Georgia's hand goes to her mouth and she says, 'Oh, you poor man,' and wants to put her hand over Bunny's but resists the impulse.

'I'm not going to tell you it's been easy,' says Bunny, looking over his shoulder.

'No,' say the women, 'of course not.'

Bunny raises his gla.s.s of wine and has the eerie feeling that this scenario is not his alone, or even that of the three women, but rather they are players in somebody else's observance and he looks over his shoulder again to see if anybody is there.

'Do you feel that?' says Bunny, bringing his shoulders up around his ears.

The women look at him questioningly.

'A kind of chill in the room?' he says and looks over his shoulder again, but then lifts his gla.s.s and says, 'To life!' His hand trembles and the wine slops from the gla.s.s and seeps into the cuff of his shirt.

'To life,' say the women, looking at each other.

'And all the c.r.a.p that goes with it,' says Bunny and empties the gla.s.s down his throat, then says, 'Are you sure you don't feel that?'

Bunny shudders and looks behind him. He checks his watch but the numbers blur. He pulls on his jacket.

'I've got to go, ladies,' he says and this remark is greeted with a clamour of protest. 'Now, now, girls, I'm a working man,' says Bunny and pulls up the collar of his jacket. He notices a whorl of fog curl from his lips like a question mark.

'Did you see that?' he says, looking this way and that.

He reaches into the top pocket of his jacket and produces some business cards. He hands one each to Zoe and Amanda.

'Your products will be with you within ten working days. If there is anything you need, don't ... um ... hesitate to call. OK? It's been ... um ... an absolute pleasure,' he says.

Bunny turns to Georgia and he sees her through a bleared film. Georgia looks at Bunny, her violet eyes, wells of sympathy.

'Are you all right?' she says.

'Um ... here is my card. Now, please don't lose it ... ah ... and if there is anything and I ... um ... mean anything anything I can ... ah ... do for you, please don't hesitate to call. Night or ... um ... you know ... day.' I can ... ah ... do for you, please don't hesitate to call. Night or ... um ... you know ... day.'

Georgia puts her hand over Bunny's and says, 'What is it?' then reaches into her purse and hands Bunny a Kleenex. Bunny realises, with a shiver, that the metallic mushroom on the front of Georgia's T-shirt is not a mushroom at all but a mushroom cloud.

'You have the most ... ah ... extraordinary eyes, Georgia,' says Bunny and dabs at his cheeks. 'Um ... they go way ... um ... down.'

'Oh, you poor man,' whispers Georgia to herself.

'To the depths ... um ...'

Zoe puts her hand to her mouth and blows a tiny sprite of vapour across the pink b.u.t.terfly tattooed on her wrist. She looks at Amanda and, with an intake of breath, says, 'Oh, my G.o.d.'

Bunny snaps shut his sample case and sc.r.a.pes back his chair and he stands and says, 'Goodbye, ladies.'

He looks all around him, opens the door and disappears, leaving behind him an atmosphere of incredulity and sadness.

'Wow,' says Zoe.

Bunny stands on the gangway, then leans out over the balcony and realises, in a tentative way, that some sort of demand is being made of him from the other side the dead side but has no idea what. He descends the stairs and marches across the windblown courtyard of the estate, through its boxy, black shadows and towards the Punto.

The fat man in the dress and the lavender wig sees Bunny and rears up from the bench and, with the pot-plant held out in front of him like he's holding a child who had fouled its nappy or a pack of nitro-glycerine or something, lurches towards Bunny, a low growl rising from his throat.

Bunny stops, plants his feet on the ground and says, 'Don't come near me, you f.u.c.king nut-job!'

The guy looks at Bunny and sees something in him sufficiently impressive to inspire an urgent rethink as to the wisdom of his current course of action. He performs a comic, under-cranked retreat and sits back down in his hunched and plaguey position on the bench.

'f.u.c.king wacko,' says Bunny and crosses the courtyard to the Punto and climbs in.

'Are you all right, Dad?' says Bunny Junior.

'What?' says Bunny. 'f.u.c.king what?'

The boy closes his encyclopaedia and says to his father, 'I don't really like it here, Dad.'

Bunny starts the Punto and says, more to himself than to his son, 'Well, let's get the f-u-c-k out of here, then.'

'Where to, Dad?'

Bunny reaches into the pocket of his jacket and produces the client list and shoves it into Bunny Junior's hand.

'This is the client list,' says Bunny.

'OK,' says Bunny Junior.

Then Bunny reaches across the boy and punches the glove compartment and it springs open. He pulls out a street directory.

'This is an A to Z,' he says.

'OK,' says the boy.

'OK. Now, you're the navigator,' says Bunny, and the Punto lurches into the street.

'The navigator?' says the boy.

'The navigator!' says Bunny.

Bunny Junior looks at the list and executes a flourish of his hand that he hopes will impress his father and make him like him, or at least not be angry with him. He points at the names.

'Next stop, Sh.o.r.eham!' he says, optimistically.

15.

Bunny Junior sits in the Punto and watches a little Sun beetle land on the windscreen and, from his unique vantage point, admires its black jewel-like underbelly as it moves about the gla.s.s. He marvels too at its mysterious, coppery sheen and wonders how anything so common could be so beautiful. He reaches into his pocket and removes a black marker and places it against the windscreen and traces the meandering trajectory of the Sun beetle on the gla.s.s. He wonders if there is any order or system to it. Bunny Junior loves beetles always has and always will. When he was smaller he had a cigarette box full of dead beetles and he tries to remember what he did with it. He had all sorts of beetles Devil's Coach-horses, Black Clocks and Brown Chafers, Whirligigs, Sun beetles (like this one), Malachites, Red Soldiers and s.e.xtons, Red Cardinals and Stag Beetles and his favourite, the Rhino Beetle. The Rhino Beetle is the strongest creature in the world and has three horns on its head and can lift 850 times its own weight. If a human could do this, it would mean he could lift 65 tons. He runs through all the beetles he knows quietly and to himself, and as he does so, he traces the now clearly random wanderings of this most ordinary of beetles, making the patch of windscreen look like the outer surface of a slowly expanding human brain. He is managing the job as navigator really well, he thinks he has a knack for reading the maps and giving clear instructions and his dad, who can be a tough customer to please if you aren't up to scratch, says he is doing really well. Part of him wonders what he is actually doing doing, though, sitting in the car all day and missing school. 'Learning the ropes,' he guesses.

The air is turning a coral pink and candy-coloured clouds have been hung about the sky like shredded banners and the sun is falling behind the houses and he can hear the starlings creating their late-afternoon racket. His father has promised that this is the last job of the day, and the Sun beetle crawls its anarchic and pointless beat and before his raw and crusted eyes, the great black brain expands.

'The Replenishing Cream with Rose Flower has almost magical restorative powers,' says Bunny.

He is sitting on a calico-covered sofa in the living room of a modest but well kept home in Ovingdean. He feels exhausted, wrung out and, above all, spooked. He is coming to believe that there are forces at work, within and around him, over which he has little or no control. He feels, obliquely, as though he is playing second banana in somebody else's movie and that the dialogue is in asynchronous Martian and the subt.i.tles are in Mongolian or something. He is finding it exceedingly difficult to ascertain who the first first banana is. The optimism of the morning has given way to the notion that he is, in short, basically all over the f.u.c.king shop. On top of this, he is finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that there is a very real possibility his wife is observing him from the dead side and that he should, in some way, behave himself. This is close to impossible when the woman sitting in front of him, a Miss Charlotte Parnovar, is a bone fide, died-in-the-wool melon farmer who is giving off such serious and incontestable signals that Bunny can practically see the sparks leaping back and forth between them. Bunny, it should be said, has always considered himself a prize conductor of electricity and, as he ma.s.sages lotion into staticky Charlotte's hands, he begins the process of erecting a finial or air terminal or strike-termination device in his zebra-skin briefs. banana is. The optimism of the morning has given way to the notion that he is, in short, basically all over the f.u.c.king shop. On top of this, he is finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that there is a very real possibility his wife is observing him from the dead side and that he should, in some way, behave himself. This is close to impossible when the woman sitting in front of him, a Miss Charlotte Parnovar, is a bone fide, died-in-the-wool melon farmer who is giving off such serious and incontestable signals that Bunny can practically see the sparks leaping back and forth between them. Bunny, it should be said, has always considered himself a prize conductor of electricity and, as he ma.s.sages lotion into staticky Charlotte's hands, he begins the process of erecting a finial or air terminal or strike-termination device in his zebra-skin briefs.

'This collagen-and elastin-rich cream can improve moisture up to two hundred per cent,' says Bunny.

'Oh, yeah?' says Charlotte.

Charlotte has an interestingly high forehead that is, in a s.e.xy way, completely void of expression except for the fact that there is a strange dry cyst, like a white whelk, in the centre of it. She has a soft powdering of near-invisible down on her upper jaw and her stiff, peroxide-ravaged hair is pulled back and clamped to the back of her head with a metal clip. This is done with such severity that it actually elongates her subtly derisive eyes. Charlotte sits across from Bunny on a matching calico sofa, wearing loose-fitting towelling shorts and a pink cotton vest stretched across large, pillowy b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She wears a tiny diamante charm on a silver chain around her neck, like a glittering treasure washed up on a coral shelf.

On the far wall hangs a framed picture from a West End musical and on the opposite wall a poster of a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, dressed as a gypsy and holding a little brown monkey. On the coffee table in front of him a homemade affair of stressed brick and smoke-grey Perspex sits Bunny's sample case beside an incongruous bowl of stale potpourri.

Bunny squeezes more lotion into Charlotte's hands, kneading them and tugging on her fingers.

'Its unique healing powers penetrate deep into the skin, leaving your hands feeling supple and ... blissed out,' he says, and he can see, if he adjusts his sight line fractionally, Charlotte's inner thigh muscle jump and spasm in the gaping leg of her shorts. Her fingers are bony and strong and lubricated and, as he squeezes and unsqueezes them, he imagines her v.a.g.i.n.a barely an arm's length away.

'It's ... um ... miraculous,' says Bunny.

'I don't doubt it for a second,' says Charlotte.

Her voice has a super-s.e.xy masculinity to it, and Bunny frets for a second but shortly after realises the folly in this if she were a d.y.k.e, she wouldn't be sitting here letting him do his thing with her hands, and he relaxes and presses his thumb into her open palm and slowly rotates it.

'They've done actual tests,' says Bunny, emphasising the last word, elongating it, softening it.

'What kind of tests? tests?' says Charlotte, imitating him, gently mocking him.

'Scientific ones,' says Bunny.

'Hmmm,' says Charlotte and Bunny can see a secret and slightly sardonic smile find its way into the corner of her mouth.

'Yeah, does wonders for the wrists too,' he says, moving up and feeling hard, ribbed muscle in her forearms.

Charlotte closes her eyes. 'Hmmm,' she says again.

's.e.xy lady,' says Bunny, under his breath.

'What did you say?'

Bunny nods at the poster of Frida Kahlo, who looks down at them from under her one bizarre and conjoined eyebrow with flat expressionless eyes.

'In the picture,' says Bunny.

Bunny registers the hint of condescension in Charlotte's smile.

'Oh, Frida Kahlo. Yes, she's beautiful, isn't she? I think that was painted in the 1940s,' she says, looking up at the picture.

Bunny thinks he feels a surge of electricity pa.s.s through Charlotte's fingers into his, moving through his bones and straight into the base of his spine. He is overwhelmed by a mult.i.tude of tantalising things he can say but for some reason he says, 'Didn't they have tweezers back then?'

Charlotte's features shift infinitesimally, but in doing so her face becomes angular and severe.

'I'm sorry,' she says. 'What do you mean?'

Bunny holds a finger up to his forehead, and even as he does so, he feels a sense of things unravelling and of having lost control.

'The mono-brow,' he says, regretting it instantly.

'The what?' says Charlotte.

'Makes you wonder what her legs looked like,' he says before he can stop himself.

'I'm sorry, I don't follow you,' says Charlotte, extracting her hand from Bunny's and staring at him with a fierce disbelief.

'I can see why the monkey likes her,' he says, jamming a knuckle into his mouth.

Charlotte leans forward and connects with Bunny's eyes.

'I don't know if you can follow this, but Frida Kahlo was involved in a terrible accident that left her severely handicapped. I think she was. .h.i.t by a truck, if you must know!'

Bunny picks up a towel and wipes the excess moisturiser from his hands. He feels disorientated and he can almost see the words as they tumble from his mouth, as if someone else was filling in his speech bubbles someone with a deviant love of catastrophe.

'Really? To be perfectly honest, I find the picture a little depressing. But what would I know? Still, if she painted it with her foot ...'

Then, effortlessly and seamlessly, Bunny says, 'Speaking of which, I have a sensational balm that is just heaven for the tootsies ... Miss ... may I call you Charlotte?'

Charlotte looks at Bunny, her head angled as though she were trying to decode the anarchic scribblings of a child.

'You can call me Bunny,' says Bunny, and he waggles his hands behind his head like rabbits' ears.

A low, unpleasant chuckle escapes Charlotte's throat and she picks at the cyst on her forehead and says, 'You're kidding, right?'

Bunny feels, suddenly, that although all evidence points to the contrary, he may have a chance of pulling this exchange back from the abyss and says, 'I'm deadly serious, Charlotte.'

'That's the kind of name I'd give to my ...'

'Rabbit?'

Charlotte softens and, despite herself, smiles and says, 'Yeah ... Rabbit.'

Bunny sees the super-toned muscle in Charlotte's thigh twitch and thinks he sees, carried on the happy, ozonic air, golden sparks of love jumping out of the legs of her pink towelling shorts. Emboldened, Bunny leans in and wiggles his eyebrows and says, suggestively, 'Well, Charlotte, you know what they say about rabbits?'

'No, I don't. What?'

'Well, they're ... um ... well, you know ...' says Bunny.

'No, I don't know what they say,' and then Charlotte adds something that sees this entire episode slip through Bunny's fingers like the string of a child's fly-away balloon.