'These children are having their childhoods stolen from them,' he says. He leans down and touches the little girl on the top of her head with his fingers and smiles at the woman. 'Poor things.'

The woman bends over the buggy and moves away and Bunny clocks her hunched and hurried retreat.

'Definitely a mummy,' he says to himself.

He presses the intercom of 'Eternity Enterprises'.

'Who is it?' says a distorted, robot voice through the intercom and Bunny looks up at the video cam mounted above the doorway and flips it the finger. The monitor squawks and Bunny enters. He bounds up the stairs two at a time and continues down a dank, low-ceilinged hall until he comes to a door that says, in a Gothic demi-bold font, 'ETERNITY ENTERPRISES'. Without knocking, he opens it and enters.

Geoffrey sits in his swivel chair like some infernal cyber-experiment gone horribly wrong the unholy welding of too much man with too little machine. He is a circus elephant on roller-skates or a semi-deflated Michelin Man in a Hawaiian shirt. He looks up at Bunny with his implausibly wise, b.u.t.ton-like eyes and says, 'What's green and smells like bacon?'

Bunny rolls his eyes at Geoffrey, faux-bored.

'Kermit's finger,' says Geoffrey.

There is a painful screech of tortured springs as Geoffrey leans back in his chair. Then, with an air of satisfaction, he steeples his fingers over his riotous girth and smiles.

'I've heard it,' says Bunny.

'Yeah, but it's a stone cla.s.sic.'

'If you say so, Geoffrey.'

'Always worth reviving, I say, lest we forget,' says Geoffrey.

Geoffrey seems supremely at home in this environment, as if everything he needs is here in this pinched and cut-rate room and indeed it is his fridge full of lager, his Swedish p.o.r.n collection, his telephone and his little swivel chair; but the office is hot and airless and Bunny feels, almost immediately, a rivulet of perspiration wind its way between his shoulder blades. With a watery redistribution of weight, Geoffrey leans his garish bulk forward and all the little gra.s.s-skirted hula dancers slip and slide. His face is laddered by the sunlight that pours through the half-open Venetian blinds and he is forced to squint and his bright, little eyes sink into his face.

'I've got a question for you, Bun,' he says. 'What are you doing here?'

Bunny hooks one finger into his collar and says, 'I'm ready to go.'

Geoffrey gestures to the single wooden chair in the corner and says, 'Take a seat, bwana, you're making me nervous.'

Bunny drags the chair to the desk and sits down and is about to say something but Geoffrey raises one ma.s.sive paw in the air.

'Are you sure, my man? There is no pressure here. Shouldn't you take a little time just to, you know, sort some things out?'

'I'm all right, Geoffrey. Just give me the list and some samples. I'm all out of samples.'

'When I lost my Hilda, Bun, you know, it took a while.'

Bunny feels a wobble in the room's atmospherics and a vague acceleration of his blood. This is p.i.s.sing him off. He slaps his palm down on the desktop.

'What am I gonna do? Sit around the house all day, tugging at my d.i.c.k? Now, Geoffrey, give me the f.u.c.king list.'

Bunny entertains the idea of asking his boss if he was ever visited by his wife after she died, but thinks better of it. That is all behind him now.

'OK, Bunny, you're the boss,' says Geoffrey, handing Bunny a list of names and addresses that he folds in two and slips into the inside pocket of his jacket. Bunny realises he has been sweating so heavily that drops of perspiration have soaked into the fabric of his tie.

'No, Geoffrey, you're the boss. I just happen to be the only guy in this two-bit operation that has the faintest f.u.c.king idea how to sell anything.'

The door flies open and Poodle enters with his leering grin, his stonewashed jeans and his yellow, architectural 'do. His booze-blown eyes are a terrifying Virgin red.

'I rest my case,' says Bunny, standing.

'Christ!' says Poodle, 'What happened last night?'

'I think you may have been a little excessive in your libations,' says Geoffrey. 'You brought shame upon the house of Eternity Enterprises.'

Then Geoffrey looks at Bunny and says, 'What do you want?'

'The lot. Hand s.h.i.t. Face s.h.i.t. Body s.h.i.t. Hair s.h.i.t.'

Geoffrey reaches down under the desk and produces a collection of various sachets, tubes and miniature bottles of lotions and creams, and Bunny sweeps them into his sample case.

Then Bunny turns to Poodle, who is looking sideways at Bunny, his eyes glinting, his needle-like teeth bared in a peerless impression of a happy velociraptor. He moves the flat of his hand slowly across the considerable bulge in his stonewashed jeans and raises an eyebrow.

'I f.u.c.ked your lady friend last night,' said Bunny.

'I know. She told me. She said it was a little ... sad,' says Poodle.

'Oh, yeah? Can you ask her for my d.i.c.k back?'

Poodle emits a low chuckle and with the tips of his manicured fingers tugs at the gold sleeper in his ear.

'I know. Incredible, eh? She's a yoga-nut. She's training to become an instructor.' Poodle rubs his hands together then performs a Jackoesque swivel of his hips. 'Fun and games!' He squeezes his genitals. 'Coming down to The Wick for a drinky-poo?'

'No,' says Bunny, 'I've got my kid in the car.'

Poodle moves to the window in a lewd creep. He wears tight jeans and a clean, white Polo shirt that accentuate his broad shoulders and small, compact b.u.t.tocks but give him the proportions of a hyena. He peers through the slatted blinds, the sunlight jazzing the pale irises of his eyes.

'f.u.c.k, Bun, some c.u.n.t's giving you a ticket!'

's.h.i.t,' says Bunny, and he snaps shut his sample case.

'Hey, Bun,' says Poodle, squinting in the light as though he can't believe what he sees.

Bunny, who is halfway out the door, turns.

'Your kid looks like he is having some kind of fit!'

Bunny slams the door and Geoffrey moves his great weight to the fridge and tosses Poodle a beer.

'I'm worried about that guy,' he says.

Bunny grabs the parking ticket that is taped to the windscreen of the Punto and for the benefit of the traffic warden, who is walking down the street, tapping away at his electronic ticket dispenser, his hat angled ironically on his head, Bunny performs an impressive p.o.r.no-panto of a man f.u.c.king a traffic warden up the a.r.s.e. The traffic warden watches Bunny expression-free for a moment, which inspires Bunny to do his famous impersonation of a traffic warden sucking his own d.i.c.k. Then he watches the traffic warden curse under his breath and start marching down the street towards the Punto, whereupon Bunny performs a basic risk-a.s.sessment exercise he is big and he is black and climbs in the Punto and starts the car. The traffic warden stops, shakes his head and walks away.

'The nerve of that guy,' says Bunny, looking over his shoulder. 'And with a r.e.t.a.r.d in the car and everything!'

'He was a bit of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, wasn't he, Dad?' says Bunny Junior.

Bunny looks at his son and smiles.

'You said it, Bunny Boy.'

There is a loud and sudden knock on the roof of the Punto and Bunny jumps and looks everywhere at once. Poodle's face appears in the window and he mimics rolling it down.

'It's Poodle,' says the boy.

'I can see that,' says Bunny and winds down the window.

Poodle slips two fingers into the breast pocket of his Polo shirt and extracts a small piece of notepaper and hands it to Bunny.

'My gift to you. She lives in Newhaven,' he says out of the corner of his mouth, running a buffed fingernail along his cheekbone. He licks his lips and says, 'Ouch!'

Bunny rolls his eyes towards the boy and then back to Poodle, who is unconsciously dabbing at the raw and flaky entrance to his right nostril with his finger.

'Oh, yeah,' says Poodle. He crouches down and says to the boy, 'Hey, Bunny Boy. Nice shades.'

'Hi,' says the boy.

'No school today?' says Poodle, clamping a Mayfair Ultra Light between his teeth and torching it.

The boy shakes his head.

'Lucky you,' says Poodle.

Then he looks at Bunny, and his face elongates into something sleek and lupine, and the transformation is so convincing that Bunny can almost hear the bones snap in his face.

'You'll find her a most accommodating customer,' says Poodle in a stage whisper, and then leans through the window. Bunny can feel his breath, hot and excited, against his ear. 'It will help with the grieving process,' he says.

Bunny stares blankly at Poodle, the nerve under his right eye contracting. Poodle stiffens and tiny beads of sweat appear on his upper lip. He tries to smile but cannot, overrun by a kind of rigor.

'Sorry, Bun, that was out of line.'

Bunny reaches up and pinches Poodle's shaved and polished cheek and says quietly, 'You're a c.u.n.t, Poodle. Did you know that?'

Poodle grins sheepishly and draws on his f.a.g, his hand betraying the faintest of tremors, 'Ah ... yes, actually I do.'

Bunny pats Poodle's cheek gently, almost strokes it.

'But I love you,' he says.

'And I love you,' says Poodle.

'Now, f.u.c.k off,' says Bunny and rolls up the window.

Bunny screws up the piece of paper that Poodle has given him and tosses it on the floor at Bunny Junior's feet. Poodle stands on the pavement, hand raised in a sardonic goodbye, and then f.u.c.ks the air lewdly, the shape of his p.e.n.i.s curled and visible against the inside leg of his jeans. Bunny guns the engine and veers blindly into the traffic on Western Road.

'He's a funny one, isn't he, Dad?' says Bunny Junior.

'Poodle, my boy, is a b.l.o.o.d.y idiot,' says Bunny.

'What are we going to do now, Dad?'

But Bunny barely registers his son's question because suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, Bunny is experiencing something beyond the realms of anything he has experienced before. The simple act of crumpling up Poodle's 'gift' and casting it aside has filled Bunny with a belief that he is in command of his life. He is also registering, in an unprecedented way, a feeling of virtuousness. He feels a momentary wave of euphoria course through his system, a cup of love in his bowels, and he turns left at Adelaide Crescent and heads down towards the sea.

'I am in control of my appet.i.tes,' says Bunny, quietly, to himself.

'Me, too, Dad,' says Bunny Junior.

They pa.s.s the majestic downward sweep of Regency terraces along Adelaide Crescent and watch in silence as a father tosses a Frisbee to his young son in the public gardens, while the mother lays down a tartan rug, then bends over a wicker picnic basket. Ouch thinks Bunny.

'What are we going to do now, Dad?' says the boy.

'Now, we are going to shake the old money tree, that's what we're going to do,' says Bunny.

Bunny Junior takes off his shades and screws up his face.

'What?' he says.

'We are going to relieve a few b.o.o.bs of their cabbage.'

The boy smiles at Bunny, but the smile is the kind of smile that looks like it has fallen off the child's face, shattered on the ground and then been glued back together at random it's a zigzag smile, a seesaw smile, a wonky little broken smile. Bunny registers this but also the look of unknowing on the child's face, the total lack of comprehension, the giant cartoon question mark floating over his head, and thinks This kid doesn't understand a f.u.c.king thing. And what's with that smile?

'We're gonna sell some stuff!' says Bunny, exasperated.

'You're good at that, aren't you, Dad?' says the boy, shifting in his seat and spinning his sungla.s.ses around like a propeller.

Bunny leans in close to him and says, with a flush of awe and wonder, 'Bunny Boy, I am the best!'

Bunny hears the boy say, 'Everybody thinks you're the best, don't they, Dad?!' but they are pa.s.sing a bus shelter, advertising Kylie Minogue's brand new range of lingerie for Selfridges called 'Love Kylie', and Bunny tries to remember what Poodle told him he had seen on the Internet about Kylie but draws a blank. Instead he feels a rush of blood, viral and urgent, throb in his extremities, his fingers pulsing on the steering wheel. He looks at the boy.

'I could sell a bicycle to a barracuda!' says Bunny, and the boy laughs.

'No ... no ... I could sell two bicycles to a barracuda!'

The boy looks up at his father and, seeing the ease with which he moves in and out of the traffic, one hand on the wheel, his elbow out the window and his brilliant sense of humour and how he can make everybody like him, even complete strangers, his world-cla.s.s smile, his wraparound shades, his tie with the cartoon rabbits on it, his amazing curl, his f.a.gs and the whole thing with his sample case, he shouts, 'You're fantastic, Dad!'

Bunny throws back his head and shouts back, 's.h.i.t, Bunny Boy, I could sell the whole b.l.o.o.d.y bike shed!' and laughs and then remembers what it was that Poodle had said about Kylie Minogue how he had read a blog somewhere saying that Kylie went off like a f.u.c.king firecracker in the sack and that there was, like, nothing she wouldn't do! She was insatiable! insatiable!

Bunny glances at the crumpled piece of paper that rolls around Bunny Junior's feet and bares his teeth and wrenches his eyes away and makes an emphatic change of gear and presses on, and says, 'You've got a lot to learn.'

'I know, Dad,' says the boy.