"He was tooken to it like a duck into the water!" she said, gobbling up the vile brown-yellow fish with apparent enthusiasm as she talked.

After the revolution, Leningrad was a hub of political and cultural life; musicians, writers, artists, film-makers, philosophers were caught up in the ferment of political ideas. Many had revolutionary sympathies and were eager to put their art to the service of the people. One of these was Sergei Prokofiev, who met the talented young violinist from Orsha when he conducted the orchestra in which Artem was playing.

"Arti, too, wanted to bring the great music in front of the ma.s.ses."

He had learned his socialist sympathies from his father, who was a Jewish Bundist, she explained. Before I could ask what a Bundist was, she rattled on, "So long as you were not saying something bad about the Bolsheviks, in that time you could play what music you liked."

By the late 19305 Artem was playing lead violin with the People's Orchestra and had just started to perform as a soloist. But as Stalin's grip tightened musicians, too, were booted into line. Mrs Shapiro frowned and wolfed down her fish.

"Like poor Prokofiev. He had to repent, isn't it? When I listen to the seventh symphony I think always of how they made him change the ending."

The false sense of security afforded by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact meant that Russia did not antic.i.p.ate the German invasion in the summer of 1941. So when Artem heard that his father was ill, he felt safe enough to set out to visit his family in Minsk in June that year. Byelorussia was at that time in the eastern part of the former Polish territories, which had recently been annexed by Russia, and rumours were flying about of what had happened to Jews in the German-occupied west. Artem hitched a ride on a goods train heading west at exactly the time when every Jew in Europe who could flee was heading east, just as the pact collapsed and the German armies swept eastwards through Poland into the Soviet Union.

"But he was reunited with his family?"

"Yes. His parents and two sisters still were there. But the n.a.z.is were building a wall of barbed wires around the streets in Minsk where the Jews lived so no one would run away."

"A ghetto?"

"Ghetto. Prison. Same thing. But ghetto is worse. Too many peoples crammed inside. No food. Potato peels and rats they were eating. And every day soldiers were shooting people in the streets. Other ones died from diseases. Some suicided themselves out of despair."

Mrs Shapiro's voice had grown so quiet that I could hear a tap dripping in the kitchen, and the scuffle of a feline scratching itself under the table.

"But what happened to Artem's family?"

By the time Artem arrived in Minsk, the population was already swollen by the thousands of Jews who had fled eastwards, as well as by German Jews for whom there was no longer room in the German and Polish ghettoes or concentration camps. Despite starvation and the periodic typhus and cholera epidemics that raged through the ghetto, and daily summary executions, sometimes of hundreds of people at a time, they just weren't dying fast enough. Shooting them all would use up too much ammunition. Then a local n.a.z.i commandant came up with a clever idea to kill Jews efficiently without wasting precious bullets.

One morning some forty Jews were picked up at random off the streets, herded to a woody spot on the outskirts of town, and forced to dig a pit. Then they were roughly roped together and pushed into the pit they had dug. Russian prisoners of war were ordered to bury them alive.

"But the bolshie Russians refused to do it, so the Jews had to be shot in the end and the Russians also. So even more bullets was used up, isn't it?"

Artem's father was among the forty.

To save bullets and time, mobile ga.s.sing vans were set up to tour the district. But why waste all that human labour potential, when the munitions factories were struggling to find workers? It was decided that able-bodied Jews like Artem should be made to contribute to the war effort.

"So they sent him in Kaiserwald."

Kaiserwald was a labour camp, not an extermination camp, though it was no holiday camp either, buffeted by cold winds off the Baltic, squatting inside its cage of barbed wire under a perpetually pewter sky. In this miserable spot, a number of German companies, including some that are now household names, contracted to use the cheap labour facilities. In Kaiserwald, those who could work could eat, the others died. But the Lithuanian guards were lax and lazy, and couldn't always be bothered with the security procedures demanded by their new bosses. One early morning on his way to work Artem came upon a guard, still tipsy from the night before, p.i.s.sing against a wall-he had chosen a private spot where the wall turned a corner behind the barracks. Artem knew immediately that this was his chance; live or die, he had to take it. Although he was weak from months of semi-starvation, surprise was on his side. He picked up a stone and bludgeoned the Lithuanian over the head; then he stole his uniform and papers.

"And he ran away on all his fastest legs into the forest, to join the partisans."

She paused and reached for a cigarette. Beneath the table a fight had broken out over the remnants of my fish. There was a screeching and thrashing of tails.

"Raus, Wonder Boy! Raus, Stinker! Raus, Violetta!" She tried to kick them under the table but her feet got tangled in the tablecloth and she sat back with a sigh of resignation.

"What happened next?" I prompted.

Straightening herself out, she lit her cigarette.

"Ach, Georgine, I cannot tell this story while we are eating good food and thinking of these poor hungry peoples. Another time I will finish it. Better now I should play you some music. Great Russian composers. You would like?"

I nodded. Under the table, hostilities had been suspended while the cats waited for their next course. Wonder Boy was licking his bottom again. Violetta was rubbing herself against my legs. Mrs Shapiro gathered the plates and tottered off into the kitchen, leaving her cigarette smouldering in a saucer. I was beginning to feel a bit strange. Between us, we'd almost polished off the bottle of wine. The dim long-life bulb cast fuzzy downward shadows on the table and walls that made everything seem faded and unreal-or maybe it was the images from the terrible story working on my imagination.

After a while I became aware of a sound in the next room, a low mournful sound, like a voice calling from the netherworld. For a moment I thought it was a cat, then I realised it was music-such soft, sad music-that had crept in quietly through the open door. At first it was a single violin, then it was joined by others, and then a tune emerged, throbbing with melancholy and repeating itself over and over, growing louder and higher. For some reason I found myself thinking of Rip-of Rip and me together, of Rip and me making love, our hands and bodies fumbling for each other in the dark, always finding each other, always coming together, each time the same yet each time different, repet.i.tions and variations.

Now the tempo of the music changed; it became louder, more violent, with cymbals clashing and drums throbbing away like a headache, and the violins racing up and down, faster and faster, arguing with each other, contradicting each other, in a turmoil of sound. I thought of Rip again, and I remembered the terrible fury and churning of our last argument. No, I realised, it wasn't just the music. A gut-churning feeling was building up in my stomach right now. Then Mrs Shapiro reappeared in the doorway with another tray.

"Now we heffa dessert."

"Er..."

She placed the tray on the table. It looked like some sort of shop-bought pie, still in its foil dish. I could handle that-I'd grown up on this sort of food. There was a tub of REDUCED cream on which the sell-by date was clearly visible. I did a quick calculation. Only two days overdue. I'd eaten worse. "...just a little."

I tasted the pie cautiously. It seemed perfectly all right. I had only a tiny drop of cream, which also seemed all right.

"You like it?" asked Mrs Shapiro.

"Yes, lovely. Delicious. What is it?"

"Prokofiev. Symphonic Song Symphonic Song. Wait. It will get better."

As I listened the tempo of the music changed again. It became graciously flowing and jubilant; the original melody had returned, but with more depths and heights of emotion, as though it was leaping over itself, over the contradictions and arguments, over the terrible drumbeat and stomach-churning turmoil, into a new world, a new happy world where everything was going to be all right again for ever and ever. Tears welled up in my eyes; heavy and warm, they rolled down my cheeks.

The music stopped and silence seeped into the room. Across the table from me, I saw that Mrs Shapiro was dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. Then she fumbled in her bag for her cigarettes and matches, lit up again, and inhaled with a long sigh.

"We heff been living here in this house together playing music together. I was playing piano, he was playing violin. Such great music we made together. Now I am living here alone. Life goes on, isn't it?"

I could feel my tears welling up again. How much better it would be, I thought, to love and be loved like this until parted by death, and even after death, than to feel love shrivel and die while life goes on around you, dreary and loveless. Oh heck, there goes my splattered heart again.

"Why are you crying Georgine? You have lost someone, too?"

"Yes. No. It's not the same. My husband...he walked out on me, that's all."

"You are still young, you will find somebody else."

I wiped my tears and smiled. "If only it was so easy."

"Darlink, I will help you."

The next thing I can remember is throwing up on my own doorstep. I was still wearing the green dress, with my jeans underneath and my pullover and duffel coat on top. I felt terrible. My head was throbbing, and I was alternating violently, frighteningly, between burning hot and clammy cold. Above my head, stars were spinning in the blackness. I knelt on the stone steps and puked again. Then I felt a warm furry presence beside me. It was Violetta. She must have followed me home. "h.e.l.lo, cat." I stretched out my hand to stroke her, and she arched her back and purred, rubbing herself against me. Then she started lapping up the sick off the doorstep.

6.

Sticky brown stuff On the Sunday morning after my dinner with Mrs Shapiro, I woke up at about ten o'clock. There was a horrible taste in my mouth and a bowl with some slimy stuff by the bed. I must have thrown up in the night, but I couldn't remember anything. My head was throbbing. A hard beam of sunlight was hammering between the curtains where they didn't quite meet, like a chisel splitting my brain. I got up and fiddled with the curtains, but as soon as I stood up dizziness brought me down again, and I flopped back on the bed. The ceiling seemed to be moving backwards and forwards above me, like in an earthquake. I pulled the covers over my head, but that brought on a panic of suffocation. What had I been dreaming about? I had an image of people roped together, pushed into a pit to be buried alive. Was that a nightmare? No, it was worse than a nightmare-it was something that really happened.

I staggered into the bathroom and gulped cold water from the tap, then splashed some on to my face. The light was too harsh. I rooted through my drawer for something to cover my eyes and found a pair of black knickers; I slipped them over my head like a hood. The waist elastic just reached the tip of my nose. I lay back down on the bed and let the darkness enfold me. That was better. If Rip had been there he'd have laughed at me. If Rip had been there he'd have made me a cup of tea and comforted me. I remembered that music, the bounding, soaring, happily-ever-after melody that had carried me along in its arms last night. Was that a dream? Yes, it was. At our wedding, the organist had played the Arival of the Queen ofSheba Arival of the Queen ofSheba and Dad overcame his scruples about religion enough to walk me up the aisle on his arm. It was the first time Rip's parents and mine had met, and it was all excruciatingly polite. Rip had discreetly removed the engraving of the Staffordshire coal mine which some ancestor had owned in 1882, and I'd persuaded Dad not to wear his National Union of Mineworkers tie. Mr Sinclair engaged Dad in conversation about rugby, drawing on his own school experiences but skirting around the fact that the sport had been named after his own school, and Dad did his best to keep the conversation up, skirting around the differences between rugby union and rugby league. Mrs Sinclair complimented Mum on her hat, and Mum asked her for the recipe for the chocolate peripherals; Mrs Sinclair skirted around the question without revealing that everything, including the profiteroles, had come from a catering firm in Leek. Mum didn't say anything about the olives on the canapes, but I could see her eyeing them with suspicion. It was 1985, remember, and olives hadn't yet reached Kippax. To be on the safe side, she slipped them under a cushion. Later, I saw Mrs Sinclair shaking hands with the vicar, with three olives adhering to her behind. and Dad overcame his scruples about religion enough to walk me up the aisle on his arm. It was the first time Rip's parents and mine had met, and it was all excruciatingly polite. Rip had discreetly removed the engraving of the Staffordshire coal mine which some ancestor had owned in 1882, and I'd persuaded Dad not to wear his National Union of Mineworkers tie. Mr Sinclair engaged Dad in conversation about rugby, drawing on his own school experiences but skirting around the fact that the sport had been named after his own school, and Dad did his best to keep the conversation up, skirting around the differences between rugby union and rugby league. Mrs Sinclair complimented Mum on her hat, and Mum asked her for the recipe for the chocolate peripherals; Mrs Sinclair skirted around the question without revealing that everything, including the profiteroles, had come from a catering firm in Leek. Mum didn't say anything about the olives on the canapes, but I could see her eyeing them with suspicion. It was 1985, remember, and olives hadn't yet reached Kippax. To be on the safe side, she slipped them under a cushion. Later, I saw Mrs Sinclair shaking hands with the vicar, with three olives adhering to her behind.

I poured myself a large gla.s.s of water, and went back to bed. I must have dozed off, for when I woke up later in the afternoon, I felt much better. I went downstairs to rummage in the fridge for something to eat and ended up pouring myself a gla.s.s of wine instead. My stomach was still feeling delicate from its Sat.u.r.day night trauma, and probably it would have been sensible to stick to tea and toast, but I needed something to cheer me up. An after-mood from the nightmare still clung to the edges of my mind. And I was missing Ben. Three more days until he'd be back with me. Carrying my gla.s.s of wine I went back upstairs, and I noticed that the door to his room was slightly open, so for no particular reason I went inside.

It smelled of Ben, or to be precise, it smelled of Ben's socks; and here they were, in a waiting-to-be-washed heap near the door. Also in heaps on the floor were his school clothes, his not-school clothes, the books he was halfway through reading, the books he would never read, exercise books, notebooks, and loose papers that might have once been in books, a collapsed stack of DVDs, a mound of CDs and various bits of mysterious electronic gear. A triangle of dried-out pizza with two symmetrical bites, one on each side, was propped against a half-empty bottle of lime-green fluid on the mouse mat. On the walls were posters of the Arctic Monkeys, Amy Winehouse, and a Lord of the Rings Lord of the Rings poster featuring a close-up of Ore dentistry. My eyes roved around the busy cluttered s.p.a.ce and I smiled to myself- dear Ben. poster featuring a close-up of Ore dentistry. My eyes roved around the busy cluttered s.p.a.ce and I smiled to myself- dear Ben.

The desk was a tip of crumpled papers, broken pens, chewed-down pencils, bottle tops and ring pulls, gum, wrappers, flyers, tissues, all splattered with some kind of sticky brown stuff- it may have been congealed hot chocolate-that was also daubed on the keyboard of his computer, and even on the monitor, where a Windows logo was whirling mindlessly around. A small photograph was stuck to the bottom of the monitor with Blu-tack. I leaned forward to look, and my heart squeezed in my chest. It was Ben and Stella. They were sitting on a park bench surrounded by greenery, grinning their heads off.

I bent down to get a closer look at the photo-Ben's innocent open-mouthed grin; Stella's pretty smile, more posed and self-conscious-and my sleeve caught the gla.s.s of wine, which splashed everywhere, mingling with the congealed chocolate. I took a tissue from my pocket and started to mop, taking care not to disturb anything, because part of me was thinking that I didn't want Ben to know I'd been poking around in his room. As I wiped the mouse, the computer suddenly whirred into life and the screen came up-a black background with a single word flashing in red, animated with dancing flames: Armageddon Armageddon. It looked like some stupid computer game.

After that fish dinner I avoided Mrs Shapiro for a couple of weeks, then I forgot about her. Life carried on with its limping rhythm: Ben, not-Ben, Ben, not-Ben. I was learning to walk with the limp and I slept better with the black knickers. Sometimes, to cheer myself up, I fantasised about revenge. In The Splattered Heart The Splattered Heart, feisty Gina, having discovered Rick's infidelities, was also planning something dramatically unpleasant involving extra spicy Madras vegetable curry andor a subtler approach based on fish soup diluted with pee.

I was sitting at my laptop one dull afternoon in November, trying to write about adhesives but sneaking back every few minutes to the exercise book which was open on my desk, when the phone rang.

"Mrs Georgina Sinclair?" An unfamiliar woman's voice, squeaky like a rusty gate.

"Yes. Sort of. Who's speaking?"

"I'm Margaret Goodknee from the Whittington Hospital."

My hands went cold and my heart started to thump. "What's happened?"

"We have a Mrs Naomi Shapiro in A&E."

"Oh, dear."

I must confess, all I felt was relief. Not Ben. Not Stella.

"On her admission form she's named you as her next of kin."

2.

Adventures with Polymers

7.

Pick and mix "Why me?" I wondered, half curious and half irritated, as I made my way down a long busy ward looking for Mrs Shapiro. "Doesn't she have anyone closer?"

I found her at last, shrunk down into the hospital bed, with only her little face peeping out above the sheet, and her black curls straggling over the pillow. The silver line along the parting was several centimetres wide, but apart from that, without her weird make-up, she actually looked better than before.

"Mrs Shapiro? Naomi?"

Her face lit up with a smile of recognition, and she reached out her hand from under the covers to hold mine.

"Georgine? Thenk Gott you come. You heff to get me out of here."

"I'll do my best, Mrs Shapiro. When you're better. What happened?"

"Slipped on the ice. Wrist brokken."

She waved her left hand at me, which was plastered and strapped, the fingers protruding from the dressing like bent grey twigs with splashes of chipped nail varnish at the tips.

"You heff to get me out. Food is terrible. They mekking me eat sossedge."

"Shall I tell them you want a kosher diet?"

"Kosher pick and mix. No hem no sossedge. But bekkon I like." She winked a mischievous eye. "A little bit of something does you good, isn't it?"

The sister in charge was a small brisk unsmiling woman with sc.r.a.ped-back hair who sniffed at the idea of pick and mix, so I asked her to put Mrs Shapiro down for kosher. She scribbled it in the file, then she added, "She doesn't seem to be registered with a GP. We need her NHS card or some form of ID to verify her ent.i.tlement." She must have seen my jaw tighten. "It's the rule now. Just a box I have to tick."

When I came back to her bedside, Mrs Shapiro was sitting up looking chirpy and trying to get into conversation with the woman in the next bed, who was lying on her back, breathing through an oxygen mask.

"Mrs Shapiro," I asked, "are you registered with a doctor?"

"What for I need the doctor?" She was in a fighting mood. "These young boys, what do they know? Only to ask shmutzig questions. When you last been on the toilet? Please stick out the tongue. What kind of a doctor says this? In Germany we had Doctor Sc.h.i.n.kelman-this was a real doctor." A faraway look had come into her eyes. "Plenty medicine. Always red. Tasted of cherries. And plenty tablets for Mutti Mutti."

"But do you have a medical card? Any form of ID?"

She sighed dramatically and pa.s.sed her good hand across her brow.

"Seventy year I been living in this country, n.o.body ask me for no card."

"I know," I soothed. "It's like Sainsbury's-the surveillance society. But you need something to show how long you've been living here. What about the bills on the house? Council Tax? Gas?"

"All papers are in the bureau. Maybe they will find something." She sat up and blinked rapidly. "They are looking into my house?"

"I'm sure it's just a formality. I'll go and get them, if you prefer."

She turned around, gesturing with her strapped-up hand.

"Key to my house is in the coat."