"I don't think so. I'm not sure if I'm looking in the right place."

"At least I know now why you keep staring at the side of my head."

"There's this new diet I've heard of. For the first two days you just eat apples. Any kind, but you mustn't mix them; if you have Golden Delicious for breakfast you can't have c.o.x's for lunch. Then for two days you eat only cheese-if you have Edam for breakfast you must-"

"No," Colin said. He shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

"No, somehow I don't think so either. I'll just get fat."

"That would be restful."

"Mrs. Ryan wasn't fat, was she?"

"Skin and bone."

"Colin?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think three beds will be enough?"

"I'm counting on Alistair going to Borstal before long. I think it's a fair bet."

"What if Suzanne decides to come home? Oh, you know, I can't forgive myself now for trying to talk her into an abortion. When I saw Gemma I thought-well, she's a lovely little thing, who would be without her? And if Suzanne wants-"

"She won't come home. She told you, she's got her own life now. So has Alistair, he'll be off soon, somewhere or other. They're nearly grown up, Sylvia. That part of our life is over. The other two will be off before you know it. It's they who have the future."

"And we have none?"

"There are worse things than no future." He put his arm across her shoulder, held her tight by the upper arm. "Cheer up. The excitement's over. Nothing will happen to us now."

Next day, when Lizzie Blank came in to clean, she found Colin's present sitting on the coffee table. She looked at it for a long time, without touching. Then she knelt before it, as Colin had done, and traced the faculties with her finger. I have got these now, she thought. All of them. I have got everything, except offspring. Carefully she lifted the head and dusted it, although it did not need dusting, and set it down in the dead centre of the table. She was perfectly sure that it was what she had waited for. She had last seen it in Sholto's shop; its arrival here could not help but tell her something. It was a mysterious transportation; there would be others.

Sylvia came downstairs. She was still in her dressing gown, and she smiled secretly to herself, and hummed as she went into the kitchen. Lizzie followed her.

"Mr. Sidney get his leg over, then?" she enquired.

"Lizzie!" Sylvia glared at her. "You can stop it, you know, or I'll have to give you notice. I can't have the children hearing you talk like that."

"The little lambkins," Lizzie said sarcastically. "'Hearing you talk like that.' We've got very snooty, haven't we?"

Sylvia looked at her daily woman with barely concealed dislike. Since the incident with the photograph she had become increasingly familiar and cutting, and she was definitely skimping on her work, claiming that the breakdown of most of the electrical appliances was making cleaning impossible, that she was tired out and worn to the bone. She looked far from bone, Sylvia thought, her white unhealthy-looking flesh oozing out of her clothes. She had flesh, and to spare.

"I'll be straight with you, Lizzie," she said. "I believe in straight talking."

"Oh yes?"

"I don't like you, Lizzie. There's something about you I never have liked, and I resent you poking your nose into my daughter's business. I kept you on because when we had Colin's mother here you were a G.o.dsend, and I don't deny that, and I'll give you a reference, and you can read it."

"And now you're discharging me?" the woman said sullenly.

"We don't need you. We'll be moving soon."

"I can travel."

"Not that far."

Lizzie looked up. "And this house will be empty?"

"It will be on the market. As soon as I find somewhere, we'll be off."

"Well, I'll save you the trouble of firing me, Mrs. Sidney, madam. I was going to give in my notice anyway. I think you stink."

"That's as maybe," Sylvia said levelly.

"And you needn't worry I'll tell on Florence. I wouldn't soil my lips, I might tell on her if they still had capital punishment. If I thought she'd be hanged by the neck till she was dead."

"You monster," Sylvia burst out. "Get out of my house."

"Your house? Not for long."

"And give me my daughter's address before you go. Your address, I mean, it's the only one I've got for her. I'll send your wages on."

"I'd sooner have cash."

"I'm sure you would, but I haven't got it on me. You'll have to wait. I'll pay you for the week."

"Don't bankrupt yourself, will you?"

"If you don't go," Sylvia said, "I shall hit you. Here, write it down on this." She thrust at Lizzie the notepad she used for her shopping lists, and the stub of a pencil. "She's not with you, is she, Suzanne?"

"No, I've not seen her." Lizzie bent over the counter top, grasping the pencil awkwardly.

"If you do see her, tell her to come home. I can't bear to lose my children."

"You're very emotional, aren't you?" Lizzie looked up, and puckered her face. "Like this, you go."

"How dare you imitate me?"

"I've seen your old photographs. How dare you imitate me?"

"What? You've been through my drawers?"

"A lot of water's gone under the bridges since those days, Mrs. S."

"It's the last straw. Hurry up with that and go."

Laboriously, Lizzie set down Mr. Kowalski's address; wavering block capitals traced with much effort. She pushed it at Sylvia. "There you are."

"You can barely write." Sylvia took it from her and looked at it in astonishment. "Who wrote your application for you? I had a letter."

"My landlord wrote it. You didn't ask me if I could write."

"You're here under false pretences."

"If you like," Lizzie said grimly. She took her coat from the hook by the door and put it on.

"You can go out by the back door," said Sylvia, pointing. "You always do."

"Pardon me, Mrs. Sidney. I can go out the front."

On the way through the hall she paused and looked up the stairs. All the bedroom doors were closed; the stairhead was in darkness. The final straw, she thought. Four and twenty Sidneys, baked in a pie.

Isabel Ryan was blundering about in her kitchen, still in her dressing gown, though it was nearly midday. That's nothing, she thought. I can still be in it at four in the afternoon, I can still be in it at eight o'clock, and then it is time to get back into it and go to bed. Have I been to bed? she wondered. The house was very cold, though it barely registered with her. She did not think about what her body needed; it had its own life. She could not remember how much time had pa.s.sed since she had rung up Sylvia Sidney; one night, or two, or many more. In a mist of grief and nausea, she clung to the edge of the kitchen sink, swaying gently.

Perhaps she should have been more persistent. The woman had sounded stiff and dangerous, as if she were going to snake down the wires and do her some damage. What had she thought, that she had rung up to claim Colin back? After all these years? It must have sounded like it. All she had wanted was information. What was the child like?

Is it some natural kind of child, she wondered, that looks like Jim, or like its mother? Or is it a mystery baby; and does it get solved? She ran her hand down over her body. If this was the solution, would she know it soon enough to put it in her expose? It must come along quickly, because she had almost run out of typing paper; she couldn't get more unless she was sober, and if she was ever sober there was no saying what she might find out, and the task would be endless. She might even find out if she was pregnant or not. Would Jim stay with her, now she had contracted this mysterious swelling? He hadn't said.

She could feel resolution spreading inside her; another strange organic growth, beyond her control. I will get together some clothes, she thought, even if it takes me an hour to do it. I will go out and drive my car, even if I crash it. I will go upstairs and find that letter that Miss Suzanne Sidney has written to my husband. Then I will take the address and look at my street map, and taking the letter, I will shred it up finely and flush it down the lavatory. Then I will go round and see her. I will wait outside her house and watch her come and go. I will just look on. I shall just show myself, walk down the street. Then she will see what it is like to be Jim's wife. She will profit by my example; and I will profit by hers.

Or else I have lost everything, she thought. Jim Ryan, Colin Sidney; and my whisky gla.s.s as well.

Less than a mile away from Buckingham Avenue, lying to either side of a narrow and little-used road called Turner's Lane, there was a tract of open ground. It was surprising that houses had not been built there, but the residents of Lauderdale Road, whose gardens backed onto it, regarded it as an amenity, and had fought with vigour the various schemes for its use which had been put forward over the years. And so it had been unchanged for as long as they remembered; a few desolate acres of tussocky gra.s.s, stagnant marshy pools, and little thickets of p.r.i.c.kly bushes. The residents never went there; there were houses on three sides of it, and on the fourth side only the old ca.n.a.l. They left it to stray dogs and cats, to the odd exhibitionist, to the pa.s.sing rabbit and urban fox; and to their children.

It was in one of these p.r.i.c.kly thickets that Alistair Sidney and his friends had set up their den. When they had reached school-leaving age, and the winter came on, they had thought they would leave dens behind. But their homes were not congenial to them, and they found that they needed it more than ever. They had a clean dirt floor, swept and compacted; branches curved densely above them, making their shelter almost as wind- and weather-proof as a conventional tent. It was not quite high enough for standing, but you could manage a crouch. The thorns left long pink scratches and puncture marks, which sometimes went septic; but Sherwood had stolen a first-aid kit recently, so that was all right. A dense undergrowth protected them from observation; in spring, as Austin said, they'd be practically invisible. If it had only had video games it would have been perfect.

The children had pa.s.sed many happy hours here, playing with the skeleton that the Brownies had found by the ca.n.a.l.

"They want to do their karate badge, them Brownies," Austin said. "Then they could of protected it from us."

"Kari reckons it's a rabbit anyway," Alistair said. "She does biology. Don't you, pimpleface?"

"Nar," Austin said. "It's human, that."

"It could be a mix."

"A chimera," said Karen.

"A wot?"

"A chimera. A mix-up. A bit of this and a bit of that. A monster. A thing of hybrid character."

"Yer," said Austin judiciously. "Could be."

Since Christmas, they had occupied themselves in trying to arrange the bones in an intelligent order, and they were immersed in this, one sunless afternoon at half-term, when the sound of crunching wood and vegetation alerted them to an imminent invasion.

"Christ, it's my dad," Austin said. "n.o.body else has boots like that. Quick, boil-head, get the bones back in the box."

Karen leaped up and began to shovel the skeleton into the Tes...o...b..x in which they kept it between jigsaw sessions. The sound of crashing and scrunching came closer, punctuated by d.a.m.ning and blasting in a powerful male voice. "It is my dad!" Austin hissed. "Quick, get it out of the way. I'm off. He's b.l.o.o.d.y violent. He can cripple you with one kick."

Heavy breathing warned them that the intruder was almost upon them. Austin fled, bent double, through the back exit. Karen shoved the box after him and, grasping the springy twigs and branches, attempted to cover the signs of his retreat. Her hands bled; she fell to her knees and shovelled dead leaves into a mound, banking them against the entrance to the bolt hole. Before she had time to scramble to her feet the intruder was upon them; not the Reverend Teller, but a wild youth, brawny and stubble-headed, wearing boots the equal of the vicar's, and with leather thongs binding each wrist.

"Jesus," Alistair breathed. He sized up the lad and knew he was no match. They were at his mercy. Do something, Scab, he thought, distract him, offer him your body. "We weren't doing no harm, mister," he said in a whining voice. "Don't beat us up, we'll leave peaceable, honest." Karen, still crouching, stared up at the youth, holding up hands finely beaded with blood.

The youth's beefy chest heaved. He reached forward; Alistair was taken up by the front of his zipper jacket and held, skull to hairless skull.

"Where's that friggin' Austin?" the youth demanded.

"Never saw 'im," Alistair said gamely. "Who are you? Aw, gerrof, don't torture me."

"Me?" said the youth. He breathed into Alistair's putty face. "I'm his friggin' probation officer."

A month later, after Austin had been sent down-burglary, retail premises-the remnants of the gang had met to discuss their problem. They had to face the fact that their den was no longer secure; if they wanted to keep their skeleton, they would have to find a safer place for it.

"Can't keep it at our house," Karen said. "We're moving. Anyway, if you had a box, my mum would look in it."

Alistair thought. "She would if it was yours," he said, after some effort.

"She would if it was yours too."

"You can't keep it at my house," Sherwood said. "My mammy would p.a.w.n it."

"Nar, you couldn't p.a.w.n a skeleton."

"She p.a.w.n anything. Or, come Friday night, start stewing, curry bones, mm-mm, delicious, old family recipe from Montego Bay."

"You Rastafarian git," Alistair murmured. "Your mammy goes down the chip shop, I've seen her."

Karen giggled. "I bet Lizzie Blank would eat stewed bones. She used to eat everything Claire gave her when she was doing her cookery badge, and some of it was absolutely disgusting."

"I wish you'd shut it," Alistair grumbled. "And give me some peace while I'm trying to think." He squatted, cradling his head between his hands. Suddenly he looked up, his features clearing. "Got it in one," he said. "What a piece of f.u.c.king brilliance."

"What? What is it?"

"Look, you know our lot. You know what they do. Sleep around, knock off old ladies, receiving stolen goods. But what's the one thing they don't do? Mess about with other people's post."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, all right, suppose a letter come addressed to Dad. Mum would want to open it, she'd be tempted, she'd feel it around to see if there was anything inside it, but she wouldn't actually open it, oh no, she'd be ashamed. After he'd come home and opened it, she'd sneak it away and read it, but that's different, according to her." He tapped his head. "That's psychology, Sherwood."

"So?"

"So, Lizzie Blank."

"We had this daily," Kari explained. "But she's left."

"So, we go down Fletcher's, nick some brown paper and string, and we do up the bones in a nice parcel. Then we put her name on it, and our address, and leave it in our hall. Like it's come through the post. n.o.body'll interfere with it."