His voice was like black treacle-sweet, with a hard mineral edge.

"Not like today then," I batted my wet eyelashes. What was happening to me? This man was an estate agent, and definitely not my type. "Er...unusual name. Italian?"

I was regretting that I'd worn my batty-woman clothes.

"Spanish. My father was an itinerant mandolin player."

"Really?" He was still smiling, and I couldn't tell from his face whether he was joking, but the idea was, mmm, appealing. "I've got the key," I mumbled. "Do you want to look around?"

The cheeks crinkled into a smile. The eyes smouldered. I gazed into them. My poor fish-heart tugged feebly at the line, but it was caught.

Wonder Boy, Violetta and their mates had congregated at the door. I let them in and fed them in the kitchen because it was too wet outside. It was bitterly cold indoors, a dank pungent chill which hit you with the stink of stale cat food mingled with other odours which were quite a lot worse. Then I became aware of another, more pleasant smell, faint and spicy like expensive soap. That was him him. Inexorably drawn, I followed along as he wandered around the house, murmuring to himself under his breath. He had a little instrument like a torch with a laser beam that bounced enticingly against the walls of the rooms, to measure the size. I watched, transfixed. Click. Flash. If I asked nicely, would he let me have a go with it? He wrote the details on the back of what looked like a crumpled till receipt.

He seemed completely unfazed by the smell. Even when he stepped in a pile of fresh cat poo in the hall (how did that get there?) he just bent down and cleaned it off with an immaculate white cotton handkerchief from his breast pocket. I watched, awestruck, as he deposited it in the kitchen bin.

"I could live in a place like this," he murmured huskily in his deep manly mineral-edged voice that spoke directly to my hormones, bypa.s.sing my brain completely. I realised now where we'd met before-in the pages of The Splattered Heart The Splattered Heart. He was just as I'd imagined the hero. Except that in my book the hero was a poet, not an estate agent.

"Character. That's what you so rarely get in the housing market nowadays."

We were standing together in the entrance porch at the end of his tour. The rain had stopped and the weak wintry sun was putting in a brief appearance, so it was warmer out here than indoors, and much less smelly.

"Ornate plasterwork; period arches; decorative corbels. I mean, don't get me wrong, Mrs Sinclair, there's a lot needs doing. You'd have to do it sensitively, of course. Keep all those stunning period features. Get a couple of designers in to give you ideas. You could open up the attics, for instance. Make a fabulous penthouse suite." A flame flickered in the depths of his eyes.

"Everybody seems to fall for this house."

"It's the potential. You can see the potential. You'd have to cut that tree down, for starters."

"It's got a preservation order on it."

"Doesn't matter. You just pay the fine. The tree gets cut; the Council gets its cut. Everybody's smiling."

I hadn't much liked the tree myself, but now it suddenly felt like an old friend.

"You can't do that!"

"So when's your aunty planning to put it on the market?"

"She just wanted an idea of its value, in case she decides to sell. What do you think?"

He looked at the notes he'd scribbled on the receipt, crinkling his eyes and furrowing his handsome brow in a way that was faintly reminiscent of Aristotle. Well okay, only very faintly.

"Haifa million, maybe?"

I don't know exactly what I'd been expecting, but our own semi with its three poky bedrooms and narrow strip of garden had cost almost that. He saw the look on my face.

"The area brings it down. And we're looking at a cash buyer, of course, not a mortgage. I'll put it in writing for you."

I gave him my address. We shook hands. He climbed into his hungry-looking car, and was gone in two puffs of hot air from the chunky twin exhausts.

I walked back slowly, still feeling slightly giddy from my encounter. As I came up the street, I could see that Ben was already home, the blue square of his monitor winking away through the window as he tried to navigate the lonely cyber-seas, teeming with who knows what pirates and sharks. My mother-heart tightened with a little squeeze of sadness: it wasn't good for him to spend his evenings up there on his own.

"Hey, Ben, shall we go to the pictures tonight? We could go and see Daniel Craig in James Bond James Bond."

Scan Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan. While my mother-heart ached for Ben, my woman-hormones were still tingling for Mark Diabello.

"Sounds like c.r.a.p."

"It probably is c.r.a.p, but it might be entertaining."

"I don't find c.r.a.p entertaining, Mum? But we can go if you want to?" I noticed there was something different about his voice-a new rising inflection at the end of his sentences-questioning, or apologetic. I wondered whether he was like this when he stayed with Rip. Somehow I imagined that life in Islington would be an endless round of stimulating activities and highbrow conversations, and it was only with me that he spent his hours closeted with his computer. I would have rung Rip to ask him if we'd been on better terms, but we weren't, and I didn't.

Instead of going out, we ordered dinner from the Song Bee and ate it by the gas fire in front of the TV. It was a cop drama, I can't remember what. I'd just been thinking that the male lead looked a bit like Mr Diabello when suddenly Ben turned to me.

"Mum, do you believe in Jesus?"

His question hit me out of the blue. I drew a slow breath.

"I don't know. I'm not sure what I believe, Ben." What was this all about? I wondered. "I believe Jesus was a real person, if that's what you mean."

"No, what I mean is, Mum, do you believe Jesus'll save you at the end of the world?"

"Ben, love, the world isn't going to end."

I had a sudden memory of how I'd been at his age-I believed that nuclear war would wipe out the human race before I'd even had a chance to lose my virginity. We'd sat around on Sat.u.r.days in the Kardomah cafe in Leeds, my mates and I, fantasising about how we would spend our last four minutes after the final warning.

"It's like...I really love you, Mum. You and Dad. I don't want..." He was mumbling, as though his mouth was full of sand. "All you have to do is accept Jesus into your life?" His eyes, when he looked up at me, were wide, the pupils dilated, as if fixed on some private nightmare.

"The signs are there, Mum? All the signs are in place?" That strange questioning inflection-it was as though someone else, an alien, had got inside him, and was speaking through his mouth, staring at me through his eyes.

"The world's been around for a long time, Ben. Don't worry."

I pulled him into my arms and hugged him tight. He stiffened against me at first, but I held him close until I felt him relax, his head resting on my shoulder. Whatever it is, I thought, he'll grow out of it.

Next day I overcame my pride and phoned Rip.

"I'm worried about Ben. Can we talk?"

"I'm just in the middle of something. Can I ring you back in half an hour?"

But he didn't.

Ben didn't go round to Rip's until late on Sat.u.r.day. He spent the day upstairs on his computer, and I spent the day working on The Splattered Heart The Splattered Heart. Outside, the rain lashed at the garden, and the wind made a spooky whistling noise through the ill-fitting secondary double glazing, but inside we had the central heating on and Snow Patrol keeping up a soft background rumble. Each time I walked into Ben's room, he minimized the screen he was looking at. We took turns to bring one another cups of tea, and treated ourselves to Danish pastries from the Turkish bakery and dim sum for lunch from the Song Bee. I needed the extra sustenance; now we were getting down to the nitty-gritty: The Splattered Heart, Chapter 4 The Splattered Heart, Chapter 4.

It was hard to decide whether Rick should be a l.u.s.t-crazed s.e.x fiend or a minutely endowed, impotent v.i.a.g.r.a case. I crossed out a whole page, and started to think about Rip. No, it wasn't s.e.x that had gone wrong between us, but whatever had gone wrong had taken the shine out of the s.e.x, too. Keep the romance in your marriage, Mum's magazines used to say, and they advised strategies like wearing s.e.xy underwear, and greeting your hubby in your negligee when he got back from work. Actually, I tried that once, but he didn't notice.

He called round at six to pick Ben up in his Saab convertible and they went straight off to the cinema-they were going to see Daniel Craig in James Bond James Bond. After they'd gone, that horrible silence settled on the house, like a coffin lid closing.

12.

Marine biological glues It wasn't until Monday morning that I remembered I hadn't fed Mrs Shapiro's cats. I heard a familiar yowling sound in the garden, and when I looked out of the upstairs window, there was Wonder Boy lurking under the laurel bush. He was looking up at the window with a reproachful look on his face. All around him was a ma.s.s of grey and brown feathers, sodden in the rain. Seeing him here in my garden made me furious-I didn't want him killing my birds; in fact I didn't want him at all. I pulled on my brown duffel coat and my wellies and strode off round to Totley Place. He followed me, slinking along at a distance, ducking into a gateway or garden if I stopped and looked back. Then I noticed that the Stinker was following me, too; and another scrawny tabby. I was turning into the Queen of the Cats. The other cats were waiting for me in the porch when I arrived, a puny, enthusiastic reception committee. None of them looked particularly wet.

There were three weird things I noticed on that visit. The first was a pile of fresh cat poo, almost in the same place where Mr Diabello had stepped in it the other day. It had a distinctive curled macaroon shape, unlike all the other brown shrivelled-sausage deposits that I found around the house from time to time. I was sure that I'd got all the cats out of the house when we left. Who was the culprit-and how had he got in? I cleared it up and counted them as they milled around my legs-one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. When I left, I'd make sure to count them out.

As I straightened up, my eye fell on a picture on the wall directly above where the cat poo had been. It was a photograph, rather grainy and washed-out, of an arched stone doorway with a cross on top, Corinthian columns on each side, and above the door a carving of a man on horseback with a spear. Something about it was familiar. I must have looked at it dozens of times without really seeing it. What I saw now was that it was the same arched doorway as in one of the Harlech Castle tin photographs, the one with the dark-eyed woman: Lydda. The columns and the harshness of the light made me think of Greece.

The third thing I noticed, when I went through to the kitchen to feed the cats, was that the key to the back door, which should have been inside in the lock, was missing. Someone had taken it. I realised in a flash that it could only have been wicked, wolfy Mr Diabello.

I fed the cats quickly and rushed home in a rage, but just as I picked up the phone to vent my fury at Wolfe & Diabello, it rang in my hand. It was Penny, the admin manager from Adhesives Adhesives, wanting to know whether I'd received the press release about the new research into marine biological glues. The truth was, it had come two days ago, and I hadn't even looked at it. I mumbled something vague and apologetic, but she saw right through me.

"What's going on, Georgie?" she boomed. "Something's not right, darling, I can tell. Is it that husband of yours again?"

"No. It's another devious man."

I explained about the missing key and the dodgy estate agent.

"Hm." I could hear Penny breathing on the other end of the phone. Nothing about her was quiet. "Don't rush into anything, darling. You could be wrong about the key, then you've blown your chances with that s.e.xy man."

How did she know he was s.e.xy? Was I that obvious?

"You should get a second opinion, darling. Two second opinions. One about the price of the house, and one about the social worker."

The same thing had happened to an aunt of her Aunty Floss, she said, who'd been put in a home by the Council and died six months later of unspecified complications.

"G.o.d bless. I'm sure she's up there in heaven, tippling sherry and looking down and cursing those b.l.o.o.d.y sc.u.mbags who got her house."

"Do they allow tippling and cursing in heaven?" I giggled.

"Well, if they don't, darling, I'm not going there."

The thought of all that tippling and cursing cheered me up, and I promised Penny I'd get on with the marine biological glues-yes, straightaway-but first I'd take her advice and try to get another social worker a.s.sessment.

Mrs Goodney, I knew, worked at the hospital, not the Council, so next day I telephoned the Council's social services department again. I explained to the cheery "Elder-lee!" voice that an elderly neighbour had gone into hospital and needed an a.s.sessment before she could go home.

"Mm-mm. Can you hold the line a minute? (Eileen, what's 'er what does 'ome visits?)"

Eileen's voice, m.u.f.fled by distance, said something that sounded like 'Bad Eel'.

"She's out on 'er dinner," I heard her say.

"You need to speak to Muz Bad Eel. I'm afraid she's in a meeting. Can I take your number and ask her to call you back?"

Bad Eel. I pictured someone slim and slippery, with scarlet lipstick and a small silver gun tucked inside a frilly gaiter. I spent the whole morning at my desk, looking out of the window at the wind chasing stray leaves around the dank patch of lawn, and waiting for the Bad Eel to phone me back. I was supposed to be working on the press release Penny had sent about marine biological glues. Some company was developing a synthetic version of the glue that bivalves such as mussels and oysters use when they cling to the rocks. One of the strongest bonds in nature, apparently. They use fine thread-like tentacles called byssus, which are rich in phenolic hydroxyls. Phenolic hydroxyls: something about those words just turned my brain to glue. I started thinking about bivalves living down there in the dappled light, how they filter the algae from the water, how they close themselves up against the sea. It must be wonderful to be a bivalve, to be able to shut yourself away in your own mother-of-pearl-lined world, hanging on to the rock while the waves and tides churn outside. Ms Firestorm showed up to help me out. Cloistered in their shimmering watery depths, the loyal bivalves cling pa.s.sionately together Cloistered in their shimmering watery depths, the loyal bivalves cling pa.s.sionately together...Yes, we could learn a lot from bivalves. I realised I wasn't very interested in commercial applications, and when the other elusive marine creature still hadn't called by lunchtime, I wrapped up warm against the wind and set out for the hospital.

Mrs Shapiro was sitting in the day room when I arrived, wearing a pinafore-style hospital dressing gown tied at the back and a pair of woolly socks on her feet. I felt a pang of guilt. Probably it was my responsibility, as her next of kin, to bring in some suitable hospital gear for her. I'd have to remember for next time.

A tattered magazine was open on her knee, but she wasn't reading; she seemed to be engaged in a fractious and incoherent argument with another old lady sitting beside her.

"But 'er were on this ward when she shouldn't of been," the old lady was saying vehemently, "and new sister said it weren't 'er business anyway."

"Well, if they was no longer there someone must heff tooken them."

"No, because she weren't supposed to be. That's what I'm sayin' to yer."

She looked up and saw me in the doorway.

"That's 'er there. Ask 'er."

Mrs Shapiro turned, and stretched out her hands to me.

"Georgine, you got to get me out of here. All this people is mad."

"She's talkin' tripe," said the old lady, and heaving herself up out of the chair she minced off along the ward, muttering aloud.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"She is a bonker," said Mrs Shapiro. "Brain been amputated."

The old lady stopped, turned, flicked two fingers at us, and carried on.

"How are you doing, Mrs Shapiro?" I pulled up a chair beside her. "I thought you'd be going home by now."

"I am not going nowhere," said Mrs Shapiro. "They say I must go into the oldie-house. I tell them I am not going nowhere."

She folded her arms determinedly across the front of the green dressing gown. The argument with the old lady was obviously just a warm-up for a much bigger argument to come.

There was a new sister on duty, a young girl who looked hardly older than Ben.

"What's happened with the home a.s.sessment?" I asked.

"The report's just come through. They're recommending residential care. I'm afraid she's not very happy about it."

"I really don't see why she needs residential care. She was managing fine."

"Yes, but you know, once they start falling, they can very easily lose their confidence. Especially at her age."