's.h.i.t, no!' says Bunny, checking his rear-view mirror. 'We're on the road!'

'What are we gonna do, Dad?'

'You, me and Darth Vader there are checking into a hotel!'

Bunny checks his mirror again he's looking for any police action, the wail of a siren, the flashing blue light looming up behind him but there is nothing but the somnambulant creep of the evening traffic. He turns off the seafront road, though, just in case, and disappears down a side street. The last thing he needs is to be nicked in breach of his Antisocial Behaviour Order. That would be a serious b.u.mmer. Bunny looks at his son, who for some reason has an extremely deranged smile on his face.

'Really, Dad?' he says. 'A hotel?'

'That's right! And you know what we are going to do when we get there?' Blocks of yellow light move across the boy's face and his eyes are round and wild as Bunny adds, with due reverence, 'Room service.'

'What's room service, Dad?'

'Jesus Christ, Bunny Boy, you know the capital of Mongolia but you don't know what room service is?'

Bunny has been banned for life from three McDonald's, one Burger King and thrown out of the Kentucky Fried on Western Road with such force that he fractured two of his ribs. This was on a busy Sat.u.r.day in the middle of the afternoon. Bunny also has four separate ASBOs in the Suss.e.x area.

'Room service is when you lie on your bed in a hotel room, close your eyes and think of anything in the world that you want, and I mean anything, then you ring up reception, ask for it and some jobber in a bowtie brings it up for you.'

'Anything, Dad?' says the boy, twisting his Darth Vader and realising at the same time that he didn't actually have anything to worry about all along.

'Sandwiches, cup of tea, fish and chips, a bottle of vino ... um ... f.a.gs ... a ma.s.sage ... anything. And another thing, Bunny Boy ...'

The Punto pa.s.ses a shadowy man with tattoos on his arms changing the back tire on a maroon cement truck (with the word 'DUDMAN' painted across the bonnet in giant cream letters) parked in a lay-by at the side of the road. Bunny Junior notices with a jolt of panic that its windscreen wipers are moving back and forth at a tremendous rate, but it isn't raining.

'When we get to the hotel, I'm gonna show you the weirdest thing in the world!'

The boy looks up at his father and says, 'What, Dad?'

Bunny rolls his eyes and says, 'I'm talking f.u.c.king completely Wacko Jacko!'

'What's that, Dad?' says Bunny Junior again, stifling a yawn.

'I mean seriously off the planet, Janet!'

'Da-ad!' says the boy.

'I mean bananas in f.u.c.king pyjamas!'

The boy laughs and says, 'Da-a-ad!'

Bunny changes lanes, looks awed and leans in close to Bunny Junior for dramatic effect.

'The tiniest f.u.c.king soaps you've ever seen in your life.'

'Soaps?' says Bunny Junior.

'Yeah, smaller than a matchbox, they are.'

'Really,' says the boy and squeezes his lips together in a smile.

'And individually wrapped,' says Bunny.

Bunny Junior's face glows gold, then tarnishes, and then glows gold again, and goes on like that for a while. He holds out his hand, his thumb and forefinger extended to suggest the size of a matchbox.

'Really? This big?' he says, amazed.

'What?'

'The soaps,' says Bunny Junior.

'Smaller.'

Bunny holds his thumb and forefinger about an inch and a half apart and whispers to his son, 'They are tiny tiny.'

Bunny Junior can smell the fish on the salted air blowing up from the sea. A mist rolls up from the dark waters and curls about the Punto, a ghostly white. He waggles his black plastic figurine.

'Soap for Darth Vader,' says Bunny Junior.

Bunny flips on his high beams and says, 'You got it, Bunny Boy.'

18.

Bunny remembers the day he and Libby arrived home from the hospital with the baby. The tiny child's eyes, yet to find their colour, peered out of his scarlet, Claymation face as they laid him in the cot.

Bunny said to Libby, 'I don't know what to say to him.'

'It doesn't really matter, Bun. He is three days old.'

'Yeah, I guess.'

'Tell him he's beautiful,' said Libby.

'But he's not. He looks like somebody stepped on him.'

'Well, tell him that then,' she said. 'Only, in a nice voice.'

Bunny leaned into the crib. The child seemed to Bunny both terrifyingly present and a thousand light years away, all at the same time. There was something about him that he just couldn't handle, so full of his mother's love.

'You look like somebody put you through the mincer, little guy.'

Bunny Junior jerked his tiny bunched fingers in the air and changed the shape of his mouth.

'See? He likes it,' said Libby.

'You look like a bowl of Bolognese,' said Bunny. 'You look like a baboon's a.r.s.e.'

Libby giggled and placed her raw and swollen fingers against the baby's head and the baby closed its eyes.

'Don't listen to him. He's jealous,' she said.

That was also the day that Sabrina Cantrell, Libby's workmate and 'oldest friend', came to pay her a visit. While Libby nursed the baby in the living room, in their tiny kitchenette Sabrina made the exhausted new mother a cup of tea. Bunny, who offered to help her, was suddenly and unexpectedly visited by a venereal compulsion that involved Sabrina Cantrell's a.r.s.e and both his hands something midway between a slap and a full-blown squeeze. It came out of nowhere, this compulsion, and even as he groped up great handfuls of her backside he wondered What the f.u.c.k am I doing? Nothing came of it, of course, and it was the last time he ever saw Sabrina Cantrell, but a chain of events was set in motion that Bunny felt was beyond his control. There was a voice and a command, there was an action and there was indeed a consequence shock-waves reverberated through the Munro household for weeks. Why had he done it? Who knows? Whatever. f.u.c.k you.

Bunny rarely thought about that first marital miscalculation what it was that guided his hands inexorably towards their forbidden resting place but he did often think about the feel feel of Sabrina Cantrell's backside under the thin crepe skirt, that wonderful contracting of the b.u.t.tocks, the jump of outraged muscle, before the s.h.i.t and the fan had their fateful a.s.signation. of Sabrina Cantrell's backside under the thin crepe skirt, that wonderful contracting of the b.u.t.tocks, the jump of outraged muscle, before the s.h.i.t and the fan had their fateful a.s.signation.

As he lies on his back, in his zebra-striped briefs at the Queensbury Hotel in Regency Square, working his way through a bottle of Scotch and watching with ancient eyes the tiny TV that blithers in the corner of the room, Bunny places a finger gently on the bridge of his nose and two thin rivulets of new dark blood emerge and run down his chin and drop soundlessly onto his chest. He curses to himself, rolls a Kleenex into plugs and inserts them up each nostril.

The room is a riot of psychedelic wallpaper and blood-coloured paisley carpet that appears to be designed around the ghosted, Technicolor nightmares of an Australian backstreet abortionist. The scarlet curtains hang like strips of uncooked meat and a paper lightshade that hangs from the ceiling writhes with fierce, whiskered Chinese dragons. The room reeks of bad plumbing and bleach and there is no room service and there is no mini-bar.

Bunny Junior lies on the other bed, in his pyjamas, engaged in an epic battle with his tormented eyelids nodding off, then jerking awake, then nodding off again a little yawn, a little scratch, a little folding of the hands to sleep.

'Daddy?' he mutters, rhetorically, sadly, to himself.

Bunny stops thinking about Sabrina Cantrell's backside and starts thinking about her p.u.s.s.y instead and quite soon he is thinking about Avril Lavigne's v.a.g.i.n.a. He is almost positive that Avril Lavigne possesses the f.u.c.king Valhalla of all v.a.g.i.n.as, and in response to this late-night meditation he carefully folds a copy of the Daily Mail Daily Mail over his semi-tumescent member. There is, after all, a child in the room. over his semi-tumescent member. There is, after all, a child in the room.

Bunny lights a Lambert & Butler and focuses on the television. A woman on a 'confessional' talk show is admitting to being s.e.x addict. This holds no special interest to Bunny except that he finds it difficult to see how this woman, with her triplicate chins, flabby arms and lardy rear-end, could find enough guys willing to indulge her rank appet.i.tes. But apparently this was not a problem, and she gives a lurid and detailed account of her nympho-sploits. In time they bring on her husband, beaten-down and camera-shy, and she asks him to forgive her. The camera does a slow zoom on her tear-sodden face as she says, 'Oh, Frank, I have done bad things. Terrible, terrible things. Could you please find it in your heart to forgive me?'

Bunny pours himself another Scotch and lights up a Lambert & Butler.

'Kill the b.i.t.c.h,' he mutters.

Bunny Junior opens his eyes and, in a faraway voice that rises up from the soft curds of sleep, says 'What did you say, Dad?'

'Kill the b.i.t.c.h,' answers Bunny, but the boy's eyes have closed again.

Then the sound seems to drop out of the television and the face of the host, a guy with a floppy yellow fringe and a salad-green suit, seems to morph into that of a braying cartoon horse or laughing hyena or something and Bunny, appalled, closes his eyes.

He recalls, with a shudder, Libby standing in their kitchenette, red-eyed with confusion and disbelief, holding the baby and the telephone, and asking Bunny, point-blank, 'Is it true?'

She had been on the phone with Sabrina Cantrell, who had rung up to inform Libby that her husband had groped her in the kitchen and was, in all probability, a s.e.xual pervert or something.

Bunny did not answer but hung his head and examined the monochromatic checkerboard linoleum on the floor of the kitchenette.

'Why?' she sobbed.

Bunny, in all honesty, had no f.u.c.king idea and he said this to her, shaking his head.

He remembered, quite distinctly, the baby, sitting like a little prince in his wife's arms, lift one well-sucked fist and uncurl his index finger and point it at Bunny. Bunny recalls looking at the child and having the overwhelming desire to go down to the Wick with Poodle. After half a dozen pints Poodle put a comforting arm around Bunny and bared his shark-like teeth and said, 'Don't worry, Bun, she'll get used to it.'

Bunny opens his eyes and sees the boy has raised himself up and is sitting on the edge of his bed, a look of concern on his face.

'Are you all right, Dad?' says the boy.

But before Bunny can think of what to answer, the TV comes alive with a urgent blast of music and a voice that cries, 'Wakey-wakey!' and the boy and his father look at the screen and see an advertis.e.m.e.nt for Butlins Holiday Camp in Bognor Regis. Various photographs framed in yellow cartoon stars cartwheel across the screen, showing the range of activities offered at Butlins the Tiki Bar with its simulated electrical storms, the Empress Ballroom with its crimson curtains and tuxedoed band, the indoor and outdoor swimming pools, the world-famous monorail, the putting green, the adult quiz nights, the giant fibregla.s.s rabbit that stands sentry by the pool, the Apache Fort, the Gaiety Building and amus.e.m.e.nt arcade. Smiling staff members in their trademark red coats show smiling patrons to their individual chalets and finally, in pink neon, blinking hypnotically across the screen, the Butlin's Holiday Camp mission statement, 'Our true intent is all for your delight.'

Bunny's eyes grow wide, his mouth drops open and says with genuine feeling, 'f.u.c.k me. Butlins.' He sits straight up and jams another Lambert & Butler in his mouth. 'Are you watching this, Bunny Boy? Butlins! Butlins!'

'What's Butlins, Dad?'

Bunny Zippos his cigarette and points at the TV, expels a noisy trumpet of smoke and says, 'Butlins, my boy, is the best f.u.c.king place in the world!'

'What is it, Dad?'

'It's a holiday camp,' says Bunny. 'My father took me there when I was a kid,' and with the mention of his father, Bunny feels a butcher's hook twisting in his bowels. He looks at his watch and screws up his face and says to himself, 'Christ, my old dad.'

'Why is it the best place in the world?' asks the boy.

'Has anyone ever mentioned you ask a lot of f.u.c.king questions?'

'Yes.'

Bunny reaches across to the bedside table and grabs the Scotch and, waving the bottle with an extravagant flourish, says, 'Well, let me just pour a little drink and I'll tell you.'

Bunny slops whisky into his gla.s.s, then lies back against the headboard and says, with emphasis, 'But you've got to listen.'

Bunny Junior's head suddenly wobbles dramatically on his neck and he falls back on the bed, arms splayed. He closes his eyes.

'OK, Dad,' he says.

'Don't b.l.o.o.d.y ask me why Dad took me to Butlins. He no doubt had some raunchy tete-a-tete or some liaison kangaroo with some slapper or something, I don't know, he was a squire of the dames, my old man, and he loved a bit of the fluff. Not bad-looking either, in his day,' says Bunny.

'When we arrived he changed his shirt, had a shave, put pomade in his hair, you know, then sent me down the pool, for a swim. He said he'd come by and get me later on.'

The boy's breath deepens and he brings his little square knees up to his chest and appears to sleep. Bunny pours the Scotch down his throat, then attempts to place the gla.s.s back on the bedside table but he misses and the gla.s.s rolls around the shrieking paisley carpet. He retreats deep into his memory and he sees the throbbing terraced lawns and the turquoise water churning with screaming children. He sees the fifteen-foot bucktooth rabbit that stands by the swimming pool. His voice comes out tired and sad.

'So I went down to the pool, and I was doing this thing that I liked to do. I'd crouch down with just my eyes looking over the top of the water and glide around like a crocodile or a b.l.o.o.d.y alligator and watch all the kids jumping around and doing bombs and cavorting about. I used to feel like n.o.body could see me but, you know, I could see them.'

Bunny attempts to make some gesture with his hand to ill.u.s.trate a point and for a brief moment he wonders how on earth he ever ended up this way.

'Anyway, on this particular occasion I started to get the feeling that someone was watching me and I turned around and there, sitting on the edge of the pool, was a girl ... about my age ... I was just a kid ...'

Bunny sees, in his mind, the girl with her long wet hair and her nut-coloured limbs, and he finds that hot tears are running down his face, and once again he circles his hand in the air, his cigarette dead between his fingers.

'And she was smiling at me ... watching me ... and smiling at me and, Bunny Boy, I got to tell you, she had the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen and she wore a tiny yellow polka-dot bikini and she was all caramel-coloured from the sun ... with these violet eyes ... and something came over me, I don't know what, but all the b.l.o.o.d.y emptiness I felt as a kid seemed to evaporate and I filled with something ... a kind of power. I felt like a b.l.o.o.d.y machine.'

Bunny can see, in his mind's eye, the afternoon sun spinning in the sky and the glare of it as it touched the surface of the pool. He can see the water part as he floated slowly through it.

'So I kind of glided towards her and the closer I got the more she smiled ... and I don't know what came over me, but I stood up and asked her what her name was ... f.u.c.king twelve years old twelve years old I was ...' I was ...'

The cigarette falls from Bunny's fingers and lands on the scarlet carpet.

'... and she said her name was Penny Charade ... I kid you not. Penny Charade ... I'll never forget it ... and when I told her my name she laughed and I laughed and I knew that I had this power ... this special thing that all the other b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who were flopping around in the pool trying to impress the girls didn't have ... I had this gift ... a talent ... and it was in that moment that I knew what I was put on this stupid f.u.c.king planet to do ...'