The truly scary thing was that they didn't even know what to be scared of. He could attack anywhere, using any means. There would be no coded warnings, no 'legitimate targets'. No-one knew who he was or what he looked like, and he had never stuck his own head above the parapet. Nonetheless, there was one thing she was determined about, one thing she had sworn to herself back in Brussels and felt even more strongly about now.

If the Black Spirit set foot on her turf, Angelique de Xavia was taking him downtown.

68.WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER THIRD.

real life (trade mark.)What do you want to be when you grow up?

That had always been a hard one for Ray to answer, even back in the days when each of the aspirational possibilities had its own Fisher-Price play-figure: fireman, policeman, doctor, soldier, train-driver, bus-driver, binman, sailor, pilot, spaceman. In retrospect, there had been a distinct leaning towards the public sector in those moulded plastic role-models, but this had undoubtedly been less to do with socialistic vocational ideology on the part of the manufacturer and more to do with the greater marketing opportunities afforded by professions associated with a specific vehicle (sold separately). Still, this kind of thing was bound to have a subliminal effect; strictly speaking, even the astronaut was on the public payroll, and these toys were sold in the days well before bus deregulation, back when Brian Souter was probably barring gay Weebles from riding his Dinky Toys double-decker.

Ray guessed that many of those Fisher-Price product lines had by now succumbed to the toy industry's most feared affliction - irreversible anachronism - but maybe that was preferable to a modern new range that included IT specialists, call-centre drones and burger-flippers. The accessory range wouldn't be a knock-out either.'Dear Santa, I have been a good boy all year, apart from that time I put the hamster in the washing 71.machine but Mum says that's okay because I was only trying to get the chewing gum off his fur though she wasn't happy about that because I'm not supposed to eat chewing gum because you can choke to death on it and it makes you look like a ned. Can I please have a Fisher-Price management consultant please and if it's not too much please can I please have the flipchart and team-building equipment kit please.'The first thing Ray could remember wanting to be was a welder. He was in Primary Three at the time and didn't have the first idea what a welder did, but that was hardly relevant under the circumstances. It was the long lunchtime (teachers' payday, last Thursday of the month) and they were playing Colditz. Ray wanted to be on the goodies' side for a change, but the goodies' leader, Tommy Dunn - seven-year-old detached cool personified - had stipulated that you only got on to his team if you wanted to be a welder when you grew up. Tommy's dad was, if Ray remembered correctly, a consultant maxillofacial surgeon, or possibly a welder.

'Make it' was the command by which their playtime world was shaped, a good dozen years before Captain Picard added the stylish but redundant 'so'.

'Make it that I've dug a tunnel through intae the sewers an' it comes oot behin' the kitchen bins/ Tommy had decreed, before cautioning his fellow captives: 'An' make it that I've got tae go ahead masel' an' yous have tae cover up fur me until I come back an' say it's safe.'

The subsequent absence of the welding evangelist had precipitated a discussion between POWs and Jerries as to what they each really wanted to be, something that Ray was instantly aware of never having thought about. It was quite 72.a concept; dizzying and daunting, exciting and intimidating. You could be anything: you simply had to choose what. The possibilities were suddenly endless, but the time for contemplation was more finite. At seven years old, he felt rushed into a decision, hoping as soon as he had committed that it wasn't binding. Twenty-six years later, little had changed.

'I want to be an astronaut,' he ventured. He'd liked SF stuff, from The Clangers upwards. If adult careers were being offered like crayons from the teacher's box, might as well go for the brightest. All of a sudden, his future extended beyond the next Christmas or birthday, and was coloured as never before, with spaceships, teleports, airlocks and moonbases.

'Astronauts risk their lives, so they do,' warned Brian Lawrence, recently prospective policeman, lately lost to the welding profession. 'You could get kill't. Mind there was a fire in one of the rockets in America, and sure there was that one when the air ran oot, and they nearly died as well. They never died, but nearly, so it just shows you.'

'Eh, well I don't want to be an astronaut any more,' Ray amended. It was an age when the instant climbdown carried no ego penalties; at least a decade off that first shameful resort to the phrase 'not as such'.

He wasn't pressed for an alternative, as Tommy Dunn had returned with the news that his tunnel was clear, and the Jerries had acquiesced in his escape scenario ('Make it that I've brung back a gun an' we're takin' wan o' the Jerries wi' us as a hostage so's the other yins cannae touch us until we're through the tunnel, right?').

Tommy's tunnel, as it transpired, no longer emerged by the kitchen bins, but instead led (still via the sewers) into a system of caves, also known as 'the sheds'. The sheds, Victorian-built playground shelters dividing the infants'

73.area from the Primary Threes, Fours and Fives, lent themselves memorably to children's willing imaginations, the underfoot conditions and perennially damp walls perhaps tendering subliminal suggestions.

'Make it that there's a river runnin' through the caves, an' we're wadin' through it until it gets too deep an' then we have to duck under an' haud oor breaths an' swim through the dark an' come up in a big pool except still in a cave, right?'

Ray remembered it as though real, that extended lunchtime seeming to stretch far beyond an hour and a quarter, their adventure in the caves unhindered by the girls bouncing sponge-balls against the walls nor by the other boys using the support poles for goalposts. Mainly he remembered the smell of wet stone, incongruously warm, inexplicably comforting; perhaps it was only those things after that, because of that.

'Make it that I've caught up wi' yous an' snuck up under the water,' said Mick Hetherston, having arrived at the sheds and been brought up to date with the state of play.

'You'd never have caught up - we've been in these caves for a whole night noo. You can stay in the sheds, but you're over there, you're miles back. You've still tae go through an' up oot the pool, hasn't he, Raymie?'

'Aye.'

'But make it I'm really a British secret agent pretendin' tae be a Jerry, an' I was helpin' yous escape aw the time, an' that's how yous were able tae take Bobby hostage back at the castle.'

'Aye, that's gallus,' was the impressed consensus.

'An' make it I was a British secret agent tae,' appealed Bobby, doing the arithmetic and reaching a disturbing conclusion.

74.'Naw, then there'd be nae Jerries left. Make it that you escape fae us an' we have tae hunt you doon.'

'But I don't want tae be a Jerry anymair.'

'It's ma game, so you have tae.'

'Och, that's shite.'

No, Bobby, that's life. Some suckers were just stuck with their role. Question was, were they better off than those who couldn't find one? In the space of half an hour, Ray had moved on to a third vocation, though he had at least remained true to his wartime allegiance.

'I think I want to be a pilot.'

This one wasn't a pressure decision. Given a little time to get used to the whole idea, he realised that this was a notion that had been knocking around his head for a while. He liked flying. He'd been on an aeroplane six times: to Spain and back, then to Bulgaria and back twice. Coming back wasn't as much fun. There was still the thrill of takeoff, but after that you were just going home, and your holiday was well and truly over. Taking off on the way out was the greatest feeling in the world. If he was a pilot, he'd get to fly every day, get to feel that amazing take-off sensation all the time.

He loved the airport too, loved being there. The check- in, the conveyor belts, the departure lounge, and of course, the planes. Everything was modern at the airport: shiny, all plastics, metals and glass; not like school, where everything was old, dull and wooden. When they drove past it on the motorway, he used to fantasise that his parents were about to turn their vehicle towards the car park and surprise him, say the boot was full of secretly packed luggage and they were heading off for a fortnight. When he had kids of his own, he'd told himself, he'd surprise them that way for real.

75.They also went to the airport to collect relatives, which was exciting because he got to see the planes, but it always left him with a sense of disappointment. The place looked just as fascinating, as space-age, but the sense of magic wasn't there when you knew you weren't going any further than the arrivals hall. It was like seeing the new toys at someone else's birthday party. The better they looked, the greater the feeling of missing out.

Airports had never ceased to tantalise him as he got older. They were places for beginnings. There was always a sense of potential about them; of adventures waiting to be had beyond their gleaming corridors, high-tech portals to a better place than the one you were used to. In childhood, they were where holidays began, the wrapping paper on a present bigger and better than anything you could get for Christmas, but nonetheless a present only your parents could bestow, and like Christmas, but once a year. In adulthood, admittedly something of a courtesy title in his case, they offered the constant, autonomous possibility of escape, whenever you wanted, and whatever you wanted that to mean: from a spontaneous cheap winter week in Hammamet to, well ...

To what, Raymond Ash? Say it.

To a ticket the fuck out of your life.

That, after all, was why he was at the airport right then, wasn't it? To be tantalised, to contemplate the possibilities in a place where possibilities proliferated, as opposed to home or work, where they shrank, withered and died. Or was he really going to swallow that shite he was telling himself about going there to buy his PC magazine because the airport was on the way home and the parking was about the same price as New Street? He'd bought the magazine half an hour ago, and the parking was in twenty-minute 76.increments, so why wasn't he on his way?

Ray was sitting on a bench in the upstairs concourse, watching the screens, the destinations, the possibilities. Watching the passengers, wishing he was one of them, knowing that such a transformation was one credit-card transaction away. Make it that I'm getting on that flight to New York. Make it that I'm getting on that flight to Toronto. Make it that I'm not a rookie English teacher anchored to his unpromising new career by a wife and three-month- old baby. Make it that I don't have to go home to them tonight, to see her in desperate tears and to hear him screaming because the pain won't stop. Make it that I don't have to humiliate myself in the face of another shower of psychopaths tomorrow.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Ray still didn't know. He was thirty-three and he still didn't know. Father? Teacher? They'd both sounded good for a while, but then so had astronaut and pilot. Astronauts risk their lives. Pilots, it turned out, also needed a little more vocational commitment than he had anticipated: viz, being prepared to fly to foreign destinations without going on holiday for a fortnight once they got there. He hadn't foreseen all the drawbacks to his latest pursuit either, but had proceeded through faith in the dual, contradictory self- assurances that: a) he would be able to surmount any obstacles through the drive to provide for his family; and b) if he didn't like it, he could always do something else.

Also known as denial. Denial, however, was peace of mind on tick, and sooner or later, the bill always arrives, plus interest.

So now here he was, a father and a teacher. He didn't like either and he couldn't do something else, not any more. That was why he was at the airport, wasn't it?

77.Possibilities.

/Start new game.

This will abort the game in progress. Are you sure?

Yes/No.

No, not sure, but thinking about it very carefully. The game in progress wasn't looking good. Health was low, energy was lower, morale was flashing red and the battle just kept getting harder. He had been badly misled about the skill level.

After sex, there could be no facet of human existence that people lied about more than parenthood. It was a mammoth, worldwide, multicultural, ecumenical, cross- generational conspiracy of porkies that would shame the Warren Commission, but without which, presumably, the species might well have died out. People didn't just fib about it to your face, either; the shelves of every bookshop and library were teeming with volume upon volume of whoppers, theoretical and purportedly anecdotal information, guidance and advice that bore no resemblance to reality as he and Kate were experiencing it - on average twenty hours a day.

For three months, their lives had passed in an excruciatingly slow, trance-like haze, never fully asleep, never fully awake, as they struggled to cope with a tiny creature who didn't seem particularly pleased to have been called into existence. It had been a planned pregnancy, but within a couple of weeks they had learned that while they might have wanted a child, they definitely hadn't wanted a baby; and definitely not one like this poor wee scone.

Misery, thy name is colic.

It began in the afternoons, around three, sometimes earlier, and ended around three in the morning, sometimes later. Within about ten minutes of each breastfeed 78.concluding, Martin would draw his wee legs up to his stomach, arch his back, open his mouth and howl, tears on his temples, pain and confusion on his face. Ray had very quickly appreciated what the word 'inconsolable' truly meant. There was nothing he could do to alleviate his son's suffering, save wearing a path in the carpet as he walked up and down holding him, stroking him, singing to him, patting him, all of it utterly, utterly futile.

The evenings, in particular, were a blast. They each took it in turns to fail to console the junior Munch model while the other grabbed a quick bite to eat through in the coveted oasis of peace that the kitchen had become. It was surely a sign of sensory deprivation that he often found himself wishing a Tesco microwaveable cannelloni could last forever, because as soon as it was finished, it was back to face the enemy.

They usually had the TV on, both to provide distraction and to give some sense of time, but unless Martin was clamped to the nipple, they were reliant on their new favourite number - 888 - for Teletext subtitles. This had its limitations for the genre they were in most need of (the phrase 'comic timing' clearly meant little to whoever programmed the computer to present the feedline and punchline one atop the other on the same screen), but did have an unintentionally reciprocal effect on live news and current affairs shows. The poor sod frantically pummelling on the phonetic translator could seldom keep up, particularly during interviews, so you were often treated to the closing arguments of one item when the talking head or cutaway footage was already up for the next. The sight of Carol Vorderman being inadvertently captioned as 'a cancerous blight on our society that we seem powerless to stop' had been an invaluable chink of light in an otherwise 79.very bleak few hours, matched on another occasion by Baroness Young appearing to tell David Frost that she deeply regretted posing topless for FHM.

Adding to the siege effect was the fact that unlike most new fathers, Ray hadn't had the escape of a job to go to by day, the start date for his post being ten weeks after the birth. It was an interval that had once seemed cosily serendipitous, leaving him free for a natural nesting period during which the three of them could rest, recover, bond and contemplate their Mothercare-catalogue blissful future.

Ray used to wonder how torturers could carry out their atrocities, as their victims' screams of pain would be unbearable to anyone with the merest vestige of humanity. He now reckoned that the first qualification would be parenthood, as there could be nothing that inured you to the sound of screaming better than hearing it for hours on end, every day of every week.

There were far darker thoughts than that, though, thoughts that you weren't supposed to admit to, that you couldn't unburden to anyone, and that there was definitely no page in the parenting manuals offering advice on. This was, of course, because he was the first new father ever to think them, just like Kate was the first new mother to intersperse worries that her newborn might die in its sleep with wondering whether she'd feel bereaved or relieved.

This was the gigantic lie, masking truths that nobody talked about, nobody acknowledged. You were supposed to be all smiles and chunky jumpers now, posing in photos, smiling down at your beatific bundle, whose very presence just filled your heart with warmth and your head with pride. Parenthood was hard work, sure, but bountifully rewarding, and it cast a sparkling spell of love, joy and fulfilment about every minute of your soft-focus existence.

80.Didn't it?

When he looked down at Martin, the main thing Ray felt was tired, and instead of gazing towards the bright, beckoning adventure of their lives ahead, what most frequently filled his mind was the question of how he could get back the life he had. He had many times contemplated the same desperate scenario as Kate, knowing as she did that it was merely a symptom of distress. That was why as soon as the baby did fall silent for any length of time during the night, his first response was to get up and check that this wasn't because the bugger had spontaneously snuffed it. In fact, he remembered breaking down in helpless floods of tears on the living-room floor one afternoon while Kate was asleep upstairs, the emotional collapse precipitated by the idea of another possible way out: what if they gave him up for adoption? They were clearly not cut out for raising him, you only had to look at the state of the pair of them to see that. Surely someone else could do a better job, could ease his pain, stop the crying. Wouldn't that be better for all of them? Then he had looked at Martin, at that moment awake and uncharacteristically calm. He saw him two, maybe three years older, standing in a room with other children, other adults, looking a little nervous, a little confused, not knowing the man who was kneeling down to say hello to him. That was when Ray lost it. He ended up walking around the living room, holding Martin to his shoulder as ever, but with Ash pere taking on the crying role for a change.

Despite this, the question refused to go away, whether or not he had a satisfactory answer for it. He wanted his old life back, and who wouldn't. This wasn't life; this was barely subsistence. And yeah, he knew - they both knew - of all the ways it could be worse, the things they ought 81.to be grateful for. Martin was, colic aside, a fit and healthy baby, with none of the defects every expectant parent can't help worrying about; not even ginger hair. Wonderful, magic, spiffing. Can I go to bed now please? Can I have some time to myself? And could somebody remind me who I used to be?

It'll get easier, people kept telling him. He wanted to believe that, and rationally knew he ought to, but it was a hard thing to have faith in when the evidence to hand didn't appear to support it. They'd struggled through weeks, months of this, and the only thing that had alleviated was the pain when Kate breast fed, a development she attributed to having lost all feeling in that area. Ray worried that he'd suffer the same effect emotionally, so worn-down and hollowed-out did he feel. These days, he barely felt like an individual, never mind the specific individual he'd been a few months ago. Instead, he was an enslaved appendage, existing only to serve the unknowingly tyrannical infant. He could plausibly envisage parenthood turning the pair of them into these miserable, embittered cyphers, bearing no resemblance to the two people who had opted to become parents in the first place. It'll get better. Yeah, and what if it does but I don't?

That was the true fear, wasn't it? Not that he'd never get his old life back, but that he'd never get his old self back. His 'old life' was far too nebulous a concept to know exactly what part or period to feel nostalgic about. For much of Kate's pregnancy, he'd been a glorified student, for God's sake, in his bloody thirties. Not exactly heady days, he'd have to say, but they had been days of genuine optimism, and a certain belated sense of maturity. Baby on the way, responsibility close at hand, time to 'put away childish things' to quote St Paul, from Ray's shortlist of 82.least favourite expressions, irritatingly appropriate given that he had been making a living from computer games before opting to train as a teacher. He hadn't looked back then, but admittedly if there was one thing Ray was truly cut out for in life, it was packing in whatever he was doing and starting over elsewhere.

Save current game before quitting? Yes/No.

No.

Since graduating from university, a wince-inducingly long time ago now, his CV had become a testament to his versatility and constant thirst for fresh challenges, to quote the job-interview spin. Another way of looking at it was that he had the attention span of a hyperactive budgie and the applied perseverance of a butterfly. The truth was probably a combination of the two, and he left it to individual interpretation what one made of a previous employment list that included, in no memorable order: bartender, waiter, video-shop clerk, local radio researcher, occasional local radio contributor (unpaid, usually in reparation for screwing up the researcher part and leaving a hole in the schedule where a missing guest should have been), local council desk-jockey, call-centre drone, computer assembly- line operative, computer relocation technician (and no, that wasn't a euphemism for thief), archery instructor, minicab driver, typesetter, PC gaming entrepreneur, cartoonist and rock star.

This last didn't actually appear on his CV, though it was true, kind of in the same way as playing for East Stirlingshire meant you could describe yourself as a professional footballer. Simply 'drummer' would be more accurate, which was probably why he had opted to excise it altogether from the official version. You were obliged to admit to your criminal record, but fortunately there were 83.some stigmas the law couldn't force you to reveal.

In a working life spent flitting hither and yon, the hardest change should have been the most recent one: selling up The Dark Zone and training to be a teacher; giving up a project he had invested time, money, energies and hopes in, for a career offering more stability but demanding vocational commitment (ooh, scary). At the time, though, it had felt right; more right, more defining than any decision he had ever made. The business was only that - a business, another project he could (and inevitably would) walk away from. What had always really mattered was him and Kate. They had begun to talk seriously about having a baby, and though she had never spelled it out, he knew that it wasn't something she'd embark upon while he was still living out his extended adolescence. Even when the business was making money, he'd never have kidded himself that it was viable in the long term. Maybe he'd have got a few more years out of it (and maybe the bank would have closed it in another month), but what he and Kate were planning put the timescale into perspective. Making the decision even more straightforward was the fact that The Dark Zone was listing into the red when the council's offer came in to buy him out, so he recognised fate's beckoning finger and did the grown-up thing.

Mistake.

One week in the job and he could still see fate's hand, but it was showing him a different finger.

/set skill level nightmare.

/set opponent_num 30 AWAITING GAMESTATE.

LOADING REAL LIFE(tm) ENGINE.

LOADING MOD: 'ENGLISH TEACHER'.

LOADING SOUNDS.

84.LOADING MAP: BURNBRAE ACADEMY [burnb.bsp]

LOADING GAME MEDIA.

LOADING PENCIL.

LOADING RUBBER.

LOADING RULER.

LOADING JOTTER.

LOADING BLACKBOARD.

LOADING OTHELLO.

LOADING LORD OF THE FLIES.

LOADING ROBERT BURNS - SELECTED POEMS.

LOADING WEAPONS: PUNISHMENT EXERCISE.

LOADING WEAPONS: HOMEWORK ESSAY.

LOADING HAZARDS: WINDOW-POLE.

LOADING HAZARDS: FIRE ALARM.

LOADING HAZARDS: MALEVOLENT FART ACCUSATION.

LOADING OPPONENTS.

AWAITING SNAPSHOT . . .

RAYMOND ASH ENTERED THE GAME.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Not this.

/Start new game.

This will abort the game in progress. Are you sure?

Yes/No.

Not such an easy decision away from the PC. In the virtual world, you could live a million lives, take on a host of personas, and there was no such thing as regret because you could reload a saved game, go back to before the point where you went wrong, or quit and start over again. Even online, in deathmatch, there was no ultimate price for your mistakes: when you died, you just respawned elsewhere on the map and plunged back into the fray.

85.That's what he'd been doing all these years, wasn't it? Quitting and starting over again when it wasn't going to plan. Respawning in a new job, thinking it didn't really matter if things didn't work out. That was why he was here at the airport, here where he could buy a ticket to anywhere and just disappear. Ray was looking at the Quit screen because he needed to know that it existed. He wasn't really thinking the unthinkable, just standing on the edge to see whether it made him feel like jumping in or running back.

Ray looked at the clock on the departures board, wondered where Kate and Martin would be right then. Out for a walk with the pram maybe, passers-by stopping to offer their tuppenceworth, having heard the bawling from a hundred yards away.

'Fine set of lungs on him, eh?' Every fucking time. Every fucking one of them.