'He tells me ...'

'You spoke spoke to him?' interrupts Bunny and looks in the window of the Punto and sees Bunny Junior slumped in the pa.s.senger seat looking decidedly out of sorts, his head lolled back, the tip of his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. to him?' interrupts Bunny and looks in the window of the Punto and sees Bunny Junior slumped in the pa.s.senger seat looking decidedly out of sorts, his head lolled back, the tip of his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

'He tells me he is feeling ill,' says the police officer.

'And?' says Bunny. But he's had enough of this.

The police officer says, all business, 'What is your name, sir?'

'My name is Bunny Munro,' he says, leaning in and snuffling like a rabbit. 'Is that Chanel?'

'Excuse me?' says the police officer.

Bunny leans in closer and sniffs again.

'Your scent,' he says. 'Very nice.'

'I will ask you to stand back, sir,' says the police officer and her hands drop to her belt and hover around the can of mace snug in its little holster.

'That must have knocked you back a few bob.'

The police officer repositions herself, planting her feet firmly on the ground. Bunny senses that she is new on the job and notices an activated, keyed-up gleam in her eye and a fleck of foam on her lower lip, as if this was the moment she had been waiting for all her professional life, and indeed, beyond.

'Take a step back,' she says.

'I mean, how do you afford that on a policeman's wage?' says Bunny, thinking he may have got that thing about her not being a d.y.k.e wrong, and thinking he would probably be best served if he kept his mouth shut.

'Would you like to continue this conversation down the station, sir?' says the police officer, her hands dancing around her belt as if she can't decide whether to mace him or club him.

Bunny steps forward, blood flushing at his throat.

'The thing is, officer, that boy you just questioned in the car is frightened. He is scared out of his f.u.c.king wits. His mother just died in the most terrifying of circ.u.mstances. I can't begin to describe the effect that this has had on him. It's a f.u.c.king tragedy, if you must know. Right now, my son needs his father. So, if you don't mind ...'

Bunny notices the muscles relax in the police officer's thighs as she softens her stance. He notices a slight incline of the chin and a twinge of humanity around the edges of her eyes. Bunny thinks No, he was right the first time, she is definitely not a d.y.k.e, and under another set of circ.u.mstances things might have panned out differently. He actually feels a throb of sadness as the police officer steps aside and permits Bunny to pa.s.s, open the door of the Punto, get in and drive away.

As he negotiates the late-afternoon traffic, Bunny pats Mrs Brooks' wedding rings in his pocket, registers the after-scent of the police officer's perfume and is almost blown out of the driver's seat by a blizzard of imagined p.u.s.s.y, glittering and sleek and expensive and coming at him from every direction Jordan's, Kate Moss's, Naomi Cambell's, Kylie Minogue's, Beyonce's and, of course, Avril Lavigne's but spinning up through all of that, in an annulus of tiny handcuffs and resting on a cartoon cloud of Chanel, comes the humble v.a.g.i.n.a of the police constable, number PV388.

Back on top thinks Bunny, obscurely, as he turns into a Pizza Hut and hits the men's room with a vengeance.

Bunny folds a slice of pizza in half and stuffs it into his mouth. Bunny Junior, shades on, does the same. There are so many jalapenos on the pizza that tears run down the side of Bunny Junior's face and his nose streams.

'She wanted to know why I wasn't in school. I think it's, like, illegal illegal, or something,' says the boy with a barb of irony his father does not detect.

'And?' he says.

'I told her I was sick, Dad.'

'And?' says Bunny.

'And she wanted to know where my mother was!' shouts the boy and drops his piece of pizza, gulps down his c.o.ke and rubs at his forehead. 'And she wanted to know where my father father was!' Tears well in the boy's eyes. was!' Tears well in the boy's eyes.

'b.i.t.c.h,' says Bunny and stuffs another piece of pizza in his mouth.

'Why aren't aren't I in school, Dad?!' shouts Bunny Junior and wipes a great streak of snot from his nose with the back of his hand. Bunny looks at his son, flat-eyed, and rotates the bracelet on his wrist. He sucks his c.o.ke and says nothing for a while. I in school, Dad?!' shouts Bunny Junior and wipes a great streak of snot from his nose with the back of his hand. Bunny looks at his son, flat-eyed, and rotates the bracelet on his wrist. He sucks his c.o.ke and says nothing for a while.

'Take those gla.s.ses off,' says Bunny.

The boy does so, and in the hard-boiled light his swollen eyes itch and dazzle. Bunny pushes the pizza tray to one side and speaks in a voice so quiet the boy has to crane forward to hear him.

'I'll ask you straight up, Bunny Boy. What would you rather do? Be with your dad or hang out with a bunch of snotty-nosed little f.u.c.kers at school? You want to amount to something? You want to learn the business or walk through life with your a.r.s.e hanging out of your trousers?'

'Can I put these gla.s.ses back on? It hurts in here. I think I might be going blind,' says the boy, squinting up at his father. 'I think I need some eye drops or something.'

'Answer the question,' says Bunny, 'because if you want to go back to school, just say the f.u.c.king word.'

'I want to be with you, Dad.'

'Of course you do! Because I'm your dad! And I'm showing you the ropes! I'm teaching you the trade. Something some mummified old b.i.t.c.h with a b.l.o.o.d.y blackboard and a piece of chalk wouldn't have the faintest idea about.'

The boy's eyes stream in the people-hating glare and he dabs at them with a napkin and slides his shades back on and says, 'I think I might need a white stick and a dog soon, Dad.'

Bunny doesn't hear this, as his attention has been drawn to an adjacent table where a mother sits eating pizza with what must be her daughter. The young girl is wearing gold hipster hotpants and a lemon yellow T-shirt that says 'YUMMY' and shows her belly. She wears fluorescent pink nail polish on her fingers and toes. Bunny is thinking that in a few years' time the girl would be seriously hot, and the thought of this has Bunny considering revisiting the bathroom, but then the girl's mother says to Bunny, 'I don't like the way you are looking at my daughter,' and Bunny says, aghast, 'What do you think I am?!' and then says, 'Jesus! How old is she?' and the woman says, 'Three.' Bunny says, 'That's not to say that in a few years ... well, you know ...' and the woman picks up a piece of cutlery and says, 'If you say one more word, I'll stick this fork in your face,' and Bunny replies, 'Wo! You suddenly got very s.e.xy,' and the woman scoops up her daughter and moves away, saying, 'a.r.s.ehole,' and Bunny waggles his rabbit ears at her and says to Bunny Junior, 'I learned the trade with my old man, out on the streets streets, you know, the front line. We'd drive around in his van, find some rundown old place, a real drum flaky paint, overgrown garden owned by some rich biddy with fifty f.u.c.king cats, and in he'd go, and before I had time to eat my sandwich, out he'd come with a nice little Queen Anne dressing table. He had a gift, my old man, the talent talent, and he taught me the art how to be a people person. That's what we are doing, Bunny Boy. You may not be able to see it right now, but I am handing down the talent to you. Do you understand?'

Bunny Junior says, 'Yes, Dad.'

His father stands and says, 'OK, then.'

'I might have to learn Braille,' says the boy.

'b.i.t.c.h,' Bunny says under his breath.

There is a crack of thunder, a flash of lightning and it begins to rain.

23.

In the corner of the room, on a small black television, a bull elephant fornicates epically with its mate. Bunny, who lies on the bed fully clothed and wholly drunk, can't quite believe what he sees. A storm wails against the windows thunder, lightning, cats, dogs and in the bed next to Bunny the boy lies curled in a deep, embryonic sleep. Neither the trumpeting mastodon nor the hammering rain can wake him.

In one practised motion Bunny decants a miniature bottle of Smirnoff down his throat, shudders and gags, then repeats the action with a little green bottle of Gordon's gin.

He closes his eyes and the black wave of oblivion gathers strength and moves towards him. But Bunny finds his thoughts straying towards the three young mothers he visited yesterday morning was it only yesterday? Amanda, Zoe and especially Georgia. Georgia with the big bones and the violet eyes. Georgia with the gone, gone husband.

Somewhere in the back stalls of his consciousness Bunny hears the triumphant bull elephant blow a super-sized bucket of custard into his happy consort. The windows buckle as the storm pounds and down in the ba.s.sbins he hears the infrasonic reverberations of thunder. Bunny imagines, dreams even, Georgia naked and angled across his knee, her great, white globoids trembling beneath his touch, and it feels as if these apocalyptic rumblings of weather and his goatish visions were in some weird way connected and prophetic because, deep down, Bunny knows, more than he knows anything in the world, his mobile phone is about to ring and that Georgia will be on the line.

Bunny opens his eyes and gropes about for his mobile phone just as it begins to vibrate, juddering about on the bed to the super-s.e.xy ringtone of Kylie Minogue's 'Spinning Around', and he visualises Kylie's gold lame hotpants and his d.i.c.k magically reanimates, hard and erect, as he flips open the phone and says, 'What's the story, morning glory?'

He puts a Lambert & Butler between his lips and torches it with his Zippo and smiles to himself because he knows he knows the story.

'Is that Bunny Munro?' comes a voice, soft and timid and from another world.

The room swims as Bunny throws his legs over the edge of the bed and sits up and says, 'And who might that be?' but he knows knows.

'It's Georgia,' says Georgia. 'You were at my house yesterday.'

Bunny draws on his cigarette and blows a syzygy of smoke rings one, two, three then reams the last one with his index finger and says, out of a dream, 'Georgia with the violet eyes.'

'Is it ... did I ... have I called too late?'

Bunny slips his socked feet into his loafers and says, with genuine emotion, 'You won't believe what I'm watching on the Discovery Channel.'

'It's too late ... I can call back,' says Georgia, and Bunny thinks he can hear the low breathing of a sleeping child and a terrible, protracted loneliness coming down the line.

'Have you any idea just how big an elephant's d.i.c.k is?!' says Bunny.

'Um ... maybe I should ...'

'It's ... aah ... it's f.u.c.king elephantine! elephantine!'

Bunny leaps to his feet and the room turbinates and unravels and Bunny claws at the air futilely and shouts, 'Timber!' and lands like a felled tree between the two beds.

'I've made a mistake,' says Georgia, and Bunny raises himself on his hands and knees.

'Georgia ... Georgia, the only mistake you made was not to ring me sooner. I've been lying here, going off the hinges thinking about you.'

'You have?' she says.

Bunny stands, the phone clamped to his ear and looks down at his sleeping son. He experiences a wave of sentiment so strong that he can barely find the presence of mind to pick his car keys up off the bedside table.

'Didn't you feel it yesterday?' said Bunny, his voice low. 'The chemistry ... sparks were going zip, zip and zap, zap!'

'They were?' says Georgia.

Bunny conducts a villainous panto-creep from the hotel room, leaving the TV running and closing the door behind him. The hallway is the colour and texture of whale blubber and Bunny moves down it with footsteps both comic and monstrous, the cloacal stream of mustard-coloured carpet roiling beneath his feet.

'You know they were! E-leck-tricity, baby! Zap, zap! Zip, zip!' he says into the phone.

'Well, you seemed like a nice kind of guy,' she said.

'Thunderbolts and lightning! Very, very frightening!'

'Um, Bunny?' says Georgia.

'Mamma mia! Mamma mia! Mamma mia, let me go!'

'Are you all right, Bunny?'

Bunny negotiates the stairs, one at a time, at a perilous backward angle, hanging sloth-like from the banister, whereupon he flings out an arm and sings in an insane operatic voice, 'Beelzebub had a devil put aside for me! For me! For me!'

He makes his way through the unpeopled lobby of the Empress Hotel and all the while Bunny thinks This is strange. Where is everybody? He pa.s.ses the vacated reception desk and his voice grows serious.

'I'm going to tell you something, Georgia, because I don't think there should be any bulls.h.i.t between us. You know, lies and stuff ...'

Georgia's response seems otherworldly, distant, dreamed. 'Um ... OK,' she says.

'Because I've had it up to here with that s.h.i.t, all right?' says Bunny.

'OK,' says Georgia. 'What is it?'

'I'm drunk.'

Bunny jams another Lambert & Butler in his mouth, torches it, then steps out the front door of the hotel onto the seafront and is. .h.i.t by a gale force of such brutality he is pummelled to his knees. His jacket flaps over his head and he shouts into his phone, 'f.u.c.k me, Georgia! Hang on a minute!'

Bunny sees, in slow motion, a vast wave of seawater explode against the promenade wall, then be picked up by the wind and carried, surrealistically and in sheet-form, across the road and dumped on top of him. Bunny scopes the Punto, then crawls towards it, the salted rain tearing at his face. He notices that the coastal road is deserted and that most of the streetlights are down. He hears, above the clamour of the storm, a grinding and twisting of metal, and a crack of lightning reveals the skeleton of the West Pier. The wind hammers at the Punto and Bunny, with considerable effort, prises open the door and, in time, clambers in. He sits, drenched, and watches an over-cranked POV shot of green seawater pool at his feet and he says, stunned and not of this earth, 'Georgia?'

'What's going on, Bunny? Are you OK?'

Georgia's voice sounds unlike anything he has ever heard before, and he wonders whether he hears anything at all.

'Just a second,' says Bunny.

He looks at himself in the rear-view mirror and sees a man who could well be himself but somehow is not. He is not as he remembers himself to be. His features seem unrelated to each other and a general subsidence has occurred. His eyes have sunk into their orbits and there is a debauched slackness to his cheeks and when he attempts to smile he reminds himself of Mrs Brooks' leering, yellow-toothed Bosendorfer. His face is scoured raw by the salted rain and his helixed forelock hangs across his face like a used condom but it's not that he just looks like a different person and he wonders where he went.

'Georgia, listen to me. This one's coming at you, baby, straight from the heart. OK?'

'OK.'

'How would you feel about a lonely, lovesick, slightly drunk, middle-aged man coming to visit you in the middle of the night?'

'What, now?' but the voice seems electronic, like a recorded message.

'I'm taking that as an affirmative,' says Bunny.

'Bunny, where are you?'

He turns the key in the ignition and, with an uncharacteristic confidence that makes Bunny think What's up with the Punto? the car roars into life.

'Where am I?' Bunny says, 'Oh, Georgia, I'm all over the f.u.c.king place!'

Bunny forceps the phone and tosses it on the seat next to him. He notices that the two pools of water at his feet have drawn together to become one larger pool and he feels a palpable but unidentifiable sense of emotion at that. He closes his eyes and he hears a great, black wave crash against the seawall and spew its jet of foam over the Punto and the car judders at the impact and he hopes he has not fallen asleep. He opens the glove compartment, takes out the sales list, finds Georgia's address and moves out onto the depopulated street. Bunny notices that a power-line has blown down and he can see it writhing like a black snake, fizzing and showering sparks and moving towards him down the rain-drenched street. He feels as though the black snake is seeking him out, and that if it reaches him he will die. He also thinks he could be seeing things and that this is all a mirage or an illusion or a monstrous vision or something, and he says through his teeth, 'Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening.' Then he jams his foot on the accelerator and moves in slow motion down the street.

As Bunny navigates the streets, and Georgia's voice recedes, he thinks, with a cybernetic certainty I am the great seducer. I work the night. Sheets of darkness that his headlights can barely penetrate wall him in but Bunny feels like he could lie back and close his eyes and the trusty Punto would know exactly where to go. Once he has left the coastal road, the wind abates and the night stops throwing down any more rain and Georgia's large white backside fits snugly into the p.o.r.nographic think-bubble that hangs over his head. A spectral silence envelops the car and Bunny hears nothing but his own steady, inevitable breaths.

Out of the night the great hulk of the Wellborne estate looms up, like a leviathan, black and biblical, and Bunny parks the Punto by the now empty wooden bench gone is the fat man in the floral dress, gone are the hooded youths. Bunny steps out, his suit drenched, his hair plastered to his head, but he does not care he is the great seducer. He works the night.