I don’t usually get to do kids. I don’t know why. Kids are just as fragile as their parents, after all – even more so, maybe, the way they fling themselves at the world so hard as if nothing is going to break them.

I suppose, with kids, some find it hard to be dispassionate. Adults, I think, generally respond well to calm frankness, even when the news is bad, especially when the news is bad. Because when they’re faced with mortality, they don’t want it clouded by hysteria. They don’t want my sympathy. I’ll say ‘I’m sorry’, but it’s a matter of form, it acts as a sort of verbal stepping stone between the verdict and the inevitable questions that follow: the how long untils, the will it hurts, the is there anything to be dones? And there’s panic, I’m sure, but all that comes after, that’s nothing to do with me; if I’m calm, then they’re calm, and I believe that they’re grateful for that, and the moment I pass judgment and sentence them to death I treat them like equals, I give them the illusion we’re all in this together. And in that togetherness, as we seem to collude against the illness and the suffering to come, I’ve surprised them, I’ve shown them how dignified they can be. And that dignity is something they can look back on and aspire to in the darker days ahead.

Kids don’t do that. Kids are unpredictable. Some cry, some call for their parents (because their parents can fix everything), some ignore me altogether and stare out of the window, stare down at their socks. Sometimes they laugh. They even laugh. What’s up with that?

I know people who say there is no greater tragedy than the death of a child, and some of them are even quite intelligent, some even quite good doctors. They talk about all that wasted potential. I, respectfully, disagree. I see only people who haven’t done anything yet. I would far rather mourn an elderly man, say, who has spent a lifetime learning through experience and achievement – just think how much further he could have gone! The cure for cancer isn’t going to be discovered by a twelve year old, it’ll be discovered by an adult long in the tooth with the weight of years on his shoulders, by an adult lucky enough to get as clever as he can be and not be felled by some silly disease or another along the way. I suppose it’s just a different way of looking at it. I can’t mourn a child. It’d be like mourning an embryo or a pupa. I don’t mourn the elderly, I must admit. I don’t mourn anyone. But I would mourn the elderly, I think, in principle.

And when I first met Steve Herbert I saw nothing to be impressed by. He had flung himself hard against the world, he’d had an accident on his bicycle, or scooter, or some such thing, and the accident no doubt had been his fault, and there he was in the emergency room grinning from ear to ear like it was all some big adventure. I suppose it was, at that; his whole body had been X-rayed to check for broken bones, and I imagine the sort of kid who gets his kicks from scooters is probably one who’d get kicks from X-ray machines too. There were no bones broken, he’d escaped with bruising. I didn’t know why I’d been called in to look. Nurse Johnson showed me the X-rays; she didn’t tell me what else they had found during the examination, she said she’d let me see for myself. And then she looked on, hopefully, as if I would tell her that she was wrong, as if my second opinion could make everything bad go away.

At first I didn’t think it was a real cockroach. For a start, cockroaches aren’t as big as that – certainly not in this country, at any rate. And secondly, how had it got inside? The kid couldn’t have swallowed it, he’d have choked. I assumed it must be some strange growth on the heart that just looked like a cockroach. But then I checked against successive X-rays and I could see that the wings had moved, that the mandibles had flexed somewhat – this was a giant cockroach, about the size of my fist, and it was clinging on hard to the boy’s pericardium, its wings obscuring the whole of the right auricle, its pincers piercing both of the atria. And it was alive.

I asked the boy whether he’d noticed any discomfort in his chest. He told me he didn’t, much; sometimes, if he went running, he’d get out of breath, he’d start wheezing; recently, if he lay in bed on one side for too long, he’d have the same problem. But there was no discomfort, really; certainly, no pain. I told him I was surprised. That there was a large hostile parasite fixed fast to his insides that was lacerating his vital organs. That I had never seen such a thing before, and wasn’t sure there was much I could do about it, and the chances were he was going to die.

He didn’t cry. I’ll give him that. He didn’t ignore me, and he didn’t laugh. Nurse Johnson said his parents had been called for, and I asked Steve Herbert whether he’d rather wait until they got to the hospital before we discussed the matter further, and he thought about it, and he said that he would.

As I say, I don’t usually get to do kids.

*

His parents were dreadful. The calm frankness didn’t work on them at all, it was tears and pleading right from the start. And I recognised the type, too; had I been telling either of them they were the ones about to die, they’d have been as dignified as could be, they’d have kept all that fear bottled up for form’s sake. But for their child, though, they just couldn’t rein the emotions in. The mother began to sob, and it was quiet enough, but somehow all the more irritating for that, all the more embarrassing – and the father kept on saying, “But why Steve? It should be one of us! Why isn’t it one of us?” And, privately, I agreed. If only it had been, everything would have been so much less dramatic.

I admired the boy. He was patient with them both. He took his mother’s hand and squeezed it. To his father he said, “I’m sure the doctor will do his very best.” I said I would.

The parents calmed enough that I could run them through the various options available. We could put Steve on a course of radiotherapy, and try to kill the cockroach with radiation. Or there were various drugs we could administer with chemo. Both treatments would have side effects, of course – we could attack the cells of the invading pest, but inevitably some healthy cells belonging to the patient would be destroyed as well. Or we could try direct surgery, but I pointed out that there were severe risks to that – from the pictures we could see that the roach had punctured the heart in several places and the tissue had actually grown over it, and that pulling the creature free might cause extensive damage, that ironically it might be the very presence of the insect keeping Steve alive, blocking his wounds, keeping the heart beating – “Rip it out of him!” the mother positively snarled, “just get that fucking thing out of my son!” And the father nodded, and the boy shrugged assent, and that was that.

Before the operation I read up on insect anatomy, and it didn’t take long; they really are remarkably simple creatures. I had removed all sorts of lumps and bumps from inside people’s chests, but I had never performed a dictyoptectomy before – I saw no reason to tell the Herbert family that. We opened up the chest, and there was the cockroach, bigger than I’d even expected, it had wrapped itself right around the heart and now that it was exposed to the light it unfurled itself, and opened its wings wide, and quivered. I had no desire to harm the cockroach, but it wasn’t my patient. I cut through its legs with a laser scalpel, until I felt the insect had loosened its grip sufficiently so I could lift off the bulk of it without much force – still, though, it found a way to cling firm, it hugged into the heart with an obstinacy that seemed almost possessive, and when at last I managed to pull it free it came out with a sick sucking sound. Then I had to remove the leg stumps that were still embedded in the myocardial layer; I had not appreciated how deeply the cockroach had punctured the heart until I pulled that first stump with a pair of forceps – out it came, long and sharp and wet, and quivering still, as if there was life in it yet, as if this weren’t just some reflex action. The holes that had been gouged in the heart now seemed big and black, but there was no blood, and for all the tissue damage I hoped that they might heal and that young Steve might affect a full recovery.

Steve was very proud of the new stitches on his chest. He called them his war wounds, and said he couldn’t wait to show them off to his schoolfriends. The skin was swollen and enflamed, and I could tell it must be sore, but the boy was having none of it, he told me he felt fine, he thanked me for all my hard work. The parents demanded to know whether their son was cured now, whether he was going to be all right, and I told them I didn’t know. He’d have to come back in a week so we could X-ray him and find out. The parents looked sulky and betrayed. Steve gave me a smile and said he would look forward to it.

I was annoyed that Steve brought his parents back for the consultation, but he was only twelve, and I suppose he needed someone to drive him. I showed them all the X-ray. “That,” I said, “is what I was hoping not to see.” I explained that we had tried to remove the whole cockroach, but it seemed we’d been unsuccessful – part of the insect had been left behind. And now the pictures clearly showed that what looked like hairy twigs were poking out of the gashes in Steve’s heart; one of the legs had grown back so fast that it had even begun to taper out at the end into some sort of carapace. In only a week we could see that the cockroach was rebuilding itself, and at this speed I didn’t doubt it’d be at its full size once more by the end of the month.

I pointed out the positives. The heart was still basically healthy; if it weren’t, the cockroach would have no means for sustaining itself. The shock of the operation alone would have caused a weaker heart to fail, but Steve’s was strong, and that could only be a good thing for the long battle ahead of us. Mrs Herbert cried again, of course; she didn’t like the use of that word, ‘battle’.

We bombarded the cockroach with radiation, but if anything it seemed to thrive beneath it; it grew at still greater speed, and even under X-ray I could see how its body glowed with a new smooth sheen. I had read, of course, that a roach could outsit a nuclear war, but I had still hoped that a concentrated blast would have been too much for it. We pumped it full of poisons, some of them highly experimental, and the roach seemed only to get fatter. It seemed to me that with each X-ray it gazed out with even greater triumph; it was fine; it was sitting pretty; it would squat in its new found home forever. Steve wasn’t doing as well. His hair fell out, and his skin got pasty and paper thin. I asked him if he was in much pain, and he would smile at me, and I could see that his gums were bleeding, and he assured me it was nothing he couldn’t handle. I could see it wasn’t true. He’d make jokes with me, one time he said his veins must be more acid now than blood, and he laughed, and when he did so he couldn’t help it, I saw he winced terribly with the effort. He told me, when I pressed him, that he threw up a lot. That was the worst thing. He hated all that throwing up. He hated all the mess. He hated being a burden on his parents. They had enough to worry about already.

One day I had to tell Steve that we’d failed. There was nothing more I could do for him. We would have to let nature take its course. The parents wept, both of them this time; both got angry. Steve hugged them, and told them it was going to be all right. He told them that he’d grown to love his cockroach. When he tried to sleep at night he could hear it hissing to him, deep inside; he thought it was trying to encourage him on, or just trying to communicate; he thought maybe it was lonely too, and confused, and just wanted to have a friend. He said it was all right. The cockroach was a part of him now, and he called it Tony. Steve said, “Please, I want to speak to the doctor alone.” His parents left.

He said to me, “Don’t feel too bad, Doc.” And I wanted to tell him he was mistaken, I didn’t feel bad at all, this was the sort of thing I did every day. But my eyes were brimming with tears. I told him I was so sorry. Had it been a giant housefly on his heart, or some sort of woodlouse perhaps, then we’d have beaten the bugger, I was sure. But cockroaches are such tenacious beasts. He said, “We did our best, didn’t we?” And he offered me his hand, and kids never offer you their hand, and I accepted it, and he shook mine, strong and hard. “You take care now,” he said to me.

I never saw Steve Herbert again. And I like to think that maybe he’s still all right. Maybe he found a way to coexist with that cockroach perfectly happily. Maybe the two of them are out there, and both thriving. I suppose that’s unlikely.

*

I went back home that night, and my wife said to me, what’s wrong? She can read me like a book. And I said that nothing was wrong, on the contrary. I told her that I’d been thinking it through, and I’d decided we should have a kid. I wanted to have a kid. I wanted a kid who was just like Steve Herbert, who was the bravest kid I’d ever known. I thought my wife would be happy. When we’d first got married it was the biggest problem, for a while I thought she’d divorce me over it. She’d wanted a baby, I didn’t. I didn’t see the point of them. “I see the point of them now,” I said. But she told me it was too late. She’d got used to the marriage we had already, she’d grown to like the compromise, she had made it work for her. I couldn’t now just come along and open up wounds that had healed over. It was too late. She told me, you can’t meet one brave child and assume all children are going to be brave, it doesn’t work like that. Any more than it had when I’d met children I’d despised, and had assumed ours would be a child too I would despise. That’s not what people are, she said, you can’t predict them. I begged. I actually begged. “Please let me have a brave little boy,” I said. And she said she was too old now, anyway; she was forty-five; I was a doctor, didn’t I know that the chance of birth defects rose substantially in older mothers? And I wanted to tell her that’s what I had wanted. I wanted a child with birth defects. I wanted my wife to drink a lot whilst pregnant, and smoke, even though she didn’t smoke already, maybe she could start? I wanted a child who would be brave. I wanted a child who would grow up needing to be brave.

*

I said I never saw Steve Herbert again, and that’s true. I did phone his house a couple of times. He didn’t answer, once it was his mother, the other his dad. I didn’t want to ask how their son was, I thought that would be impertinent, it wouldn’t suggest quite the right level of dispassion. I didn’t say anything and waited until they got cross and hung up, and then I put the phone down. Oh, and one time I parked outside his house. I was a little drunk, I think, and I sat in the car and waited to see whether he’d come out. And then I realised it was late and he’d probably be asleep, he was only a little kid, so I thought I’d wait there til morning, I’d wait until he left the house to go to school. I just wanted to make sure he was all right. I wouldn’t have even spoken to him, probably. But in the morning he didn’t come out. And that doesn’t mean anything, he might not have had school that day, it might have been the holidays, I don’t know when school holidays are.

*

Over the next couple of years I had three more patients who had cockroaches on their hearts. They were all adults, they’d lived their lives, one of them was an old man, what was he still hanging on for? They were all very upset when I broke the news. None of them had cockroaches even half the size of Steve Herbert’s cockroach, I told them, what they had was nothing; I once met a twelve year old with a cockroach who was twice as brave as you! They didn’t take much comfort from this, they were scared like little babies, and, to be fair to them, not a one of them survived the surgery.

*

My time will come. Of course it will, and for all my experience, I have no idea what to expect. I’ll be there with some doctor, and he’ll ask me to sit down because it’s always better to hear about death if you’re sitting down, and he’ll be the one to break the news to me, and he’ll be dispassionate, I suppose. He’ll show me the X-ray, and maybe I’ll look at my own cankered innards with the same detachment I felt for everybody else’s, maybe I’ll assess my own chances for survival with calm frankness. I now know how to behave. I’ll behave like Steve Herbert. Steve Herbert has shown me the way. And I want a cockroach. No, I want two cockroaches. I want to do better than Steve Herbert. He was only a kid, I have to be better. I want two cockroaches, and they’ll be nestled around my heart, one each side, my heart will be enveloped between their embrace, maybe they’ll be spooning? No. I want an egg, I want to see on the X-ray a big white egg, my heart has gone altogether and what’s hanging there is just this egg, and it’s starting to crack, you can see it’s already hatching, and maybe, maybe, from the crack you can glimpse the odd leg wriggle out towards life and freedom. I want to hatch a dozen cockroaches, more. I’ll be a father after all. And I’ll listen to the doctor deliver the judgment with dispassion, always such dispassion, and I’ll thank him, and explain to him why I think in this instance further treatment would be unnecessary. And I’ll phone my wife, and tell her the good news.

Hello!

I’m about to release the fortieth of the one hundred stories. (It’s a charming one about insects and open heart surgery. It is not necessarily going to be to everyone’s tastes. Be warned.)

Reaching 40 stories feels much the same as when I reached 40 years old. Full of energy up to the milestone itself – and then I sort of collapse panting for air, with my hair turning grey, and my heart beating nineteen to the dozen, and wanting to pull the duvet cover over my head and go to sleep.

So I’ve decided to take a month’s break, just to let my batteries recharge a little, and to make sure there are enough story ideas churning around in my brain. And I’ll be back, on Monday June 18th, fit as a fiddle, sharp as a knife, and any number of similarly exciting similes, I’ll be bound.

In the mean time, thank you for reading – especially if you’re one of the 100, and for being so patient and good-humoured as I make merry with your name! I hope you enjoy the next 60 stories – I’ll keep ‘em coming, I promise you – and I’ll do my best to make them worth your while.

Rob x

 

 

 

 

They’d found seventeen new Shakespeare plays, in the back of a fish and chip shop in Stratford upon Avon. No one had ever staged them before, or written critical studies of them, not a single academic had heard of a single one of them – they were brand new, as new as anything could be said to be that’s four hundred years old. Everyone was very sceptical at first, but the manuscripts were submitted for carbon dating, and graphological analyses, and the words were put through computers to assess how similar the writing style was to the plays we already had – and the results that came back were pretty conclusive, they said that these new texts were authentically Shakespearean, and indeed more authentic than quite a number we already took for granted. The couple who ran the fish and chip shop had found them down the back of the fridge, and in the local paper said they were ‘fair flummoxed’ as to how they’d got there. They admitted that they weren’t especial devotees of the Bard, but on a Friday night once the pubs were shut they’d serve kebabs to drunken actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company. “We support the arts,” they said.

There was a mad scrabble to get the plays before the paying public. Both the National Theatre and the RSC scrapped an entire year’s worth of programming to push the new Shakespeare texts into rehearsal. But a small theatre in Southend pipped them to the post, cutting back on set, lighting, and actors, and presenting their production as raw as it could be. The world’s critics traipsed on down to the seaside to judge it; they bought their ice creams, sat in their seats, and waited impatiently for the lights to go down. And maybe the simplicity of the production actually helped – they saw the play in its purest form, uncompromised by interpretation or directorial dickering. The play that had been chosen was ‘Whate’er You Want, My Mad Masters’, and at first glance it seemed to be a rather unpromising piece about starcross’d lovers, identical triplets, mistaken identities and poisoned handkerchiefs. The uncut text ran at a full four and a half hours, and at the curtain call there was a long silence, and for a while the management worried they might have a flop on their hands; and then, as one, the audience rose to their feet and applauded; there were tears of joy rolling down the cheeks of hardened journalists who had doubted they’d see a play that could move them again, that anything in life could ever move them; strangers were turning to each other and hugging and kissing, united in perfect camaraderie, because they had shared this moment, they were part of something magical and it could never be taken from them; the standing ovation was like a cry against the dark, against an uncertain future, and whatever the world might have in store for us, whatever the fates may bring, it is all right, it’ll be all right, we have this, we have this; people fell in love that night, friendships were restored, hearts mended, lives changed.

No one had expected the plays to be any good. Even the most optimistic of academics had already drafted theses referring to the missing texts as necessarily minor works: they had been written, and then discarded, maybe; they had failed to shape our understanding of art and thought the way Shakespeare’s other plays had, they had made no impact. In 1613 Shakespeare had retired, and it was supposed that these discovered manuscripts were the jottings of an old man who had got bored with nothing to do in the afternoons. What was realised instead was that this was a Shakespeare who was no longer worried about audience reaction, or critics, or box office, or marketing, or the painstaking niceties of getting a play into production, of actors’ egos and keeping stage management happy and making sure the boyfriend of the sponsor got enough lines. This was a Shakespeare who was having fun. These new plays were just plain better: his kings were more kingly, his lovers more loving, his evil tyrants more evilly tyrannical; the very rhythm of his iambic pentameter bristled with a punchy verve no one had ever heard before; even his comedies had a few funny jokes in them. ‘Fortinbras, His Life and Times’ was a sequel to ‘Hamlet’ that not only gave the original play a new perspective, but, as the Sunday Times said, ‘pissed all over it and made it redundant’.

And England was happy. Because what was more quintessentially English than William Shakespeare? The country basked in patriotic fervour. At the general election the Government swept through to victory, even though under his term the Prime Minister had slashed arts funding by forty per cent, even though, privately, the PM admitted he wasn’t too sure about this Shakespeare chap: how English could a man really be, if he kept writing about Danish kings and Roman wars and merchants who came from Venice?

One morning the entire second act of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ went missing. This included the somewhat overwritten exchange between Ajax and Thersites, in which Thersites insults Ajax, and Ajax beats him up. It vanished from every single edition of Shakespeare’s complete works, the Cambridge editions, the Oxford editions, the cheery children’s editions that had on the cover a grinning Shakespeare wearing a funny ruff. No one much noticed; for the first time in a hundred years there was no production of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ in rehearsal. By the end of the week, though, the rot had spread, and it claimed the whole of ‘Troilus’, and into the bargain substantial parts of ‘Coriolanus’ and ‘Henry VI Part Three’. Some academics were upset, in principle – but for all their combined intellectual efforts none of them could quite remember what the affected plays had been about. There were attempts to make copies of other Shakespeare texts they felt might be endangered – ‘Pericles’, ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’, any in which a clown popped up during the proceedings to sing about the weather – but it was to no avail, their words faded from the scribbled pages just as surely as they did from the printed texts.

But in truth, no one much minds. We have seventeen plays to enjoy that are better than those dry, old-fashioned ones. We don’t need any of them. Within a month they had all gone. People have vague memories of them: ‘Macbeth’, wasn’t there something about a dagger? ‘The Tempest’, something about a storm? And some of the phrases survive: ‘break the ice’, ‘in a pickle’, ‘dead as a doornail’ – what does it matter what they had once referred to, who cares which pickle, which doornail? The universe has given, the universe has taken away. And when what’s been given is so rich, and what we’ve lost something we’d grown used to and taken for granted and forgotten, shouldn’t we be happy? Aren’t we happy? We put up with it. It’s all right. We put up with it, we let it happen, and there were no complaints, the earth did not crack, we did not shake our gory locks at it, the deed was done and every dog had its day, and the rest, so inevitably, so thuddingly, was silence. Just silence.

Or so we thought.

*

Greg Miller had only been to see a Shakespeare the once. When he was eleven years old his English teacher had suggested she take the class to see ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, and his parents, who were always supportive of any extracurricular school activities, coughed up the money for the ticket. Greg had remembered very little of the evening, even before the old plays had faded from the world, but burned upon his brain forever was a group of fat middle-aged men dancing about dressed as fairies, and he’d never before known you could be both so bored and so terrified at exactly the same time. That night, when he got home, his mother had asked him whether he’d enjoyed it – Greg was always a polite boy, and knew that the expedition had not been a cheap one, and had cost more than his parents could easily afford – but he was so frightened that if he gave even the slightest impression the experience had not been an awful one then he might at some point be forced to see the fairies again. He told her it was a ‘bloody bugger’, and his mother said she’d never heard such language, and smacked him, and sent him straight to bed. But it worked. He was never sent to a Shakespeare again.

He’d met Moira via a dating agency. He’d met lots of women at the dating agency. And some time, usually around date three or four, the women would suggest that next time they should go to the theatre together. At that point Greg would make an excuse, tell them he was sick, anything, tell them that he’d be in touch – and he would never call again. He knew logically that not all theatre was Shakespeare, and not all Shakespeare had fat fairies in it, but why take the chance? On his third date with Moira he waited all evening for the inevitable theatre proposal; they were eating at the local Italian, and the prospect quite put him off his lasagne. He eventually got so tired of the suspense he put himself out of his misery, he jumped in with it, cut across the conversation, he asked her: “Do you want to do some theatre?” And Moira had looked down at her pasta, and suggested instead they just go back to hers for sex. She said it very politely too. And they’d gone back, they’d had the sex, and Moira was very good at it, and Greg wasn’t too bad either. And then he’d married her, and together they embarked on many years of domestic bliss, and funnily enough, they’d somehow managed to bypass the whole theatre date altogether.

One night Greg stirred in bed. A couple of hours before he’d had some of that sex that Moira was so good at, and he’d felt warm and safe. But now he was cold. He couldn’t work out why, had they left a window open somewhere? He snuggled against Moira’s back, and she grunted happily in her sleep, turned, put her arms around him. But still he was cold, it was bitterly cold, and now he felt too a wave of nausea pass right through him, it made him shudder, and for an awful moment he thought he might actually throw up. He panted for breath, the nausea steadied, that sickness still clung to him, he could feel it tight within his chest – and all the time still so cold, his skin pricking with goosebumps, and there was a nameless dread to it. And then it wasn’t nameless any more. Then he found the words.

He climbed out of Moira’s arms, out of bed. He went to the bathroom. Took a swig of tap water. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, and he seemed suddenly so old and frightened – frightened, and cold, bitter cold, and sick at heart.

He went down to the kitchen, and wrote down the words. He didn’t stop to think about what they meant. They flowed out of him, and then they stopped, just suddenly stopped – and he felt so much better, the sickness had gone, he’d got rid of some poison. Better out than in, he thought, the same way he felt about bad fruit and shellfish. He went back to bed. Moira hadn’t noticed he’d gone.

The next morning he felt lighter, happier. He didn’t even think about the sadness of the night, it was as if he’d dreamed the whole thing. He ate his breakfast, chattered with Moira – she was off to her job at the supermarket, he was off to drive his bus. “I’ll pick up some shopping,” she said, and he agreed; she picked up the little notebook on which she wrote her shopping lists, looked at it, and frowned. She handed it to her husband.

He read. And as he did so a memory stirred, and so did that rush of nausea, and of that cold all over his skin – he felt it as the words came back to him, the words he could barely understand.

This is what he’d written:

Who’s there? Nay, answer me, stand and unfold yourself. Long live the King! Bernardo? He. You come most carefully upon your hour. Tis now stuck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco. For this relief much thanks. Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.

 “But what does it mean?” Moira said.

Greg had no idea. He thought about the words all day as he drove the bus. That evening, when he got home, he went to find the notebook, and he read them again. Who were Bernardo and Francisco? He’d known a Bernard once, he’d been laid off from work after he’d made a pass at a ticket inspector. He’d never met a Francisco.

That night Moira and he had sex again, and the sex made him drowsy, and he fell asleep easily.

But after it had struck twelve, he felt it again – yes – and it was as if a wind was blowing through the room, a harsh wind that blasted every inch of his body and crept into every crevice and made him hurt. Although the windows were shut. Although the radiator was on. Although the curtains were still, and Moira beside him slept warm and happy.

He got up, wrote again. Wrote out these new words for a full hour.

When he returned to bed, Moira was awake, concerned. “What’s the matter?” she said.

Greg just hoped that Bernardo and Francisco would get off the battlements soon, it was perishing cold up there.

This was a Tuesday. On Thursday the word ‘Denmark’ was first revealed. It wasn’t until Friday that Horatio mentioned the name of Hamlet. And by this time there was a ghost, and talk of an invading army, and Greg was hooked.

He’d take pen and paper with him to bed for when inspiration struck. By the end of the week Moira had stopped making love to him. By the end of the next, she had moved to the spare room.

*

So, there was this guy called Hamlet, and he was a prince, but he was also a student, and that made sense, he was always talking to himself and trying to be too clever, just like the students Greg saw on the buses. Anyway, this Hamlet was depressed, and it wasn’t too hard to see why. His dad was dead, and his mum had shacked up with his uncle, and the ghost of his dad was walking about and saying that it was the uncle who had killed him, and asking Hamlet what he was going to do about it. And Greg felt sorry for Hamlet, felt sort of a connection to him – though, really, that was rubbish, they had nothing in common, Greg’s dad was still alive and well, and Greg’s mum hadn’t run off with his uncle, she’d run off with a steelworker named Ken.

He worked on the story each night, and it often ended on an almighty cliffhanger. Hamlet preparing to kill Claudius at prayer. The stabbing of Polonius behind the arras. Greg would hurtle the buses fast around the town, living only for the time he could get back to his pen and paper and find out what would happen next. He sometimes missed out entire bus stops; passengers complained.

And this was his story, and he didn’t know where it came from, and he didn’t want to question it too much. By day he felt himself to be ordinary, just ordinary, nothing special, nothing worthwhile – not a bad man by any means, but he’d never known what Moira had seen in him, why had she married him when there were so many better men out there? But by night inspiration soared, words flowed, ‘Hamlet’ poured out. Some mornings he would look back upon the poetry he had written, and he would literally gasp at its beauty. Some mornings he’d need to use a dictionary to find out what the poetry meant, but he was always impressed.

And it was a curse, too, all those words in his head, fighting for space, fighting to be let out. He could think of nothing else, Hamlet would chatter at him all day long, and Gertrude too, and poor Ophelia, and even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (though Greg couldn’t tell them apart). It was a curse, the words spilling out, and he couldn’t stop them, no matter how hard he might try – and he did try, he’d promise himself, he’d promise Moira, no more, not tonight, I’ll watch the telly, I’ll relax, I’ll sleep – and then the headaches would start, and the ice chill ran over his body, and the sickness swelled his heart, and he felt that certainty, that sure certainty, that if he didn’t write right now the words would be lost forever. It was a curse. But if it were a curse it was the one thing that gave his day meaning. And sometimes he would actually cry in gratitude for it.

One night, three in the morning, maybe four, Moira came to find him, and said, “I can’t cope with this, I’m leaving you, I’m going to my mother’s.” And Greg was at a really tricky part of the iambic pentameter, and the interruption was the last thing he needed, and he turned to her, and he snarled. He didn’t actually say, “Get thee to a nunnery,” what would Moira want with a nunnery? But for once he didn’t actually need to let the words out, they were written plain to see on his face. And Moira went.

*

The play was ending, it was obvious, the cast were dropping like flies. Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes. And still, Gary hoped that he might be able to turn it around, maybe Prince Hamlet would live happily ever after. It looked increasingly unlikely.

And then Hamlet died, and gave a pretty little speech that made Greg feel both sad and elated at the same time, and he was a simple man, he wasn’t used to such contradictory feelings, and he had to stand, and hold the back of the chair, and grip it tight so he wouldn’t fall over. Horatio grieved. Ambassadors appeared. Fortinbras took the throne.

The end.

There were no more words. Greg waited for some to appear, he even tapped at the side of his head to dislodge any that had got stuck, something, anything. Nothing.

He’d finished. He stacked all the sheets of paper, his handwriting growing more excitable and confident as the play had gone on, he enjoyed the weight of the script, he let all those pages ripple through his fingers. And then he went to bed. He slept properly for the first time in months. He slept through the entire day, and most of the next, and it wasn’t until it was dark that hunger forced him to get up and go down to the kitchen in search of food.

He put some bread into the toaster. He got out the margarine from the fridge, looked for a knife to spread it with, found a dirty one, rinsed it. He went to look at his play again, the manuscript still stacked proudly on the table.

The pages were blank.

The toast got burned.

It wasn’t that the paper was pristine. You could tell that it had been used, once; not for writing, perhaps, because there were no words on it, were there? But it had been used, yes, definitely – someone had worked hard on all these pages, you could see where they’d been scuffed beneath someone’s elbows, you could see the pressure made by, what, a pen, a pencil? – but there couldn’t have been a pen, because if so there’d be words, wouldn’t there, where are the words then, where are the words? – there are no words, no words at all, not a single word, not even a little one.

Greg went to the sink and threw up. He thought of Hamlet, of Osric the gadfly, of the comical gravedigger, loyal Horatio, the Player King, all lost, all gone. And threw up once more.

He shivered.

He wanted to call Moira, but he didn’t know what he could say.

He shivered, his stomach lurched again.

It was bitter cold, and he was sick at heart.

The words hadn’t gone. They were in his head, all of them, rattling around in his head.

He raced back to the empty sheets, picked up his pen. He had to set the words back down on the paper before he forgot them. But he wasn’t going to forget them, was he, they were there, they were part of him, they burned inside him, they weren’t going to let him go until he’d set them free.

He wrote.

Who’s there? Nay, answer me, stand and unfold yourself. Long live the King!

 *

He took the week off work, called in sick. If he only took a few hours’ nap, and barely paused for eating, he could write the whole of ‘Hamlet’ out again by the weekend.

He finished on Saturday afternoon, and no sooner were the final words down, than the entire text faded from the pages once more.

Greg refused to be beaten. The following week he wrote it out again, more forcefully, angrily even, using a thicker pen and blacker ink, underlining key speeches as if to give them protection.

Exhausted, he killed off his sweet prince. Exhausted, he watched as the dead prince dissolved into thin air.

He didn’t write it out again. It was in his head. That would have to be enough.

*

He first decided to find some actors. Not professional ones, he couldn’t afford them, but there was an amateur dramatics group that met on Thursdays. He met with them, told them he had an exciting new play, full of ghosts and swordfights and bucketloads of dead bodies. They asked to see the script, and he tapped at his head: “It’s in here.” He proposed to recite the lines for them, over and over until they had them memorised. They showed him the door.

So he’d have to perform it himself. He wasn’t an ideal choice. He was shy, and he muttered, and his voice was nasal, and his face went red every time he thought people were looking at him. Still, it couldn’t be helped.

He wrote to the National Theatre and the RSC, asking whether he could perform his play for them. When they didn’t reply, he wrote to all the other theatres he found listed in the phone book. At last he was told he could rent the village hall for five hundred pounds a night. He gave it some thought. Decided it only needed one night.

For a costume, he took from his wardrobe his smartest suit. It was navy blue, and came with a matching tie; he’d last worn it at his wedding, and as he put it on he felt a pang for something lost. It didn’t fit properly any more, his belly rolled awkwardly over the trousers.

He advertised his show in the local paper; he left leaflets in the libraries and upon the bus seats; he flyposted telegraph poles and phone boxes.

The audience came. It was free, after all. Greg didn’t want to make any money from this.

He went out on to the stage, shyly thanked them all for coming, cleared his throat, and let Hamlet out on an unsuspecting world.

From the very beginning the audience was confused. Which one was Francisco, which one was the ghost? Bernardo, was he anything to do with that bloke who’d been sacked from the bus garage?

By the time Hamlet made his first appearance, the back rows had already fled.

Greg had hoped that Hamlet’s soliloquy about suicide would move the crowd. “To be or not to be,” he asked them. Some cried out, “Be!”, others voted for “Not to be!” Greg heard the vicar in the second row waspishly say to his wife that if Hamlet didn’t know what was going on, why the hell should he?

And somehow it didn’t matter. As Greg heard the words out loud for the first time he realised this wasn’t just a bunch of Danes chatting, there was genius to this, and the power of it made him cry – there he was on stage, his face burning with embarrassment, and talking of hawks and handsaws, and there were tears streaming down his face – and up to that moment he’d liked to pretend this play had something to do with him, that he’d written it, that these words were his – and he realised that they weren’t his, they were everybody’s, they belonged to the whole world.

He dragged Hamlet on to his death. And, at last, he paused for air.

It was dark out there in the audience. With the lights on his face, he couldn’t see a thing.

And then, the applause. One person clapping. Just one, a woman, getting to her feet, and cheering him on. The one person left in the auditorium, giving him the standing ovation he deserved.

He stepped off the stage, and went to Moira.

“Was it all right?” he asked her.

“It was beautiful,” she told him.

“Thank you.”

“Is it over now?”

“It’s over,” he said. He thought hard, and there wasn’t a single word left in his brain. Not a word that wasn’t about Moira, and how he’d missed her, and how sorry he was.

“Good,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

They talked that night, and he apologised, and she forgave him, and they made love, and it was sweet and comforting.

In the night Greg felt the coldness again, and he sat up, and there were words now, words he didn’t understand, the beginning of something new. “Now, fair Hippolyta,” he whispered to himself, “our nuptial hours grow apace.” And he shivered, and there was a presentiment of fairies he hadn’t felt since he’d been a little boy.

“Let it go,” he heard Moira say. “Just let it go.” And so he lay back, closed his eyes, and he did.

Sarah Anne Rachel Hadley did not like her grandmother’s bathtub. Whenever she visited her grandmother, the bathtub was something she took great pains to avoid. She’d try very hard for the duration of that visit not to pee. And if she needed to pee, she’d tap with her feet really quickly to try to drive all the pee away. But sometimes she couldn’t help it, she really had to pee. And when she did, she wouldn’t look at the bathtub, she would walk straight to the toilet, eyes fixed forward. And after she’d peed she’d have to use the sink, and to do that she’d face the wall, press her feet up right against the skirting board, and she would shuffle around, and that way she’d be as far from the bathtub as could be.

There was hair in her grandmother’s bathtub, coming out of the plughole. It looked like they were growing out. They were thick, like spiders’ legs, but spiders don’t have that many legs, so it was like lots of spiders had been mushed together. They were black. And that was wrong, because her grandmother didn’t even have black hair.

*

Sarah Anne Rachel Hadley really liked her name, Sarah Anne Rachel Hadley. She liked it, because if you spelled out the first letters, S A R H, that was very nearly her first name back again. It was only missing a second A, and she could pretend that it was there. It made her feel secure. And when the kids at school spoke to her, or her mother, or her father (when he was there), when they called her Sarah, she would feel that, yes, she was doubly Sarah, she would think, I’m Sarah through and through.

Sarah Anne Rachel Hadley’s mother was called Sophie Maureen Hadley, and that wasn’t any good, that didn’t spell anything.

Sarah’s grandmother was called Eunice Pinnock. Sarah didn’t know if her grandmother had a middle name. She’d never asked.

*

Sarah liked her grandmother well enough, but she would sometimes try and hug Sarah, and Sarah didn’t like that. Whenever Mummy told her they were going to visit her grandmother, Sarah would get sad, and she’d ask her Mummy to stop all the hugging from happening, and Mummy said she’d do her best, and she had told Granny, but Granny sometimes forgot. Granny was old, old people forget things. So if Granny hugged Sarah, Sarah would have to be a brave little girl and put up with it, and not cry, and not shout, and Mummy would reward Sarah with a treat.

Her grandmother was always forgetting that Sarah was a special girl, and that her skin was very soft, and that hugging was very bad for soft skin because it would leave marks on it, or even worse, lots of grandmother’s skin might get left on Sarah’s skin, and then maybe it’d get sucked through the pores, and then grandmother would be inside Sarah. Sarah didn’t want that. Sarah wanted to be Sarah through and through.

When her grandmother hugged Sarah, she’d smell of cigarettes and cinnamon. Sarah would sometimes see her grandmother smoking cigarettes, but she never saw her eat cinnamon. Sarah liked the smell of cinnamon, but not when it was on grandmother. And she didn’t like the smell of cigarettes at all.

*

And another thing about the bathtub was the taps. The taps were too big. Something could be hiding inside the taps. Sarah would sometimes look at the taps. Because she didn’t want to, but she would sometimes look at the bathtub, she couldn’t help it, not for all her precautions, she would just stare at the bathtub, it was like an itch in her mind – she’d stare at those giant taps, those ogre taps, she’d wonder why they had to be so big.

She didn’t like the pipes either, which were rusty, bits of rust would get in the water, it’d make the water dirty. She didn’t like the cracks in the side of the bath, they looked like dirt too, but they wouldn’t wash away. She didn’t like the colour of the bath. It was a green bath. Sarah liked green well enough. But it was the wrong colour for a bath.

*

For that second A, S A R A H, Sarah would make up lots of names. Sometimes she would be Antonia. Sometimes she would be Adelaide, she’d read that in a book once, she thought that was pretty. Sometimes, when she felt bad, she’d be Anne. Sarah Anne Rachel Anne. She’d rattle it through her head, it sounded like a train on the tracks.

Most days Sarah didn’t put much thought into which name she’d pick. She was a sensible girl, really. She thought choosing her new name might be silly.

She sometimes wondered whether which name she chose affected anything. Whether she had better days as Antonia or Alexandra or Adelaide or Alice or Agnes or Anne. She’d thought about keeping a diary to see, it would be interesting. She hadn’t got around to it yet.

*

She was trying out a brand new name the day that Mummy gave her the news, she was Amanda, and maybe that had been the problem.

“Pack some toys,” Mummy said. “We’re going to Granny’s for a while.”

Going to her grandmother’s made Sarah sad, mostly because of the hugging, but also because of the cigarettes and the cinnamon. But she liked the journey to Granny’s. She’d learned it by heart. They’d catch the 23 bus to the train station. Then they’d catch the train. Then they’d catch the 32 bus to grandmother’s house. Sarah liked the way that 23 was 32 backwards, and that 32 was 23 backwards, and the train bit could be sandwiched in the middle.

She’d sometimes ask Mummy whether they could go to her grandmother’s house, but not actually bother seeing her grandmother, they could just turn right round when they got there and go home again, they could get off the 32 bus and get another 32 bus going in the opposite direction, then get the train, then get the 23 bus, and that would be good. And Mummy always said no.

Sarah said, How long are we going for?

Mummy said, “I don’t know, as long as it takes,” and that wasn’t an answer at all, but Mummy sounded cross, and Sarah didn’t like it when Mummy was cross. Sarah had only been trying to work out whether they’d be there so long that at some point she might need to go and pee, and Sarah grimly concluded they probably might be. She cried at that.

She cried too when Mummy said they were going to get there by car, because that would miss out the only good bit. Sarah said, I want to go by bus, and train, and bus. Mummy said, “We’re going by car, we’ll be carrying too much luggage,” and Sarah didn’t like the sound of that.

*

And another thing about the bathtub was that it made a noise, a sort of whispering noise.

And another thing about the bathtub was that it smelled of cigarettes and cinnamon.

*

The good news was that grandmother didn’t even try to hug her. Grandmother hugged Mummy, and Mummy held on to grandmother so long and so tight, and grandmother just forgot.

Sarah went into the sitting room whilst Mummy and grandmother talked in the kitchen. Sarah sat down on the sofa. She counted the tiles on the ceiling, and there were fifty-three complete ones, and sixteen half ones, and three which were partially obscured by light fittings. The same as always.

After a while, her grandmother came in to see her. She stood in the doorway. “Do you want to take your coat off, dear?”, and Sarah said, No, and grandmother left.

After a while, Mummy came in to see her too. “Take your coat off, Sarah,” she said. Sarah did, and Mummy took it, she left the room to hang the coat up somewhere, Sarah didn’t know where.

*

Sarah began to fidget because it was Tuesday and Tuesday was bath night, and they never visited grandmother on Tuesday because Sarah was too busy at home doing ordinary things and having her bath. But she didn’t want to fidget too much, she didn’t want Mummy to notice, because then Mummy might ask what was wrong, and Sarah was very bad at lying, and she’d have to tell her, and then Mummy might say she’d have to have her bath at her grandmother’s. And the idea of missing bath night distressed Sarah, but the idea of grandmother’s bathtub with its pipes and taps and spider legs distressed her more, she’d rather have the one distress over the other.

And at seven o’clock sharp Mummy said, “Time for bed, little lady,” and Sarah thought she might have got away with it. She’d lie in bed all night and be covered in dirt and the dirt would be soiling the bed sheets but that would be okay. And her grandmother said, “Do you want to use the bathroom, dear?”, and Mummy said, “I’d forgotten, it’s bath night!”, and Sarah hated her grandmother so much.

Mummy went upstairs to run the bath. Sarah thought she would stay downstairs, if she stayed downstairs as long as possible then maybe Mummy would forget who the bath was for, and at home Mummy never needed Sarah to be in the room whilst the bath was being run. But this time she said, “Come along, Sarah,” and Sarah had to follow her, and as she climbed up the stairs it seemed to her that her body was getting heavier and heavier and that she was walking through glue. Mummy didn’t seem to notice the dangers of the bathtub, she walked straight up to it without even taking a deep breath or anything, and she turned on the taps and the taps whistled and spat out water, spat it out in thick gobbets, then the water began to flow.

Mummy said, “I’m sorry about this, darling, I know this is all very confusing. But you’ll understand one day, and I promise you, it’s for the best.” And Sarah was looking straight at her, and nodding, just so she wouldn’t have to look at the bathtub, and hear what the bathtub was whispering.

Mummy turned off the taps. Steam rose out of the water. “You’re all set,” she said. It’s too hot, said Sarah. “It’s fine,” said Mummy. Sarah said, it’s too hot. Mummy said, “You want to wait until it cools down? Okay. Don’t be too long, I might need the bath myself! Here’s a towel.” And Sarah wanted to say, don’t go, don’t go, don’t leave me, don’t go – but she’d been having baths on her own now for years, and Mummy left.

Once they were on their own, the bathtub whispered even more. Sarah put her fingers in her ears.

She looked at the bath. She supposed the water in the middle wasn’t too bad. The water in the middle wasn’t touching any part of the bath. If she could just get into that bit, she’d be fine. If she could just get into the bath, and not touch the bath, not the sides, not reach the bottom, she’d be okay. If she were the size of a little mouse, she could bob about on the surface, safe.

But she was a sensible girl, really. And that might be silly.

She peered over the side, carefully, not too close, in case the bathtub leaped up, caught her, pulled her in. The plug was in the plughole. That was good. Because all the spider legs were in the plughole, and now they were hidden by the plug. But if she got in the bath, the plug might come free. The bathtub would pop it out, maybe the spider legs would kick it out, and then the water would be sucked down the drain, and she’d be sucked down too, she’d be sucked into a whirlpool going round and round and down and down. And Sarah didn’t mind so much the thought of going down the drain, but she’d have to brush against so many spider legs along the way.

She looked at the ogre taps. She knew what was hiding inside the taps. Fingers. And the fingers would crawl out, once she was in the bath, sitting in the bath an touching it, touching the cracks with her bare skin, the fingers would come out and prod at her. And then they’d pull the plug chain, and out of the plughole would come the plug. And the fingers would be hairy too, probably, with thick black hair, like spiders’ legs.

The water had a smell.

Cinnamon. Cigarettes.

She refused to listen to what the bathtub was whispering, but she had to take her fingers out of her ears to stop her nostrils fast against that smell.

She went to the sink. She ran water into the sink. She had no problem with the sink. The sink wasn’t cracked. There were no hairs in the sink. Hardened lumps of toothpaste, but toothpaste was good for you. The sink was green, but Sarah liked green well enough.

She got undressed. She splashed sink water all over her body, cupping her hands, and trying to get it on to her before it trickled out through her fingers. She kept her back to the bathtub, she wouldn’t look at it any more.

She dried herself, went down to Mummy.

She knew if Mummy said, “Have you had your bath?” Sarah couldn’t lie to her. Sarah was no good at lying.

Mummy and her grandmother were in the kitchen. Her grandmother was smoking. Mummy was clasping on to a cup of tea with all her might. Neither of them were speaking. They didn’t notice Sarah standing there for a little while. Then Mummy looked up.

“Are you washed?” she asked.

Sarah said, Yes.

*

Sarah slept with her Mummy that night. The spare room was right next door to the bathroom, but Sarah wasn’t frightened, she knew her Mummy would always protect her.

*

In the morning, Sarah woke alone.

She went downstairs to the kitchen. Grandmother sat at the table, on her own, and she was smoking, and clouds of blue mist hung around the room. She saw Sarah, and smiled. “Hello, dear. Do you want some breakfast?”

No, said Sarah.

Grandmother got up. She opened her arms. “You poor thing. Come here.”

No.

*

She looked all over for her mother, until the last room to try was the bathroom. Sarah took a deep breath, and went in.

Mummy was there. She was in the bath. She wasn’t washing. She was just sitting there, in the bath. She wasn’t even using the soap. She was in the bath, and the water was right up to her neck, and she was just sitting there, very still, and staring ahead, and Sarah wondered whether she might be dead, whether the bath had killed her, and she was excited, and not frightened yet, but she knew if she were dead she would get very frightened soon.

“Hello,” said Mummy. She wasn’t dead.

Sarah said, What are you doing?

“I’m having a bath.”

Okay, said Sarah.

She turned to leave.

“You don’t have to go,” said Mummy.

Okay, said Sarah. She stayed a bit longer. They didn’t say anything else. So Sarah left anyway.

*

Sarah Anne Rachel used to be much worse! She couldn’t remember now, but Mummy and Daddy once sat together on the sofa, and they told her this story. About how when she was very small, they had all gone on holiday together. They’d driven all the way to Cornwall, and Sarah had been as good as gold, just looked out of the window the whole way, hadn’t made a fuss. But when they got to the hotel, oh, it was a different matter! Oh, she’d been a nightmare! She didn’t like the bathroom there. She screamed the place down, they didn’t know, maybe she’d thought it was haunted or something. They’d booked this hotel months ago, mind. And they had to ask the manageress for another room, on another floor, with another bathroom. And Sarah hadn’t liked that one either! They had to leave the hotel, they lost their deposit. And they drove around for hours, checking out all the hotels. And it was tourist season, so most of the hotels were fully booked, and the ones that weren’t, she didn’t like the bathrooms there any better! So eventually they had to give up, no holiday to be had. They drove all the way back home that night, Mummy and Daddy taking turns at the steering wheel, and all the way Sarah sleeping soundly in the back, good as gold, not a fuss. You’d never have known, they said. You looked so peaceful, you’d never have known.

Mummy and Daddy were cuddled up together, and they laughed a lot at the story, and Sarah laughed too, but she couldn’t see really what was so funny.

Mummy and Daddy said they were just thankful Sarah had got so much better.

She was better now, it was only the bathtub at her grandmother’s house she didn’t like. But she never told her parents. She couldn’t. She didn’t listen to what the bathtub whispered, but sometimes the words seeped into her head anyway. And the bathtub warned her, don’t you ever tell your Mummy and Daddy, don’t you dare tell anyone. Or I’ll come and get you, and make you mine.

*

They told Sarah to go and play, but she’d already counted all the tiles on the ceiling of the sitting room. She counted them again, and then went to find Mummy. The kitchen door was closed. They had closed it on her. And there were whispers going on behind it. Sarah knew she didn’t want to hear the whispering, but she stood outside the door, ear jammed right up against the wood, and the words seeped into her head anyway.

She opened the door, and her grandmother and her Mummy stopped talking.

There was even more smoke in the room now, grandmother was holding a cigarette, Mummy was too, and Mummy didn’t ever hold cigarettes. Mummy’s face looked puffy like she’d been crying, though Sarah couldn’t see any wetness on her cheeks now, and the puffiness made Mummy look old, and wrinkled, and a bit ugly, she looked just like grandmother. She had become grandmother.

Mummy started, looked a bit guilty, and Mummy never looked guilty, she looked less like herself than ever. She’d had a bath and she looked worse, she wasn’t wearing any lipstick, her face was dull.

And Sarah understood, it wasn’t grandmother who made the bath smell so, it wasn’t grandmother who was bad, it was the bathtub, this is what it did to people, it made them ugly like Granny. I’ll come and get you, it had said, I’ll make you mine. And she knew she must never get into that tub, not ever. Or she’d lose herself, just as sure as she’d lost her Mummy.

“I’m sorry,” Mummy said, and put her cigarette in the ashtray, and got up, and came towards Sarah, and yes, she was going to give Sarah a hug, she was opening her arms out wide, and Sarah didn’t mind hugs from Mummy, but she minded them now, and Mummy pressed Sarah close to her, and she smelled like cinnamon.

*

And another thing about the bathtub. It doesn’t make you clean. It makes you a different sort of dirty.

*

Grandmother suggested they all deserved a day out, they should all go to the shopping mall. And Mummy agreed, but then, she would have, wouldn’t she? Mummy put on her make-up, and it made her look a bit more like herself, but Sarah wasn’t fooled. They went to a department store, and grandmother liked a dress, but it wasn’t in her size, and she ordered it, and she gave her name, Eunice Pinnock, and Sarah still didn’t know what her middle initial could be, but she didn’t much care. And Mummy admired the dress, and grandmother said, well, why don’t you get one for yourself? You need a treat, all you’ve been through. And they didn’t have it in Mummy’s size either, and so Mummy ordered it too, and gave her name as Sophie Pinnock, and that wasn’t right, that wasn’t right, that wasn’t right. It made her new name Sophie Maureen Pinnock, and that was SMP, and that still didn’t stand for anything, but it had been better before. And grandmother said, do you like the dress, Sarah? And Mummy said, you like the dress, don’t you, Sarah? Have a treat. You need a treat, all you’ve been through. And the shop did have the dress in Sarah’s size, and grandmother bought it for her, and it looked very nice.

They had drinks in the cafe. Grandmother and Mummy had coffees, Sarah had a milkshake.

And Sarah wondered if she’d have to change her name now as well. She’d be Sarah Anne Rachel Pinnock. A sarp. What was a sarp? A sarp wasn’t anything.

Mummy told Sarah to thank her granny for her dress and for the shake, and Sarah did. And when they got back to grandmother’s house they hung the new dress in the wardrobe, and Mummy promised they’d put more clothes in there soon, this was only the beginning, and Sarah thanked her too, thank you, Mummy, she said. She wanted to fidget, but she also didn’t want to fidget, she didn’t want Mummy realising anything was wrong. Mummy and grandmother went back into the kitchen to make it smell all smoky and sweet. They closed the door on Sarah. Sarah took all the money from Mummy’s purse, because she didn’t know how much she’d need. And then, very quietly, she went to the front door, opened it carefully, stepped outside, and left.

*

Sarah went to the bus stop, caught the 32 to the train station. At the station the woman behind the ticket window asked her where she wanted to go, and Sarah gave her her full address. “Which station?” asked the woman, and Sarah told her. Sarah got on the train, and she enjoyed the journey, the tracks seemed to be singing to her, Sarah Anne Rachel Anne, Sarah Anne Rachel Anne – and that was good, because today was an Anne day, today was very much an Anne day. Sarah got off the train, went to the bus stop, caught the 23, got off the bus, went home.

She rang her own doorbell to her own house, and a woman she didn’t recognise opened the front door. She was younger than Mummy. “Yes?” the younger than Mummy woman said. Sarah said that she lived there. The woman blushed. “You must be Sarah,” she said. Sarah told her name was Sarah Anne Rachel Hadley. She didn’t tell her her whole name, she didn’t know her well enough.

The woman seemed frightened of Sarah. Sarah didn’t know why. “Come in,” the woman said. “Please. Your father’s not here. He’s at work. I don’t know when he’ll. He’ll be back soon. I’ll call him, I’ll get him. So. How did you get here? Do you want anything? A coffee, you probably don’t drink coffee, there’s milk, there’s juice.”

Sarah said, I want to have a bath. My bath is overdue.

The woman blinked, and said, “All right.”

Sarah thought back to some of the whispering she’d heard. Not the nasty whispering from the bathtub, the nastier whispering through the kitchen door. “Are you going to end up my new mummy?”

The woman said, “Well. Well, I. No.”

Sarah said, Good.

Sarah went upstairs, and ran herself a bath. The bathtub was pink, the way bathtubs are meant to be, and it didn’t talk to her.

*

Sarah was still in the bath when Daddy got home. “Where is she?” she heard from downstairs. She didn’t hear what the woman said in reply, her voice was too feeble.

Daddy entered the bathroom without knocking. This would have upset Sarah once, but she hadn’t seen him for a while, she’d forgive him anything.

“Does your mother know you’re here?” he said.

Sarah didn’t know what her Mummy might know.

“Oh God.” He took out his mobile phone, and left the room. He didn’t bother to close the door, and it let cold air in, and that was annoying. Sarah heard her father downstairs, and his voice was raised.

When he came back, his voice was softer, kinder.

“What are you doing here, poppet?” he said. “You can’t just. You know.”

Sarah said, I came home.

“You can’t,” he said again. “Not for a little while. Okay? Mummy and me. We have things to sort out. Okay?”

Sarah said, Don’t you want to see me?

Daddy said, “It’s not a question of what I want, poppet.”

Sarah said, Don’t you want to see me?

Daddy said, “Not right now. Not like this. No. No.”

Sarah said nothing.

Daddy said, “Get out of the bath now, poppet.”

Sarah said, No. No.

*

The longer she stayed in the bath the more wrinkly her fingers got. She looked old, like her grandmother.

The water got cold, but to reach the taps and run more hot water in she’d have had to get out of the bath, and Sarah didn’t want to get out of the bath.

There was a knock on the door at one point, very gentle, and Sarah thought it would be her father, maybe he’d come to say sorry, maybe he’d come to say he wanted her. But it was the scared woman, the younger than Mummy woman, and she asked whether she could get Sarah a glass of milk or juice. Sarah didn’t want milk or juice. Sarah thought the woman seemed rather nice, and probably would have made a nice mummy, but she was glad she wasn’t going to be hers.

The water was very cold by the time her real Mummy arrived, and it was dark outside too. Mummy didn’t ask, she just said, “Out of the bath, now,” and Sarah was happy to oblige.

*

In the car, Mummy said, “I’m very cross with you. That was a very mean and selfish thing you did.”

Sarah thought for a while, and said, I’m cross with you too.

Sarah wondered what the noise was, and realised it was her Mummy starting to cry.

*

It was gone midnight by the time they got to grandmother’s. Sarah was dozing.

“Wake up,” said her mother, roughly, but the way she stroked Sarah’s hair was gentle enough.

Grandmother was awake, waiting for them, and the ashtray was overflowing. “What happened? Did you see her?”

“Yes,” said Mummy.

“What did you say to her?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mummy.

“What was she like?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. For Christ’s sake, Mum. Stop it. All right? Stop it.”

“I only…”

“Go to bed. I’ve had enough of it now. I’ve had it up to here. All right?”

“All right.”

“To bed with you, Sarah. Mummy will be along soon. I’m just going to have a bath.”

“Now?” Granny dared to ask.

“Now. I just need to. I want to, I. I need to wash the dirt out of me. I want to get rid of the dirt.”

Sarah lay in bed, and although she was very tired, she couldn’t fall asleep. She was listening to the water as it splashed into the tub, as it thrummed through the rusted pipes. She was listening to the whispering, and it wasn’t just whispering now, she could hear every word loud and precise and clear.

*

Sarah knocked on the bathroom door gently. She went in.

Mummy was lying in the bath. She turned her head. She looked surprised to see her.

“Go to bed,” she said.

But Sarah stood her ground.

“Oh, what do you want, Sarah?” Mummy sighed.

Sarah thought. Said, honestly – I don’t know.

Sarah then said, He doesn’t want me.

“He doesn’t want us,” said Mummy.

He doesn’t want me.

“No.”

And then: “Sorry.”

Sarah said, Is this going to be our new home?

Mummy said, “Just for a while. Not forever. You don’t mind, do you?”

No.

“This was my home. When I was your age. This house. It makes me feel like me.”

Sarah wanted to give her mother a hug, but she didn’t give hugs. And Mummy was in the bath, the bath was all around her. Sarah didn’t know how to hug her without the bath touching her. Sarah didn’t know how to offer a hug, so she didn’t.

“I want you,” said Mummy, quietly. “I promise. I do.” And Sarah gave her a hug anyway, just a little one around the neck, and the side of the tub brushed up against her, and Sarah was revolted, and Mummy was wet, and Mummy left damp patches on Sarah’s nightie.

“Get in,” said Mummy.

I can’t.

“Yes, you can. There’s plenty of room. It’s a big tub.”

So Sarah took her nightie off. Mummy sat up to make more room, and the water sloshed about a bit, and the waves seemed big and menacing, and then the water settled down again. Mummy held out her hand, and smiled. And Sarah took it. And Sarah put first one foot into the warm water, and then the other, and both feet hit the bottom of the tub, and then Sarah lowered herself into the water, and her bum hit the bottom of the tub too.

Mummy put her arms around Sarah’s waist, pulled her back, pulled her into her soapy body, and it was slippery, it made Sarah want to laugh.

“We’ll be all right, you know,” said Mummy.

And the bathtub continued to whisper. And it didn’t say such reassuring things. But it was all right, it was.

And Sarah had such soft skin, and she could feel the water leaking in through her thin pores, swelling her up fat like a balloon. The bathtub had got her now. And she would be her grandmother, she would be her mother, she would be SARP. She would learn how to hug, and to smoke, and she’d smell of sweet cinnamon. And it was all right, all of it. And she put her head back upon her mother’s chest, and she closed her eyes, closed them against the cracks and the spider legs and the fingers coming out at her from the taps, she closed her eyes, and she felt safe.

When they reached the hotel room, both of them had the urge to flop down upon that queen size bed and spread out like starfish. But neither of them did, and neither quite knew why, but it may have been something to do with not wanting to seem silly in front of the other. Daniel set the suitcase down and said, “Well, this is nice,” and went to inspect the bathroom. Susan opened up the suitcase, opened up the wardrobe and drawers, and began finding new homes for all their clothes and travel accessories.

Daniel pulled open the curtains, looked out of the window. “Come here, Susie,” he said, and Susan obliged, and they stood there, looking down upon the streets of Gdansk, so close they could be nearly touching. “We’ll get a nice view, at any rate,” said Daniel. “Once the rain stops.”

This was their anniversary present, and now they were here both of them made up their minds to enjoy it. George had given it to them. George had said he wanted to give them something special for their thirtieth. He was always taking foreign holidays with his wife, and when they came to visit every other month or so George was always full of the exciting places they had been, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, and neither Susan nor Daniel quite knew where he got it from, when he’d been a child they’d never taken him anywhere more exotic than Skegness. He had phoned them up, wished them happy anniversary, told them he was going to treat them to three nights in Gdansk; he’d just been, it was lovely, and not too overrun with tourists yet, and it was high time the two of the got out and did something, they weren’t getting any younger! They could take the holiday any time they wanted, just let him know, he’d arrange everything. And Christmas had come and then Susan’s birthday had come and then Daniel’s, and George had phoned up and said, aren’t you going to take that holiday soon, it’s nearly been a year since I offered it to you! And Susan and Daniel decided they had better get their thirtieth anniversary present out of the way quickly before they got given a thirty-first.

George had booked the flights, he’d found them a hotel he’d heard recommended, he even arranged taxis to and from the airport. The only thing he couldn’t do for them was go instead. The flight was quite comfortable, really, and Susan didn’t need the air sickness bag as she’d feared. Gdansk looked nice out of the cab window, big and old-fashioned and stony, and everywhere there were signs in foreign lettering.

They had dinner in the hotel. It was too wet to go out. Afterwards Daniel sat on the bed and read through the little guide book he’d bought at the airport, frowning at it seriously as if it were a Bible whose hidden meanings he had to interpret. “It all sounds nice,” he said. “There’s an Amber Museum, and a museum celebrating solidarity. And Soport Pier is the largest wooden pier in the whole of Europe.”

Susan found a piece of white card on the dresser by the bed. She picked it up and looked at it. She showed it to Daniel.

“Pillow menu,” he read.

“What’s a pillow menu?” asked Susan.

“I suppose,” said Daniel, and laughed, “it’s a menu for pillows. Well, I never!”

This is what the Pillow Menu said:

We understand everyone has their own personal pillow preference.

 If you would prefer a different type of pillow than is on your bed please refer to the menu overleaf. To make your request, at any time of the day or night, please phone reception on extension 0.

 Daniel said he had never really thought to have a personal pillow preference, in spite of what the card so politely asserted. Susan agreed. “Refer overleaf,” she said, and Daniel did.

Pillow 1:

 Soft & Slim Pillow!

 A soft and slim pillow offering a slight incline.

 Pillow 2:

 Feather / Duck Down Pillow!

 A feather and duck down pillow to provide dreamy soft support.

 Pillow 3:

 Firm Pillow!

 An extremely supportive firm pillow.

 Pillow 4:

 Poland Pillow!

 A large square pillow offering excellent back support for reading in bed.

 “Well, I never!” chuckled Daniel again.

“What will they think of next?” Susan agreed.

Daniel felt at the pillows that were on the bed. They felt very efficient, and very ordinary. “Let’s do it,” he said.

“Oh, Daniel,” said Susan. “We can’t. They’ll be having their tea.”

“Any time, day or night,” said Daniel. “Look. I think we should have special pillows. It’s our holiday. I think we can do whatever we like!”

He picked up the phone. Susan giggled – “Oh, you really mustn’t!” Daniel winked at her, rang down to reception.

“Hello?”  he said. “My wife and I were looking at your, uh, menu. For pillows. Is it really true that…? Well. Well, I think we’d like some pillows, yes, if it isn’t too much trouble. I don’t know.” He held the receiver to his chest. “Susan, what pillow would you like?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Pillow number one?”

“My wife would like pillow number one. And I think I will go for pillow number two. Yes. …Oh, can you? Really?” He held the receiver to his chest again. “He says we can have all four pillows, if we want.”

“Don’t be silly!” she said. “What would we be wanting with four pillows?” But she was laughing.

“Well, yes,” said Daniel, into the phone. “Yes. Go on then. Let’s, let’s go for all four, um. If you’re sure that’s all right. In your own time. Don’t let us spoil your tea. Thank you.”

He put the phone down, and Susan very gently hit his arm with one of the pillows they already had.

“What?” said Daniel, and grinned.

“Daniel Evans,” she said. “You really are the limit!”

And presently there was a knock on the door. “Room service!” called a young woman’s voice, kind and polite. “That was quick,” said Daniel, and Susan echoed him, “that was quick,” and Susan got up to answer the door. There stood a maid with thick black hair and dark brown eyes and the sweetest of smiles, and she was laden down with pillows.

“Oh, you poor thing!” said Susan. “Let me help you with that,” said Daniel.

“Is no need,” the maid continued to smile. She put the pillows down on to the bed. Daniel took out some euros, offered them to her, and she waved the money away. Her name badge was now visible – her name was Lura.

“Thank you, Lura,” said Susan.

“Yes, thank you, Lura,” said Daniel.

Lura said, “Thank you!” too, though there was really no need, and her pretty smile somehow contrived to get prettier still, and she all but bobbed a curtsey, and she left.

The couple turned to their new pillows. “Which do you think is which?” said Susan, because really, they all looked exactly the same, just like pillows. Daniel gave them each a squeeze. “I think this is number three,” he said, “this one feels a bit firmer.”

Daniel selected pillow three, and Susan pillow two. They got into their pyjamas. Daniel said, “Maybe we’ll do that amber museum tomorrow, and I wouldn’t mind a look at that pier.” Susan turned off the light. Susan liked the feel of her pillow. It was very soft, it was as if her cheek was gliding down on it, and she thought it had the faint whiff of lavender.

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night,” said Daniel.

“I’m glad we came,” she said.

For a while she heard nothing but the raindrops against the window, and her husband’s breathing, and both were soothing.

He said, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said.

It wasn’t something either said very often, and that was because they didn’t really need to. But it was nice to hear, all the same. There in the darkness, in a foreign land, with something so soft against her cheek, and lavender in the air.

She waited to see if he’d say anything else, but he didn’t, and that was perfectly all right. She heard he was asleep, and then, very soon afterwards, she was asleep too.

*

It was still raining the next morning when Susan woke up. She didn’t mind. She watched the raindrops spatter upon the windowpanes, and she thought, they’re Polish raindrops, and that made them rather exotic. The pillow beneath her head was still so inviting, and she felt she could very easily just drift off back to sleep.

“Good morning,” said Daniel. He’d woken up too. She hadn’t realised.

“Did you sleep well?”

He chuckled. “With my special pillow? I did!”

“Me too.”

They both lay in bed for another half hour, they both watched the rain. Susan knew that Daniel was close enough that she could reach out and touch him, but she was so snug as she was, she didn’t want any part of her body to traverse the cold untouched sheets between them.

“We should get up,” she said, at last.

“There’s nowhere to go,” Daniel pointed out. “We could just stay here.”

“No, we should get up.”

So they did. Daniel shaved, and once he was out of the bathroom, Susan had a shower.

Susan was drying her hair when there was a knock at the door. “I come later?” Lura said.

“No, no,” said Daniel. “We’re just going out.”

Lura pointed at the window, and at the wet, and gave an apologetic smile. Daniel smiled back, shrugged. Susan said, “Thank you for last night’s pillows,” and Lura nodded, said they were welcome.

Daniel and Susan went down to the hotel lobby. Susan took some knitting, Daniel took his guide book. They found a couple of comfy armchairs, and settled down to enjoy themselves. Daniel occasionally would tell Susan some interesting bits of historical information about places it was too wet to see, and Susan would shake her head in wonder. He pointed out some pictures of the Amber Museum. “That’s very nice,” he said.

They had lunch at the hotel. When the rain hadn’t eased off by evening, they had dinner there too.

They went back to their room, and found that Lura had cleaned it very well, and it had the same sort of pristine perfection they’d found on arrival. It seemed to Susan that all trace of them had been erased, and she had to open the wardrobe to check their clothes were still hanging there, that they belonged.

They stood by the window, and watched lightning arc over the city. “Come here,” said Daniel, and he gave her a little hug, and something that was very nearly a kiss, he brushed the top of her head gently with his lips. “Never mind, old girl,” he said. “Not much of a holiday, but never mind.” And Susan said it didn’t matter, she was quite all right, and so she was.

As they were getting ready for bed, Daniel idly picked up the pillow menu from the dresser. He gave a little cry of surprise, and Susan stopped brushing her hair and looked around, none of the glittering delights Daniel had read about in the guide book of Gdansk had sparked so enthusiastic a response.

“There are new pillows!” he said. “Look!”

And there were.

Pillow 5:

 Emperor Pillow!

 The soft innards of leaves found in the deepest parts of the Bolivian rainforest, glazed with honey and tree sap.

 Pillow 6:

 Empress Pillow!

 Lovingly sculpted from whipped asses’ milk, to ensure a peaceful night’s sleep.

 Pillow 7:

 The Little Princeling!

 Extract of cloud.

 These special pillows didn’t come free. The prices were written clearly underneath. The Emperor and the Empress were twenty-five euros each, the Little Princeling went for a cool fifty.

Neither Daniel nor Susan spoke for a while. And then Daniel said, “Well, we are on holiday…”

And Susan said, “We’ve saved so much money not going to the Amber Museum.”

And Daniel was on the phone.

Only minutes later there was a knock at the door, and there was Lura, her smile just as pretty, and she carried a large silver platter. She removed the lid, and with tongs placed each pillow gently upon the bed. Pillows five and six looked no different from each other, or indeed from the pillows the couple had already enjoyed. The Little Princeling, though, was about the size of a bathroom flannel, and Lura took it from the platter with particular delicacy, as if afraid she would break it.

She waited patiently whilst Daniel fished in his pocket for a hundred euros. She tucked the notes down the front of her dress, bobbed a little curtsey, said good night, and was gone.

When Susan pressed her face upon the Empress, she could feel the milk lap about her cheeks, and it was warm, and she was Cleopatra, and this wasn’t the sort of milk she kept at home in the fridge, not the milk she’d waste on cornflakes, and it reminded her of the milk she’d enjoyed as a child, and the way her mother would warm it for as a treat, if it were cold outside or Susan felt poorly, and the way Susan had warmed it for little George, that had been such a long time ago, and it made her feel safe, she felt protected. And she thought her milk pillow was wet, a thick wet, but when she put her hand to her face it seemed dry, and softer than it had ever been.

When David laid upon the Emperor, he heard the beating of life within it, gently beating away, of something as old as the world and something that could never die, not really, not whilst there was still air and land and sea, still a planet for life to cling to – and he heard too the beating of his own heart, and the air passing through his lungs, and the blood gushing in his veins, and he realised it was the same thing, it was all exactly the same. And he wasn’t such a bad man. He wasn’t bad, after all.

And the Little Princeling was the best pillow, and all through the night they shared it, they passed it back and forth, like a spliff, and they had forgotten they had ever done that, so many years ago, before they were married, just the once, they had forgotten they had ever been so naughty and so young.

They kissed, and they hadn’t done that for so very long either.

They took off their pyjamas, and they’d seen each other naked, of course – but not as something to look at, to enjoy. They held each other. She’d wrap her arms around him, then they’d turn over, he’d be all over her. They wouldn’t do more than that, they’d kiss and spoon, but that was the pleasure of it, knowing it could go no further, that the anticipation was there, it was like before they were married, when they had the rest of their lives ahead of them. Susan felt soft and beautiful, and David proud and brave, and they were.

*

By the morning the rain had stopped, and sunlight streamed in through the window, and Gdansk lay outside fresh and dry for them. But they didn’t want Gdansk today. They stayed in bed.

At some point Lura knocked upon their door. “Room service,” she called, softly. They didn’t bother to reply, and she left.

They dozed the whole day, and when they woke at last it was dark outside. And they saw that the room had been cleaned. Lura had at some point tiptoed in and made up the bed around them. And they didn’t know whether they should be alarmed by that, but then Daniel laughed – “Well, I never!” – and it didn’t seem to matter.

By the bedside there was another pillow menu.

They read it.

It didn’t take long. It was very simple.

Pillow 8:

 ?

 That was all.

This time it was Susan who made the phone call, and she didn’t worry that the staff might be having their tea, she wanted pillow eight brought to them right away.

Lura opened the door, and it was only then that it occurred to the couple that they were still naked, and they pulled the sheets over all their extremities. But Lura didn’t seem to mind. She smiled at them, and it was a maternal smile, it really was her prettiest smile of all. And she said, “Is good day?”, and they told her that it had been.

“Pillow eight,” she said.

And from the corridor she wheeled into the room a large chest – no, not merely a chest, this was a sarcophagus – surely there couldn’t be a mere pillow inside it, there had to be diamonds or gold or an ancient pharaoh at the very least – and Daniel looked at Susan, and saw that she was licking her lips, and he realised his mouth was dry with excitement and he was then licking his lips too.

“What sort of pillow,” Daniel asked, “have you got in there?”

Lura wagged her finger at them, but she wasn’t telling them off, it was all in play, and she laughed.

“Twenty thousand euros,” she said.

There was silence, a sort of dumbfounded silence. And then Susan and Daniel both spoke at once.

“We’ll take it,” said Susan.

“We can’t afford it,” said Daniel.

Susan stared at Daniel, and Daniel stared at Susan, and both seemed equally surprised by the other’s reaction.

Lura waited.

Daniel turned back to Lura. “We can’t afford it,” he said again. “I’m sorry.”

And Lura smiled, as if this were the response she was used to, and it probably was. She shrugged, as if to say, never mind! As if to say, it is a lot of money! As if to say, your loss, you silly old people.

“Let’s talk about this,” said Susan. “Just for a second. Let’s talk about this.” She could have pointed out that they had the money, it was sitting doing nothing in their savings account, and what were they saving it for, they were never going to spend it, there was nothing they were ever going to do together that was so exciting or so intrepid that it was ever going to be used. They didn’t even go on holidays. Did they, they didn’t even go on holidays. They would die, they would just die, one after the other, it didn’t matter who went first, and it would get left to George, and George didn’t need it, George went on holidays already. Susan could have said, this is our chance. This can be for us, at last, after all these years, for us and for no one else.

She didn’t say any of that. She just gazed at Daniel, hoped he would understand. And perhaps he did. Probably, he did.

He looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and it wasn’t clear whom he was talking to. And Lura wheeled the sarcophagus away, and the pillow that was locked within.

*

They weren’t angry with each other. But they slept apart that night. Even the Little Princeling was no help.

In the morning it was raining. Susan packed the suitcase. Daniel went down to reception and checked out. The desk clerk asked if Daniel had enjoyed his stay, and he said he had, thank you, very much. Daniel said, “And please pass on our thanks to Lura,” and the clerk frowned, then smiled, and said he would.

As they drove by taxi to the airport, Daniel was able to point out some of the buildings he’d read about in the guide book. They didn’t pass the Amber Museum or the pier.

Susan said, “I feel so old.”

Daniel said, “Well. We are old.”

Susan said, “I feel old inside.”

He bought them both sandwiches at the airport. They talked a little on the flight. They didn’t talk much in the car home.

And Daniel looked at his wife, and wished he knew what to say to put things right.

And Susan looked at her husband, and she knew that she loved him, and she was certain he loved her back. But she didn’t know that they had anything in common any more. And that was a shame.

They both wondered what the question mark pillow might have been.

They got home. There was a message on the answering machine from George. “I hope you guys had a good time! Did you see the Neptune Fountain? What did you make of the Neptune Fountain?” Daniel hadn’t even read about the Neptune Fountain, and now he took out his guide book, and stared at it in some confusion.

Susan took the suitcase up to the bedroom, unpacked what she had packed only a few hours before. She put away in wardrobes and cupboards clothes and travel accessories. Only when the job was done did she look at the bed she had shared with her husband almost every night for thirty-one years.

Daniel heard the urgency in Susan’s cry, and he thought maybe she was hurt, and that terrified him, and he realised in that instant he loved her with all his heart. And he dropped the guide book he would never bother opening again, and he ran upstairs to find her.

She was smiling. Thank God, she wasn’t hurt, she was smiling. She hugged on to him, she smiled, and her face lit up, and all the years simply fell away.

“Look,” she said.

There was their bed, cold, and harder than the one they had enjoyed in Gdansk. And there were their pillows, flat and ordinary. They’d left in a rush, Susan hadn’t straightened them properly, the pillows were still imprinted with the weight of their heads. And Susan and Daniel looked at one pillow, and then the other. And the imprint on both was the same. They looked like question marks. Exactly like question marks. As if the pillows were asking them something, and they couldn’t be sure what, and they would have to get into bed together to find out.

Craig Boardman’s dad has joined the circus. Craig Boardman told my son all about it in the playground. My son came home in tears, apparently Craig had been boasting about it rather. “I thought you were friends with Craig,” I said, and my son sulked, and said, “Not any more,” and I’m not sure who he was most angry with, Craig Boardman, or me, for not understanding why.

I’d only met Craig Boardman’s dad once, after I picked up my son from Craig’s birthday party. He seemed all right, he worked in the city, he was a bit up himself, actually. I couldn’t imagine why he’d have thrown away a career like that to go and work in a circus. “He’s a clown,” said my son, as if that explained everything. “The clowns are the best.” He asked me whether I would go and work in a circus – preferably as a clown, but it was up to me, whatever suited. I explained I had a job already. I worked in a bank. My son said that wasn’t as much fun as working in a circus, and I thought about it for a while, and I said he was probably right.

My wife made us his favourite meal, and I let him play an extra hour on the X box, but my son refused to be cheered up. I admit, I thought it would soon blow over. Craig Boardman had always seemed like quite a nice kid whenever he’d popped round to play, he always spoke to me politely and ate with his mouth closed; to be honest, he always seemed a rather better catch than my own son; to be honest, taking into account all the sulkings and temper tantrums and refusals to go to bed, there were times I rather envied Craig Boardman’s dad. But it didn’t blow over. If anything, the situation got worse. My son came home with news that other schoolfriends’ parents had all followed Craig Boardman’s dad’s lead, and they’d all joined the circus too. Andy Wyman’s dad had become a clown, Rachel Pinnocker’s dad had become a lion tamer, and in year four Tommy Puce’s dad now every night took his life into his own hands and allowed himself to be fired out of a cannon. And their kids had all formed a gang, with Craig Boardman at its head, and they went around the place lording it over the other kids, and bullying those that got in their way. One day my son came home and there were Chinese burns all over his arms, and my wife and I agreed that this had to stop.

I went round to Craig Boardman’s dad’s house right away. I rang the doorbell. Craig Boardman answered. “Hello, Craig,” I said, “I’d like to speak to your father.” As I’ve said, I’d always got on quite well with Craig, he seemed to be a well-brought-up sort of boy, but now he smirked at me insolently, before going inside to fetch him. I suppose if you’re the son of a clown you don’t need to defer to anyone, but I think that’s rather a shame. And then Craig Boardman’s dad came to the doorstep. He was wearing a white face, and thick painted lips, and he had a red shining plastic nose that flashed every few seconds or so. I presumed he was on his way to work. I told him that my son and his son had had a bit of a falling out, and that I knew boys could be boys, and they’d be friends again soon – but would he speak to Craig about the Chinese burns, because that really wasn’t on. And Craig Boardman’s dad didn’t say a word. His painted lips curved downwards, dramatically, to show me he was sad. He rubbed away mimed tears with his fists. And he indicated I should smell the flower in his buttonhole. I thought it was a peace offering, so I leaned forward as bidden. He squirted water in my face. Then he laughed – but silently, it was a mimed laugh, which seemed all the merrier somehow – and he honked his nose, and he closed the door.

My son didn’t seem surprised when I returned home. “He’s a clown, Dad,” he said, “why would he talk to the likes of you?” And the worst of it was that my wife seemed disappointed in me too, disapproving even. That night in bed she put down her Mills and Boon and fixed me with a serious look. “I don’t see why you can’t join the circus,” she said. “It’s not as if there’s not part time work going as well.” My wife, who had always said she’d loved me for me, banker and all. I asked her whether she’d really rather I worked in a circus than in the third most solvent banking conglomerate in Western Europe, and she said, “If you won’t do it for your family, at least do it for yourself,” and I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. Our lovemaking seemed pointedly pedestrian, and I wondered whether my wearing a red plastic nose would have put a bit more life into her. I agreed to go to a circus audition. She smiled at last, made something approaching the right sort of sexual effort. And for my part, I rued the day we had let the council tear down the local library and erect that big top in its place.

I put on my best suit, I went to the circus. There was a line outside. It was composed of nervous middle-aged men all trying to look entertaining, I recognised a lot of them from school Parents’ Evenings. We were auditioned in groups of six. The man in charge asked us one by one to explain what we thought we could offer a circus; I assumed he was the ringmaster, but he wasn’t wearing a red suit or a top hat, and his T-shirt was stained and he kept picking at it. I told him I wanted to be a clown to impress my son, and he said that, yeah, they got a lot of that.

He led us out into the circus ring. I gazed up at the seats all around, and imagined they were full of paying customers demanding to be amused, and at the thought butterflies started swirling round my stomach most unhelpfully. My feet sank deep into the sawdust, and I looked down, and saw that it was fake and plastic. “Let’s see what you can do,” the ringmaster said.

First, he had us juggling. I had never juggled before, I didn’t think I could. But it was easier than it looked, or maybe I had a natural proclivity for it, I don’t know – the three balls were soon dancing through the air, and I knew really that I was the one making it happen, I knew I was catching them and throwing them, but it seemed to me that it was all taking place independently of me, without any effort, the way I keep my heart beating or my lungs heaving without having to think about it, all I was doing was patting the balls on the back in friendly encouragement and sending them on their way. “More balls, more balls!” called the ringmaster, and then I was thrown a fourth ball, then a fifth, a sixth; then he threw in a glass of water, a plastic spoon, a brick – and still I could do it, still I could keep them all in the air, in one increasing circle, as if they were all cars on some invisible ferris wheel and my hands were the fulcrum, no, not so much science, as if it were magic. And I dared to believe that I was good at this, and I dared to believe that my son and my wife would be proud of me. I stole a glance at all the other dads. And they were juggling too. And they were juggling a dozen balls each, maybe two dozen even, it was hard to see because they were spinning through the air so fast, so much faster than mine, my balls now seemed to me to be meandering through the air as if stunted by arthritis and wheezing for breath. And some of the dads were juggling knives and chainsaws and burning torches, and was that a grenade, was the man next to me really juggling a grenade? They were better than me. They were all better than me. And I lost control, I admit it, I lost confidence, so did the balls, everything came crashing down. The ringmaster looked at me, frowned, didn’t say a word, and made a little mark upon his clipboard.

He made us try all sorts of things. Custard pies, collapsing cars, pratfalls – oh, I tell you, I pratted my very hardest, I tried to be the best prat I could be. And at the end of every test he would take out that clipboard, make more marks against it, and at the end of the final test he made the biggest marks on his clipboard of all. “Right,” he said, looking through the results, and then looking at us, through us, as if he could see our very clowning souls. “Right, I’ve reached my decision. You,” and he pointed at me, “yes, you, one pace forward.” And I couldn’t believe it, and I burned with pride, and I knew I would never go back to the bank again, and I knew this was what I had been born for, after all, to do stunts and japes, and make silly noises, to make people happy, to be spectacular. I began to thank him. “You can go home,” he said to me. “The rest of you, welcome aboard. Go through that door, you’ll find your barracks. You’re in the circus now.”

I begged the ringmaster to reconsider. And he listened to me, and his face softened, he seemed even quite kindly. But I knew he’d had men beg in front of him before. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “It’s your face. The whole point of comedy is that we can laugh at another’s suffering without feeling guilty about it. These other guys, life shits on them, and their faces puff out so amusingly, there’s nothing you can do but laugh! But you. There’s something tragic about you.” To illustrate his point he poured water down my trousers and hit me round the head with a frying pan. “You see?” he said. “The way you look now, so humiliated and pathetic, it makes me want to cry.” And indeed he wept then, tears rolled down his cheeks, and he asked me to leave.

I got home, and my son was so excited; he was bouncing around the room, singing, “My Daddy’s joined the circus, my Daddy’s joined the circus!” My wife looked excited too. And I had come up with all sorts of excuses why I hadn’t got the job, racism, sexism, flat feet – but when it came to it, I just told them the truth. “I wasn’t good enough,” I said. And I thought my son would throw one of his tantrums, but he didn’t; he looked at me soberly, even touched my shoulder, and said, “That’s all right, Dad.” And I saw that a certain light had gone from his eyes. He went to his room. My wife said, “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” and put on her coat. I asked her where she was going, but she didn’t reply. About an hour later she was back; “There!” she said, rather smugly really, and dropped a sequined dress upon the kitchen table. She’d got herself a job as a trapeze artist, and I must admit I was surprised – my wife had never been what you’d call svelte, not even when we’d first met, and that was years and years ago.

The next Saturday I took my son to see his mother perform at the circus. I hadn’t seen a circus show since I was small, and I felt very excited in spite of myself. I bought us some tickets, and some hot dogs, and we took our seats. There wasn’t much of an audience, just little patches of sad looking men like me sitting with their kids, and I was disappointed, I thought the circus would have been more popular than this. Then the lights on the ring went up, and on to the fake sawdust bounded every one of our friends and neighbours. Near us, all alone, sat Craig Boardman. He looked rather lost. My son told me he didn’t think Craig Boardman’s dad had much time for Craig Boardman any more. I asked my son whether we should invite Craig to sit with us, and my son shrugged, said why not? Craig seemed pleased, and said thank you very politely. I gave him a hot dog, and he ate every last bit of it with his mouth closed.

The ringmaster looked so much more impressive with a hat on his head and a whip in his hand. He brought out the first act. It was the clowns. Craig Boardman’s dad was the chief clown, and he was ribticklingly funny. He was also very good when he came back later to lift weights, and he rode a horse standing upright, and he spun plates on sticks, I must admit I began to fall a little in love with Craig Boardman’s dad. “Do you see your mother?” I asked, and my son said he did, and pointed – and there she was, at the very top of the tent, climbing on to a swing, squeezed tight into that sequined dress so that all her bits were bulging. We applauded her. She looked so graceful up there, and my heart swelled large and proud. She leaped from the swing, arms stretched out, aiming herself right where Craig Boardman’s dad was waiting to catch her, and she missed, and she plummeted to her death fifty feet below.

They said afterwards she wouldn’t have felt much, it must have been very quick – though I’m not sure, that fake sawdust was awfully sharp, and it impaled her body in a thousand different places. But at that moment I’m afraid I leaped to my feet. And I cried out, and even to me the cry didn’t sound quite human, it was so full of grief, I think, or maybe it was just shock. To think that at one moment my wife had been in the circus, and the next she was lying flat on the ground before us like a squashed jam doughnut. I cried out against the world. I cried so hard. And they turned the lights on me. And everybody began to laugh. The audience, the performers, even my son, even Craig Boardman, even Craig Boardman’s dad. Because somehow, in that epiphany of suffering, I had accidentally pulled the right face. A face for comedy, a face everyone could laugh at guilt-free. And I saw the ringmaster, and he was clapping me, and nodding, as if to say, “Fair play, sir, fair play.”

That night I made my son his favourite dinner. He helped me, quietly, in the kitchen. I wondered whether he felt ashamed that his mania for the circus had pushed his mother to her death. He said he didn’t. He said he felt a certain ennui. He recognised that at some point in any child’s life one has to accept the fallibility of one’s parents. With me, it was my failure to get a job at the circus, with his mother, it was when she so ineptly made a pig’s ear of an elementary trapeze act. “But,” he said to me, “with you, at least you tried. But Mum? I’m sorry, but she didn’t just miss Craig Boardman’s dad, she was nowhere even near.” He did seem more adult, and I asked him if he was all right, and he said he was, and I think he was lying, but that’s the adult thing to do. I was proud of him, but I didn’t say. And we sat down to eat.

Andrew Kaplan was coming home, at last, and it’d be for a real holiday, not like that time last August when the company called him back to work after only four days’ leave, they’d guaranteed he wouldn’t be needed in until January 5^th, that would very nearly give him two weeks. “Great,” his wife had said, when he’d phoned her and told her the good news, and Andrew asked whether his daughter would be excited too, and his wife assured him that she would be. The flight from Boston was packed with British people who’d be getting to see their families, and there was a revelry in the air, nothing too outspoken, nothing drunken or boisterous, they were respectable denizens of middle management – but there were polite smiles everywhere, everyone seemed to be sporting a smile, and the stewardesses were wearing tinsel on their name badges, it all seemed very festive.

The aeroplane took off half an hour late, but Andrew wasn’t too worried, he knew that nine times out of ten any delay is made good in transit. But when the pilot came over the intercom and apologised once again that they were going to have to circle Heathrow for the fourth time – “The runways are all full, everyone wants to get back for Christmas!” – Andrew began to worry about his connecting flight from London to Edinburgh. By the time that all the passengers had filed off the plane and made their way to baggage claim no one was smiling any more. Andrew was almost resigned to the idea that he’d missed the connection, but then he dazedly realised that his suitcase was the first on to the conveyor belt – and that never happened! – and if he ran he might just make it to the check-in desk on time; and so that’s what he did, he ran, and his case was heavy, laden down with so many special presents for his family, but he didn’t let that stop him – he raced down the travelator from terminal three to terminal two, apologising as he pushed other passengers to one side – and it was going to be okay, if he kept up this pace he was going to make it with minutes to spare, and he burst into the departures hall and looked up at the monitors for his flight details – and there they were, it hadn’t taken off yet! – and there was a word in red right beside it, and the word was ‘cancelled’.

And for a moment he felt quite relieved, because it meant he had no reason to run any more, and he’d done his best, hadn’t he? And for another moment he was quite angry. And then he just didn’t feel anything very much, he was just so tired.

No more flights to Scotland tonight. Sorry. Yes, the inconvenience is highly regrettable. There will, of course, be compensation, and somewhere for Mr Kaplan to rest until service resumed in the morning. But Andrew didn’t want an airport hotel, or, God knows, did they just mean some sort of darkened lounge he could sit in? – it’s all he had thought about on the flight over, that after three months away he was going home. He remembered what his wife had said, one of those last times he’d managed to get through to her on the phone – “We’ve never been apart so long before.” He’d asked her whether his daughter was looking forward to Christmas, and his wife had said, “Of course she is, she’s five years old, Christmas is all she thinks about!” And she’d explained that they had already decorated the tree together, and sent out the cards, and been carol singing – all the things they’d always done as a family, and this time he’d been away for them, and she didn’t press that point, she didn’t try to make him feel guilty – but then, she didn’t need to. And Andrew stood in the airport terminal and fumed; by rights he should be flying home right now, by rights he should be somewhere in the air over Birmingham. “I need to get back,” he said to the woman behind the counter, “I need to get back tonight, whatever it takes.” It was Christmas Eve tomorrow, he needed to know that when his daughter woke up on Christmas Eve her father would be there ready for her.

He was told there was a last train to Edinburgh, leaving from Kings Cross station within the hour. He joined the queue for a taxi, then pleaded with the people in front to let him go first, then paid them all ten pounds each. The taxi fare cost him fifty quid, but by this stage of the proceedings Andrew didn’t care about money any more – on the radio there was playing a non-stop medley of Christmas hits, and Andrew wasn’t in the mood for them, and the driver seemed quite put out when Andrew told him to turn them off. Andrew apologised with a healthy tip that used up all his spare cash. Andrew tried to call his wife to tell her he’d be late home, but his mobile phone was confused, it was still hunting for a signal from an American network provider. He asked the taxi driver whether he could use his phone. The taxi driver refused.

He bought a ticket with his credit card. The train was already filling up. He dragged his suitcase down the platform, and carriage after carriage he couldn’t spot an empty seat. He was starting to despair – and there, at the very last compartment, there were seats galore, the train was almost deserted. He couldn’t see why, he looked for a sign that said it was a different class, or required special reservation, but no, nothing. He climbed aboard, heaved his case into the empty luggage rack, plopped himself down wearily into a seat. He had a whole table to himself. He smiled at the people around him – “Pretty lucky!” he said, but they didn’t reply. There were a couple of businessmen sitting together, a young mother with a girl, an elderly mother reading a magazine, a middle-aged man who was asleep. Andrew decided to take his cue from this last passenger; he closed his eyes, and by the time the train pulled out of the station Andrew was snoring gently.

*

“Bang!”

And Andrew was awake, and there was the little girl, and she was leaning over his table as if she owned it, and she was pointing a gun at him, except it wasn’t a gun, it was two fingers, with a third wiggling underneath as a trigger. “Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Andrew wasn’t sure whether to respond or not. With his own daughter he tried to play along as much as possible, no matter what strange pretending game she flung at him, that was what a daddy was supposed to do. But this wasn’t his daughter, and he didn’t know whether he should encourage her, frankly he didn’t know whether he should be talking to her at all. So he sort of half went for it; he clutched at his chest, he said, “Ugh!” quietly, as if he’d been shot, as if he were dying, but it was all a bit pathetic, and even as he did it, Andrew could feel himself blushing red with embarrassment.

The little girl didn’t seem to mind. She looked delighted by this unexpected piece of playacting. “Bang! Bang!” she went, she shot him twice more for good measure, and Andrew didn’t know what he was supposed to do this time, he was already dead, wasn’t he? And she laughed out loud, and then, with a scream, turned and ran down the aisle to the other end of the carriage. She didn’t shoot at any of the other passengers, and Andrew didn’t know how he felt about that, whether he was annoyed or just a little bit proud.

He looked towards the girl’s mother, but she didn’t appear even to have noticed, she was staring dully out of the window. He looked around the rest of the carriage, with a rueful smile – kids! – but no one caught his eye. The old woman was still reading her magazine; the businessmen had run out of things to say, and were looking away from each other; the middle-aged man was still asleep.

Andrew rather envied him, because here came the girl again, running back down the aisle, whooping. Andrew wondered how anyone could sleep through a racket like that.

His head felt muzzy, he knew he was teetering upon the edge of sleep, and if only he could fall in the right direction he’d be dozing soundly all the way home. Why wouldn’t the girl shut up, why wouldn’t she just sit down and shut up – he’d never let his daughter run riot on a train, especially not when it was late at night, especially not when there was a passenger onboard who was clearly fighting jetlag – and he felt a resentment for the mother who was still not doing a thing to help, still just looking out of the bloody window, really! – and he tried to force the resentment down, because he knew if he let it the resentment would keep him awake, it’d growl away at his innards, he’d be unable to relax. And here came the girl again –

“Ssh!” he said, and glared at her, and put his finger to his lips. And she stopped dead, and looked surprised, and a little hurt maybe that her one playfellow, the one person who had given her a damn, had turned against her. Her bottom lip trembled. She began to cry.

“No, no,” said Andrew, “ssh!” And he put his finger to his lips again, but this time with a smiley face, see, all smiles, he wasn’t cross with her, not really. But it was no good. The tears were in full flow now, the girl let out a misery that was profound and was sincere, and was very very loud, she began to scream the place down. He hadn’t realised you could scream tears out like that.

Andrew panicked a bit, looked quickly at the other passengers. But no one seemed to mind. The woman didn’t raise her eyes from her magazine. The businessmen turned their heads in the child’s direction, but with supreme indifference – and then quickly turned away again, as if annoyed that the pair of them had been caught looking at the exact same thing.

And the mother said, very softly, but stern, “Come and sit down.” And for a moment Andrew stupidly thought she might mean him. But the girl sulkily turned, and went back to her seat. “Get out your colouring book. Play with your crayons.” The little girl was still crying, angry little sobs, but she did what she was told. And all the while the mother didn’t so much as glance at her, her attention still upon the window and whatever she could make out from the darkness.

The little girl took out her crayons. She looked down at her colouring book. Grim, not a hint of a smile. The crying had almost dribbled to a halt, there was just the odd little moan punctuated with sudden sniffs. Andrew watched her, carefully; the little girl didn’t seem to notice he was spying on her, but then, then, in one instant she turned her head towards Andrew, right at him – and what was that in her smile? Rage? Triumph? Something adult anyway, something almost sneering, and it made Andrew feel small and ashamed.

And then she was at work with her crayons. She wasn’t colouring anything in, she was attacking the book, stabbing down hard with the bright blue stick, slashing at the page. And now, in her left hand, she produced a yellow crayon, and she was stabbing down with that too, she was showing no mercy, the crying had stopped, she was instead giving grunts of effort as she stabbed as hard as she could. And Andrew realised only he could see this, mother took no interest whatsoever, and Andrew thought he should alert her, because this was wrong, something was terribly wrong – and as the child spattered blue and yellow cuts deep into the paper she looked at him again and he could see there was spit bubbling out of her mouth, was it even foam? And Andrew opened his mouth to say something, he didn’t know what, but before he got the chance –

- the woman had turned from the window. She didn’t look angry, or annoyed, or frustrated – that was the oddness of it – her face looked perfectly composed and neutral. “Enough,” she said, calmly, and stood up, and she was pulling the little girl up too, by the shoulders, and up into her arms. And the little girl began to scream again, and this time it was a scream of fear, she knew she was in trouble now – and the mother didn’t care, she was into the aisle, and carrying the girl up to the other end of the carriage, the girl struggling and kicking and lashing out, and yet for all that still holding on tight to her crayons and her colouring book. And the mother and child were gone.

The sudden silence was a shock. Andrew closed his eyes right away, to see if he could find that drowsiness again, but the silence rang right round his head.

He looked out of the window. It was black out there, just black. He couldn’t see a thing, not a single house, or a tree; it was as if someone had painted over the windows, and there was a glossy shine to the black that began to give Andrew a headache.

Presently the woman came back, and sat down in her seat. Andrew was pleased to see the noisy little girl wasn’t with her.

He closed his eyes again. A couple of minutes later, when he opened them, he saw that one of the businessmen had fallen asleep. He closed his eyes once more; when he opened them, a few minutes after, he saw that the second businessman had succumbed too, and his head was lolling against his partner’s, and they seemed huddled together for warmth and protection. It almost made Andrew laugh out loud – and he decided that he’d like to take a picture of them with his phone, and send it to his wife. She would find it funny, and she could show it to their daughter too! He took out the phone, but it still hadn’t found a signal.

Next time he closed his eyes he wanted to see whether he could make the old woman fall asleep too. But she didn’t, she remained forever glued so sourly to her magazine. Never mind.

The mother was staring out at the blackness of the night.

He wondered where the little girl had got to.

The mother then took a thermos flask out of her bag, and poured herself a cup of tea. She sipped at it, turned back to the window.

Andrew closed his eyes one last time, tried to fall asleep. The train rocked from side to side as it sped down the tracks, it made him feel like a baby, it made him feel drowsy. But all the while he listened out for the return of the little girl, he knew the little girl would be back soon, must be, he was tense with anticipation of the noise she would make.

He refused to open his eyes for a good ten minutes. He kept himself busy by reciting, silently, and in strict chronological order, the captains of the English cricket team since Len Hutton. When he reached the present day, he opened up – and looked – and the girl still hadn’t returned. The mother had put away her tea now, the old woman was still reading, the businessmen and the middle-aged man all still asleep.

Where was she?

He got to his feet. No one looked up. He walked down the aisle to the end of the compartment. The electronic door trundled open for him with a hiss.

The girl wasn’t to be seen. He tried the far door, but it was locked, this was the end of the train. A sign said the toilet was vacant, and Andrew knew that little girls aren’t always very scrupulous about locks. He hesitated, then knocked gently upon the door. “Are you all right?” he called.

There was no answer, and that annoyed him, she must have been in there for twenty minutes now, twenty at the very least, time for him to recite the English cricket team and back again! And he realised he needed the toilet anyway, he hadn’t been since halfway over the Atlantic Ocean, and so when he knocked again it wasn’t just as an interfering busybody, but as a man who had waited long and patiently for the lavatory and was now claiming his due right to pee.

He pushed upon the door, very tentatively, and it swung open, and he peeked his head around the door, fully prepared to make protestations of surprise when he saw the little girl inside – but there was no one there – and he supposed that was a good thing, he hadn’t really wanted the embarrassment of a girl with her undies round her ankles – but where was she then? Where had she got to? And the answer crept over him, and any urine that had been nestling in his bowels froze to ice and was never going to come out now, not ever.

The mother had thrown her overboard. She must have thrown her overboard. She had had enough of her tantrums, and had picked her up, and marched her down the aisle, and to the window, and chucked her out. And he could imagine the little girl’s screams being cut off as she was sucked into the night, and how her body would have fallen down the side of the speeding train, as if she were flying, as if she were a witch, a little witch who’d lost her broomstick, falling until her head smashed against the track.

And then the mother had calmly returned to her seat. And all the while since had been staring out into the blackness. The blackness into which she had tossed her child.

No.

That couldn’t be it.

Think.

He had had his eyes closed. And what had happened, surely – yes – was that the girl had walked past him to the other end of the compartment – tiptoed past, probably, unusually quietly, but girls were peculiar things, weren’t they, maybe she was playing some sort of game? – she was now no doubt terrorising another compartment altogether. And the mother? The mother who had just sat in her seat the whole time (half an hour more like, really) whilst her daughter ran amok somewhere without supervision? That made her a bad parent, perhaps, but he could live with that, he wasn’t the best parent in the world either, was he, was he? She could be a bad parent, that still made more sense than that she was a murderer.

He sighed with relief, and only then realised he’d been holding his breath, that he’d been scared. And he actually went to the toilet; he couldn’t do anything especially useful in there, but he splashed some lukewarm water on to his face, he wiped it off with a paper towel. It was better than nothing, better that than he’d had a wasted journey.

And with full confidence he walked back down the aisle to his seat at the other end of the compartment. And he was going to sit down, he really was, and that would have been the end of the matter – but there was just a moment’s hesitation, the need to satisfy some stupid lingering doubt – or maybe it was something to do with velocity, he was already on a trajectory to the next compartment, why stop short, why not walk straight on and look?

The electronic door wouldn’t open for him. He tugged at it. It wouldn’t budge.

It wasn’t locked, nothing like that, what would be the point? But it was jammed, very definitely jammed, and there was probably nothing suspicious in that, no cause for alarm, it wasn’t as if his compartment had been deliberately segregated from the rest of the train (why on earth did that pop into his head?). But he pulled at the door with all his might, he grunted with the effort. Until he became convinced that all the passengers behind him were watching, and laughing. And then he stopped, and he turned about, and of course no one was watching, no one even cared.

He stood there, bit his lip. Tried to work out what to do.

The girl was small, maybe she was hiding somewhere in the carriage? (Silently, for over half an hour?) He walked down the aisle again, and he looked this way and that, he looked underneath the tables and upon all the rows of seats. And he thought, has she got off? Could she simply have got off? The train hadn’t stopped at any stations yet, it was two hours’ journey until York – but maybe they had reached York; he hadn’t thought he’d fallen asleep when he’d closed his eyes before, but maybe he had without realising it, he was jetlagged to tiny bits, maybe they’d passed a dozen stations and he hadn’t even noticed, maybe the train had stopped and the little girl had got off – late at night – on her own – and her mother had stayed onboard and waved her goodbye – for some reason – and –

“Excuse me,” he said softly to the old woman with the magazine, “has the train stopped anywhere yet?”

The old woman looked up, at last, and stared at him, and she didn’t reply – and it didn’t seem to Andrew that she was being rude, there was utter blankness in that expression, maybe she didn’t understand English? (Although the magazine was in English, wasn’t it?) She continued to stare, she wouldn’t look away.

And he said, “What happened to the little girl?” And at that her mouth began to open, very slowly, it was almost as if he could hear the creak of those old lips parting, and muscles that had lain dormant for so long began to grind as they were forced into action – and suddenly Andrew didn’t want to see what would happen next – he didn’t want to see that mouth open – he didn’t want to see what might be inside – and he whipped his head away from her, he backed off, he fought down a sudden swell of panic and breathed and breathed again and felt his heart steady. He looked back at the old woman, he forced himself to, and she was once more staring intently at her magazine, it was as if he’d never approached her in the first place.

He saw that her eyes weren’t moving, she wasn’t reading anything, it was all staring, just stares. He walked past her and turned around to look at the pages, and saw that across the centrefold was a picture of a young woman, a model, prettier than the old woman could ever have been. He wondered if she’d been gazing upon this one picture for the entire journey. He wondered why.

He went back to the end of the carriage. He pulled down the window, and took a deep breath of fresh air, and felt better.

And he could see that it was possible, look. See how the window opened nice and wide? A little girl could squeeze through there, no problem. He himself could squeeze through, probably, if he hunched his shoulders a bit. That was all it would take, and then he’d be with the girl, they’d both be off this train and the wretched journey would be over. And the blackness was perfect, he could see the beauty of it now, this close up, his face so close it was grazing it. So shiny, new even – and the little girl hadn’t suffered, he could see that now, she had just flown away into the dark and would never have hit the ground, the wind so fast and carrying her off safely. And he knew then that he would do it too. He would do it. He would do it. He would step out into the blackness. He would do it. He would never see his wife or daughter again, but then, was he ever going to have seen them anyway, what, really? Because he couldn’t believe that, he couldn’t picture that, the three of them together, around a Christmas tree, laughing, hugging, it was beyond imagining, it seemed so fake – and there was nothing fake about the blackness, that was the only truth, why not accept it? He would do it. And the wife and daughter might be sad, for a bit, he wondered if they would. But they’d never find his body, it’d be lost within the black. – And he wondered whether his luggage at least would make it home, he had Christmas presents for his family, he’d like them to have something nice to open on the big day.

He stepped forward. He felt something hard under his foot. He toyed with it for a moment, rolled it under his sole, then frowned, wondering what it was. He lifted the foot to see.

There were two crayons. One blue, one yellow.

He picked them up. He looked at them for a while.

When he walked back into the compartment the lights seemed dimmer somehow. As if the darkness had seeped in from somewhere, or was it just because he was tired? Because he was so tired. And the old woman was asleep now, her head slumped awkwardly, uncomfortably, and she’d dropped her magazine on the floor – and Andrew thought he should pick it up for her, but he never wanted to go near her again, and as he passed her down the aisle he pressed his body hard against the opposite row of seats.

Everyone was asleep. Except the mother, who was no longer looking out of the window, she was looking at him. And smiling.

“Ssh,” she said, and she put her finger to her lips. “Let’s not wake them.”

“No,” said Andrew.

She tapped at the seat next to her. “Come and sit down,” she said. And Andrew did.

*

The woman took out her flask and poured herself a tea. She asked whether Andrew would like one. He thanked her, said no. And she nodded at that, as if that was what she’d been expecting, and smiled, and sipped at her tea, and looked back out of the window again, as if her audience with Andrew was at an end.

Andrew felt he should leave her, get up, return to his own seat. But he felt so heavy.

He was still holding the crayons, bunched together tight in his fist.

“Excuse me,” he said, and the woman looked at him. “Excuse me,” he said again, and held the crayons out to her.

He wondered what she’d do. Whether the woman would look shocked. Or remorseful. Whether she’d get violent, or cry, or confess. But her face didn’t change at all, it was most disappointing.

“Is that some sort of Christmas present for me?” she said.

“Yes,” said Andrew. “No. I mean. For your daughter.”

“Do you have a daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you give your presents to her?” And her eyes twinkled, because she was teasing him – was she teasing him?

“No,” he said. “I mean. You don’t, I. I thought. I think your daughter may have dropped them.”

She took them from him then, looked at them hard, studied them even. “I don’t think these can be my daughter’s,” she concluded finally, and handed them back.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t have a daughter.”

Any more, thought Andrew – he dared her to say it, any more. “Oh,” he said.

The woman smiled. And went back to the window.

“No,” said Andrew. “I mean. Hey.”

She looked back.

“You don’t have…?” – and he so much wanted to ask directly, he’d seen her with her, hadn’t he, the whole carriage had – although he knew that if he woke them up they would all deny it, he knew that with sudden cold certainty, if they even talked to him, if they even acknowledged him at all. He wanted to say, but I saw you with the girl, the girl you got rid of, what did you do to her? And instead he said, “You don’t have a daughter? Well, have, have you ever wanted one?”

The woman raised her eyebrows at that, amused, and Andrew blushed.

“I don’t have anyone,” she said. And she held his gaze this time, daring him to contradict her – but, no, it wasn’t that, she wasn’t daring him at all, she spoke with the confidence of utter truth, she knew he wouldn’t contradict her, why would he try?

“I’m sorry,” said Andrew. “So, you’ve no one to spend Christmas with?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.” And he felt an urge to invite her home, she could stay with his family, she could be his family, he felt it rise up inside him, if he had been breathing more freely then it might even have popped out.

She stared out at the night. He stared at it too. And it seemed to him they were hurtling through a void, they were nowhere at all, nowhere, that the tracks would end and the train would fall into the void deeper and deeper and they would be lost, it seemed to him this may have already happened.

“Are you seeing your family for Christmas?” she asked.

And he told her.

He told her of the presents he had for them in his suitcase. For his daughter he had some dolls bought specially in Boston, all of them famous figures from the American Revolution, she wouldn’t find them anywhere else! And for his wife he’d picked up some perfume at duty free. But now these gifts felt a bit paltry. What would his daughter want with a figurine of Paul Revere? But little girls were so good at playing games, weren’t they, he had seen her have hours of fun with a cardboard box, she had pretended it was a car, and a dinosaur, and a spaceship, and she’d said to Andrew, play with me, pretend with me – but Andrew wasn’t very good at pretending, when his daughter shot him with her fingers and Andrew fell over he always tried a bit too hard and he was sure she was embarrassed by his efforts; she had taken that cardboard box, pretended it was a time machine, and a zoo, and a father, he’d come home once and she’d got a box and was pretending it was him. He didn’t know what to do with his own daughter, and each time she’d grown, and aged, and changed. And what would his wife want with perfume? But he had a better present for them, something he couldn’t wrap, should he tell? He’d be coming home for good. For good. No, not this time, but soon, very soon. Because for the last year and a half he’d been doing these trips to the States, and his wife had said to him, you’re missing out on your daughter’s childhood! and he had said, but it’s my job, I have to go where they tell me, do you think I have any choice? But now he was coming home for good, by April he’d be back in Britain, they said some time in the spring, it’d be May at the latest. He’d be home, and his wife had said, you’re not only running out on her childhood, you’re running out on me – and she wouldn’t be able to say that any more. She wouldn’t be able to complain about a bloody thing. And when he told them both, and he’d tell them on Christmas morning, he’d keep it as a proper present, how happy they would be! Because his wife was wrong, he wasn’t trying to avoid her, that was ridiculous, he loved her, he was pretty sure he loved her, being at home with her again would take some adjustment but it would be worth it. He was scared. Of course he was scared. He couldn’t remember his wife’s name. How odd. The jetlag. His own wife’s name, and he was fairly certain she’d had one. He couldn’t remember his daughter’s name. He wondered whether he might have written them down somewhere, maybe they were on his mobile phone, along with the names of his bosses and his secretarial staff and all his clients, but no – no – he’d call them now, he’d ask – but there was still no signal, the phone said it couldn’t find a network provider. And he was scared, because he knew when he got home there would be that conversation, because that conversation always happened when he got back, sooner or later. And when he’d tried calling his wife recently she’d been so curt with him, she sounded so very far away – and when he told her he’d be home for Christmas for a whole two weeks she sounded almost sarcastic – “Great,” she’d said – that was all – “Great.” And she never let his daughter come to the phone any more, she was too busy being asleep in bed or playing with cardboard boxes or being dead. And he knew then. Oh God, he knew then. His wife didn’t love him. Not any more. She had once. Not any more. And his daughter. His daughter, his daughter was dead. She was dead. And his wife hadn’t even told him! She hadn’t told him, because he was in Boston, what good would it do? She hadn’t told him because she was angry with him, she’d had a daughter, and she’d slipped through his fingers, she’d got lost in the blackness of the night. Though, to be fair, maybe she had told him, didn’t he remember that time – wasn’t there a phone call – wasn’t there a conversation, and a lot of tears, and he’d had to go to a meeting, they were waiting for him, he wasn’t going to listen to this shit, “Bastard!” she’d said, she’d screamed her tears out, he hadn’t realised you could scream tears out like that, “now, now,” he’d said, “I’ll be home for Christmas, we can talk about it properly then.” “Great,” she’d said. Oh God. Oh God. He’d had a daughter, and she was lost, and he was lost too.

The woman who had never been a mother and had never had a daughter took his hand. She smiled. She asked if he would like that cup of tea now. He said yes.

“Wipe away your tears,” she said.

“Yes.”

She poured him a cup. It was steaming hot. It tasted bitter.

“You get some sleep,” she said. “Don’t you worry. I’ll wake you when you get home.”

“Yes. Thank you. Yes.”

He settled back in his seat. It felt so soft suddenly, and it was peaceful, there wasn’t a sound. And the train rocked from side to side as it sped down the void, it made him feel like a baby, it made him feel drowsy.

“Can I keep the presents?” she asked. He didn’t know what she meant for a moment. “The crayons?” He gave them to her. She put them in her pocket. She smiled again, took his hand again, squeezed it. She let him sleep.

*

It wasn’t the woman who woke him up. It was a station guard, shaking his shoulder gently. “Come on, mate, end of the line,” he said. There was no one else in the compartment, and the lights were on full. “Come on, some of us have Christmas to get home to!”

Andrew fetched his luggage from the rack. It felt lighter than he remembered. He stepped out on to the platform. Edinburgh was icy, and wet, and right, and home, and he breathed the air in, and felt awake.

He caught a taxi. The taxi driver was playing a medley of Christmas songs. Andrew didn’t mind.

He couldn’t find his keys. He hammered at the front door. “Let me in!” he cried. And then, to take the desperation out of his voice, “Let me in, it’s Santa Claus!”

And his wife opened up. There she was. Oh, there she was.

“Do you love me?” he said, and he could see that she did, her eyes shone with it, he hadn’t realised how very obvious love could look. “I love you,” he told her, “I love you,” and decided not to add that he couldn’t remember her name.

“Where is our daughter?” he said. “Is she all right? Is she alive?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, he ran up the stairs, ran to the bedroom. His daughter was in bed, and stirred at his noise. “Daddy?” she said. She rubbed at her eyes. “Daddy? Is it really you?”

“Yes,” he said, “yes, darling, I’m home, I’m home, and I’m never leaving again!” He wouldn’t leave, sod the job, sod Boston, he’d found something he thought had been lost, he wouldn’t let go. And she was better than he remembered, she’d reached the age at last where he would never feel uncomfortable with her, or anxious, she was perfect, she was shiny, what luck.

He pulled her out of bed, right by the shoulders, held her, hugged her, and he kissed her head and he kissed her hair. And he knew her name, it was all right. She smelled to him of earth, and mud, and dead leaves, but it was all right. He rocked her in his arms. And after a while he stopped, but the rocking just kept on going, and he didn’t know what it was.

The king had won another war, and wanted the victory commemorated, and decreed that a statue of himself on horseback leading his troops into battle should be designed, carved, and copied, and erected throughout the land in every single city, town, municipality, and all villages containing a population of more than five hundred souls. The village of K_ had nearly six hundred souls in it. And so it was that the court engineers came and set a statue down right in the middle of the square. It was made of grey stone – it was said that marble had been reserved for the cities alone – and was some twenty feet tall; the horse stood up ready to charge, and balancing upon its hind legs looked for all the world as if it were on tiptoes; and on its back the king raised a sword high, or maybe it was a cutlass, and his mouth was wide open, presumably in the act of shouting out some heroic order or other. The king’s nostrils were flared; so were the horse’s. The people of K_ quite liked the statue, really; it was a talking point, and it was something to shelter beneath when the sun was hot. And then, one day, not very long after, the king decided it was time to go to war again, and that he would need all the young men to fight alongside him. And in a trice the young men left, and the population of K_ dipped far below five hundred, and really they no longer qualified for a statue at all.

A year passed, and the young men never came home, and it became clear they never would. The burgomaster went to see the stonemason. He proposed that the statue be turned into a memorial to all those from K_ who had died and would not return; at the top of the plinth the stonemason could engrave the words ‘OUR GLORIOUS DEAD’, and beneath that, in smaller writing, but very neat, the names of all the young heroes. “Do you like ‘Our Glorious Dead’?” said the burgomaster. “I was also toying with ‘OUR FALLEN SONS’.” The stonemason told him he could have both, if he were paid a couple more coins for the effort, and the burgomaster readily agreed. The burgomaster produced a list of all the names that needed to be carved on to the stone, there were exactly a hundred of them, and the stonemason decided that if he carved one name every morning, and one name every afternoon, then that would be two names carved a day, and the job would take fifty days to complete.

And so it was. It was another warm summer, but the stonemason was in the best possible place in the whole of K_, working in the cool shadow of the statue. In the morning he would carve a name upon one side of the plinth; in the afternoon, when the sun had moved, he would carve a name upon the other side. There was no order to the names, he would engrave them at random, he’d look down the list and see whichever name caught that day’s fancy. And the people of K_ would come and see how he was progressing, and when the day came that he would choose the name of one of their dead sons, they would get so excited, and read the name out loud in wonder, and press their fingers into the inscriptions and marvel at the weird shapes of the letters, and weep for joy that at last their sacrifice had been acknowledged.

One evening Mr and Mrs Klein came to see the stonemason. Mr and Mrs Klein had no children. The stonemason couldn’t guess what they might possibly want.

They stood there in his cottage and looked nervous.

“We would like you to engrave the name of our son,” Mr Klein said.

“We have money,” said Mrs Klein.

“You don’t have a son,” pointed out the stonemason.

“But not for want of trying,” said Mr Klein, and he blushed bright red, and Mrs Klein looked down to the ground. “We wanted a son so very much. But we were never so blessed.”

The stonemason had put in a long day’s engraving, he had chosen a name that afternoon that had four whole syllables to it, and he was tired. “You’ll have to leave,” he said. “I don’t see how I can help you.”

Mrs Klein said, “If we had had a boy, he would have been taken from us. He would have gone to fight in the war. And we would have lost him, just as suredly as all the others. We would have had a hero too. It’s not our fault. It’s not our fault I was never strong enough to bear one.”

“Please,” said Mr Klein. “Honour our fallen son. We only want what’s right.”

“We have money,” said Mrs Klein again.

The stonemason said, “What name did you want?”

“Raphael.”

“Raphael? Really?”

“It is what,” said the Kleins, “we would certainly have called him.”

The stonemason felt shamed by the new commission, but he didn’t know why. He knew he couldn’t engrave the name on the statue with all the village there to see. So, sleepy as he was, he lit a candle, and went out then and there, he took up his chisel and he tapped out this latest child who had been lost in war. The moon hid behind the clouds, and the mason’s arms were weak, and it took hours to complete the job. For the sake of the real martyrs, he made sure that Raphael Klein’s name was slightly smaller than theirs.

He had barely had an hour’s sleep when he was woken by someone thumping at his front door.

The burgomaster was furious. “Don’t you understand?” he cried. “How this discredits the tragedy of the lads who so bravely died for us? The lads who actually existed?”

The mason stood his ground. When confronted by any extremity of emotion, he always chose to imitate the stone he worked with and understood so well, his face became impassive, his shoulders slumped hard as granite. “I just follow orders,” he said.

“Indeed!” said the burgomaster. “But not for nothing, I’ll bet. How much were you paid?”

“Two silver coins.”

“Two silver coins! So, that’s the price of our town’s integrity!”

A couple of hours later the burgomaster returned.

“Two silver coins,” he scoffed. “Look here. I’ve brought you five gold coins. And for them I want you to give me two sons. One is called Peter, the other is called Pyotr. They were good boys, strong boys. Identical, born in the very same hour, you couldn’t have told them apart – but I could, I could. Twins, and always the best of friends. They were the world to me. And they marched off to war together, and first they slapped me on the back, they said to me, Papa, if we never meet again, it’ll be for a higher cause – and they laughed, because they were men, do you see? And I laughed too. They gave me the courage to laugh. Pyotr joined the cavalry, Peter the infantry. And they died together, at the exact same time. Peter was stabbed through the heart in the midst of battle; elsewhere on the field, Pyotr’s horse was blown up by a mortar shell. They died at the very same instant, inseparable even at the end – and they never knew. They never even knew.” And the burgomaster cried. The stonemason knew that the burgomaster had sent four sons off to war already; with the twins, that made it a tidy half dozen.

The villagers of K_ came to the stonemason with all the money they could afford. They bought dead sons. Some bought an entire platoon of dead sons. Some only wanted one son, a single son, a handsome son, kinder and more honourable and just plain better than the one they had spent years bringing up and had sent away shaking and weeping and scared to die. And the villagers would tell the stonemason the stories of their new sons’ deaths, and most often they had died saving the king himself, or if not, the whole army, there had been such meaning to the deaths, they had died so that hundreds more could live – and always they’d done so with a hardy smile or a witty quip, it was never in pain or filth or puke, it was never screaming for their mummy and daddy to save them, why wouldn’t their parents save them? And it was easier to part with these sons, because they’d been born at the end of a chisel just so they could be killed. And it was harder to part with them, too, because they were perfect. And as the villagers told the stonemason the stories, oh, there were tears of great pride, and tears of loss, a loss all the greater for being for something never actually won in the first place. The stonemason listened politely, but he wished once they’d paid him the money they’d just shut up and leave. He had a lot of work to do.

Pretty soon there wasn’t room on the plinth for all the names. If the burgomaster had chosen between ‘Our Glorious Dead’ and ‘Our Fallen Sons’, then a few more might have been squeezed on, but there it was, he’d just had to be indecisive. The names soon snaked up the horse’s legs, on to the horse’s flank, right across the horse’s arse. And on to the king himself; the king’s face was tattooed with the names of all the boys he had killed, or would have killed, if the boys had been foolish enough to let themselves be born in the first place.

The stonemason always did these special names at night. He was no longer ashamed. But the darkness felt the right place for all the never-was-es and should-‘ve-beens. He continued to work on engraving the real dead in the daytime, but he was tired, and frequently he made spelling mistakes. No one seemed to mind.

And the stonemason became very rich.

*

And once, when he was dozing, he dreamed that the statue fell on him. He hadn’t even seen it start to topple, it must have all been very quick, one moment he was condemning another boy to death, the next he was sprawled out flat, pinned fast by the king’s buttocks. And he knew that the statue must weigh several tons, by rights he should be squashed to a pulp, but he understood stone, stone ran through him like lifeblood, stone would never hurt him. It was the dead. It was the dead who’d done it. He’d burdened the stone with too many dead, and it had made the stone top heavy – and it hadn’t  been fair on the stone, it was just unfeeling stone, why should the stone be made to care for them? He knew he could push the statue off, set it back on to its plinth, and they’d both be right as rain – but it was all the dead standing on top of it, they made it impossible, the dead all stomping down with their little army boots, he couldn’t budge it an inch. They stared down at him, and he knew they weren’t doing it deliberately, they didn’t know what they were doing, they were just stupid corpses. And there were just too many. There was just one too many. One fewer corpse in the world, and he could have set himself free.

When he awoke, he was drenched with sweat. He steadied his breathing. He got up. He went to his coffers.

And went out, into the night.

The house of Mr and Mrs Klein was all dark, like mourning. They had only ever asked him for that one son, the first son, Raphael. After that they had avoided the stonemason, turned away from him at the market, or in church, and he had never known why. Maybe they had realised Raphael’s inscription was smaller than the others, and more discreetly hidden. Maybe they thought he would tempt them to create and then murder another child.

Underneath their door he slid two silver coins.

He went back home, and to bed, and his conscience never troubled him again.

*

One evening, when the moon was its brightest, the dead came back. Not the dead who had ever lived, but the dead who had never been.

Into the town they marched, right to the square, right to the statue itself. And Raphael Klein was at the front, he was their leader. And everyone could tell it was Raphael Klein, even though no had ever seen him before, because he had just his father’s mouth and just his mother’s eyes, he did his parents proud.

He announced that they had all been granted a furlough. Just one night, to visit their families. Just one night, and then back to war. And that was good, because war was good, all the camaraderie and all the honour, and they were winning, didn’t their parents feel proud? And the soldier boys read the inscriptions on the memorial, and how they laughed. They weren’t dead, they were well and fit and happy, couldn’t Father see how well, didn’t Mother feel proud they looked so well in their smart uniforms? And the villagers of K_ were proud, and no one wanted to point out that some of them were missing limbs, or parts of their body, or parts of their head; not for all the world did they want to hurt their children’s feelings.

There were cakes and ale, and dancing, and games, and no one slept that night.

The stonemason stayed at home. He had never carved a name upon the statue for himself. He had been tempted. Of course he had been tempted.

When the knock sounded at the door, slow and heavy, the stonemason refused to open up. “Go away!” he said.

More knocking, so slow, heavier still, and it was not the knock of a dashing young hussar, it was the knock of a simpleton, from the lowest dregs of the regiment, what was standing behind the closed front door was nothing better than cannon fodder – “I don’t want you!” he shouted at it.

For a moment the knocking stopped. But then, as before, no more insistent, but just as mindless, thump, thump, thump.

And outside he could hear his neighbours celebrating what never was and could never have been.

“I never wanted a child!” he shouted. “Do you hear? I never wanted you!”

And there was silence. And he thought he had chased his son away. And that was a relief. And then, so suddenly, it was such a dreadful thing.

“Are you still there?” he said.

No answer.

“Are you there?”

Still nothing.

The stonemason said, “I never had a child. To have a child, I would have had to love someone. I would have had… to make someone love me. And, do you hear? Do you hear me? I never even came close.”

Still nothing, but the sound of villagers at play, mocking him.

“Please?” And he opened the door.

There he was, waiting for him. Unnamed. And featureless. His face a fracture of rock and chalk.

“My son,” he breathed. And he put his arms around him, and the statue cut at his skin, and made him bleed, and he didn’t care.

Mr Prepolec invited Mrs Prepolec out to dinner. He never thought she’d say yes, but the asking alone seemed like the right thing to do, one firm step on the road to recovery. But she did say yes. She didn’t want to go to their local restaurant. She wanted to go to a restaurant where there were no memories. So they got into the car and drove out of town and it was nearly forty-five minutes before they’d found somewhere that looked suitable. And there were no memories there, but of course there were memories there, they both remembered the first time Charlie had eaten a spaghetti bolognaise and had thought it was worms, and how much fun he’d had twisting the worms around his fork, and how he had splashed them both with meat sauce. There was nothing but memories. But they did well, they didn’t mention Charlie once, well, they mentioned him once, but not too badly, it was all right. They were going to be all right. And the waiter was polite, and the decor nice, and Mr Prepolec said, “It’s good here, we should come again.” The food was very nice and the wine was nice and neither of them enjoyed it, and neither of them had expected to, that would be too much to ask for.

He said, “I love you.”

She said, “I love you too.”

He raised a glass to toast her, but halfway up he decided that might be inappropriate, and drank alone instead.

*

At a little after nine o’clock they got home, and they could see right away that the house had been burgled. The alarm had been triggered, the blue box above the front door was flashing, and they could hear the siren inside, an electronic wail that was low and mournful and annoyingly discreet.

Mr Prepolec felt a rush of excitement. “Let me go first,” he said. “They might still be in there!” Though he didn’t know what would happen if he opened the door and found burglars the other side, what would he say to them, what could he do. Mrs Prepolec was right behind him, and she nodded fiercely as he put the key in the lock and pushed the door open, and Mr Prepolec thought she seemed excited too.

The hallway looked just the same as they’d left it. Mr Prepolec called, “If there’s anyone there, come out!” But no one did.

They saw where the burglars had broken in, a smashed window at the back leading out on to the garden. She said, “We’ll have to see what’s missing,” and he said, “I’ll do downstairs, you upstairs,” and they set to work. And as Mr Prepolec inspected the sitting room he allowed himself some little congratulation, he and his wife really responded well to crises. The day by day silences had been so difficult, but give them a crisis and they could really show off their best.

And then he heard a shout from upstairs, it was a shriek, and he hadn’t heard his wife shriek like that, not even through all the agonies of the last few weeks – and he rushed up to her, up the stairs two at a time, straight to the bedroom.

The bedroom, like the sitting room, looked untouched. There was not a hint any stranger had been inside. But his wife was shaking, positively shaking; tears were streaming down her face.

“What is it?” he asked, and went to touch her, and didn’t quite.

She said, “He’s gone. Oh God. Oh God.”

She pointed at her dressing table.

He said, “Are you sure?”

She said, “Oh God.”

He said, “Because you might have put it somewhere else? Hey? Did you put it, listen…”

She said, “What are we going to do?”

He said, “Did you put it in a drawer? Could it be in a drawer?”

She said, “What ever are we going to do now, oh God.”

He said, “I think we should check the drawers. Let me check the drawers. Let me.” And he checked the drawers, and the drawers were full of other stuff, jewellery, some of it perfectly nice, some of it perfectly burglerable, but it wasn’t there. And his wife sank down on to the bed, and then stood up again.

“We’ve got to get after them,” she said.

“What are you saying?”

“They could be right outside. They might only have just. They might be.”

“We don’t know what they look like,” he said. “We don’t know what to look for.”

“Oh God.”

“We’ll call the police. It’ll be all right.”

“How can the police help? You just said…”

“Listen…”

“They won’t know what to look for.”

“I’ll call the police. We have to call them anyway.”

“I’ll call them.”

“I’ll call them. You’re in no. You lie down, or. Or make us a cup of tea, I’ll, I’ll call them right away.”

He called the police. They said they’d send someone right over.

*

At ten minutes to ten she started clearing up the broken glass from the sitting room carpet, and he told her not to, he said it might be evidence, he said the police might want to fingerprint it, maybe that’s how they’d find the culprit. And she dropped the glass as if it were burning hot.

*

At quarter past ten the police rang the doorbell. There were two of them – one was a short woman, young; the other, a man who was younger still, who never said very much. They both looked suitably serious.

Mr Prepolec said, “Thank you for coming over.”

Mrs Prepolec said, “Thank you. Would you like some tea? We’ve put tea on.”

The woman said, “Thanks, we’ve just had some. Oh, this is a nice house. Have you had it long?”

He said, “About ten years now.”

She said, “Nearer fifteen!”

He said, “About fifteen.”

The woman said, “And can you show… Oh yes. Yes, this is where they’ll have got in, look.”

She said, “They? Do you think there was more than one?”

The woman said, “And when would this have been?”

He said, “We got back about nine-ish. We’d been out for dinner. We’d been out, I don’t know, an hour and a half?”

The woman said, “So, that’ll give us an hour and a half window.”

He said, “Yes.”

She said, “Will you be able to catch them?”

The woman said, “And has there been any other damage?” Her colleague was writing down everything in a little notebook.

“No,” said Mr Prepolec. “No, it was just the window.”

“Well, that’s a mercy,” said the policewoman. “And missing, what’s missing?”

He said, “Not that much.”

She said, “It’s everything to us.”

“Have you made a list?”

He said, “No need for a list. It was in the bedroom.” The Prepolecs showed the policewoman and her friend up the stairs.

“Right,” said the policewoman, surveying the room. The policeman wrote something new down in the notebook.

“It was an urn,” he said.

“Over here,” she said.

He said, “Though it might have been in the drawers. It’s gone, anyway.”

She said, “It contained our son. Charlie. It contained his ashes. He was seven. He was only seven.”

“Right,” said the policewoman. “Oh, I’m very sorry.”

He said, “It’s all right.”

She said, “It’s not all right. It was the only thing. It was the only thing left. Of him. Why didn’t you get here sooner? Then you could have… got after them and… bloody caught them…”

He said, “Hey, hey.”

She said, “Oh God, do you think you can get him back?”

The woman said, “A cup of tea would be nice. Mrs Prepolec? Do you think we could have that cup of tea?”

Mrs Prepolec said, “Yes.”

The woman said, “Andy here will help you.”

Mrs Prepolec said, “I don’t need. Yes. Thanks. Yes. Sugar?”

The woman said, “Please.” And Mrs Prepolec and the silent man with the notebook called Andy went downstairs.

“Sorry,” said Mr Prepolec. “She’s. Well.”

“Of course,” said the woman. “Your son. I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” said Mr Prepolec. “But we’ll be all right.”

“What did the urn look like?”

“So big. Quite small. They don’t give you many ashes. I thought there’d be more. We were both surprised. Oh, and it was sort of grey. The urn.”

“Sort of grey,” said the woman. “Right. And is the urn all that’s missing?”

A few minutes later the tea was brought up. Mrs Prepolec had stopped crying. She was even smiling. She looked at the policewoman with such hope in her eyes.

“Here you are,” she said. “Do you think you can get him back? I mean, I know you can’t make any promises.”

“It just seems odd that this was the only thing that was stolen,” said the policewoman. “I mean. Did anyone know where you kept the urn?”

“No,” said Mrs Prepolec.

“No,” said Mr Prepolec. “I mean, sometimes, you move it about, don’t you, love?”

“I’m not quite sure where I want to keep it yet,” said Mrs Prepolec.

“Odd,” said the policewoman. “Well. Well, we’ll get right on to it.”

“I know you can’t make any promises,” said Mrs Prepolec. “That’s all right.”

The woman said, “I won’t lie to you. The chances of recovering the urn are really. Well, very small. I mean, it’s not impossible.”

“No.”

“No.”

“But I don’t want you to have your hopes raised.”

“I don’t need the urn back,” said Mrs Prepolec. “If that makes things easier. We were going to get a better urn anyway. Something pretty we could keep forever. We only want the ashes inside.”

“That doesn’t,” said the woman, slowly, “make recovery much easier, no. Now, we’ll give you an incident report number. Andy. There. And if you get any further info, just. Yes. And we’ll send you something about theft counselling, it’s standard procedure.”

“We won’t need that,” said Mr Prepolec.

“It’s no trouble. Now, will you two be all right?”

“We’ll be all right,” said Mr Prepolec.

Mrs Prepolec said, “Yes. Yes.”

Then Mrs Prepolec said, “We won’t press charges. Tell them that. So long as they give us the ashes back.”

The policewoman said, “Nasty business. But you sleep safe. They never come back. And I’m. We’re sorry for your loss.”

They both thanked her.

Andy said, “Forgive me, but. How did your little boy die?”

And they told him.

*

At ten thirty-five the police left. At ten forty, Mrs Prepolec remembered the glass in the sitting room, there might be fingerprints on it. She wanted to call the police up and tell them. Mr Prepolec told her not to. Mrs Prepolec said they’d been asked to call if they had any further info, and this was further info, and Mr Prepolec said this wasn’t the sort of info that they’d have had in mind.

They dealt with the glass together. He picked up all the shards one by one, taking care he didn’t cut himself. She held a plastic bag open for him to drop the pieces inside. It was a perfect example of just how effective they could be when they worked together, they didn’t even need to plan it, he’d just gone to the shards, she’d gone for the bag, they were a team. It was the same mindset that had sent out the funeral invitations so efficiently, and had ensured the catering had been a success. At ten forty-five Mr Prepolec took the bag from his wife, and sealed it with a knot. “That’s that then,” he said. She asked whether he was going to call the insurance company for the window, and he said it’d be rather a waste of their no claims discount, wouldn’t it? And it was only three panes broken, he could have a go at them himself at the weekend.

He said, “You didn’t mean that, did you? About the urn?”

She said, “What?”

He said, “That we were going to buy a new one. To keep forever.”

She said, “Oh. Yes. Well, I hadn’t decided.”

He said, “I thought we’d agreed. We were going to scatter the ashes in the park. Where he used to play, you know.”

She said, “In the back garden, we said.”

He said, “Or in the back garden, yeah. Yeah, you never said anything about keeping the ashes.”

She said, “I hadn’t decided.”

And at quarter past eleven her face suddenly lit up. She went to the phone.

He said, “Who are you calling?” and she said, “Shh!”

She spoke to an answering machine in her nicest voice. She asked very sweetly if her call could be returned urgently, the very first thing next morning.

He said, “Was that the police? Love?”

She said, “It was the crematorium. I thought, hang on. We didn’t get many ashes in the first place. Maybe they have some left over.”

He said, “They won’t have any left over.”

She said, “They might.”

He said, “It wouldn’t all have been Charlie’s ashes anyway. There’ll have been bits of coffin in there.”

“I know.”

“It may have been other people’s ashes too. We don’t know.”

“Why are you saying that? Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t know, then just bloody well shut up.”

A few minutes later he said, “Look. I was just trying to. I don’t know.”

She said, “It’s all right.”

He said, “But the ashes. Love. Love. They’re just a symbol, aren’t they? That’s what I mean.”

She didn’t reply.

“So,” he said, “we could scatter some other ashes. We could still say goodbye to Charlie.”

“What other ashes?”

He said, “It wouldn’t matter. It could be, I don’t know. One of his favourite toys. We could burn that bear of his, what, Paddington.”

“Paddington.”

“Charlie loved Paddington. We could set fire to Paddington and scatter Paddington’s ashes. That’s all I’m. That’s what I’m saying.”

A few minutes later he said, “I love you.”

A few minutes later he said, “I’m going to the toilet.” He didn’t go to the toilet. He went up the stairs to Charlie’s room. He closed the door. He sat on the bed.

*

Just before midnight she came upstairs to find him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry too,” she said.

“Sit with me,” he said.

She did.

They’d left the room as it was. All the toys. All the cupboards full of little socks, little shirts, little person clothes. The wallpaper of characters from Toy Story. Mr Prepolec knew at some point he’d have to strip the wallpaper. Getting rid of the clothes and toys wouldn’t be so bad, there was still some use to them, they wouldn’t feel wasted. But he’d have to strip the paper right off.

He said, “I’ve been thinking. And it’s just you and me now. And I’m so sorry about Charlie. About all of this. But maybe, with the ashes, it’s good they’ve gone. Because it’s over. You know? It’s over. And I was so. Oh, dreading, that moment we would scatter his ashes. So scared of it. Having to say goodbye again, and we’ve already done it, haven’t we, I can’t go through that again. And now, it’s awful. I just feel such relief.”

She said, “Yes.”

He said, “Do you feel it too?” And he said, “We have each other.” And he said, “Oh, God. Oh, shit.”

She said then, “Did you do it?” And it was so quiet.

And he thought, what, did she mean, was it all his fault? Was it his fault Charlie had died? And of course it wasn’t. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. No one could have known.

She said, “Tell me. Did you do it? Did you steal the ashes?”

“What? No. No, I.”

She said, “What the police said. How odd it was. Only the ashes missing. And the thief knowing where there’d be. You knew where there’d be.”

“I thought they were in the drawers.”

She said, “Did you do it?” And he said, how, how could he have done it, they were out together, they were doing something together, at last, like ordinary people, as if they were ordinary people again, he hadn’t left her side, he hadn’t even been to the toilet, they’d been together the whole time. She said, “You could have asked a friend. You have lots of friends. You could have paid someone,” and he said, of course he hadn’t, he hadn’t got any friends, no friends at all.

She said – and she did the same thing she’d done with Charlie – she said, “Look at me, I can see if you’re telling the truth.” He looked at her, and my God, she was beautiful, she’d been crying and her eyes were so wet and large. “Just tell me. I’ll forgive you. I’ll understand. I’ll try to understand.”

He said, “I didn’t do it.” And she thought about this, then got up, and left the room.

She was back a few minutes later. She was wearing her coat. She was carrying his.

“What?” he said.

“We’ll look outside,” she said. “Maybe the burglars dropped something.”

*

At ten past midnight they left the house. She said, “You look down that street, I’ll look down this one.”

He’d not wanted to go, but he felt the need to apologise to her, and he wasn’t sure for what. He’d said there’d be nothing to find. She said she’d read somewhere that burglars drop some of their spoils in the getaway from the crime scene. She said she’d seen this programme once about burglars who were overcome with remorse, and brought back things they’d stolen, and left them on the front lawn. Maybe their burglars were remorseful. Maybe they’d thought, we can afford to buy an urn. Maybe they’d decided they could have a child of their own.

The moon was bright, and they didn’t need torches. She handed him a torch nonetheless, and turned on her own. She turned it up to her face, and she looked somewhat devilish. “Good luck,” she said.

He traced the beam on to the pavement for a while, and then, when he rounded the first corner, and could no longer be seen, he turned off the light. He stood there, and for all he was worth he tried to cry, but nothing would come out.

*

At one o’clock Mr Prepolec checked his watch, and decided that was time enough. He went back home, and found Mrs Prepolec was already indoors. In the kitchen she was making yet more tea.

“No luck,” she said. “Any luck? I had no luck.”

He said, “I can’t do this any more.”

She said nothing to that. He felt his heart beat faster. He felt sick.

“We’re not going to see Charlie again,” he said.

“No. But.”

“I’m not happy,” he said. “With you.”

“No,” she said. “But. But.”

“The three of us. It worked. Didn’t it? As a family. When we were all together.”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t sure it would work. Do you remember? When you were pregnant? I didn’t think it would work. Because the two of us, on our own, that worked. Why should three of us work? Why mess that up? Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“But it did. It was good. It was good. And now. It’s just you and me. Again, you and me left, baby.”

She nodded.

“I don’t see how.” He said, “I don’t see how.”

She said, “We’ll be all right.”

He said, “I only want to make you happy. And nothing makes you happy.”

She said, “I can’t be happy.” And she said, “We’ll be all right, though.” And she said, “We just have to get back to where we were. Before Charlie. We just have to find that again.”

“I don’t see how we’re going to do that.”

“No. No. No. Nor me. I know.”

He made a move further into the kitchen, right towards her, and she thought he might be about to hug her, and she steeled herself for it accordingly. She didn’t want to be hugged. But maybe it would be all right, so long as she let the hug happen, maybe after the hug everything would get better, maybe the hug would be the turning point. She steeled herself, then, but he didn’t hug her, and all that steel in her body gave way, she felt her limbs get all floppy and useless again.

“I’m going to bed,” he said. “Not in our bed. I’ll sleep. I’ll sleep on the sofa, or. Charlie’s bed. I’ll sleep in Charlie’s bed. Not to get away from you. I just want to be on my own.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and he went.

*

At quarter past one she knocked on Charlie’s door. “Can I come in?” she asked. He wanted to tell her to go away, he wanted to say something that would make her hurt, and he didn’t know why, why would he want that? “Sure,” he said.

He was lying on the bed, fully clothed, staring up at the ceiling. She said, “That looks comfortable.”

“It is.”

“Can I join you?”

“All right.”

There wasn’t much room on the bed. He shuffled to one side, but they had to hold on to each other to stop themselves rolling off.

She said, “I need you to tell me you did it.”

“I didn’t.”

“I need it to be you. I need it to have been you. Please. And not some stranger. Please.”

He said, “I did it.”

“I need you to tell me how. I need you to make me believe it.”

He said nothing for a while, and she thought he wasn’t going to speak, he wasn’t going to speak again, not ever, and where would that leave them? And then, softly, he explained. He told her how he’d asked a man at work. No one she knew, he wouldn’t give the name, it didn’t matter. He’d asked this man for a favour, no money had changed hands. He’d told the man their address, when they would be out at dinner, the exact location of the urn. And then he’d given instructions for the man to take the ashes to the park, and scatter them there by the swings – Charlie had liked the swings.

She said, “I’d prefer the back garden.”

He said, “I told him the park,” and that had to do.

She said, “Thank you.”

She said, “I still love you.”

He sighed.

He said, “Good.”

“Is it, though? Is it good?”

He thought about it for a while. “I don’t know,” he said, honestly.

“No.”

“I don’t see,” he said, “how it can be bad.”

“Can we turn the lights off?” she said. “Can we get beneath the covers?”

He couldn’t see why not.

*

Charlie had had a bedside clock, it lit up in the dark, it showed wild animals. And so they both knew when it was thirty-five minutes past one.

And at thirty-five minutes past one it was exactly nineteen days since Charlie had slipped away, and neither of them mentioned this, but both commemorated the moment in their own way.

Then he turned the clock around, so they couldn’t see the time any more. And it was truly dark.

And twenty-four hours later, exactly, they’d reach twenty days. And maybe that would be better. Or maybe it would be just the same. But they’d reached nineteen, they’d reached another milestone, they’d hopped right over it, and that was good, that was good, that was all right.

*

They dozed for a while. They now had no way of telling for how long.

They got hot. So they took off their clothes, and they snuggled together, naked.

And at length Mrs Prepolec said, “I kept on thinking, he’ll be more interesting when he’s older. Seven year olds aren’t very interesting. They haven’t done anything yet. They have nothing to say. I kept on thinking, he’ll be better when he’s a teenager, I have that to look forward to. But now, he’s never going to get interesting.”

She said it very softly, maybe because it was dark, maybe because she thought Mr Prepolec might be asleep.

He said, at last, “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“Tomorrow,” he said.

And then he said, “Yes.”

They began to kiss then. They hadn’t kissed for a while, and that had nothing to do with Charlie, or his death, they just hadn’t felt the need for such a very long time. They did now, but incuriously, and both thought that at any moment they might pull away and tell the other to stop.

He climbed on top of her.

He said, “Is this all right?”

She said, “Yes.”

He said, “Do you want me to. I don’t know. Do you want me as I am?”

She said, “It’s up to you.”

He said, “I think I’ll carry on. As I am, I think that’s best.”

They made love. And it didn’t mean anything that there was no condom, not necessarily – this wasn’t the start of something new. It was just another absence in a room full of absence. But it felt good, and they worked together, they didn’t need to tell the other what to do, they were a team. And afterwards Mrs Prepolec said thank you, and Mr Prepolec said thank you, and they kissed, and they held each other, and they went to sleep.

A man comes to the door, and tells you he’s collecting the sexual favours from the descendants of Great Masters of English Literature. You didn’t know you were the descendant of any Great Master, but he takes out a family tree he’s researched and shows the direct line between you and Laurence Sterne, the author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759). You thank him, but explain that you’re happily married, and have never once in fifteen long years cheated on your husband. He says he quite understands, and has the grace not to look too disappointed. He bobs his head with perfect courtesy. And asks whether you happen to have the address of your sister handy. Your sister is married as well, but she’s always been flightier than you, and her morality is her own affair – you see no reason why you shouldn’t help the man out. He smiles, bobs his head again, gives you his card, and leaves.

Something about this encounter disturbs you, and it takes you a full hour to work out quite what. Your sister hasn’t even read the classics! She doesn’t read anything unless it’s in big print and comes with a naked pirate on the cover. Whereas at least you’ve read Tristram Shandy – you didn’t understand very much of it, but you read it. Your sister is unworthy of the collector’s attention. You call him on his mobile phone straight away, and suggest he comes back – but he’d better hurry, your husband will be home from work soon, and he might not understand, he’s not as supportive of the arts as you are. The man does you doggie style in the kitchen, it is most enervating. Afterwards he pulls off his condom, seals the mouth tight with a small wooden clothes peg, and then sticks the warm rubber memento in a large scrapbook with blu-tac.

You ask whether you can look at the scrapbook. He seems unsure; he’s clearly gone to a lot of trouble over it; he cares about his collection with a depth that is really rather sweet. At length he agrees, but you’ll have to look over his shoulder, you mustn’t touch. He shows you the condoms he’s worn ploughing the relatives of all the greats: Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Makepeace Thackeray, the two better Bronte sisters, Wilkie Collins, Shelleys both Mary and Percy Bysshe, Nicholas Blake, Thomas Hardy. You admit it’s very impressive, it’s like a condensed library in there. There are pictures beside the condoms – of the nineteenth century literati, and of their sexually satiated great great grandchildren – the photographs show a whole array of subjects, some old, some young, fat, thin, both genders, the man tells you he doesn’t mind who he has to fuck, we’re all just bags of flesh containing our ancestors’ DNA, what does it matter the current form it might have taken? He shows you a picture of Laurence Sterne, and you think maybe you can see some family resemblance. And he takes a photo of you, and you try to smile properly, not display the same cheesy sleepy half-embarrassed grin you’ve seen in all the others – and you mostly fail.

When your husband comes home he’s concerned; something’s troubling you; what on earth is the matter? And so you tell him. You fancy you know your literary fiction pretty well, but you don’t recall ever having read anything by Nicholas Blake. He suggests tomorrow morning first thing you should go to the library, he’s always full of good ideas. And so you do. And there is Blake, under B, sharing shelf space with Balzac and Bulwer Lytton. You select the fattest novel you can find, it weighs in at eight hundred pages, and you start reading it on the bus home. The style is a bit old-fashioned maybe, but it’s full of urchins and prostitutes and reform bills and mistaken identities, the whole liberally sprinkled with jibes against the French and the blacks. It may just be the best book you’ve ever read. You can’t put it down, you read it for two weeks straight. You neglect the housework, and when your husband comes home one night, and sees all the dust that has been collecting, he jokes, “What, do you think we’re living in the nineteenth century too?” And, really, you have to laugh.

There’s a picture of Nicholas Blake at the back of the book, and he looks very old, and very wise, and you wish he had been your granddad – not Laurence Sterne, he looks like a right jerk.

It takes you months to find out the identity of Nicholas Blake’s great-great-great niece, on her mother’s side. She lives in Cirencester, you go there by train, it makes for a nice Sunday afternoon outing. You knock on her door. You tell her you’re a collector, and she sighs a bit, and looks bored, she’s seen this all before, of course – and when she opens her legs you tell her it isn’t sexual favours you’re after, you collect teabags, that’s it, you want teabags of the descendants of the Great Masters of English Literature, teabags will do you just fine. She seems a little disappointed. She makes you both a pot of tea and you sit out in the back garden and talk. It’s a hot day and it’s really too hot for tea, and you wish now you’d said you collected straws or ice cubes or something, a nice cold lemonade would be just the thing. Too late now. You ask her whether she’s proud to be related to a man of letters, and she says she doesn’t ever think about it. You ask her what she does for a living, and she tells you she works in a cake shop. She is really pretty dull, and you try to find a way to leave her as soon as politeness allows. You finish your tea. She offers you the teabag. You accept it, shake off the drips, put it in your purse. She asks whether she can see your scrapbook collection of teabags, and you say no. Because, frankly, even if you had one, she doesn’t deserve it.

You take the Nicholas Blake book back to the library. You had thought to keep it, but now you realise you won’t need it any more. You think any great artist should be measured not by his masterpieces but by the most average work he puts out to the world, and really, that niece of his was pretty average stuff. The overdue fine is hefty. You pay it without a murmur. You feel you ought to pay somehow, that you ought to be punished, you tried to soar above the rest of mankind on wings fashioned from other people’s genius, and now you have been brought down to earth.

A little while later your sister tells you that for her birthday present she would like a copy of Tristram Shandy. You are surprised by her awakening interest in the arts, and then understand that the man must have found her and collected her too – and for a moment it makes you sad that the condom he soiled inside your body hadn’t been enough for him, that he needed still more Sterne seeded skin fragments pressed between his pages. He had been a greedy man, for all his courtesy and his painstaking genealogical research. You never mention the man to your sister, but you do one day ask whether she enjoyed Tristram Shandy. Even over the phone you can hear she has wrinkled up her nose. “Not much,” she says, and then she sighs – “if we’re going to get saddled with some writer in the family, why can’t it have been one of the good ones?” And you never agree with your sister, you haven’t agreed with her about anything since primary school, you’ve never liked your sister, you’ve never quite understood how the same DNA is swishing about inside the both of you – but now you agree with her, you agree entirely, and you feel a familial warmth, a new bond, and you marvel at the unifying power of literary appreciation.