‘Tamara Cleo. You know fine it’s some greasy, bearded bloke up in Barnet.’

  ‘Yeah. High Barnet,’ I said.

  Lou slapped the pages. ‘Look, boyo. Here’s how we’ll do it for easy money and to preserve sanity. For each book, one of us reads the first ten pages, one of us reads the middle ten pages then we both read the last ten pages. Do we really need to know any more? Then we’ll rustle up fifty bloody words of some blabber, or whatever it’s called.’ He frowned at my copy. ‘And how is it at the Vampire Brothel? You don’t see the same customers twice?’

  ‘Brothel of the Vampire. Hero is a dozy copper, outraged by a dropped crisp packet or a vampire chewing a toddler’s neck. Actually seems to be some real anti-vice sentiment; you can’t have a book where the whores triumph, so both vampires and whores look doomed to go down together.’

  ‘These books are terrifying, but not in the way intended. Let’s get some lovely Guinness down us for a bit of Montezuma’s revenge. It’ll go nicely with the reading.’

  So that’s how we did it for horror book after book, suffering through the beginnings, the middles and the ends.

  *

  This time it was I who went to collect the cash from Toby’s secretary on Fulham Road.

  The belle Belle was behind her desk in a dress that looked more like a sequence of small stoat’s or weasel’s footprints which had been run over by a tractor on a big white sheet.

  ‘Toby’s in the country,’ she made clear before I’d even reached the desk. ‘With his wife,’ she smiled vacantly.

  I handed over the A4 envelope of our copy and she slid across a smaller one. I checked it was eighty quid, right in front of her.

  ‘Where’s your friend today? Loo-Ell-En?’

  ‘He’s otherwise engaged.’

  ‘So you’ll be taking me for a drink this lunchtime, then?’

  ‘I can’t, Belle. I’d love to, but I’ve had to give up alcohol. I’m on antibiotics.

  She nodded. ‘I won’t ask,’ she said, but she leaned back in her seat, quite relaxed. With a knowing voice, she went on, ‘So, you two aren’t writing a book on that man, from that awful band?’ Now she leaned forward and twisted a pencil round and round on her desk. ‘I prefer Scritti Politti. Something soulful.’

  ‘That all fell through.’

  She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Really? It fell through, did it? Funny, that. The same thing happened with the last fellow Toby was getting to do all his little bits and bobs. A small man; can’t remember his name now, though it wasn’t so long ago. He wanted to be a novel writer too. Some people would say that Toby was just using you, wouldn’t they?’ She moved her long fingers and peppered little repeating rhythms onto the A4 envelope. ‘Yes, funny, that.’

  I moved my head at her and smiled in both acknowledgement and admiration. I walked away. ‘We needed the money. See you later, then.’

  18

  It had happened. Aoife had an interview coming up at LTM, the big model agency, and Lou got me alone in my room. ‘You need to go with Eeef tomorrow.’

  ‘Abby can go. She’s coming over in the morning anyway, to help with all the make-up stuff.’

  ‘I know that, but I need you to pal her up to this agency joint. Needs to be a bloke goes with her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We can’t afford taxis, Cunningham. She needs to go there and back on the Tube. Wait till you see how she has to dress. You can’t turn up looking like a nun at blessed Easter. Have to show you’re confident about your body and you need to show it off. None of them admit it, but they’re showing how skinny they all are, so they wear short skirts, smoky sunglasses during a London winter; all that kind of shit. I need you to go with her. Keep men off her.’

  ‘It’s London in broad daylight. Not a football club in Donegal.’

  ‘Please, Cunningham.’

  ‘If it makes you happy, of course I will.’

  ‘Ta. Keep an eye on her at this agency. Stupid gorillas and damn sleazers up there.’ He winked.

  Abby materialised at eight thirty in the morning – an hour not agreeable to those crafting in literature – and she began creating Aoife, who’d got up and showered at seven. Aoife and Abby seemed more preoccupied with appearances than they had in preparation for Lou and Aoife’s wedding – perhaps they were even more excited.

  Lily was crying and I had to hold her and feed her in the front room while Lou lunged about with a fag in his mouth, to no purpose, like the expectant father he once was.

  Aoife came out of the bedroom much more subtle than I had feared. Hair down naturally, powdered, louche face, an extraordinarily short skirt, black tights and tan leather boots.

  ‘Her legs are too thin for those boots,’ Abby maintained.

  Aoife looked directly at me and shrugged apologetically. ‘I like them.’

  It was like looking at someone you knew well, transformed by a uniform of duty for a strange and distant war. She’d been replaced by an idea which had been thought up somewhere else, by another sensibility. A male one, of course. Aoife as cosmopolitan beauty was a first-class disguise and she confessed to me, ‘You have to dress like this. Every girl walking round in there is really beautiful and all done up and they know I’ve had a baby so they’ll be all watching—’ Her voice trailed off and she looked out the window, squinting at the harsh natural light.

  I nodded. ‘But that’s okay. You look super sexy.’

  ‘Steady on, the bloody Scotch lodger,’ Lou muttered.

  Aoife turned back to me, her eyes hard into mine. It was a strange look – as if I were the only one untainted by this perilous game and she sought consent.

  Lou clapped his hands much like Toby Hanson. ‘Right, great. Cunningham’s going to tag along with you, love.’

  Aoife had obviously been firmly briefed on this matter and she stubbed her head once, but Abby was amazed.

  ‘Why is Douglas going with her?’

  ‘To keep an eye on her on the Tube and up the West End.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to her on the Tube?’

  ‘Look at her, Abby. She looks— Some weirdo could follow her.’

  Abby frowned at me but spoke to Aoife. ‘He’s not going into the actual agency with you, is he? Oh for God sake, Lou. It’s not some porn agency. That’s Susie Bic’s agency. It’s upmarket; respectable.’

  Lou stood still. ‘Why shouldn’t Cunningham go inside the agency?’

  ‘For one thing, he might be taken for a moody, possessive husband or boyfriend.’ Abby stared at Lou. ‘That’s why you aren’t going. Agencies don’t want the slightest hint of that. They want independent gals. And in those unspeakable shoes that are as bad as his old ones; jeans, tartan work shirts and that dead Scottish otter jacket, or whatever it is. He’ll cramp her natural style.’

  Aoife said, ‘Don’t be so cruel. Douglas is very handsome. And he has beautiful eyes.’

  ‘Okay, Cunningham. She’s convinced me. Wait outside the agency, and wear my coat at all times.’

  She was so tall in those boots, Aoife had to step sideways, descending the stairs of Almayer House with her arms held up, hands supporting her on the walls all the way down. I walked ahead to catch her if she fell and Abby snapped orders from behind us. We headed along Bollo Lane, waving upwards at Lou, who watched us from the living room, holding Lily to the window. What did he make of us from up there? Abby carried her make-up bag, which folded out like a field medic’s amputation set. I was wearing the macintosh with the small bloodstain on the inside lining and Aoife had a dark woollen coat over her short skirt.

  Before she left us, Abby fired out quite a lot of information at Aoife about other girls to name-drop, but I couldn’t help myself thinking that, for all her bluster, Abby wasn’t getting that much modelling work herself. She kissed Aoife on both cheeks, then Abby moved up the road back towards Ealing.

  Inside Acton Town Tube station, I tried to ponder if we should buy full day passes and go somewhere in town together, after her interview.

  She asked, ‘Where? We’ve no money.’

  I tried to encourage her. ‘There are things you can do for nothing in London.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go up the Monument.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Monument.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘At Monument. That’s what it’s called. Where the Great Fire of London started. You can climb up the stairs inside looking three hundred feet down the middle of it.’

  ‘Oh great. For three hundred feet below me, people will be able to look right up this bloody skirt.’ She slapped at the flank of her wool overcoat, whipping out a glimpse of long thigh.

  ‘Leave your coat on,’ I said.

  She stared directly back at me. I’d never seen her in such a bad and snappy mood. I went morose.

  We got onto a Piccadilly Line train for Aoife’s intended stop at Green Park. She swiftly told me that Green Park was once Lou’s stop, when he was hall portering. She spoke as if it were some lost golden age, and with a hint of a reprimand to me.

  On the train we sat on the seat row which faces the one opposite, Aoife taking her place first. I had hesitated then stepped beyond her, one seat further and I sat down against her left side. Someone had jettisoned most of a Guardian on the seat across, so I reached over, drew it to me and looked at it for a few moments with disinterest. Cluelessly, like a dribbling liberal, the Guardian was still straddling the fence over the miners, as if there actually were two valid arguments. You could feel dark, undemocratic forces were at work, smearing and fearing and being supported by middle-class cluelessness. The Secret Service, doubtless in action as usual, justifying their huge cost, protecting the national interest and other millionaires’ assets. In the future, people would ask where you stood and what you did at this historical moment during the miners’ strike. What was I doing? I’d dropped a few coins in a bucket and I was looking at a female model’s leg.

  Piccadilly Line trains ran fast and non-stop after Turnham Green, through Ravenscourt Park until Hammersmith, so we battered along at quite a velocity on the elevated track. Aoife’s upper left arm rocked, pushed and actually bumped a few times, against my right arm.

  I turned towards her. ‘Not nervous?’

  ‘Course I am. It’s not like a normal job where who you are actually counts for something. With this job, who you are doesn’t matter one little bit, it’s only what you look like. Imagine how that would feel to you? It’s like you have no soul.’

  I nodded. I saw her left hand resting there, the coat hanging open. Her skirt so short – she was just all legs in black-patterned tights and the hand with the wedding ring rested uselessly on the thigh of her left leg. I reached with my right hand, gave her fingers a silly little squeeze then withdrew my hand straight back into my lap. She turned with a very weak smile.

  ‘You look great. Very beautiful. You’ll be fine and they’ll put you back on the books.’

  She nodded. Just maybe two smart bumps of her head. I could feel I was smiling, the same forced, muscular grimace as when I pull back my lips to brush my teeth. I looked down. My right hand had reached out and rested upon Aoife’s hand again. I looked at my hand there. Was that why I had sat on her left, so I could use my right hand? Her hand didn’t react, it just lay there as my own rested on top, like two trilobites, one mounting another. I could feel her wedding ring so I took my hand off and moved it slightly forward, beyond her fingers. I put my palm down softly on that uncrossed left leg, a bit above the knee. The train’s movement cautiously shook my hand while it lay limply – as if trying to dislodge it. I widened out my fingers, shaping them to the contours of her leg; the heat through the black tights was of her living flesh which I speculated so much upon.

  I couldn’t look at her face. I looked at her leg with my hand spread out on it like something that had fallen from a height, as if it were justified being there. The train lurching from side to side was very noisy and I wasn’t sure I was taking in breaths.

  I was looking ahead across the slatted floor to the varnished wood of the far windows. My hand was resting on Aoife’s leg as we rocketed along and she hadn’t even told me to drop dead yet. I dared to shift my eyes toward her. She was looking directly ahead. Suddenly her red lipstick turned to my ear and my body violently stiffened. Her voice seemed to have dropped into a lower timbre. ‘Douglas, I have an interview.’

  I nodded slowly and I turned to look and her. I frowned at her flecked, damaged irises.

  ‘Douglas?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have an interview ahead here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The bloody cursed train was slowing down. I just wanted it to keep moving through London and onward, up to Theydon Bois or wherever-the-hell; some technical emergency so they could never stop, for two hours. Two days. Circling the Circle Line. We’d sleep on the floor together.

  I realised how dry my throat had become. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘I need to think right now. About that.’

  ‘What else could you think about?’ I replied, full of dread. The train was really slow by then and not moving in open air but submerged down in some sequence of black brick walls with the sky a bright roof, rammed up somewhere above us.

  ‘I don’t want to be upset or distracted.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t want—’

  There was a jerk and we both nudged into each other a bit. The train had stopped in the Hammersmith station. The doors hissed and opened soberly.

  ‘—you to be upset.’

  ‘Aoife?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How could I be upset, how could I?’ With a huge effort – because I saw a man stepping on to the train and coming our way – I lifted my hand from her leg and swung it back toward me.

  This person sat diagonally across from us, glanced at Aoife’s legs, as any normal man would, then he looked down. He appeared sad, I thought.

  Nothing was said. The doors closed and the train began moving again.

  ‘You look so beautiful.’

  ‘Douglas.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I—’

  I interrupted. ‘I wish there was somewhere we could go. There’s no bloody escape.’

  I moved my hand back towards the leg but now she slowly shook her head with an aware certainty. ‘Somewhere to go?’ she suddenly queried.

  I took heart. ‘Maybe you should come away with me somewhere? For the day. A day out. Today.’

  She looked round.

  ‘Can I put my hand back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Okay. I can deal with that.’

  She frowned. ‘Have you and Lou been drinking this early?’

  ‘No. I’m telling you what I feel.’

  In a blank, very low voice to try to conceal it from the other passenger, she turned her face toward me, ‘What you were feeling was my leg.’

  I smiled at her.

  ‘How many more stops?’ she said in a clear, casual voice.

  Then I closed my eyes and opened them. We jerked to a halt and our faces had moved closer. The doors hissed. We’d arrived in some damned shadowy grotto, a chlorophyll light – actual ferns were growing down here – I could see them, just out of my peripheral vision through the window glass and behind her small shoulder. I could see ferns because I’d turned my head far aside to try and kiss her on the mouth but she saw it coming and jerked her head away as if a fly had settled on her lips – as she must have done at thirty school dances, in the shadows of disco light. A similar mausoleum gloom.

  ‘Watch my make-up.’

  I whispered, ‘You’re a Catholic but don’t you ever think we’re already living in Hell? We might not be, but some are.’ I knew there wasn’t much time so I stood up and quickly walked out the open doors onto the platform of Earls Court station and the train doors closed behind me.

  I leaned slightly over and looked back into the train, through the window glass; Aoife and her legs, alone on that bank of seating. It was as if I were peering into a miniaturised, petrified doll’s house interior, lit by small bulbs, considering a scale model of a preserved past where I’d once existed.

  Aoife was staring straight ahead, seemingly with relief, as if I did not exist and never had in her entire life. The train moved off, rattling with an hysterical excitement.

  I slid my Yale key into the lock of 506 and turned it. I’d taken two steps into the hallway when I knew something was badly wrong with Lily because Lou said a word with an aged and inevitable weariness and he’d phoned up Abby, who spoke back to him in fear, but with no attempt to talk quietly – for Lily’s sake – as if Lily were not present or worse: unconscious.

  ‘What is it?’ I called and ran quickly down the corridor, over the patch of carpet – yet the bedroom was darkened by the curtains as I saw Lily asleep in the cot and then Lou and Abby in the bed together. Him next to the bookshelves, his shoulders white and bare, surprisingly narrow – Abby on Aoife’s side, looking right at me.

  ‘Okay, then,’ I said in the manner of a statement.

  ‘Why are you back so soon? Are you alone?’ Lou asked in a reasonable voice.

  The air was cool in there, so the bedspread mostly covered them – which was human enough. Soon they both sat up, only slightly on their elbows, each with a certain impatient, querulous expression as they watched me in the half-light as I looked at them. They listened beyond me into the stillness of house space behind.

  ‘She’s at that agency. I came back alone.’ I made a huge mistake then; I took a step to the cot and held out my hands as if to lift the sleeping baby.

  Lou did not raise his voice, which made his tone more chilling, and he also moved out of the bed with huge speed in a frantic, feminine bustle – but nonetheless he stood beside me in an instant.

  ‘Don’t you even dare wake her,’ he said.

  My hands fell back uselessly as if my arms had been broken by his words.