'Michael -the question is how should we deal with this?'

And now the practical hats of the Kippses were put on. The women in the room were not offered hats and instinctively sat back in their chairs as Michael and his father leaned forward with their elbows on their knees.

'Do you think Kiki Belsey knows about this... note?' said Michael, barely allowing the last word the credence of its own existence.

This is what we don't know. She's certainly made nO claims. As yet.'

'Whether she knows or not,' flashed Victoria, 'she can't prove a thing, right? I mean she has no written evidence that would stand up in court or whatever. This is our birthright, for fuckssake .' Victoria allowed sobs to take her again. Her tears were petulant. It was the first time death in any form had ever forced its way into the pleasant confines of her life. Running alongside the genuine misery and loss was livid disbelief. In every other walk oflife when the Kippses were hurt they were given access to recourse: Monty had fought three different libel cases; Michael and Victoria had been brought up to fiercely defend their faith and their politiCS. But this -this could not be fought. Secular liberals were one thing; death was another.

'I don't want thatlanguage, Victoria,' said Monty strongly. 'You'll respect this house and your family.'

'Apparently I respect my family more than Mum did -she doesn't even mention us.' She brandished the note and, in the process, dropped it. It floated listlessly to the carpet.

'Your mother,' said Monty, and stopped, shedding the first tear his children had yet seen since this began. To this tear Michael was unequal: his head fell back against the cushions; he let out a shrill, agonized croak and began to weep angry choking tears himself.

'Your mother,' tried Monty again, 'was a devoted wife to me and a beautiful mother to you. But she was very sick at the end the Lord alone knows how she bore it. And this,' he said, retrieving the note from the floor, 'is a symptom of sickness.'

'Amen!' said Amelia and clutched her fiance. 'Ammy, please,' growled Michael, pushing her off. Amelia hid her head in his shoulder. T m sorry to have shown it to you,' said Monty, folding the paper in half. 'It means nothing.'

'No one thinks it means anything,' snapped Michael, wiping his face with a handkerchief Amelia had thought to produce. Just bum the thing and forget about it.'

Finally the word was out there. A log popped loudly, as if the fire were listening and hungry for new fuel. Victoria opened her mouth but said nothing.

'Exactly,' said Monty. He scrunched up the note in his fist and tossed it lightly into the flames. 'Although we should invite her to the funeral, I think. Mrs Belsey.'

'Why!' cried Amelia. 'She's nasty -I saw her that time in the station and she looked right through me like I didn't even exist! She's uppity. And she's practically a Rastafarian!'

Monty frowned. It was becoming clear that Amelia was not the quietest of quiet Christian girls.

'Ammy has a point. Why should we?' said Michael.

'Clearly, in some way your mother felt close to Mrs Belsey. She'd been left alone a lot in the last few months, by all of us.' Upon hearing this obvious truth, everyone found a spot on the floor to focus on. 'She made this friend. Whatever we think ofit, we should respect it. We should invite her. It's only decent. Are we agreed? I don't suppose she'll be able to make it anyway.'

A few minutes later the children filed out again, feeling a degree more confused as to the true character ofthe person whose obituary was to appear in tomorrow morning's Times: Lady Kipps, loving wife of Sir Montague Kipps, devoted mother of Victoria and Michael, Windrush passenger, tireless church worker, patron of the arts.

Through the grubby windows oftheir minicab, the Belseys watched Hampstead morph into West Hampstead, West Hampstead into Willesden. At every railway bridge, a little more graffiti; on each street, fewer trees, and in their branches, more fluttering plastic bags. An acceleration of establishments selling fried chicken, until, in Willesden Green, it seemed every other shop sign made reference to poultty. Written in a giant, death-defying font above the traintracks, a message: YOUR MUM RANG. In different circumstances this would have amused.

'It gets kind of... more crappy down here,' ventured Zora, in the new, quiet voice she had assumed for this death. 'Aren't they rich? I thought they were rich.'

'It's their home,' said Jerome simply. 'They Jove it here. They've always lived here. They're not pretentious. That's what I was always trying to explain.'

Howard rapped the thick glass side window with his wedding ring. 'Don't be fooled. There're some bloody grand houses around here. Besides, men like Monry like being the big fish ina small pond.'

'Howard,' said Kiki in such a tone that nothing further was said until Winchester Lane, where their journey ended. The car pulled up beside a little English country church, tom from its village surroundings and dropped into this urban suburb, or so it seemed to the Belsey children. In fact it was the countryside that had receded. Only a hundred years earlier, a mere five hundred souls had lived in this parish of sheep fields and orchards, land that they rented from an Oxford college, which institution still counts much of Willesden Green among its possessions. This was a countty church. Standing in the pebbled forecourt under the bare branches ofa cherry tree, Howard could almost imagine the busy main road completely vanished and in its place paddocks, hedgerows and eglantine, cobbled lanes.

A crowd was gathering. It pooled around the First World War memorial, a simple pillar with an illegible inscription, every single word smoothed into the recess ofits own stone. Most people were wearing black, bur there were many, like the Belseys, who were not. A wiry little man, in ' a street cleaner's orange tabard, was running two identical white bull terriers up and over the small mound of remaining garden between the vicarage and the church. He did not seem to be of the party. People looked after him disapprovingly; some ruts were heard. He continued to throw his stick. The two terriers persisted in bringing it back, their jaws clamped round it at either end, forming a new, perfectly coordinated eight-legged beast.

'Every kind of person: whispered Jerome, because everybody was whispering. 'You can tell she knew every type of person. Can you imagine a funeral -any event -this mixed, back home?'

The Belseys looked around themselves and saw the truth of this. Every age, every colour and several faiths; people dressed very finely -hats and handbags, pearls and rings -and people who were clearly of a different world again, in jeans and baseball caps, saris and duffle coats. And among them -joyfully -Erskine Jegede! It was not appropriate to whoop and wave; Levi was sent over to fetch him. He came over doing his bull's stomp, dressed in natty racing-green tweed and brandishing an umbrella like a cane. All that was missing was the monocle. Looking at him now, Kiki could not work out why she hadn't noticed it before. Despite Erskine's more dandified stylings, sartorially, Monty and Erskine were a match.

'Ersk, thank God you're here: said Howard, hugging his friend. 'But how come? I thought you were in Paris for Christmas.'

'I was -we were staying at the Crillon -what a hotel that is, that hotel is a beautiful place -and [ got a phone call from Brockes, Lord Brockes: added Erskine breezily. 'Bur Howard, you know I've known our friend Monty for a very long time. Either he was the first Negro at Oxford or I was -we can never agree on that. But even if we haven't always seen eye to eye, he is civilized and I am civilized. So here I am.'

'Of course,' said Kiki in rather an emotional way and took hold of Erskine's hand.

'And of course Caroline insisted,' continued Erskine mischievously, nodding to his wife's lean form across the way. She was standing in the archway of the church, engaged in conversation with a famous black British newscaster. Erskine looked mock-fondly after her. 'She is an awesome woman, my wife. She is the only woman I know who can power-broke at a funeral. ' Here Erskine turned the volume down on his big Nigerian laugh. 'Anybody who's anybody will be there,' he said, badly impersonating his wife's Atlanta twang, 'though I fear there aren't as many somebodies here as she had hoped. Half these people I have never seen before in my life. But there we are. In Nigeria we weep at funerals -in Atlanta apparently they network. It's marvellous! Actually, I'm rather surprised to see you here. I thought you and Sir Monty were drawing swords for January.' Erskine's umbrella turned into a rapier. 'So says the college grapevine. Yes, Howard. Don't tell me you're not here for your own ulterior motives, eh? Eh? But have I said the wrong thing?' asked Erskine as Kiki's hand dropped from his own.

'Umm ... I guess Mom and Carlene were pretty close,' murmuredJerome.

Erskine held a hand dramatically to his breast. 'But you should have stopped me speaking out of tum! Kiki -I had no idea you even knew the lady. Now I am very embarrassed.'

'Don't be,' said Kiki, but looked at him coldly. Erskine was paralysed by social friction of any kind. He looked now as if he were in physical pain.

It was Zora who came to his rescue. 'Hey, Dad -isn't that Zia Malmud? Weren't you guys at school with him?'

Zia Malmud, cultural commentator, ex-socialist, anti-war campaigner, essayist, occasional poet, thorn in the side of the present government and regular TV presence, or, as Howard succinctly put it, 'typical rent-a-quote wanker', was standing by the monument, smoking his trademark pipe. Howard and Erskine quickly made their way through the crowd to say hello to their fellow Oxonian. Kiki watched them go. She saw vulgar relief paint itself in broad strokes all over Howard's face. It was the first time since they arrived at this funeral that he had been able to cease twitching, fiddling in his pockets, messing with his hair. For here was Zia Malmud, in and of himself nothing directly to do with the idea of death, and therefore able to bring welcome news of another world outside of this funeral, Howard 's world: the world of conversation, debate, enemies, newspapers, universities. Tell me anything but don't talk of death. But the only duty you have at a funeral is to accept that somebody has died! Kiki rumed away.

'You know,' she said in frustration, to no child in particular, 'I'm getting really tired of listening to Erskine bad-mouth Caroline like that. All these men ever do is talk about their wives with contempt. With contempt. I am so sick of it! '

'Oh, Mom, he doesn't mean it,' said Zora wearily, as once again she was called upon to explain how the world works to her mother. 'Erskine loves Caroline. They've been married for ever.'

Kiki restrained herself. Instead she opened her purse and began searching through it for her lip-gloss. Levi, who had resorted to kicking pebbles in his boredom, asked her who the guy with all the big gold chains was, with the guide dog. The Mayor, Kiki venrured, but couldn't be sure. The Mayor ofLondon? Kiki muttered assent but now rumed again, getting up on tiptoe so she might see over the heads of the crowd. She was looking for Monty. She was curious about him. She wanted to see what a man who had so worshipped his wife looked like once he was deprived ofher. Levi continued to badger her: Of the whole city? Like the New York Mayor? Maybe not, agreed Kiki tetchily, maybe the mayor ofjust this area.

'Seriously ... this is weird,' said Levi, and yanked his stiff shirt collar from his neck with a hooked finger. It was Levi's first funeral, but he meant more than that. It did seem a surreal gathering, what with the strange class mix (noticeable even to as American a boy as Levi) and the complete lack of privacy that the two-foot perimeter brick wall afforded. Cars and buses went by incessantly; noisy schoolchildren smoked, pointed and whispered; a group of Muslim women, in full hijab, floated by like apparitions.

'It's pretty low rent,' dared Zora.

'Look, it was her church, I came here with her -she would have wanted the service in her church,' insisted Jerome.

'Of course she would,' said Kiki. Tears pricked her eyes. She squeezed Jerome's hand and he, surprised by this emotion, returned the pressure. Without any announcement, or at least not one the Belseys heard, the crowd began to file into the church. The interior was as simple as the exterior suggested. Wood beams ran between stone walls, and the rood screen was of a dark oak, plainly carved. The stained glass was pretty, colourful, but rather basic, and there was only one painting, high on the back wall: unlit, dusty and too murky to make anything of at all. Yes, when you looked up and around you -as one instinctively does in a church -everything was much as you might have imagined. But then your eyes came to earth again, and at this point all those who had entered this church for the first time suppressed a shudder. Even Howard -who liked to think himself ruthlessly unsentimental when it came to matters of architectural modernization -could find nothing to praise. The stone floor had been completely covered by a thin, orange-and-grey capsule carpet; many large squares of fuzzy industrial felt slotted together. The pattern therein was of smaller orange boxes, each with its own sad grey outline. This orange had grown brownish under the influence of many feet. And then there were the pews, or rather their absence. Every single one had been ripped out and in their place rows ofconference chairs -in this same airport-lounge orange -were placed in a timid half-circle meant to foster (so Howard envisioned) the friendly, informal atmosphere in which tea mornings and community meetings are conducted. The final effect was one of unsurpassable ugliness. It was not hard to reconstruct the chain of logic behind the decision: financial distress, the money to be had from selling nineteenth-century pews, the authoritarian severity ofhorizontal aisles, the inclusiveness ofsemicircles. But no -it was still a crime. It was too ugly. Kiki sat down with her family on the uncomfortable little plastic chairs. No doubt Monty wanted to prove he was a man of the people, as powerful men so often like to do -and at his wife's expense. Didn't Carlene deserve better than a small ruined church on a noisy main road?

Kiki felt herself quiver with indignation. But then, as people took their seats and soft organ music began, Kiki's logic flipped all the way around. Jerome was right: this was Carlene's place of local worship. Really Monty was to be commended. He could have had the funeral somewhere fancy io Westmioster, or up the hill io Hampstead, or -who knows -maybe even io St Paul's itself (Kiki did not pause over practicalities here), but no. Here, io Willesden Green, io the little local church she had loved, Monty had brought the woman he loved, before a congregation who cared for her. Kiki now chastised herself over her first, typically Belseyian opinion. Had she become unable to recognize real emotion when it was right io front of her? Here were simple people who loved their God, here was a church that wished to make its parishioners comfortable, here was an honest man who loved his wife -were these things really beneath consideration?

'Mom: hissed Zora, pulliog her mother's sleeve. 'Mom. Isn't that Chantelle?'

Kiki, thus separated from uneasy thoughts, looked obediently to where Zora was poiotiog, although the name meant nothing to her.

'That can't be her. She's io my class: said Zora, squiotiog. 'Well, not exactly in it but .. : The double doors of the church opened. Ribbons of daylight threaded through the shady ioterior, tyiog up a stack of gilt hymn books in their radiance, highlighting the blonde hair of a pretty child, the brass edging on the octangular font. All heads turned at once, io an awful echo of a wedding, to see Carlene Kipps, boxed io wood, corning up the aisle. Howard alone looked up ioto the simple concameration of the roof, hopiog for escape or relief or distraction. Anything but this. He was greeted iostead with a wash of music. It poured down on his head from above, from a balcony. There eight young men, with neat curtains ofhair and boyish, rosy faces, were lending their lungs to an ideal ofthe human voice larger than anyone of them.

Howard, who had long ago given up on this ideal, now found himself-in a manner both sudden and horrible -mortally affected by it. He did not even get the opportunity to check the booklet in his hand; never discovered that this was Mozart's Ave Vemm, and this choir, Cambridge singers; no time to remind himself that he hated Mozart, nor to laugh at the expensive pretension of bussing down Kingsmen to sing at a Willesden funeral. It was too late for all that. The song had him. Aaaah Vay-ay, Aah, aah, vay sang the young men; the faint, hopeful leap of the first three notes, the declining dolour of the following three; the coffin passing so close to Howard's elbow he sensed its weight in his arms; the woman inside it, only ten years older than Howard himself; the prospect of her infinite residence in there; the prospect of his own; the Kipps children weeping behind it; a man in front ofHoward checking his watch as if the end of the world (for so it was for Carlene Kipps) was a mere inconvenience in his busy day, even though this fellow too would live to see the end of his world, as would Howard, as do tens of thousands of people every day, few of whom, in their lifetimes, are ever able to truly believe in the oblivion to which they are dispatched. Howard gripped the arms ofhis chair and tried to regulate his breathing in case this was an asthmatic episode or a dehydration incident, both ofwhich he had experienced before. But this was different: he was tasting salt, watery salt, a lot of it, and feeling it in the chambers of his nose; it ran in rivulets down his neck and pooled in the dainty triangular well at the base of his throat. It was coming from his eyes. He had the feeling that there was a second, gaping mouth in the centre of his stomach and that this was screaming. The muscles in his belly convulsed. All around him people bowed their heads and joined their hands together, as people do at funerals, as Howard knew: he had been to many of them. At this point in the proceedings it was Howard's more usual practice to doodle lightly with a pencil along the edge of the funeral programme while recalling the true, unpleasant relationship between the dead man in the box and the fellow presently offering a glowing eulogy, or to wonder whether the dead man's widow will acknowledge the dead man's mistress sitting in the third row. But at Carlene Kipps's funeral Howard kept faith with her coffin. He did not take his eyes from that box. He was quite certain he was making embarrassing noises. He was powerless to stop them. His thoughts fled from him and rushed down their dark holes. Zora's gravestone. Levi's. Jerome's. Everybody's. His own. Kiki's. Kiki's. Kiki's. Kiki's.

'Dad -you OK, man?' whispered Levi and brought his strong, massaging hand to the cleft between his father's shoulders. But Howard ducked this touch, stood up and left the church through the doors Carlene had entered.

It was bright when the service began; now the sky was overcast. The congregation were more talkative departing from the church than they had been before -sharing anecdotes and memories -but still did not know how to end conversations respectfully; how to rum the talk from the invisibles of the earth -love and death and what comes after -to its practicalities: how to get a cab and whether one was going to the cemetery, or the wake, or both. Kiki did not imagine she was welcome at either, but, as she stood by the cherry tree with Jerome and Levi, Monty Kipps came over to them and expressly invited her. Kiki was taken aback.

'Are you sure? We really wouldn't want to intmde in any way whatsoever: Monty's response was cordial. 'There's no question of intrusion. Any friend of my wife is welcome: 'J was her friend: said Kiki, perhaps too keenly, for Monty's smile shrank and tightened. 'I mean, I didn't know her real well, but what I knew... well, I really loved what I knew. I'm so sorry for your loss. She was an amazing person. Just so generous with people.'

'She was, yes: said Monty, a queer look passing over his face. 'Of course, one worried sometimes that people would take advantage of exactly that quality: 'Yes!' said Kiki, and impulsively touched his hand. 'I felt that too. But then I realized that that would always be a deadly shame on the person who did it, I mean, who took advantage -never on her: Monty nodded quickly. Of course he must have many other people to speak to. Kiki drew her hand back. In his low, musical voice he gave her directions to the cemetery and to the Kippses house, where the wake was to be, nodding briefly at Jerome to acknowledge his prior acquaintance with the place. Levi's eyes widened during the instructions. He had no idea these funeral things had second and third acts.

'Thank you, really. And I'm ... , am so sorry about Howard having to leave during the ... he had a stomach ... thing,' said Kiki, motioning unconvincingly in front of her own belly. 'I'm really just very sorry about that.'

'Please,' said Monty, shaking his head. He smiled again briefly and moved away into the crowd. They watched him go. He was stopped every few feet by well-wishers and dealt with each of them with the same courtesy and patience he had shown the Belseys.

'What a big man,' said Kiki admitingly to her sons. 'You know? He's just not petty,' she said, and here stopped herself, under the aegis of a new resolution not to criticize her husband in front of her children.

'Do we have to go to all that other sruff?' asked Levi and was ignored.

" mean -what the hell was he thinking?' demanded Kiki suddenly. 'How can you walk out of somebody's funeral? What goes on in his head? How is that a way to...' she stopped herself again. She took a deep breath. 'And where in the hell is Zora?'

Holding hands with both her boys, Kiki walked the edge of the wall. They found Zora by the church doors talking to a shapely black girl in a cheap navy suit. She had a flapper's helmet of ironed hair, a kiss curl glued to her cheek. Both Levi and Jerome perked up at this attractive prospect.

'Chantelle's Monty's new project,' Zora was explaining. 'I knew it was you -we're in poetry class together. Mom, this is Chantelle, who I'm always telling you about?'

Both Chantelle and Kiki looked surprised by this.

'New project?' asked Kiki.

'Professor Kipps,' said Chantelle, barely audible, 'attends my church. He asked me to intern for him here over the holidays.

Christmas is the busiest time -he has to get all the contributions to the islands that need them before Christmas Day -it's a real good opportuniry...' added Chantelle, but looked miserable.

'So you're in Green Park,' said Jerome, stepping forward as Levi hung back, for even this much acquaintance had confirmed for both that this girl was not for Levi. Despite her name and other appearances to the contrary, she was from Jerome's world.

'Excuse me?' said Chantelle.

'Manry's office -in Green Park. With Emily and all those guys.'

'Oh, yeah, that's right,' said Chantelle, her lip trembling so violently that Jerome at once regretted bothering her with the question. 'I'm just helping out a little, really... I mean I was going to help with that ... but now it looks like I'm going home tomorrow.'

Kiki reached our and touched Chantelle's elbow. 'Well, at least you'll be home for Christmas.' Chantelle smiled painfully at this. One sensed that Christmas in Chantelle's house was a thing best avoided. 'Oh, honey -it must have been a shock ... coming here, and now this awful thing happens...'

It was just Kiki being Kiki, offering the simple empathy her children were so used to, but for Chantelle it was exactly too much ofwhat she needed. She burst into tears. Kiki at once put her arms around her and brought her into her bosom.

'Oh, honey ... oh ... it's OK. It's OK, honey. There you are... you're fine. There's no problem ... it's OK.'

Slowly Chantelle pulled back. Levi patted her gently on the shoulder. She was the kind of girl you wanted to look our for, one way or another.

'Are you going to the cemetery? Do you want to come along with us?'

Chantelle sniffed and wiped her eyes. 'No -thank you, ma'am I'm gonna go home. I mean -to the hotel. I was staying at Sir Monry's house,' and she said this very carefully, emphasizing the oddiry of the title to the American ear and tongue. 'But now ... well, I leave tomorrow anyhow, like I said.'

'Hotel? A London hotel? Sister, that's crazy!' cried Kiki. 'Why don't you stay with us -with our friends? It's only one night -you can't pay all that money.'

'No, I'm not -' began Chantelle, but then stopped. 'I have to go now,' she said. 'Nice meeting all ofyou -I'm sorry about... Zora, guess I'll see you inJanuary. Nice to see you. Ma'am.'

Chantelle nodded goodbye to the Belseys and hurried away towards the church gates. The Belseys followed at a slower pace, looking around themselves all the time for Howard.

'I do not believe this. He's gone! Levi -give me your cell.'

'It doesn't work here -I ain't got the right contract or whatever.'

'Me neither,' said Jerome.

Kiki ground her court heels into the gravel. 'He's crossed a line today. This was somebody else's day, this was not his day. This was somebody's fUneraL He has just got no borders at all. '

'Mom, calm down. Look, my cell works -but who're you going to call, exactly?' asked Zora, sensibly. Kiki phoned Adam and Rachel, but Howard was not in Hampstead. The Belseys got into a minicab the practical Kippses had thought to call, one of a long line of foreign men in foreign cars, windows down, waiting.

Twenty minutes earlier, Howard had walked out ofthe churchyard, turned left and kept on walking. He had no plans -or at least, his conscious mind told him he had none. His subconscious had other ideas. He was heading for Crickiewood.

By foot he completed the final quarter-mile of a journey he had started by car this morning: down that changeable North London hill, which ends in ignominy with Crickiewood Broadway. At various points along this hill, areas are known to fall in and out of gentrification, but the two extremes ofHampstead and Crickiewood do not change. Crickiewood is beyond salvation: so say the estate agents who drive by the derelict bingo halls and the trading estates in their decorated Mini Coopers. They are mistaken. To appreciate Cricklewood you have to walk its streets, as Howard did that afternoon. Then you find out that there is more charm in a half-mile ofCrickiewood's passing human faces than in all the double-fronted Georgian houses in Primrose Hill. The African women in their colourful kenti cloths, the whippet blonde with three phones tucked into the waistband of her tracksuit, the unmistakable Poles and Russians introducing the bone structure of Soviet Realism to an island of chinless, browless potato-faces, the Irish men resting on the gates ofhousing estates like farmers at a pig fair in Kerry ... At this distance, walking past them all, thus itemizing them, not having to talk to any of them, flaneur Howard was able to love them and, more than this, to feel himself, in his own romantic fashion, to be one of them. We scum, we happy scum! From people like these he had come. To people like these he would always belong. It was an ancestry he referred to proudly at Marxist conferences and in print; it was a communion he occasionally felt on the streets of New York and in the urban outskirts of Paris. For the most part, however, Howard liked to keep his 'working-class roots' where they flourished best: in his imagination. Whatever the fear or force that had thrust him from Carlene Kipps's funeral out on to these cold streets was what now compelled him to make this rare trip: down the Broadway, past the McDonald's, past the halal butchers, second road on the left, to arrive here, at No. 46 with the thick glass panel in the door. The last time he stood on this doorstep was almost four years ago. Four years! That was the summer when the Belsey family had considered returning to London for Levi's secondary education. After a disappointing reconnaissance ofNorth London schools, Kiki insisted upon visiting No. 46, for old times' sake, with the kids. The visit did not go well. And since then only a few phone calls had passed between this house and 83 Langham, along with the usual cards on birthdays and anniversaries. Although Howard had visited London often in recent times, he had never stopped at this door. Four years is a long time. You don't stay away for four years without good reason. As soon as his finger pressed the bell, Howard knew he'd made a mistake. He waited -nobody came. Radiant with relief, he turned to go. It was the perfect visit: weJl intended but with no one at home. Then the door opened. An elderly woman he did not know stood before him with a nasty bunch of flowers in her hand -many carnations, a few daisies, a limp fern and one wilted star-gazer lily. She smiled coquettishiy like a woman a quarter of her age greeting a suitor half Howard's.

'HeJlo?' said Howard.

'HeJlo, dear: she replied serenely, and pressed on with her smile. Her hair, in the manner of old English ladies, was both voluminous and transparent, each golden curl (blue rinses having recently vanished from these isles) like gauze through which Howard could see the haJlway behind.

'Sorry -is Harold in? Harold Belsey?' 'Harry? Yes, 'course. These are his: she said, shaking the flowers, rather roughly, 'Come in, dear.' 'Carol: Howard heard his father caJl from the little lounge they were swiftly approaching, 'who is that? Tell them no.'

He was in his armchair, as usual. With the teJly on, as usual. The room was, as ever, very clean and, in its way, very beautiful. It never changed. It was still frowsty and badly lit, with only one double-glazed window facing the street, but everywhere there was colour. Bright and brazen yeJlow daisies on the cushions, a green sofa, and three dining chairs painted piBar-box red. The waJlpaper was an elaborate, almost Italianate paisley swirl ofpinks and browns, like Neapolitan ice-cream. The carpet was hexagons of orange and brown and, in each hexagon, circles and diamonds had been drawn in black. A three-bar fire , portable, tall, like a little robot, had its metal back painted blue, bright as the Virgin's cloak. There was probably something richly comic about all this 1970S exuberance (left by the previous tenant) settling itself around the present, grey-suited, elderly ten:>.nt, but Howard couldn't laugh. It hurt his heart to note the unchanging details. How circumscribed must a life have become when a candy-coloured postcard of Mevagissey Harbour, Cornwall, is able to hold its place on the mantelpiece for four years! The pictures of Howard's mother, Joan, were likewise unmoved. A series of photos of Joan at London Zoo remained gathered in the one frame, overlapping each other. The one ofher holding a pot of sunflowers still rested on top ofthe television. The one of her being blown about with her bridesmaids, veil flapping in the wind, remained hanging right by the light switch. She had been dead forty-six years, but every time Harold switched the light on, he saw her again.

Now Harold looked up at Howard. The older man was already crying. His hands shook with emotion. He struggled to get up from his chair and, when he did, embraced his son delicately around his middle, for Howard towered above him, now more than ever. Over his father's shoulder. Howard read the little notes resting on the mantelpiece, written on scraps of paper in a faltering hand.

Gone to Ed's for my haircut. Back soon.

To the Co-op to return kettle. Back in 15 mins.

Gone shopping for nails. Back in 20 mins.

'I'll make the tea, then. Put these in a vase,' said Carol shyly behind them, and went off to the kitchen.

Howard put his hands on Harold's. He felt the little rough patches of psoriasis. He felt the ancient wedding ring embedded in skin.

'Dad, sit down.'

'Sit down? How can I sit down?'

'Just...' said Howard, pressing him back softly into his chair and taking the sofa for himself. 'Just, sit down.' 'Are the family with you?' Howard shook his head. Harold assumed his vanquished pos ition, hands in lap, head bowed, eyes closed. 'Who's that woman?' asked Howard. 'That's not the nurse, surely. Who are those notes for?' Harold sighed profoundly. 'You didn't bring the family. Well ... there it is. They didn't want to come, I'm sure ...' 'Harry, that woman in there -who is that?'

'Carol?' repeated Harold, his face the usual mix ofperplexity and persecution. 'But that's Carol.'

'Right. And who's Carol?'

'She's just a lady who comes by. What does it matter?'

Howard sighed and sat down on the green sofa. The moment his head connected with the velvet he felt like he'd been sitting here with Harry these forty years, the both of them still tied up in the terrible incommunicable grief oOoan's death. For they fell into the same patterns at once, as ifHoward had never gone to university (against Harry's advice), never left this piss-poor country, never married outside his colour and nation. He'd never gone anywhere or done anything. He was still a butcher's son and it was still just the two of them, still making do, squabbling in a railway cottage in Dalston. Two Englishmen stranded together with nothing in common except a dead woman they had both loved.

'Anyway, I don't want to talk about Carol: said Harry anxiously. 'You're here! I want to talk about that! You're here.'