To cheer her up, I launched into a description of my bargains.

"Chicken korma, Mum. Reduced from 2.99 to 1.49."

"Oh, lovely. What's a chicken corner?"

Mum isn't stupid, but she's partially deaf-my nana had measles during her pregnancy. Dad and I tease her because she refuses to wear a hearing aid. ("People'll say I'm an alien if I start going around wi' bits of wire coming out of my head." Actually, where I come from, in Kippax, they might.) "Chicken korma. It's Indian. Sort of spicy and creamy."

"Oah, I don't know if your dad'd fancy that." Her voice sounded flat and defeated.

I tried another tack.

"Have you read any good books recently, Mum?"

In the right mood, this is her favourite topic, a guilty pleasure we share. When I was sixteen, Dad had given me a copy of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which I'd pretended to enjoy but had secretly found depressing and tedious, and Mum had introduced me to Georgette Heyer and Catherine Cookson, whom I pretended to despise, but secretly devoured.

"Always look out for the underdog," Dad had said.

"There's nowt to beat a happy ending," said Mum. "I just finished Turquoise Temptation Turquoise Temptation ," she sighed down the phone. "But it were rubbish. Too much heavy breathing and ripped-up underwear." A pause. "Have you seen owt of Euridopeas?" ," she sighed down the phone. "But it were rubbish. Too much heavy breathing and ripped-up underwear." A pause. "Have you seen owt of Euridopeas?"

I knew she secretly hoped we would get together again. I didn't tell her he'd been round to pick up his stuff.

When Rip and I first fell in love, I sometimes used to imagine us as romantic characters in a great tempestuous love story set against the turbulent background of the miners' strike, transgressing boundaries of wealth and cla.s.s to be together. I was his door into an exotic world where n.o.ble savages discussed socialism while soaping each other's backs in t' pit baths. He was my door into Pemberley Hall and Mansfield Park. We were so full of illusions about each other, maybe it was bound to end in a splattering.

After Mum had rung off, I made another cup of tea and picked up my pen.

The Splattered Heart

Chapter 2.

It was a sunny October day, and Rip-ck's mind was on carnal things as his mini mini Porsche Porsche nosed its way nosed its way roared up over the roared up over the Roaches Roaches hills still brilliant with dazzling autumn colour. After a few miles hills still brilliant with dazzling autumn colour. After a few miles after Leek after Leek...(Should I change the location as well as the names? I tried to cast my mind back to my journalism course with frisky Mrs Featherstone, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what she'd said about libel.)...the road turned sharply to the right, and Gina saw the entrance to a driveway, with a cattle grid and two stone gateposts, and there at the bottom of the valley, a good mile away, was Hothorn House Hothorn House Holty Towers, sailing like a stone galleon in a shimmering red-green-and-gold sea. (Pause for admiration; that was good-the galleon bit.) Despite herself, Gina Holty Towers, sailing like a stone galleon in a shimmering red-green-and-gold sea. (Pause for admiration; that was good-the galleon bit.) Despite herself, Gina was impressed by was impressed by found herself inexorably drawn towards the found herself inexorably drawn towards the house house stately pile and she could not help noticing stately pile and she could not help noticing that these people obviously hod a bob or two that these people obviously hod a bob or two the stunning period features. So this is how the other half live, she thought. the stunning period features. So this is how the other half live, she thought. Actually, she found it quite appealing. Actually, she found it quite appealing. How disgusting How disgusting.

In fact Rip was always much less troubled by the differences between our two families than I was.

Me: (Whisper.) You never told me they were so posh.

Him: (Murmur.) But when you have money, you realise how little it really matters.

Me: (Loud whisper.) Yes, but it matters if you haven't got enough.

Him: (Quietly confident.) Inequality only matters if it makes people feel feel unequal. unequal.

Me: Yes, but...(But that's a load of c.r.a.p.) Him: You don't feel unequal, do you, Georgie?

Me: No, but...(of course I b.l.o.o.d.y do. I don't know what to do with all the knives and forks. I feel as though they look down their hoity-toity noses at me. But I can't admit it, can I, without seeming like a complete loser? So I'd better keep my mouth shut.) Him: Mmm. (Kisses me tenderly on the lips, then we end up in bed. Which is always nice.)

5.

Fish It was already dusk on Sat.u.r.day evening when I made my way up the lane to Canaan House for my dinner date. As I moved out of range of the spooky sodium glow from the street lamp on Totley Place the shadows closed in on me, and I must admit, I felt a tremor of apprehension. What was I letting myself in for?

The night was cold and starry. The moonlight etched silvery outlines of trees and the gables of Canaan House on to the darkness. But even in that ashy light there was something cheerfully eccentric about its hodgepodge of styles: Victorian bay windows, a Romanesque entrance porch with twirly columns supporting chubby rounded arches, exuberant Tudor chimneys, and a mad Dracula turret with pointed Gothic windows stuck on one side. I wouldn't go so far as to say I was inexorably drawn inexorably drawn, but I did quicken my step. The garden path was almost overgrown with brambles but a narrow trail led towards the porch. I pulled my duffel coat around me and looked for signs of light up ahead. Had she forgotten I was coming?

The house itself was dark but I had a sense of eyes watching me. I stopped and listened. I could hear nothing but a faint rustling of leaves that could have been the wind. There was a smell of earth, mouldering vegetation and a musky foxy stink. I took a couple of steps closer to the house, and as I approached the porch a cat burst out of the undergrowth on to the path in front of me. And another. And another. I couldn't count how many cats there were in that soft lithe seething throng, rubbing up against me, purring and mewing, their eyes glinting gold and green, as if I'd stepped into a teeming shoal of furry fishes.

The front door had a frosted gla.s.s panel through which I could now see a faint sliver of light far away inside. There was a bell to one side. I pressed it and heard it ringing somewhere in the depths of the house. The sliver of light widened into a crack and then into a rectangle as a door opened. I heard shuffling footsteps, a safety chain being unlocked, then Mrs Shapiro opened the door.

"Georgine! Darlink! Come in!"

It's hard to describe the stench that hit me as I stepped over the threshold. I almost gagged and I had to struggle to keep the look of disgust off my face. It was a smell of damp and cat pee and s.h.i.t and rot and food mould and house filth and sink grunge and, cutting through all that, a rank, nauseating, fishy stink. This last smell, I realised with a sinking feeling, was dinner.

The cats had slunk in beside me-there were only four of them after all-and dashed up ahead into the back of the house. Mrs Shapiro clapped her hands as though to chase them away and smiled indulgently.

"Little p.i.s.skes!"

She was wearing a long-sleeved dress in carmine velvet, shaped at the waist and daringly cut away at the front and back to reveal her wrinkled shoulders and the loose skin of her chest. A double string of pearls gleamed around her throat. Her dramatic black curls were piled on top of her head with a collection of tortoisesh.e.l.l combs, and she'd painted on a dash of matching carmine lipstick-not all of it on her lips. I was still wearing my jeans and a baggy pullover under my brown duffel coat. She stepped back on her high heels and eyed me critically.

"Why you wearing this old shmata, Georgine? Is not fletter-ing for a young woman. You will never get a man this way."

"I...er...I don't need..." I stopped. Maybe a man is what I needed after all.

"Come. I will find you something better."

She led me into the wide tiled entrance hall, from the centre of which a polished mahogany staircase curved away to the next floor. Underneath the staircase were piles of black bin-liner bags, bursting with-I don't know, really, what they contained, but I could see clothes and books and electrical items and crockery and bedding spilling out where the bags had split. At one side was parked the old high-sprung pram, now apparently full of bundled rags, on which a couple of stripy felines were dozing. She shooed them away and started to root among the bundles. After a few moments she began to tug at a piece of dark green stuff which, when she pulled it out, turned out to be a dress in some heavy silky fabric with long scalloped sleeves.

"Here," she held it up to my chin, "this I think is more flettering for you." I looked at the label-it was a size 12-my size-and a Karen Millen. In fact it was a gorgeous dress. Where on earth had she got this from?

"It's lovely, but..." Actually, when I thought about it, I could guess where she'd got it from-she must have pulled it out of a skip. "...but I can't possibly take it."

Who would put a dress like this in a skip? Then I thought of Rip's clothes, which I'd put in the skip, and in a flash I understood-another heart had been splattered somewhere.

"Is too big for me," she said. "Will look better on you. Take it, please."

"Thank you, Mrs Shapiro, but..." I brushed away the cat hairs that were clinging to the silky fabric. As I shook it out, I could smell the faint sweat and expensive perfume of its previous owner, and I wondered what had driven her lover to get rid of the dress.

"Try it! Try it! No need to be emberressed, darlink."

Did she expect me to put it on straightaway? Obviously she did. She stood over me as I stripped down to my knickers in the cold foul-smelling hall and slipped the dress, still slightly warm from the sleeping cats, over my head. It slid down over my shoulders and hips as though it was made for me. Why was I doing this? I asked myself. Why didn't I just put on my own clothes and firmly but politely say goodnight? I thought of escaping, I really did. Then I thought of the trouble she must have gone to, to prepare the meal, and how let-down she would feel. And I remembered my empty house and the bright pink sausages in the fridge and Casualty Casualty on TV. And by then it was too late. on TV. And by then it was too late.

"Wait, I will zip it!" I could feel her hands, bony like claws, on my skin as she wrenched the zip up behind me. "Beautiful, darlink. You already looking much better. You are a nice-looking woman, Georgine. Nice skin. Nice eyes. Good figure. But look at your hair. Looks like a sheep's popo. When you last been at the hairdresser?"

"I can't remember. I..." I remembered the way Rip used to look at me, the way he would run his fingers through my hair when he kissed me.

"You want I will put some lipstick on you?"

"No, really, Mrs Shapiro."

She hesitated, looking me up and down.

"Okay. For tonight is okay. Come, please."

I followed her through a door into a long gloomy room where an oval-shaped mahogany table had been spread with a white cloth and two places set at one end with cutlery, napkins and gla.s.ses. In the centre of the tablecloth, a large white cat was curled up asleep.

"Raus, Wonder Boy! Raus!" She clapped her hands.

The cat stretched one muscular black-socked leg behind its ear and began licking its private parts. Then it scratched about, sending bits of fluff flying everywhere. Then it rose to its feet, stretched itself a couple of times, jumped down from the table, and sauntered around the room.

"This is Wonder Boy." (She p.r.o.nounced it Vunder Boy.) "Looks like he has made a little wish in the corner." There was a wet patch on the wall by the door, more or less at the height of Wonder Boy's tail, that reminded me of our first meeting. She reached out and scratched him behind the ears, and he let out a purr like a motorbike starting up. "He is my darlink. Soon you will meet Violetta and the Stinker. The pram babies you have already met. Mussorgsky is somewhere hiding. He is a little bit jealous of the Wonder Boy. Borodin you will not see. He comes only to take the food. Seven altogether. My little femily."

I handed her the bottle of wine I'd brought. White Rioja. Nice with fish. We both struggled with the corkscrew, but she got it open and poured us each a gla.s.s.

"To bargains!" she said. We clinked.

"Can I help you with anything?" I was nervous about what could be happening in the kitchen, but she gestured me severely to a chair.

"You are my invited guest. Please, Georgine, tek a seat."

Close up I could see that the tablecloth was not white at all but a sort of mottled greyish yellow, bristling with cat hairs of many colours. The napkins weren't white either, they had pink and red blotches that could be wine or beetroot or tomato soup. While Mrs Shapiro busied herself in the kitchen, I discreetly tried to clean away the grunge that was encrusted between the p.r.o.ngs of my fork, and to study the room I was in. The only light was from a single long-life bulb screwed into a bra.s.s chandelier whose other five bulbs were defunct. On the wall opposite the door was a marble fireplace, and above it a large gilt-framed mirror so spotted and clouded that, when I stood up to take a peep at myself in the green dress, I seemed faded and grey, sadder and older than my mental image of myself, my eyes hollow and too dark, my hair wind-snaggled and too curly, the dress so different to anything I'd worn for ages that I hardly recognised myself. I turned away quickly as if I'd seen a ghost. On the facing wall were two tall windows that seemed to be boarded up behind the curtains, and between them hung a photograph in black and white, an old-fashioned studio portrait of a young man in evening dress with sharp clean features, fair curly hair swept back from a high forehead, and in his left hand, held up against his cheek, the neck of a violin. He had startlingly pale eyes staring out of the picture that caught and held my gaze as though he was present in the room. Strangely, although the photograph was in black and white, it seemed more vivid and alive than my own image in the mirror.

As I studied the photograph I became aware of a smell-a faintly fishy smell that seemed to have wafted into the room. I looked round and saw that Mrs Shapiro was standing in the doorway carrying a large silver tray on which were two steaming bowls.

"Soupe depoisson. Cuisine franfaise ," she beamed, placing one bowl in front of me and seating herself opposite me with the other. I looked into the bowl. It was a thin sc.u.mmy-looking liquid in which some greyish gobs of matter were floating part-submerged. ," she beamed, placing one bowl in front of me and seating herself opposite me with the other. I looked into the bowl. It was a thin sc.u.mmy-looking liquid in which some greyish gobs of matter were floating part-submerged.

"Please start. Don't wait."

I dipped my spoon in. Probably it won't kill me, I told myself. I've eaten worse than this in Kippax. Across the table, Mrs Shapiro was slurping away with gay abandon, pausing only to dab her lips with her napkin. Ah-that's what those red blotches were. I found that if I held my breath as I swallowed I could manage the liquid. The grey gobs I tried to mash up in the bottom of the bowl so it wasn't obvious how much I'd left.

"Lovely," I said, trying to find a clean corner of napkin to pat my mouth.

The second course was in some ways better and in some ways worse. It was better because there were boiled potatoes and leeks in a white sauce which, although lumpy, looked reasonably edible; it was worse because the fish, a whole curled-at-the-corners filet of something hard, brown and yellow, smelled so sickening that I knew I would never be able to bring myself to swallow it. Even Mum never served anything as bad as this.

As I was poking away at the potatoes and leeks I felt a sudden warm pressure in my groin. I looked across the table at Mrs Shapiro. She smiled. The pressure turned into pounding, rhythmic and insistent. What the h.e.l.l was going on?

"Mrs Shapiro..."

She smiled again. I could feel a vibration accompanied by a strange rasping sound like a car engine trying to start on a cold day. Now through the silky stuff of the dress I felt a sharp p.r.i.c.k of claws on my thighs. I slipped my hand down under the tablecloth and touched warm fur. Then I had an idea.

"Mrs Shapiro, that photo," I pointed to the wall behind her, "who's it of?"

As she turned her back for a moment, I slid the filet off my plate on to the floor, and gave the cat a shove.

"That is my husband," she turned towards me and clasped her hands together, "Artem Shapiro. My beloved Arti."

Beneath the table the purring had intensified, and turned into a satisfied chomping.

"Was he a musician?"

"One of the greatest, darlink. Before the war. Before the n.a.z.is got him into the camp."

"He was in a concentration camp?"

"Kaiserwald."

I'd never heard of Kaiserwald. It wasn't among the names I'd learned in history lessons at school, like a horrible roll-call of death.

"Where's that?"

"Riga. Besides the Baltic Sea. Many Jews from all over Europe ended there. Even some we knew from Hamburg."

"Your family was from Hamburg?"

"Left in 1938."

"But Artem-he got away, too?"

"This story is too long, Georgine. Too long and too long ago."

The young man in the picture held me with his pale intense eyes. I noticed how elegantly his fingers were clasped around the neck of the violin. In The Splattered Heart The Splattered Heart the heroine's lover would have hands like this, I thought. Ms Firestorm was already on the prowl, looking out for a great romance set against the turbulent background of World War Two. the heroine's lover would have hands like this, I thought. Ms Firestorm was already on the prowl, looking out for a great romance set against the turbulent background of World War Two.

"Please tell me, Mrs Shapiro. I love stories."

"Yes, this is a loff story," she sighed. "But I do not know if it will heff a happy ending."

The story she started to tell me that night did turn out to be a love story of sorts, and though she related it in her funny hobbled English, my imagination filled in the s.p.a.ces between the words so vividly that afterwards I couldn't remember what she'd said and what I had imagined.

Artem Shapiro, her husband, she told me, was born in 1904 in the small town of Orsha in a country that sometimes belonged to Poland, sometimes to Russia, sometimes to Lithuania, and most of the time was just a place where people-Jewish people, anyway-got on quietly with their business, keeping their heads down during the years of wars and pogroms and the political machinations of the great powers.

"It is our way. We believed if we kept quiet we would survive."

His father was a violin maker, quite a successful one, and he thought the boy would learn the trade, too, but one day Artem picked up the instrument and began to play, and that was how it started. Every day for an hour or two after working with his father, he would sit outside in the backyard and play the popular tunes he heard on the street. Then he tried to improvise his own tunes. The neighbours would drop whatever they were doing, and hang over the fence to listen. It was not long before he began to show real promise as a violinist.

"Darlink, everybody who was listening was astonished. They could not believe that such a young boy would be playing like this."

When Artem was in his teens, the family moved to Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia. His parents paid for him to have lessons with a violin teacher, and it was the teacher who suggested that the young man should go to St Petersburg, or Leningrad as it was by then, several hundred kilometres to the east, to study at the conservatoire.