And then, pulling the wheelie suitcase behind him, he walked out of the front door into the sunny Aldwych morning, and out of the Grahame Coats Agency forever.

SPIDER HAD SLEPTPEACEFULLY IN HIS OWN ENORMOUS BED, in his place in Fat Charlie's spare room. He had begun to wonder, in a vague sort of way, whether Fat Charlie had gone for good, and had resolved to investigate the matter the next time that he could in any way be bothered to do so, unless something more interesting distracted him or he forgot.

He had slept late, and was now on his way to meet Rosie for lunch. He would pick her up at her flat, and they would go somewhere good. It was a beautiful day in early autumn, and Spider's happiness was infectious. This was because Spider was, give or take a little, a god. When you're a god, your emotions are contagious-other people can catch them. When people stood near Spider on a day that he was this happy, their worlds would seem a little brighter. If he hummed a song, other people around him would start humming, in key, like something from a musical. Of course, if he yawned, a hundred people nearby would yawn, and when he was miserable it spread like a damp river-mist, making the world even gloomier for everyone caught up in it. It wasn't anything he did; it was something that hewas.

Right now, the only thing casting a damper on his happiness was that he had resolved to tell Rosie the truth.

Spider was not terribly good at telling the truth. He regarded truth as fundamentally malleable, more or less a matter of opinion, and Spider was able to muster some pretty impressive opinions when he had to.

Being an imposter was not the problem. He liked being an imposter. He was good at it. It fitted in with his plans, which were fairly simple and could until now have been summarized more or less as: (a) go somewhere; (b) enjoy yourself; and (c) leave before you get bored. And it was now, he knew deep down, definitely time to leave. The world was his lobster, his bib was round his neck, and he had a pot of melted butter and an array of grotesque but effective lobster-eating implements and devices at the ready.

Only....

Only he didn't want to go.

He was having second thoughts about all this, something Spider found fairly disconcerting. Normally he didn't even have first thoughts about things. Life without thinking had been perfectly pleasant-instinct, impulse, and an obscene amount of luck had served him quite well up to now. But even miracles can only take you so far. Spider walked down the street, and people smiled at him.

He had agreed with Rosie that he would meet her at her flat, so he was pleasantly surprised to see her standing at the end of the road, waiting for him. He felt a pang of something that was still not entirely guilt, and waved.

"Rosie? Hey!"

She came toward him along the pavement, and he began to grin. They would sort things out. Everything would work out for the best. Everything would be fine. "You look like a million dollars," he told her. "Maybe two million. What are you hungry for?"

Rosie smiled and shrugged.

They were passing a Greek restaurant. "Is Greek okay?" She nodded. They walked down some steps and went inside. It was dark and empty, having only just opened, and the proprietor pointed them toward a nook, or possibly a cranny, toward the rear.

They sat opposite each other, at a table just big enough for two. Spider said, "There's something that I wanted to talk to you about." She said nothing. "It's not bad," he went on. "Well, it's not good. But. Well. It's something you ought to know."

The proprietor asked them if they were ready to order anything. "Coffee," said Spider, and Rosie nodded her agreement. "Two coffees," said Spider. "And if you can give us, um, five minutes? I need a little privacy here."

The proprietor withdrew.

Rosie looked at Spider inquiringly.

He took a deep breath. "Right. Okay. Let me just say this, because it isn't easy, and I don't know that I can...right. Okay. Look, I'm not Fat Charlie. I know you think I am, but I'm not. I'm his brother, Spider. You think I'm him because we sort of look alike."

She did not say anything.

"Well, I don't really look like him. But. Y'know, none of this really comes easy to me. Ookay. Uh. I can't stop thinking about you. So I mean, I know you're engaged to my brother, but I'm sort of asking if you, well, if you'd think about maybe dumping him and possibly going out with me."

A pot of coffee arrived on a small silver tray, with two cups.

"Greek coffee," said the proprietor, who had brought it.

"Yes. Thanks. Idid ask for a couple of minutes...."

"Is very hot," said the proprietor. "Very hot coffee. Strong. Greek. Not Turkish."

"That's great. Listen, if you don't mind-five minutes. Please?"

The proprietor shrugged and walked away.

"You probably hate me," said Spider. "If I was you I'd probably hate me, too. But I mean this. More than I've ever meant anything in my life." She was just looking at him, without expression, and he said, "Please. Just say something. Anything."

Her lips moved, as if she were trying to find the right words to say.

Spider waited.

Her mouth opened.

His first thought was that she was eating something, because the thing he saw between her teeth was brown, and was certainly not a tongue. Then it moved its head and its eyes, little black-bead eyes, stared at him. Rosie opened her mouth impossibly wide and the birds came out.

Spider said "Rosie?" and then the air was filled with beaks and feathers and claws, one after the other. Birds poured out from her throat, each accompanied by a tiny coughing-choking noise, in a stream directed at him.

He threw up an arm to protect his eyes, and something hurt his wrist. He flailed out, and something flew at his face, heading for his eyes. He jerked his head backward, and the beak punctured his cheek.

A moment of nightmare clarity: there was still a woman sitting opposite him. What he could no longer understand was how he could ever have mistaken her for Rosie. She was older than Rosie, for a start, her blue-black hair streaked here and there with silver. Her skin was not the warm brown of Rosie's skin but black as flint. She was wearing a ragged ochre raincoat. And she grinned and opened her mouth wide once more, and now inside her mouth he could see the cruel beaks and crazy eyes of seagulls....

Spider did not stop to think. He acted. He grabbed the handle of the coffeepot, swept it up in one hand, while with the other he pulled off the lid; then he jerked the pot toward the woman in the seat opposite him. The contents of the pot, scalding hot black coffee, went all over her.

She hissed in pain.

Birds crashed and flapped through the air of the cellar restaurant, but now there was nobody sitting opposite him, and the birds flew without direction, flapping into walls wildly.

The proprietor said, "Sir? Are you hurt? I am sorry. They must have come in from the street."

"I'm fine," said Spider.

"Your face is bleeding," said the man. He handed Spider a napkin, and Spider pressed it against his cheek. The cut stung.

Spider offered to help the man get the birds out. He opened the door to the street, but now the place was as empty of birds as it had been before his arrival.

Spider pulled out a five-pound note. "Here," he said. "For the coffee. I've got to go."

The proprietor nodded, gratefully. "Keep the napkin."

Spider stopped and thought. "When I came in," he asked, "was there a woman with me?"

The proprietor looked puzzled-possibly even scared, Spider could not be sure. "I do not remember," he said, as if dazed. "If you had been alone, I would not have seated you back there. But I do not know."

Spider went back out into the street. The day was still bright, but the sunlight no longer seemed reassuring. He looked around. He saw a pigeon, shuffling and pecking at an abandoned ice cream cone; a sparrow on a window ledge; and, high above, a flash of white in the sunlight, its wings extended, a seagull circled.

CHAPTER NINE

IN WHICH FAT CHARLIE ANSWERS THE DOOR AND SPIDER ENCOUNTERS FLAMINGOS

FAT CHARLIE'SLUCK WAS CHANGING. HE COULD FEEL IT. THE plane on which he was returning home had been oversold, and he had found himself bumped up to first class. The meal was excellent. Halfway across the Atlantic, a flight attendant came over to inform him that he had won a complimentary box of chocolates, and presented it to him. He put it in his overhead locker, and ordered a Drambuie on ice.

He would get home. He would sort everything out with Grahame Coats-after all, if there was one thing that Fat Charlie was certain of, it was the honesty of his own accounting. He would make everything good with Rosie. Everything was going to be just great.

He wondered if Spider would already be gone when he got home, or whether he would get the satisfaction of throwing him out. He hoped it would be the latter. Fat Charlie wanted to see his brother apologize, possibly even grovel. He started to imagine the things that he was going to say.

"Get out!" said Fat Charlie, "And take your sunshine, your Jacuzzi, and your bedroom with you!"

"Sorry?" said the flight attendant.

"Talking," said Fat Charlie. "To myself. Just um."

But even the embarrassment he felt at this wasn't really that bad. He didn't even hope the plane would crash and end his mortification. Life was definitely looking up.

He opened the little kit of useful amenities he had been given, and put on his eyeshade, and pushed his seat back as far as it would go, which was most of the way. He thought about Rosie, although the Rosie in his mind kept shifting, morphing into someone smaller who wasn't really wearing much of anything. Fat Charlie guiltily imagined her dressed, and was mortified when he realized that she seemed to be wearing a police uniform. He felt terrible about this, he told himself, but it didn't seem to make much of an impression. He ought to feel ashamed of himself. He ought to....

Fat Charlie shifted in his seat and emitted one small, satisfied snore.

He was still in an excellent mood when he landed at Heathrow. He took the Heathrow Express into Paddington and was pleased to note that in his brief absence from England the sun had decided to come out.Every little thing, he told himself,is going to be all right.

The only odd note, which added a flavor of wrongness to the morning, occurred halfway through the train journey. He was staring out of the window, wishing he had bought a newspaper at Heathrow. The train was passing an expanse of green-a school playing field, perhaps, when the sky seemed, momentarily, to darken, and, with a hiss of brakes, the train stopped at a signal.

That did not disturb Fat Charlie. It was England in the autumn: the sun was, by definition, something that only happened when it wasn't cloudy or raining. But there was a figure standing on the edge of the green by a stand of trees.

At first glance, he thought it was a scarecrow.

That was foolish. It could not have been a scarecrow. Scarecrows are found in fields, not on football pitches. Scarecrows certainly aren't left on the edge of the woodland. Anyway, if it was a scarecrow it was doing a very poor job.

There were crows everywhere, after all, big black ones.

And then it moved.

It was too far away to be anything more than a shape, a slight figure in a tattered brown raincoat. Still, Fat Charlie knew it. He knew that if he had been close enough, he would have seen a face chipped from obsidian, and raven-black hair, and eyes that held madness.

Then the train jerked and began to move, and in moments the woman in the brown raincoat was out of sight.

Fat Charlie felt uncomfortable. He had practically convinced himself by now that what had happened, what hethought had happened, in Mrs. Dunwiddy's front room had been some form of hallucination, a high-octane dream, true on some level but not a real thing. Not something that had happened; rather, it was symbolic of a greater truth. He could not have gone to a real place, nor struck a real bargain, could he?

It was only a metaphor, after all.

He did not ask himself why he was now so certain that everything would soon begin to improve. There was reality, and there wasreality, and some things were more real than others.

Faster and faster, the train rattled him further into London.

SPIDER WAS ALMOSTHOME FROM THE GREEK RESTAURANT,napkin pushed against his cheek, when someone touched him on the shoulder.

"Charles?" said Rosie.

Spider jumped, or at least, he jerked and made a startled noise.

"Charles? Are you all right? What happened to your cheek?"

He stared at her. "Are you you?" he asked.

"What?"

"Are you Rosie?"

"What kind of a question is that? Of course I'm Rosie. What did you do to your cheek?"

He pressed the napkin against his cheek. "I cut it," he said.

"Let me see?" She took his hand away from his cheek. The center of the white napkin was stained crimson, as if he had bled into it, but his cheek was whole and untouched. "There's nothing there."

"Oh."

"Charles? Are you all right?"

"Yes," he said. "I am. Unless I'm not. I think we should go back to my place. I think I'll be safer there."

"We were going to have lunch," said Rosie, in the tone of voice of one who worries that she'll only understand what's actually going on when a TV presenter leaps out and reveals the hidden cameras.

"Yes," said Spider. "I know. I think someone just tried to kill me, though. And she pretended she was you."

"Nobody's trying to kill you," said Rosie, failing to sound like she wasn't humoring him.

"Even if nobody's trying to kill me, can we skip lunch and go back to my place? I've got food there."

"Of course."

Rosie followed him down the road, wondering when Fat Charlie had lost all that weight. He looked good, she thought. He looked really good. They walked into Maxwell Gardens in silence.

He said, "Look at that."