13.

'It's like this, Bunny Boy, if you walk up to an oak tree or a b.l.o.o.d.y elm or something you know, one of those big b.a.s.t.a.r.ds one with a thick, heavy trunk with giant roots that grow deep in the soil and great branches that are covered in leaves, right, and you walk up to it and give the tree a shake, well, what happens?'

Bunny drives the Punto super-slow through the Wellborne estate in Portslade and looks at the customer list Geoffrey has given him. The towers cast long, dark shadows across the courtyard and Bunny hunches down in the Punto and peers up through the front windscreen searching for the flat with the corresponding number.

'I really don't know, Dad,' says Bunny Junior, listening intently, retaining the information and knowing, in time, he will probably understand.

'Well, nothing b.l.o.o.d.y happens, of course!' says Bunny and slows the Punto to a halt. 'You can stand there shaking it till the cows come home and all that will happen is your arms will get tired. Right?'

The boy's attention is diverted momentarily by three youths that perch on the back of a wooden bench, smoking. Depersonalised in their ma.s.sive jeans and their oversized sneakers, the ends of their cigarettes flare from deep within the dark recesses of their hoods and Bunny Junior slips on his shades and shrinks down in his seat.

'Right, Dad,' he says.

Bunny rolls down the window, sticks his head out and looks up at the flats.

'Jesus! They could put f.u.c.king numbers on the doors, at least,' he says.

Then he adjusts the rear-view mirror and looks at his reflection and manipulates the waxed curlicue of hair that sits on his forehead like the horn of some mythological beast.

'But if you go up to a skinny, dry, f.u.c.ked-up little tree, with a withered trunk and a few leaves clinging on for dear life, and you put your hands around it and shake the s.h.i.t out of it as we say in the trade those b.l.o.o.d.y leaves will come flying off! Yeah?'

'OK, Dad,' says the boy, and he watches as one of the youths pulls back the edge of his hood and reveals a white hockey mask with a human skull printed on it.

'Now, the big oak tree is the rich b.a.s.t.a.r.d, right, and the skinny tree is the poor c.u.n.t who hasn't got any money. Are you with me?'

Bunny Junior nods.

'Now, that sounds easier than it actually is, Bunny Boy. Do you want to know why?'

'OK, Dad.'

'Because every f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d and his dog has got hold of the little tree and is shaking it for all that it's worth the government, the b.l.o.o.d.y landlord, the lottery they don't have a chance in h.e.l.l of winning, the council, their b.l.o.o.d.y exes, their hundred snotty-nosed brats running around because they are too b.l.o.o.d.y stupid to exercise a bit of self-control, all the useless s.h.i.t they see on TV, f.u.c.king Tesco, parking fines, insurance on this and insurance on that, the boozer, the fruit machines, the bookies every b.a.s.t.a.r.d and his three-legged, one-eyed, pox-ridden dog are shaking this little tree,' says Bunny, clamping his hands together and making like he is throttling someone.

'So what do you go and do, Dad?' says Bunny Junior.

'Well, you've got to have something they think they need, you know, above all else.'

'And what's that, Dad?'

'Hope ... you know ... the dream the dream. You've got to sell them the dream.'

'And what's the dream, Dad?'

'What's the dream?'

Bunny Junior sees his father adjust his tie, then reach into the back seat of the Punto and grab his sample case. He unlocks it, checks its contents, and closes it again. He looks at Bunny Junior, squares his shoulders, opens the door to the Punto, points his thumb at his chest and says, 'Me.'

Bunny climbs out of the car then leans back in through the open door.

'I won't be long. Stay in the car,' he says, and closes the door.

Bunny Junior looks around nervously, then thinks Well, n.o.body is going to hurt a nine-year-old, especially one who is wearing shades but as a precautionary measure slides down a little further in his seat and, over the top of the window, watches his father approach the juveniles who are probably responsible for about one hundred heinous murders between them and have intercourse intercourse all the time sitting on the bench. all the time sitting on the bench.

'Any of you guys know which is flat ninety-five?' asks Bunny.

The youth in the middle although Bunny is not completely sure says 'f.u.c.k off', then executes an unconscious variation on the Mos Def Wave but with the middle finger extended.

Bunny smiles deferentially and says, 'Well, yes, OK, but do you think number ninety-five is in this block?' He points west. 'Or in this block?' He points east.

The young men suck on their cigarettes, jets of nostril smoke issuing from the obscurity of their hoods. No one says anything, but there is a general ratcheting-up of the potential for violence as the youths realign their bodies inside their giant, comic-book clothes. The youth in the middle propels a bead of spittle into the air and it lands at Bunny's feet.

Bunny takes a step closer and addresses him.

'You know what you remind me of, son?'

'What's that, granddad?'

'A c.l.i.toris.'

'A what?'

'I think it's the hood.'

Bunny turns and walks towards the first of the buildings. The lit b.u.t.t of a cigarette flies past his ear and Bunny calls out, without looking back, 'They'll kill you, those things! You'll get cancer and die!'

He reaches the stairwell of the building and waves his arms theatrically, as if addressing the world, and yells, 'Think of the great loss to humanity that would be!'

Then Bunny disappears into the sunless vestibule of the stairwell. He hop-skips over a condom full of dead teenage s.p.u.n.k that lies among the debris that has collected around the steps. He heads up the stairs, the acrid chemical tang of bleach and urine hitting him in the face like a slap, and for no particular reason at all he thinks of the s.e.xy-surreal dichotomy between Pamela Anderson's furry Ugg boots and her (almost) shaved p.u.s.s.y. By the time he reaches the top of the staircase, there is a radical teepeeing of the front of his trousers. To his surprise he finds, as if by some miracle, that he is standing outside No. 95. He turns and looks over the balcony and concentrates on the galactic pattern of seagull s.h.i.t that decorates the roof of the Punto until his erection subsides.

He notices that the youths have left the wooden bench and in their place is a fat guy in a floral dress growling like a beast and pulling the price tag off what looks like a large potted orchid.

Bunny hopes, in a peripheral way, that Bunny Junior has locked the car door. Then he turns around and knocks on the door of No. 95.

Bunny Junior opens his encyclopaedia at the letter 'M' and reads about the mantis, an insect with a well-camouflaged body, mobile head and large eyes. He reads that the female eats the male head-first during copulation, then looks up 'copulation' and thinks Wow, imagine that. He commits this to memory by putting it in a virtual colour-coded box and storing it in the shelved data bank of his mind. He has hundreds of these boxes that relate and interrelate and can be drawn upon at will, in an instant. Ask him about the Battle of Britain or about the deathwatch beetle and he can tell you. If you want to know about Galapagos Islands or the Heimlich manoeuvre, then Bunny Junior is your man. It's a talent he has.

But two things worry Bunny Junior as he sits slumped in the front seat of the Punto.

First, when he tries to call to mind his mother he finds her image is still disappearing. He can remember the year they started building the Eiffel Tower but he finds it increasingly difficult to recall what his mother looked like. This makes him feel bad. He tries to arrange his memories of the things they did together in the form of exhibits, frozen in time, like the stuffed birds in the gla.s.s cases in the world-famous Booth Museum. He arranges them in his memory as if they were waxwork statues or something. But the image of his mother is vanishing, so that when he goes to look at the scene of, say, the day his mother pushed him on the swing in the playground of St Ann's Well Gardens, he can see himself vaulted high into the air, his legs kicking out, his face alive with laughter but who is doing the pushing? A slowly dissolving ghost-lady as incomplete as a hologram. He feels, in this instance, forever suspended on the swing, high in the air, never to descend, beyond human touch and consequence, motherless, and after he has stopped crying and dabbing at his tears with the sleeve of his shirt, he worries about the other thing.

On the bench where the juvenile delinquents were sitting is a fat guy in a dress, playing with a pot plant. He wears a lilac wig. Every now and then he looks up at the boy and makes a noise like some kind of monster maybe a werewolf or a h.e.l.lhound or something. This scares Bunny Junior and very secretly he reaches across and pushes down the lock on the car door. As he does this, he looks over at the entrance to the stairwell where his father disappeared and standing there, with her back turned towards him and partially lost in shadow, is a woman with blonde hair, dressed in an orange nightdress. Bunny Junior puts his hands up to his face and before his eyes he sees her step deeper into the shadows and disappear or dematerialise or atomise or something, he can't decide which.

14.

'Now, let's see what we've got here,' says Bunny, the oiled spiral of his hair his lovelock relaxing attractively on his forehead. 'Zoe, I've got you down for the Replenishing Hand Cream, the Elastin Extra Relief Hand and Body Lotion, the Almond, Honey, Milk and Aloe Mask, the Phytocitrus Hair Masque, the Re-Nutriv Lifting Cream and Morrocan Rose Otto Bath Oil, very nice, that one, the ladies tell me ...'

Bunny sits at a circular table in a neat kitchen with three women in their mid-thirties. Zoe is dressed in chocolate-brown velour tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt from LA Fitness on North Road. She is tall, with auburn hair and dark brown eyes and a little pink b.u.t.terfly tattooed on the inside of her right wrist. Crazy thinks Bunny as he leans towards her and reads from his order form. He notices, momentarily, that the miniature crystal snowflakes that dangle from her ears refract diamonds of light unflatteringly on the underside of her jaw.

Amanda, on the other hand, is small and reminds Bunny of Kylie Minogue, except that she is goblinned by a ma.s.s of candy-coloured hair extensions and has enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s, tiny hips and practically no rear-end at all. She also wears the same chocolate-brown velour tracksuit bottoms as Zoe and jiggles an infant on her lap that gurgles and points at things that are not there or that are there but only it can see.

Georgia, whose home it is, wears a peach-coloured T-shirt with what appears to be a metallic-silver representation of a mushroom printed on the front. She wears blue jeans and matching denim espadrilles, has violet eyes and is overweight, and although each of the women has the high-hearted but baby-blasted look of new mothers, there is an air of jeopardy about Georgia that produces a nervous, tinkling giggle.

Zoe gestures at the order form and says, 'If that doesn't sort me out, nothing will!'

Tiny Amanda has a large and guttural laugh while big Georgia's laugh sounds like the ringing of little bells and, in an oblique way, this weird mismatch amuses Bunny and his cheeks dimple. He turns his attention to Amanda and touches her briefly on the wrist with his index finger. The infant lets forth a wail of protest at this intrusion and, without taking her eyes off Bunny, Amanda works a dummy into the child's mouth.

Bunny consults his order form.

'Now, Amanda, I've got you down for the same as Zoe but not the Hair Masque because of your ...'

'Hair extensions!' say Zoe and Amanda, craning forward. They are on their second bottle of red and Amanda, in particular, appears a little flushed. On the table in front of them sits Bunny's open sample case, displaying the little bottles and sachets of lotions and creams.

'... Hair extensions. And very nice they are too. Plus, you wanted the Dermo-expertise Eye Solace,' says Bunny. 'And ... a bottle of Scotch and a good night's sleep.'

The women laugh and Amanda says, 'Oh, for a good night's sleep!' and mock-throttles her baby.

Bunny clocks the way Georgia tugs at her T-shirt and squirms in her chair as he turns to her and says, in a playful voice, 'Now, Georgia Georgia, I am very very disappointed in you.' He takes note of the flush of colour that rises at her throat. disappointed in you.' He takes note of the flush of colour that rises at her throat.

'Ooh, Georgia, the man is disappointed!' says Zoe and reprimands Georgia with a gentle slap to the back of the hand. Georgia bows her head, sips her wine and tugs at her T-shirt, all at the same time.

'You've ordered the hand cream, the body lotion, the Almond and Aloe Mask, the Hair Masque and the Lifting Cream but you have not ... and it hurts me to say this ... you have not ordered the Moroccan Rose Otto Bath Oil.'

'Georgia!' scolds Zoe. 'You complete fiend!'

'Now what baffles me is why a woman as fine as yourself feels it justifiable to deny her body the very thing it aches for ... liquid heaven ... one hundred per cent plant oils and natural fragrance ... romantic, old-fashioned, sensuous ... Barry White in a bottle, this stuff ... with a hint of the East. Slip into this at the end of the day and it will waft you to paradise ...'

Bunny places his hand on the underside of Georgia's wrist and presses on the soft dough of her flesh and believes he can feel her pulse quicken. He leans in close and whispers, 'I am very, very disappointed.'

'Georgia, buy the b.l.o.o.d.y bath oil!' screams Amanda or Zoe, and once again they shriek with laughter. The baby on Amanda's lap jettisons the dummy from its mouth and bares the glazed ridges of its gums and makes a noise impossible to interpret.

Minute beads of perspiration have formed under Georgia's eyes, as she says, 'All right. I'll have the bath oil!' and then releases her fraught and silvery giggle.

Bunny shoots his cuffs and writes on the order form.

'One bottle of Moroccan Rose Oil for the lovely Georgia.'

Bunny smiles at Georgia and Georgia, in time, meets his eyes, and smiles back at him and Bunny knows, without arrogance or hubris, more than he knows anything in this world, that he could f.u.c.k Georgia in a heartbeat. Amanda too, he thinks. Zoe would need a little more work but it was Georgia that would give out and give out all the f.u.c.king way.

'Now, ladies, I have some rather special Men's products. A gift for the hubby, perhaps?'

The three women look at each other and then collapse into laughter.

Zoe says, 'Got any facial scrub with ground gla.s.s in it?!'

Amanda says, 'How about a Moroccan Acid Bath!'

'Do I detect a little husband trouble?' he says.

'Not any more!' says Amanda or Zoe, and they hi-five each other in solidarity.

Bunny looks at Georgia and says, 'Not you too?'

Georgia nods. 'Gone,' she says.

'What? Gone Gone, gone?' says Bunny.

'Yep. Gone, gone,' says Georgia.

Bunny leans forward and the lubricated forelock snakes on his brow as though it possesses its own heartbeat. He says, conspiratorially, 'If you don't mind me saying so, ladies, they must be out of their f.u.c.king minds.'

At this point two small girls waddle into the kitchen, something incomprehensible having severed the hypnotic pull of the vast plasma-screen TV in the living room. With zombied eyes, they stop and look up at the adults and one of the children reaches around and pulls her bikini bottom out of the crack in her a.r.s.e. Then she turns and disappears back into the living room, the other child following close behind.

'Charming,' says Bunny, and the women laugh their different laughs, then lapse into a weighted silence as if the course of their lives were altering before their eyes old skins falling away, weeping wounds healing, new and hopeful horizons opening.

Zoe picks a piece of lint from the leg of her chocolate velour tracksuit.

'You got any kids, Mr Munro?'

Bunny realises he was wrong about Zoe and he could f.u.c.k her too and a small, grey kitten enters the kitchen through a cat-flap and walks nonchalantly through the room.

'Call me Bunny,' he says and puts his hands behind his head and waggles them like rabbits' ears. He creases his nose and makes a snuffling sound.

'You got any kids, Bunny?' says Zoe.

'One. A boy,' he says and experiences an uncomfortable intestinal spasm as he remembers his son waiting in the car. He looks at his watch.

'What's his name?' asks Georgia.

'Bunny Junior,' says Bunny with a disarming pathos that fills the room with a gentle heartfelt ache. 'He's the light of my life, that little guy. The sun rises and sets with him.'

'And Mrs Munro?' says Zoe, craning forward and breathing deep into her lungs. Bunny notices, with a specialist's eye, that Zoe's b.r.e.a.s.t.s make no concessions to any gravitational bias whatsoever, as if they were hewn from granite or flint or something.

'Gone,' says Bunny, feeling an unexpected constriction of the throat.

'How?'

Georgia bats Zoe on the arm and says, 'Don't be so nosey.'

'She pa.s.sed away,' says Bunny. 'Recently.'

'No,' says the chorus of mothers.