’s form before closing her PC down for the day and decided to call to give him the chance to attend.  Jane was impressed, and it reinforced both her view of how wonderful the internet is and also what a good omen it was for Dick’s future.  Dick was not so sure.  Anyway, he was going to London tomorrow for two reasons now, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

They were both tired.  Jane had booked tickets for the cinema and so they went and got a sandwich and soon after were spotted buying a huge container of popcorn and disappearing into one of the smaller screens in the cinema.

Tuesday

Dick had a lie-in as was usual since he had no work.   He was dozing when the phone rang. He knew who it was on the phone before he looked at the display to see her name.  She was all excited and wanted him to be too. He wished he was excited but somehow found it hard to share her enthusiasm.  Perhaps it was his innate laziness or perhaps he had some psychic insight into the later events of the day.

Anyway, Jane’s mood only partly rubbed off onto Dick, and soon he was putting some reasonably smart things on.  He headed off for the train station after breakfast. Jane did the same though her journey to London was a quicker one than his as she had the fast train from Reading and he had to start from the branch line at Henley.  She waited for him at Paddington.  She phoned him but his phone was not receiving a signal, so she went to the platform she thought his train was coming into.    Instead of Dick the almost identical Richard got off the train.  At first she thought how smart Dick looked until he got a bit nearer and she realised it was not Dick after all but his upmarket double.

They smiled at each other though Jane’s mind was elsewhere.  Where was Dick?  Why would his phone not work?  Richard’s mind was also elsewhere: he had arranged to meet his recently ex-girlfriend, ostensibly to talk about splitting their joint possessions though Richard really hoped for a reconciliation.

Dick arrived on the following train though did not see Jane.  He knew, even though it was against his usual disorganised nature, which train he was to catch to go to his appointments at the college. He opened his phone to call Jane but there was no display. He shook it ands till no display.  Drat.  The one time he does want to speak to her he cannot.

Dick uses his underutilised initiative and went to find the right tube train.  While going round the circle line he took out his phone again and took the battery out and put it back in. Suddenly it sprang into life with several text messages.  He read them quickly and then called Jane.   She was cross, though glad he was going the right way after all. She rushed down to the tube to follow him.   They would meet at West Green tube where they had to change.  Dick got there first, of course, and was waiting when a phonecall came in. Jane told him not to wait but she would be on the next train and meet him in the college. Then he’d be on time even if she was late.

Meantime Richard arrived at West Green station just after Dick’s train had left.  Jane was again surprised to see him and again at first thought she’d found Dick. Richard and Jane both caught the next train north though were in different carriages.   Dick’s train meantime was charging along when suddenly there was a bright flash, followed immediately by an ear splitting bang and then sudden darkness. There were screams all around, mixed with the sound of crumpling metal, smashing glass and the sound of a once-whole train disintegrating in a confined space.   Then, all fell silent. 

On Richard and Jane’s train all they knew was that the usual stop between stations seemed longer than usual.  After what seemed an agonisingly long wait their train slowly pulled into the station ahead.  The announcement told them all to leave the train and continue their journey by another means.   Jane reached the surface and tried Dick’s phone.  Nothing again. He was either still in the tube or his phone had died again.  Next there was a scream of sirens though Jane did not at first connect it with her interrupted journey.  She caught a bus going in the same direction as the train and was horrified to see fire engines and ambulances clustered around the next station.  Something made her get off the bus.  The police had cordoned off the area and told her there had been “an incident” on the train below.   Somehow she knew Dick had been hurt.   She waited, and kept trying his phone. Nothing.  She waited until it got dark and still nothing.  No phonecall, no answer from Dick’s phone.   She could not leave the scene.  The police came and told her to go home, and gave her a number to call.

After some time she decided this was the only thing to do, and turned to leave only to see Richard standing there. They looked at each other and both simultaneously burst into tears. They held each other in consolation, and both said they were sure they had a partner on the bombed train.   They went together back to Reading, and exchanged phone numbers before going their separate ways, around midnight.

Only three days later did they both hear that both Dick and Richard’s lost girlfriend had been killed by the bomb on the 2:15 from East Finchley.

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