It didn't work, of course, but at least he was too tired to stay awake all night whacking off.

41.

Agnes didn't phone at all during Justin's stay with Peter and Dorothea. She felt it was kinder that way, though in fact it wasn't. When she finally did make contact she was greatly relieved that it was Peter who answered the phone.

'I'm having a show.' She sounded excited. 'I've had an idea for some time now.' After a few minutes of general chat, she rang off, without asking to speak to Justin.

Peter felt a knot of worry form in his stomach, but there was nothing he could say, nothing to do but wait and see. When he pa.s.sed the message on to Justin over breakfast the next day, he played down the news, but Justin's nonchalance fooled no one.

'What exactly made you fall in love with Agnes?' Dorothea asked, accepting a piece of toast.

Peter glanced at his friend.

'She made me feel important,' Justin said. 'Like I was fascinating. And she's so...' He paused. 'So absolute. I was flattered.'

'Hmmm.'

'What do you mean, "hmmm"?'

'Just, hmmm.' Dorothea chewed thoughtfully for a minute. 'And that's enough to make a person fall in love?'

'Being flattered? I guess it was for me. She spent a lot of time looking deep into my eyes and coming up with ways to improve me. I guess that sounds pathetic.'

'Yes.' Dorothea's gaze was impa.s.sive.

Justin paused, the bread knife clutched in one hand. 'Maybe it depends how desperate you are to be improved.'

'How desperate are you?'

'Oh, way off the scale,' he said. 'More toast?'

Peter placed a bowl of cat food out by the back door. 'You might be average for all you know. Other people conceal it better.'

'Concealing it better is less desperate.'

Dorothea shook her head. 'Being you must be horrible.'

'Thank you.' Justin looked depressed.

'Never mind. Not much you can do about it anyway.' Brushing the crumbs off her nightdress, she swapped her slippers for wellies and strode off down the garden to the bird table with a fistful of breadcrusts.

The next time Agnes phoned, it was to tell Justin and Peter she needed to get away for the day, and did they want to come with her to the seaside? Empty vistas, stormy seas and grey skies were what she required. Wide open s.p.a.ces. 'I thought it would be nice to have you both,' Agnes said.

You've already had me, Justin thought mirthlessly. You want to have him too?

'Justin?'

But it's December, he thought. It'll be freezing cold and bleak and lonely, which is probably why you don't want to go by yourself. And anyway, haven't you got any playmates your own age?

'Yes, fine,' he said. She didn't want to be alone with him, that much was clear.

Peter, however, seemed pleased to have been included. So the following Sat.u.r.day, under an early morning sky lit with brilliant sunshine filtered through dark-grey clouds, they set off to Agnes's flat.

Thanks to the proximity of the Christmas season, Luton was at its most garishly festive. They took a detour through the mall, shielding their eyes from the blast of silver glare as they entered. The PA system gushed music so distorted it was impossible to tell what song was playing. It might have been 'Good King Wenceslas', though it also sounded a little like 'Santa Baby'.

Boy whimpered and pressed himself against Justin's leg while Peter and Justin looked around, and then back at each other, eyes wide with mock horror.

'Run!' Peter shouted, and they did, bursting through the automatic doors and collapsing with laughter outside. 'Oh my G.o.d. It's like the ninth circle of h.e.l.l.'

'There's a present I need to find for Charlie,' Justin said. 'I've looked everywhere else, but I can't face that place.'

Peter nodded. 'Nightmare. All Christmas shopping is.'

They walked together towards Agnes's house, squinting into the sun in a companionable silence. Peter occasionally tossed a soggy, shredded toy ring for Boy. The dog didn't bother chasing it, just reached up with each throw and caught it a few inches from his head, returning it to Peter with an air of dutiful resignation.

When they were nearly there, Peter turned suddenly to his friend. 'Justin,' he began tentatively, 'I've been wondering exactly what happened between you and Agnes. I mean, if you don't mind my asking. You seemed to get along, and then... why was there such a rush to move in with us?'

At another time, the question would have plunged Justin into despair, but now he only sighed. 'We had s.e.x. I told her I loved her. It was a disaster.'

Peter looked thoughtful. 'Women are tricky,' he said, taking the ring from Boy and throwing it again as they turned down Agnes's street. 'Of course, I'm only guessing here. My experience with women is fairly limited. Very limited, actually.' He laughed. 'In fact, it begins and ends with sisters.'

'Mine begins and ends with humiliation.'

'Wasn't it worth it?' Peter's interest was genuine.

'Not unless you're a sucker for rejection.'

They rang the bell and Agnes shooed them through to the sitting room while she finished getting dressed. Peter and Justin found themselves sitting awkwardly on Justin's old bed, a fact they both attempted to ignore.

'Hey, cheer up,' Peter whispered once Agnes had left the room, at least you've had s.e.x.'

'It's had me, more like.'

Peter wondered why people so rarely appreciated the complexities of the moment. He wondered what it would be like to have lost his virginity, to be attractive to women, to possess whatever quality it was about Justin they found so hypnotic.

Peter thought he knew what it was. There was something about his friend's uneasy blackness that mesmerized him too: Justin's neediness, his desire (and his inability) to make two plus two equal anything but pi. He appeared utterly incapable of ordering the universe in a rea.s.suring manner, had trouble differentiating hunger from loneliness, anger from love, fear from desire. Peter couldn't imagine going through life with a brain so peculiarly wired, but it made compulsive viewing. Like watching a train crash.

Anger and fear re-entered the room, dressed in a bright green ankle-length oilskin coat, an absurdly long cable-knit Aran scarf, and white high-heeled rubber boots.

'What do you think?' Agnes asked. 'No, don't tell me, I won't have anyone being rude about my country clothes.'

Peter grinned at her. 'The coat is very nice. I wish I had one like it.'

Justin sulked.

'Where are we going, by the way?' he grumbled. 'Are you taking us to Beachy Head? Planning to lure us to the edge, push us over, then swear blind it was an accident?'

'Exactly,' Agnes said. 'Especially if you continue being such a spoilsport.'

She held the door open for them and followed with the car keys, a picnic box and a little furry bag full of maps. 'Come along, boys, adventure beckons.'

42.

Justin had never driven with Agnes before. He sat crammed into the back seat of her ancient Renault with Boy, who had adopted his usual position of splendid languor: head comfortably in his master's lap, back pushed up against the nubbly old fabric, legs outstretched.

Justin sat with his hands over his ears to block out the whine of the car as it strained to compete on the motorway. He was glad he couldn't see the road; Agnes drove neither wisely nor well.

Although Peter's height made his occupation of the front seat obvious, he had tried to insist that Justin sit next to Agnes. Justin would have accepted the offer if he could possibly have done so without appearing childish. Now he could see the two of them chatting easily, their words swallowed by the noise of the engine.

What was he doing here anyway? He couldn't remember what he'd ever seen in Agnes, that hard-hearted scheming harpy, seducer and abandoner of innocent youth. Boy glanced at him sideways and Justin glared back.

With Peter's enthusiastic support, he opened Agnes's picnic box after an hour on the road, distributing crisps, sandwiches and bananas despite her protests.

'How depressingly English to eat in the car.' She sighed. 'I brought blankets and hot coffee for the beach.'

For an instant Justin imagined the freezing beach the three of them huddled together, inhibitions taking second place to warmth and regretted the spoilt picnic.

It shouldn't have taken much more than two hours to reach the coast, but the combination of Agnes's map-reading and driving skills meant it took three. She and Peter were exuberant, but Justin continued to sulk. The longer he sulked, the more he felt like a fool, but he was unable to turn back with grace.

They left the A-road. There was enough warmth in the early winter sun to colour the reedy landscape gold, and pressing his face to the back window, Justin saw a handful of vivid copper-coloured horses half-hidden behind screens of hedgerow. One of them looked up and watched them pa.s.s, throwing its head high against the damp, salty wind.

The scrub changed to salt marsh, with teasels and feathery gra.s.ses. A great blue heron flapped its prehistoric wings and rose heavily into the sky. Justin could smell the sea in the cold wind whistling through the window. There were terns, flitting and diving, and egrets wading in the marshy plain.

Agnes turned, finally, on to a dirt path marked Private and they b.u.mped along parallel to the coast, past a large, stern Edwardian house surrounded by incongruously green lawns. The road ended in a circle of cleared sand signposted No Parking. Agnes stopped the car, got out, pulled on her bright green oilskin, and stretched her arms out into the wind.

'What a view!'

She pointed past the scrubby dune, and Justin saw the top of a large sail gliding mysteriously along on what appeared to be sand. He held the car door open for Boy, who stepped carefully to the ground, stood poised for a moment, eyes half-closed, and then shot off like a rocket over the dune to the beach beyond.

The icy salt air and the warm sun made Justin feel exultant, too. He nearly forgot his grudge in the desire to follow Boy down to the beach.

'Come on,' he called to Peter, and they ran. Agnes brought up the rear, surprisingly agile in her high-heeled boots, and the three arrived at the crest of the hillock together. A narrow channel of deep water explained the sailing boat, and curlews stood further out in the muddy shallows, poking their long beaks into the water in search of lunch. A hundred metres down the beach, Boy had skidded to a halt and appeared to be practising airs above the ground, leaping and hovering, legs outstretched like a Lipizzaner. As Justin watched, his dog rolled in a pile of seaweed, shook himself free of his city smells, stood trembling for a moment in the sun, then shot off again across the dunes.

Justin flopped down in the tall pale gra.s.s, pulled his arms up into the warm sleeves of his coat and closed his eyes, while Peter wandered down to the water.

'As there's no picnic, I'm going to walk,' Agnes said, pointing south along the coast to where the mudflats gave way to a shimmering pebble beach. 'If by any chance I lose you, we'll meet back here before sundown.'

Justin nodded without opening his eyes; the winter sun on his face made him lazy.

Click click click.

He ignored her.

Peter came back up from the sea, his trainers and the bottoms of his trousers damp with salt water. He wanted to tell Justin how nice and friendly he found Agnes, but remembering his friend's mood, thought better of it.

'Shall we walk?' he asked instead, turning to follow the little path through the dunes.

Justin stood up slowly, dozy and languid, and walked behind him.

They followed the coast down to where the dunes met the sea. It was easier to stick to the path than to walk on shingle, but it required them to balance sideways against the wind that flew straight at the coast, swept up the sandy hills, gusted across the marshes and ruffled the reed beds. Justin stuffed his hands in his pockets and pulled his knitted cap down over his ears. He looked over at Peter, head thrown back, hatless, coat flapping in the wind, and shook his head.

'Aren't you freezing?'

'No. I'm warm-blooded. I like cold air rushing through my brain, remember? Makes it think harder to keep warm.'

'You're mad.'

Peter grinned, punch-drunk on sea air.

Justin followed the path down to a shelf of shale. The wind felt quieter here, and he stopped at a rock pool, squatting to get a closer look. It was illuminated by slanting rods of sunlight and appeared still except for a slight ripple on the surface where the wind hit it. He felt the water; it was warm.

Justin lay flat and lowered his face to within an inch of the pool, imagining himself floating through the weeds. He breathed out gently, ruffling the surface, then held his breath, waiting for the water to clear. Through half-closed eyes, he projected himself down, down, down, until he was gliding, swimming through unexpectedly warm winter eddies, safe in his tiny, enclosed world.

There were dark-red anemones at the bottom, opening and closing slowly like mouths. They looked gentle and welcoming; he swam around and looked deep into one of them, stroking the velvet red flesh of its throat. At the base of a reed, a periwinkle glided, leaving a faint trail in the sand. Now he could see a small population of crabs tiptoeing back and forth with the soft rocking of the pool; now a handful of tiny minnows surrounded him, curious, b.u.mping him with their weightless bodies.

A cloud covered the sun and Justin felt suddenly cold. He stood up and left the little ecosystem, following Peter's footprints along the beach. He could see his friend walking along by the water again. Agnes was nowhere to be seen. Even the mile of curving bay showed no trace of her. Perhaps an invisible shining pit of pebbles had swallowed her up.

Justin stopped to watch a group of cormorants fish from a half-submerged boulder in the sea, and when he resumed his walk, Peter too had disappeared. It seemed ages before he and Boy found him again, unexpectedly, huddled in a sheltered dip between two dunes.

Boy flopped down in the sand, head diagonally across his front paws, and watched drowsily as Peter flipped the pages of a small, well-worn book on coastal geology.

'Hi,' said Peter, moving over to make a s.p.a.ce for Justin. 'I'm just reading about Baltic amber. Apparently this whole coast is littered with it. The book says people have been collecting it here for centuries, but I've been searching all day and can't find any. It's a strange little text, listen to this,' he said, searching for a page. 'It says: "Baltic amber, fifty million years old and full of fire; warm, and enduring like love". Wonderfully romantic, don't you think? Only I don't know how to differentiate the stuff from plain old yellow stones.'

He poured a handful of yellow pebbles into Justin's palm. 'Hold them up to the light. If it's amber, you can see through it.'

Justin held one after another up to the light. They were nothing but stones. 'I wish we'd saved some of that picnic. I'm starving.'

'Me too. I'm going to keep looking for amber. We don't have to turn back just yet.'

He pushed himself to his feet and set off again, leaving Justin and Boy huddled together in the dip. The sun sat low in the sky, but the little sheltered spot was perfectly situated to trap what was left of the weak rays. Justin lay back against the bank of warm sand, dreaming of amber. The temperature would begin to drop soon; Boy was already wedged up against him for body heat.

A few minutes later he saw Agnes and Peter returning, walking close together. Agnes stopped occasionally to examine a sh.e.l.l or snap a picture of Peter, and Justin felt a wave of jealousy.