86. On the Ins and the Outs of Building a Big Bloody Monument in the Middle of a Garden

So the four children of Valerie Barrett stood below the giant, stripped tree and looked up in awe.

“I want to carve the head,” said Camille.

“I’ll do the features,” said Sara. “Rowan, why don’t you and Jim do the body shape together?”

“It’s a bit narrow, don’t you think?” said Jim.

“No,” said Camille. “She’ll have her arms by her sides.”

They all nodded. Rowan and Jim were the first to get to work, drawing on the wood the areas that they would be cutting out. “Michelangelo said, ‘I see the angel in the stone and I set her free.’,” Jim sagely observed.

“Fucking moron,” said Rowan, consciously.

Work on the monument was slow and unpopular. Once or twice, the neighbours threatened to call the council, “But have you got permission for that?” they asked. Camille tried to dead with them each time—she would explain, sobbing, if necessary, that their mother had died, in a terrible way, that this was something they needed to do as a family, that all they asked for at this awful time was a little compassion.

There was only one man who didn’t find this acceptable, their neighbour Sam Daniels. Camille had to tell him it was temporary monument, that upon completion they would burn it. She explained it was part of their religion, and she gently pointed out that to stop them honouring their murdered mother would not only appear callus to others, but may well also be discriminatory on the grounds of freedom of religious expressed. Exasperated, Sam backed down and left them in peace.

Over the next few days, the weather began to pick up. Crisp, bright mornings replaced the dark, depressing ones that had become a permanent feature of their lives for the past months. The work became slowly more pleasurable, and the giant Valerie began to take shape. The only time any of the Barrett siblings left home was for quick shop runs; mostly they lived off of fast food, ready meals or crisps and chocolates. They all found themselves beginning to think less and less about the outside world.

Jim had not spent a single moment thinking about his probabilities or his dice since building started. He and Rowan had arranged the work into shifts: they would do three hours on, one hour off. They probably would have worked into the night, but for the difficulties the bad light would have presented: the weak security light affixed to the outside of the house wasn’t nearly enough to carve by. The work consumed Jim entirely.

Rowan, too, forgot for a while about his new career as a vigilante. He and Jim were getting on well, and, more importantly, working well together. It was the first time that Rowan had ever felt close to anyone. They barely argued, the two Barrett brothers; although, truth be told, they barely spoke, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, they were working together, working to create something, working towards something.

That sense of working towards, rather than working against, was the most unique thing about the whole experience for all of the Barrett siblings. For her part, Sara had never previously gleaned any satisfaction whatsoever from any work—or anything that even remotely resembled work. But this, she enjoyed. She was the self-appointed overseer, site manager, frequently taking five steps back so as to see the bigger picture, to comment, “A bit more off there,” or, “Her leg was thinner than that,” or, “Rowan, I think we all need a tea, hmm?” And nobody minded, because the system was working.

Then there was Camille, working right up at the top, getting that head shape right, working to a photo of Valerie that she had found in the sideboard in the front room. It showed their mother aged twenty-two, after Camille and Sara had been born, but before Jim and Rowan came along. She was reasonably attractive back then, but she had never been beautiful. Camille saw it as her job to take this plain woman in the photo, and correct her features, subtly, in ways to draw out her beauty. On some level, she thought her own genetic interpretation of Valerie was a refinement—although she would never say that aloud, of course. Deep down, she found the whole idea of comparative attractiveness unsavoury, but accepted that without it, people—men—probably wouldn’t have any interest in her at all.

The four worked on, now impassioned sons and daughters, now dispassionate artists—it didn’t matter which guise they worked under, the more important point was that they were working at all, and together at that!

87. Sam Daniels

The neighbour with the biggest objection to the killing, stripping and mutilating of a tree was ageing environmentalist Sam Daniels. This cantankerous, greying man hobbled over to the Barrett’s on a daily basis; to complain or just to watch. When Camille told him the were putting the tree up for religious reasons, he found it difficult to believe her, but then he couldn’t prove otherwise; and besides, people were up to all manner of things these day… the things people did in the world really weren’t what they once had been: understandable, sensible, useful.

In his day, no bastards would be carving a twenty foot statue of their mother out of a tree.

He thought a lot about his childhood, in those days he spent watching the Barrett kids build their statue. When you walked down the street in those days, you knew what everything was. The factory over there made clothes, the one over there made toys. The smoke coming out of the chimney was from coal fires.

These days, it was all different. Nobody but the people in the factories and offices knew what was going on inside. These great industrial estates had popped up some years ago; these giant brick buildings, some with hundreds of employees all with machinery it took a graduate to turn on, let alone repair or maintain. You couldn’t tell what something did by looking at it anymore!

And jobs for life had long gone—people in one minute, out the next—there was no loyalty anymore. Not from the citizen and not from the companies. It was precisely because of the facelessness of the businesses, the imposing nature of the structures, the incomprehensible workings that the relationship between employer and employee had broken down so badly, Sam believed.

All of this, he would go on, to anyone who would listen, had devalued quality. Nobody cared about the companies they worked for, nor did they understand the machinery involved, so naturally they didn’t care about the quality of the final product, either. In the days when everything was handmade, each item was crafted with care. Now those days have passed, “It’s the flat-pack generation,” Sam would declare. But nobody listened to him, nobody cared.

A big part of the reason that nobody took him seriously was because he was so old and because he compared everything they had grown up with to things that they had never known and never experienced. For Sam, it was like trying to explain green to a blind man.

A thankless task!

88. Mark at Work

Sara had taken some time off work to do some family things, so Mark was alone in the office. One morning, a large group of impeccably turnout out men filed past his window, so he naturally went out to see what was going on. It seemed these young professionals all worked for FlameBrand, the company that owned the luxury meeting room on the top floor. But as Mark looked closer, he noticed a number of them were wearing delegate badges, meaning they were probably externals.

Mark had an idea.

He put on the tie he kept for emergencies such as this in the drawer by his desk, and slipped outside. He caught up with the group on the stairs, and walked behind them, as casually as possible. When the opportunity arose, he spoke to one of them, tried his best to blend in.

Everyone filed into the meeting room, Mark couldn’t believe he was finally inside. The ceiling was painted like a sky, the chairs were more expensive than most of the remaining furniture in his house… it was incredible.

No sooner had they all sat down around the magnificent table that dominated the centre of the room, than the FlameBrand employees began talking business. They were gauging client reactions to a new project; Mark, as one of the delegates, was supposed to offer his thoughts. The product in question was some kind of bluetooth telephone design.

“It’s super,” Mark said, when it was his turn to speak. And then, in a desperate bid to impress, he continued, as if possessed, “It’s um, design is good, is cool, I mean… ergonomic… Stylish… Encourages communiction… the um, oneness of man..?”

One of the FlameBrand employees raised an eyebrow, and asked him if he had anything more to add.

“Can I have a job?” Mark said.

The answer was no.

89. Simon and Steve get a touch of Cabin Fever

Steve, who had always been the more aggressive of the Simon-Steve-Sean gang, paced up and down the living room, wringing his hands and tutting and occasionally muttering to himself.

“For fuck’s sake, Steve,” said Simon. “Will you please sit the fuck down!”

Steve stopped for a moment, gave Simon a hate filled stare, and then carried on where he left off. “You have no idea what it’s like,” he said. “I’ve been stuck in here for weeks, Simon. You don’t know how much I need to get out. I am not the inside sort, you know that, you know that, you fuck. You have no fucking idea what it’s like for me.”

“It’s the same for me,” Simon said, trying to remain calm. “Working yourself up isn’t gong to do any good, is it?”

“I need to get out!”

“Have you forgotten that you are wanted for murder?” Simon hissed.

“I don’t care anymore, I can’t stay inside all the time, I need air!”

“You would get a lot less fucking air behind bars,” Simon pointed out.

Steve did not reply to that, he simply continued pacing and tutting and sighing.

“Look—it won’t last forever,” Simon said, trying to be reassuring.

Steve stopped abruptly and turned to Simon. “How long?” he said. “When will we leave?”

“Soon…”

“We could go up north!” Steve said. “We could go to Scotland! Do you need your passport for that?”

“No…” said Simon. “But it’s not safe, not just yet. We need to wait till things cool down a bit, sell up—get rid of everything we’ve got, and use the cash to get away and start again. I think we’ll need to go farther than Scotland…”

“Ireland?”

“I was thinking Mexico.”

“Mexico!”

“Yeah… we’d need fake passports, of course…”

“So you’re telling me that I’m stuck here, where I can’t do anything or see anyone, and all I’ve got to look forward to is going to some shithole country where I don’t understand a word they’ll be saying. I can’t speak a word of Mexican!”

“They speak Spanish in Mexico,” Simon said.

“Arsehole! What fucking difference does it make? I can’t speak Spanish either!”

“We’ll learn a bit… it’ll be fine.”

“I might as well be fucking dead,” Steve said, bitterly. He picked up a small ornament from the dressing table and threw it into the mirror, sending shards of glass everywhere.

“You’re a fucking liability!” Simon said, on his feet now, face to face with Steve.

Steve took a deep breath and backed off. “I’m cool,” he said. “But I want you to know, this is your fucking fault, Simon. This whole mess we’re in… Sean… everything. This is you’re fucking fault.”

“It’s all going to turn out fine,” Simon said.

He was convincing no-one, not even himself.

90. Et Voil
à!

The industry of the Barrett children, the buzz of activity that had been going for what seemed like forever, suddenly stopped.

They had all been so involved in the building, the creation, of the monument to Valerie Barrett, that they had almost forgotten there was a time before they started making it; of course there was, and in many ways it was that time that hung over them like a dark cloud, that had spurned them forward every day to continue working, to get the job done. For days the labour had given them purpose. It had filled the void left not by their mother, but by their lives in general; for each of them, everything they had done until their mother was killed had been empty, meaningless. Whether it was Rowan with his casual violence, Camille’s dalliances with casual sex, Sara’s job or Jim and his probabilities, the commonality was activities without substance. Or, more accurately, activities that had no substance for them. There were, of course, men and women that found their life’s work in violence, sex, office work or numbers—but the Barrett kids were not those men and women, not at heart.

Building the monument had changed something within each of them. From the first moment, when Fred and Frank had brought the tree down, and they had worked together to strip it bare and re-erect it as a blank canvass on which they could work, they felt different. They felt purposeful, more than anything. It was beyond making something to honour their mother, it was about creating something to honour themselves.

And now it was finished; that activity that had kept them so busy, that purpose that had driven them on was finished. The four of them—Camille, Sara, Jim and Rowan stood underneath it in the fading afternoon light, hands on hips and looked up.

The were all in agreement it was finished, and that was the most depressing thing.

None of them had the words to do the sense of anti-climax they felt justice.

91. Sam Daniels: One Version of Events

From Sam Daniel’s house it was possible to see the Monument clearly. If you had a good pair of binoculars, you cold see it clearly; you could even see the four Barrett siblings standing around it, hands on hips, anti-climactic expressions and all.

Sam Daniels had just such a pair of binoculars.

He went round to the house—he had a few things to say to the Barrett’s about their construction.

“Remove it immediately!” he demanded of Camille.

“But our mother died!” she protested. “This is our tribute to her…”

“Most people get a bench,” Sam Daniels said. “Or a plaque—but this, this is a disgrace.”

“Well, we did talk about those things…” Camille said. “Like we told you, it’s not permanent, we’ll take it down soon.”

Sam Daniels was furious. It wasn’t good enough. These people think they can do whatever they want—whatever happened to rules?

It was with these thoughts that Sam Daniels stepped out into the road. He was so wrapped up in his own anger, he didn’t look. A bus rounded the corner and knocked him down. He died instantly.

Poor Sam!

92. Sam Daniels: Another Version of Events

From Sam Daniel’s house it was possible to see the Monument clearly. If you had a good pair of binoculars, you cold see it clearly; you could even see the four Barrett siblings standing around it, hands on hips, anti-climactic expressions and all.

Sam Daniels had just such a pair of binoculars.

He went round to the house—he had a few things to say to the Barrett’s about their construction.

“It is absolutely fantastic!” he said to Camille.

“It’s because of our dead mother,” she said. “This is our tribute to her…”

“And to think—most people get a bench,” Sam Daniels said. “Or a plaque. But this—this is wonderful.”

“Well, we did talk about those other things…” Camille said.

Sam Daniels was gushing praise. What wonderful kids. They say that people don’t care for there elders these days—well, here was proof they did.

It was with these thoughts that Sam Daniels stepped out into the road. He was so wrapped up in his own goodwill, he didn’t look. A bus rounded the corner and knocked him down. He died instantly.

Poor Sam!

93. Jim & Jenny (again)

Despite the emptiness that was left by having completed the monument, Jim was buoyed his achievement in the manual labour stakes and decided it might be worth trying to get Jenny to go out with him again.

“I’m a man,” he said to his reflection in the mirror. “I’m a man.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” shouted Rowan, who overheard the mantra as he was passing Jim’s room.

Jim took three deep breaths and picked up the phone.

“Hello?” Jenny said. “Jenny McElroy speaking.”

“Jenny… it’s me, Jim. Jim Barratt.”

“Oh, hi Jim!”

Sounds good, Jim thought. Positive. Just ask her out. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“Jim? You there?”

“Y-Yes… I—”

“How can I help?”

“I—I—” he was floundering. “I need to see you,” he said.

“Jim? Is this about what we discussed the other day?”

Shit! This was going nowhere. Jim panicked, his mouth went into autopilot. “No, no, it’s about my mother. I think I know something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think I have some information.”

“What kind of information.”

Jim didn’t know. “Could we meet in person?”

“Sure,” said Jenny. “How about I come round later?”

“No, no,” said Jim, not wanting to have to explain the monument to her. For the first time it occurred to Jim that building a giant monolith of a murdered loved one might seem odd in some people’s eyes. “Maybe we can meet in the pub? Do you know The Yellow Torch?”

“Yes,” said Jenny. “Shall we say seven o’clock?”

“Okay,” said Jim. They said goodbye. No sooner had Jim hung up than he found himself face down on the floor in a considerable amount of pain.

“Ow! Fuck! What are you doing Rowan?”

“What do you know?” shouted Rowan.

“What?”

“What information do you have for Jenny?”

It dawned on Jim that later, when he met her, he would have to come up with something. “Shit!” he said. “I don’t know anything… I lied…”

“You lied?”

“I panicked, I was trying to ask her out…?”

“And that was the best you could do?”

Jim nodded pathetically. “I don’t know what happened,” he said.

“Shit,” said Rowan, letting Jim go. “You really are a fucking idiot, aren’t you?”

94. Three Became Two, Two Become One

Mark returned home from work to a bad atmosphere at home. Simon and Steve weren’t talking. Usually, it was Mark who dampened the spirits of the others; as much as he hated and feared the two of them, he was curious to know what was going on.

“How are things?” he asked casually.

“Make some dinner,” barked Steve. Again, unusual: that was the first time Steve had been rude or nasty to Mark. Simon was regularly horrible, of course, but Steve never joined in.

“Okay, okay!” said Mark. “I’m doing spaghetti bolognese. Is that all right for you both?”

Steve looked away and turned the television up. Mark went to the kitchen and began unpacking the shopping. Suddenly, Simon was behind him. “Hi Mark,” he said, patting him on the back. “Good day at work?”

“Um… Y—Yeah…” said Mark, worried about what might come next.

“Good to hear it!”

Mark stood in awkward silence for a moment, unsure why it was that Simon was smiling at him. Simon said, “Here, come on, let me help you with that…” and began putting the shopping away, carefully, neatly.

“Thanks,” Mark said.

“I’ll help you cook, too, if you like,” Simon said.

“Oh Simon, thanks but really, there is no need. I can—”

“I said I’ll help you cook,” Simon said, firmly.

“Uh—okay!” said Mark.

“What shall I do first?” Simon asked, once everything had been put away.

“Could you chop the onion?” Mark suggested tentatively.

“No,” said Simon.

There was a moment of silence. “Okay, well, you could—”

“I don’t do chopping,” Simon said.

“Sure, not a problem. Why not—”

“Can’t be trusted, you see,” Simon added. “You know, with knives.”

“Right,” Mark said.

“What if I grate some cheese? You can’t have bolognese without cheese, can you?”

“No,” agreed Mark. “You um—you certainly can’t.”

So Simon got the cheese and the grater and got to work. Meanwhile, Mark began chopping: onions, mushrooms, courgettes.

“Steve should really be helping, don’t you think?” said Simon.

“Well, I don’t mind, you know, he’s probably tired or—”

“No, Mark,” Simon said. “He should definitely be helping. Why don’t you ask him?”

“Me? I—No, I don’t think—I mean, it’s fine… We’re doing fine, aren’t we?”

“Hmm,” said Simon. “No, I don’t think so. All or nothing, I think.” And then, shouting: “Hey, Steve! Steve! Come here!”

“Fuck off,” was the reply from the front room.

“No, really,” continued Simon. “You should get in here. There’s something I want to show you.”

“Fuck… Off..!” Steve shouted.

“You’ll want to see this,” said Simon. “It’s our way out of here!”

Mark looked at his cousin quizzically. “What do you—” Simon shot him a look that shut Mark up immediately.

Steve wandered into the kitchen, scratching the back of his head and yawning. “This better be good,” he said.

“Oh, it is,” said Simon. “Check this out.”

The next thing Mark knew, he had been thrust into Steve by Simon; they were eye-to-eye. Mark looked in horror as Steve drew in a pained, sharp intake of breath. His eyes widened in shock.

Mark felt Simon let go of him. He recoiled and looked down at his hand. The knife he had been chopping mushrooms with was dripping blood. “What the…?” Mark began, but he fell into silence when he saw Steve, staggering backwards, collapsing. There was blood everywhere. “What did you do that for?” Mark said to Simon. “He’s dying…”

“Wrong,” said Simon. “On both counts.”

“What do you mean?” said Mark.

“I didn’t do anything, Mark, you did,” Simon said, smiling broadly. “And he’s not dying… he’s dead.”

95. Camille does what she does best

Camille, like all the others, felt empty.

Out of sheer desperation, she called Mark, but there was no answer. He was probably busy, she thought. It was probably for the best that he didn’t answer. She wasn’t stupid: she knew he didn’t like her.

She was drawing absentmindedly, of course.

She just liked to be in control. That was the problem for her now. She had nothing to control. It wasn’t that she couldn’t control the situation—she was always capable of doing that—it was that there was no situation. The future lay in front of her like an infinite empty expanse; a void; a black hole, even: sucking her forward, forward, forward to—to what? To nothing. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that in fact everything was nothing. People lived blinkered to this simple truth every day, she thought. They treat life as if it’s on tracks, like a train; as if one stop leads to the next and to the next, events that mark out the import of a life well lived, until the end of the line is reached and we ‘all change’ at the buffers. But it’s not the case. What’s closer, Camille thought, is space. A giant vacuous expanse of absolutely nothing, and the things that are out there—moons, planets, stars—are red herrings, one and all: dead, indifferent chunks of rock or collections of gas.

Yes, thought Camille, indifference. How can you control a world that is impervious to your grasp. Even Mark, precious Mark, who she had manipulated for a whole day and ridiculed, he was nothing more than flesh and body heat—what control over her life did toying with Mark demonstrate? None! She may as well have been a child moulding plasticine.

She looked in dismay at what she had done to the page. What had begun as one of her usual doodles had gone wild: she had coloured the whole page in black.

Not for the first time, Camille noticed she was crying.

96. Rowan does some more good for the community

Yes, and just like Camille, Rowan was feeling lost in a world that had become so purposeful when building the monument to their mother; a world that, since the monument’s completion, had become empty and shallow.

Rowan’s method of coping, however, was somewhat different to Camille’s. He wasn’t crying—quite the opposite, he was seeking to make others cry. He was on the warpath. The men who killed his mother were the target, and he wouldn’t stop short of getting them.

He was up and out by 7am, that morning. He decided that between now and when he finds the men, he will act to stop any form of wrong-doing he saw.

If there was one thing Rowan believed he knew, it was justice.

If there was one thing Rowan believed he was, it was justified.

The first incident he came across was a man pushing an elderly lady out of the way to get onto a bus before her. He had seen that there were few seats on the bus, he had seen that people were queuing up to get on the bus in an orderly manner, but he didn’t care. He wanted a seat, it seemed, and that was that!

However, that, as far as Rowan was concerned, was far from that.

Rowan got on the bus and watched the man read. He was a young professional of some sort: suit, tie, polished shoes, expensive briefcase, no doubt housing an expensive laptop. Rowan enjoyed the anticipation of what was to come. The man had no idea that his transgression would be punished.

The man got off the bus four stops on, and Rowan got off too. He followed the man through the streets of Highgate, and into the woods. It couldn’t have been more perfect! Choosing his moment carefully, Rowan ran up behind the man, grabbed him, and dragged him into the trees.

“What the f—” the man began to scream, but Rowan smacked him in the mouth.

“Shh!” Rowan said. “Someone might hear us!”

The man was visibly shaking.

“Do you know what you did?” Rowan asked.

“N—No…”

Rowan explained.

“D—Do you know the woman?” the man said. “Will you apologise for me?”

“No, and no,” said Rowan. “I think some form of restitution is in order.”

“Money?” said the man. “I’ve got money. Here, you can have it…”

“Hmm,” said Rowan. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Well what then?”

“I think…” Rowan said, menacingly. “I think I’ll take everything you’re wearing.”

“Wha—?” Another smack in the mouth. Rowan pulled the man’s clothes off, pausing every now and then to hit him in the face, when he made a noise. He opened up the man’s bag, sure enough there was a laptop in it. Rowan duly smashed it to pieces, threw it aside, and shoved the man’s clothes into the bag, which he slung over his own shoulder.

“That’ll teach you,” he said as he walked away.

97. The mess that’s left when someone makes you a murderer

The kitchen was covered in blood. It wasn’t like there was some blood here, some blood there: the kitchen was covered in blood. Mark very nearly stabbed his cousin—after all, what difference would a second dead body make?—but Simon was alive to the threat and took the knife from Mark’s shaking hand.

“Fucking hell,” Mark said. “Fucking, fucking hell.”

“Yep,” said Simon with a sigh. “You’ve got yourself in a pickle here.”

“Me?!”

“Of course! Who’s holding the knife, Mark? Who stabbed him?”

“You forced me!”

“Forensics wouldn’t see it like that, I don’t think…”

“You bastard!”

Simon stepped up to Mark, putting his face against his cousins. “You’re under a lot of pressure, I can see that, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” Mark was silent. “Take it back,” said Simon.

“No,” said Mark.

Simon punched him in the stomach, swift and hard. “Oof,” said Mark, doubling over.

“Take it back,” repeated Simon.

“Okay,” said Mark breathlessly. “I take it back…”

“Good!” said Simon brightly, helping Mark up to his feet. “So, what are we going to do, eh? What are we going to do?”

“We need to get rid of it!” said Mark.

“But—shouldn’t we call the police?” said Simon, his voice a parody of innocence.

Mark paid no attention. “You can steal a car,” he said. “We’ll drive it somewhere, dump it.”

“I don’t think I should be involved in something like that,” Simon said.

“Come on, Simon!”

Simon laughed. “So desperate, aren’t you? Okay, well, I’ll get the car if that would help… but that’s all. And you’ll owe me for that, Mark. Understand?”

Mark understood all to well. “Just get me the car,” he said.

98. Poster Campaign and Jenny & Jim (yet again)

The four children of Valerie Barrett came up with an idea, and it was a good one: they would have a grand unveiling of the monument. They would publicise it, get people in—maybe even journalists—and everyone would look at the monument and cheer and admire the wonderful handiwork of the Barretts, the kindness and consideration of the Barretts, the spirit of the Barratts.

Camille and Sara got to work on posters right away. Camille drew a simple representation of the monument and carefully wrote the title Grand Unveiling above it. Below, Sara wrote £free, the address, and the date and time people should turn up. Their brothers both agreed that the sisters had done a magnificent job.

Jim and Rowan, meanwhile, set about creating a cover large enough to hide the monument; after all, you can’t unveil something that plainly visible. They went to a local tent shop and managed to get the material they needed, as well as pins to stick it into the ground. Sara and Camille agreed that the brothers had done a magnificent job.

The posters that went up around town got a lot of attention, not least because from a distance, the monument looked undoubtedly phallic.

One of the people to half-notice the poster was Jenny, on her way to The Yellow Torch. Had she taken it in properly, she would have thought it mighty strange that Jim and the others had built a giant penis in memory of their mother, and were asking people to go and see it the next day. Fortunately, she didn’t take it in properly at all.

Jim met her in the pub at seven o’clock, as agreed. He thought Jenny looked beautiful. His hopes were high that he could get the situation sorted painlessly, and in a way that he still had a chance with her.

He had not come without a plan, in fact, he had thought it all through in detail. The plan was this: he intended to get her so drunk that she didn’t have any idea what was going on. By then, she would have forgotten all about the ‘information’ he had promised her. She would be in no state to go home, and would come back to his. They would have sex; he would no longer be a virgin, the world would be perfect: the end.

However, the plan fell apart from the very first minute. “I’ll have a lemonade,” said Jenny. “Now tell me, what is this information?”

99. Disposal

Jim pulled the body into the car, grunting in the darkness. Simon watched on, giggling like a child. “He always was difficult,” said Simon. “You’ve done the world a favour there, really,” he added.

Steve’s body thumped into the boot. “Come with me, Simon,” Mark pleaded. Blood streaked his hands and clothes; his eyes were red and puffy from crying and tiredness. “I can’t do this by myself.”

Simon clicked his fingers: “I know who could help… the police! Wait here, I’ll call them.”

Mark sighed. “Okay, okay, forget it.” He got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

“Wait,” Simon called, suddenly doubting his cousin. Sure, it was his fingerprints, his knife, but Simon had been there. It was all well and good making Mark think he would take the fall, but if Mark botched this, they were both going away for a very, very long time. “Wait…” Simon repeated. ”I’ll come.”

Simon dashed inside and returned with a variety of tools a couple of minutes later. He got into the passenger seat, and seemed to become a different man. He was organised, calculated. He directed Mark down streets he didn’t know: “Left here, right there, now, second right, right again at the lights…” Mark just did as he was told, grateful for the opportunity to stop thinking. He felt sick with exhaustion and anxiety.

At a set of traffic lights, a piece of paper blew onto the windscreen. Simon reached out and pulled it into the car. He read it casually and pocketed it. “Grand Unveiling,” it read.

Eventually, Mark and Simon arrived at a forest. “Dim your lights and drive in,” Simon ordered. Mark did so. After a few minutes of driving this way and that, Simon told Mark to stop. “Get out,” he said.

They dragged the body into the darkness. Simon looked around, as if for some kind of marker. “Have you been here before?” Mark asked. Simon pointed at half a dozen small sticks in the ground. Markers. “Once or twice,” he said. He passed a shovel to Mark and pointed at a spot behind the sticks. “Dig,” he said.

The dug together. It took almost two hours before Simon finally said, ”Okay, that’s enough.” Together, they pulled the body out of the boot of the car. Mark couldn’t believe that this was a person only hours ago. Now, it was nothing, not even usable meat.

Mark pulled the body towards the hole. “Not yet,” Simon said. For a terrible moment, Mark thought Simon might try and kill him as well, but much to Mark’s relief, he didn’t. Instead, he passed Mark the cheese grater he had been using hours before in the kitchen.

The next words Simon said filled Mark with horror. “You need to take away his fingerprints, his face, his teeth and his eyes.”

100. The unveiling or, finally, the ordeal is over!

The Barretts waited nervously at home for seven o’clock to come around. Everything was ready: the cover was over the monument, there was even a public address system set up for the grand unveiling. Jim had devised a clever pulley system that would allow Camille—who was to be giving the short introductory speech—to pull off the cover in a slick movement. Rowan, meanwhile, had bought lots of fireworks to let off when the time came. Temporary tables covered with food lined either side of the garden. The left over posters covered the fences on each side: in short, they had done an impressively professional job. All that remained now was to see if anybody would actually turn up.

But turn up they did—and in droves. Mostly, people were attracted by the free beer and food, but also there was a genuine sense of curiosity. Morbid curiosity, most commonly—”It’s a monument to their mother, she was murdered, you know…”—but curiosity nonetheless.

Rowan asked Jim about Jenny. “Will she be turning up,” he said.

“She saw the poster when we left the pub…”

“You left the pub together, did you?” Rowan asked, in a high-pitched sing-song voice.

“Yeah, about five minutes after we got there…”

“You scoundrel!”

“If only…” Jim said. The truth was that Jim, when put on the spot with her question: “What information?” had been unable to come up with anything at all, so he opted for honesty. His mother always said that “it’s the best policy.” Was it bollocks: Jenny put her drink down on the bar and walked straight out. That’s when she saw the poster. She was even less impressed than he thought she would be. “Jim,” she said, “I’m going to be honest with you. You and your family are fucking nuts. I’ll be coming to this, just to see what the freak show that is the Barrett’s can produce next.” Jim thought that quite an unprofessional thing to say, but thought better of commenting so.

But the biggest surprise of the night was the fact that Simon and Mark were there. Since getting home the previous night, both men had been drinking non-stop. When Simon rediscovered the poster in his pocket, he suggested they should go. Mark didn’t realise where it was, of course, but disagreed on the grounds it was too risky. He said this, having forgotten that their relationship was not one of equals. Simon didn’t need to ask a third time.

And by 7:30, the pair had arrived and were, unbeknown to them, standing behind Jenny McElroy, one of the investigating officers on the murder of Valerie Barrett.

Mark nearly fell over when Camille took the mic. “Our mother was a wonderful woman…” she began. But Mark had already tuned out. He was looking around—”Whathafuck’reyoudoin’?” Simon slurred drunkenly—and then, he saw her. Sara.

“Hey,” he called, over the speech. “Hey, Sara! S’me! S’Mark!”

Everyone looked over. Camille, still on the mic said, “Mark? Mark Selwyn? What the fuck are you doing here? How do you know my sister—?”

“Mark!” Sara said. “Shh!”

At this point, Jenny turned round. “Sweet fucking Christ—Simon? Simon Sanders? Is that you—?” Simon, drunk and panicked, punched Jenny square in the nose. Jim was standing a few metres away screamed in anger—”What the fuck—” In all the confusion, Camille accidentally pulled the pulley, bringing the cover of the monument tumbling down. Rowan, who was standing behind the giant figure of their mother, thought it was time, and launched the fireworks. Camille turned to him: “Rowan,” she said. “Rowan! It’s him!”

“Dad?” Rowan said, the colour dropping out of his cheeks.

“No! Fucking Sanders!”

“Where?”

Simon was trying to push his way through the crowd of people, but he couldn’t get past anyone in the confusion. Jim and Sara managed to grab him, and pull him back towards the makeshift stage that Camille stood upon.

“Call the police!” Camille called. “He murdered our mother!”

Rowan came around to the front of the stage to see the man he had been after for so long. The crowd gasped in surprise at Camille’s statement. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you all!” Simon yelled. “I’ll kill you like he killed Steve!” he added, pointing at Mark, who did his best to look shocked.

“Who did you kill, Mark?” Sara and Camille shouted together.

Mark made his was forward to explain: but they didn’t want to hear it. Meanwhile, the crowd pushed this way and that: here and there people fell into the monument and it creaked under all the pressure.

Rowan threw the biggest punch he had in the face of Simon Sanders, who reeled back. Sara slapped Mark, who also reeled. Both men fell on top of one another on the stage. The crowd by now had all but dispersed; the four Barrett siblings all joined in kicking and punching the two men on the stage, under the giant monolith they had created of their mother.

And in that moment, as the monument creaked and shook its way to the inevitable, each one of the family finally felt alive. With each kick placed, each punch that drew blood from either man, something of their own sins were absolved. Mark and Simon were soon finished, but the Barretts were far from done. The two dead bodies fell from the stage, but the family carried on fighting. As they screamed in the darkness, they had finally turned wholly on each other: all four Barretts, standing below the unsteady testament to their mother, rained blows on one another and in doing so, in both the giving and receiving, they finally knew what it was to be alive.

Jenny and the other guests stood at the front of the house, waiting for the police to come. From out there, the shouts and yells seemed to escalate unimaginably: when it seemed it could get no louder it did; louder and louder and louder until it seemed that nothing could stop the horror.

But of course, something could. The monument toppled. Valerie Barrett silenced her children once and for all.

77. The Funeral

At the family’s request, the only people at the funeral were the Barrett kids: Camille, Sara, Jim and Rowan and Valerie’s close friends Janice and Rodger.

Against Valerie’s wishes, her children had opted for a humanist cremation. None of them knew the first thing about her Catholic faith, neither did they have any intention of leaning. Janice had argued that it was enough that Valerie believed in heaven to justify a religious wedding, at which point Rowan began ranting and raving about how nobody but him really understood justification or justice or even Janice except him. He ‘got’ these things, he decided things, and in this case he decided that “God will not interfere with this funeral.”

The six attendees sat in silence as the funeral progressed. The man at the front talked of humanist values, about how the ideals of religion and the ideals of humanism are, at the end, not so very far apart.  “To treat each other well, treat them how we ourselves wish to be treated, is not an idea that belongs exclusively to the religious,” he said, “it is something that belongs to us all.”

Rowan felt as if he was being spoken to directly. It seemed to him that good will alone could not ensure people’s good behaviour. If ninety-nine men agreed that we should treat others as we wish to be treated, you could be certain that the hundredth would shout abuse at them, and surer still that at least a dozen would retaliate. It was necessary, therefore, for such good will to be policed. And not policed from the inside, for that could only lead to corruption and inequality. It had to be policed from someone who stood outside of morals, who saw with a clear eye the objective merits or demerits of human behaviour: in short, someone like Rowan.

“I am the hundred and first man,” Rowan muttered.

Sara punched him on the leg, hard enough to be a clear warning. All she could think about was getting through the next fifteen minutes uneventfully, without any kind of scene. The funeral didn’t sadden her particularly; in fact, it provided a great opportunity to think about her plans. She was sure now that she needed to get away, to find a place in the world that wasn’t London, that didn’t involve the commute—or perhaps even work at all, for that matter. She had reached the end, she felt; there was nowhere to go. Jim had said he foresaw his own life ending in suicide, but suggested no such similar thing for her. But when she looked in the mirror, she saw a doomed woman. She saw someone who, if they didn’t get a grip soon, would fade into nothingness slowly, by increments. She could quite easily imagine herself waking one day, seeing he slim body transfigured into little more than bones, sunken eyes, shadowy features. She could imagine a moment of realisation: the realisation of what she had become, of personal responsibility for allowing it to happen. And yes, finally, she could imagine making the choice to end it all. 

But that wasn’t what she wanted for herself. She was not a woman intent on self-destruction; like a scorpion she would only strike herself down if absolutely trapped. At the moment, she wasn’t in that position. She was still in control; her circumstances were what they were because of her own inertia. But it was time to change all that. Starting tomorrow. She would quit work, that would be a start. And then—well, then she would decide on something else. One thing at a time!

“Now,” the man continued, “we’ll play this piece of music, of which Valerie was immensely fond.”

As if, Camille thought, that man had any idea about what her mother was fond of. It was this kind of casual bullshit that upset Camille more than anything. What right did he have to speak as if he knew her mother? She didn’t, of course, appreciate the hypocrisy of her thoughts. She was, after all, the woman who had feigned collapse in order to get Mark Selwyn to spend the day with her. She was, after all, the woman who had led two men on, only to leave them standing, naked and foolish alone in their front room. And this was the woman, after all, whose first thought on hearing of her mother’s death was, “Will this make me famous?” 

But no, none of those things mattered to Camille as she sat, irritated and appalled by the humanist view that just because you didn’t know someone personally, does not mean that you did not know them at all.

The music ended and Jim stood. Having not been allowed to speak on the television at the public appeal, he had insisted on being able to say a few words here.

“My mother,” he began, “was a good woman, and a wonderful parent. She supported the four of us kids by herself, through thick and thin, no matter what. She, um, she protected us, and loved us and…” Jim trailed off. Not, as Janice thought, to hold back tears, to keep in some overflowing raw emotion—not because of that. Just because it dawned on him that he didn’t know or care about what he was saying, and really, he wasn’t saying it to anyone that didn’t know Valerie for themselves. In fact, the more he thought about the whole funeral, the more it seemed like a farce. His brother and sisters, sitting there, all wishing they were somewhere else. Janice and Rodger, clutching each other, clutching their tissues, clutching on to society’s expectations of their behaviour. For the first time, Jim thought he could understand a little of what Rowan was about. Not only that, but he could understand why Rowan behaved like he did. It was ridiculous, this whole set up.

Everyone was looking at him. The longer he went without speaking, the more everyone became captivated with him. The spell was finally broken when Janice cleared her throat gently. At the sound, Jim seemed to suddenly come alive again. Smiling as best as he could, he stepped down and stood in the aisle, facing the coffin. 

“Fuck this,” he said. “This is all bullshit.”

Janice gasped. Sara, Rowan and Camille couldn’t help but snigger. Jim pointed at the coffin and, in his most authoritative voice said, “Let’s get it over with, shall we? Can someone flip the ‘burn’ switch so we can all get out of here?”

78. Developments

Once the dust had settled on the funeral, Jim felt pretty good about himself. He called Jenny.

“How was the funeral?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said. “Good… You know, as funerals go.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I was calling to ask—”

“If we’ve got any news?”

“Um… yeah…”

“It’s funny you should call just now, because I was about to call you. We’ve had a sighting of the suspects in Kentish Town.”

“Is it definitely them?” asked Jim, trying to sound interested.

“Well, it’s been corroborated by two independent witnesses.”

Jim was thinking about how to ask her out, rather than what she was saying, so the lacklustre “Cool,” he muttered must have seemed a little odd to Jenny. They were quiet for a few moments. Then Jenny said, “I’ll keep you informed of any developments, of course.”

“Of course,” Jim echoed. 

“Well, good-bye then.”

“Jenny?”

“Yes?”

“Will you go out with me?” Jim blurted out.

“Excuse me?”

“I was hoping we could, um, you know, go out.”

“Go out? How do you mean?”

“On a date, perhaps?” explained Jim. He had never wished to undo a conversation in his life more than he did right now.

“Oh Jim—I… Well, it’s difficult…”

“I understand,” Jim said quickly, wanting the phone call to be over as swiftly as it could be.

“No… it’s the job, you see… it’s—policy!” she blurted the last word out almost triumphantly. “We’re not allowed,” she added. And then, to finish: “It would be unprofessional.”

“You don’t need to explain,” said Jim.

“It makes perfect sense,” said Jim.

“I understand,” said Jim.

A hat-trick of lies!

79. A Bit of Niceness for Mark

Mark’s murderous cousin Simon, along with his equally murderous friend Steven, were having a great time of making Mark’s life hell. Today was Wednesday—they had been staying in his Kentish town flat for three days. So far, they had smashed the television in his bedroom, sold a load of his things, torn some of the pages from his favourite books and eaten him out of house and home. They did these things during the day, while Mark worked. To add insult to injury, when Mark came home in the evenings they went out of their way to be polite. When Mark casually asked about his television or his missing things or his books or his food, Simon would innocently reply, “I don’t know what happened there Mark. Are you sure it wasn’t like that before?”

In short, they were making Mark Selwyn’s life hell. But something was happening at work that was making his life worth living: he and Sara were getting on.

Mark had decided that things were what they were and that was that. He couldn’t help it if Sara’s sister was crazy anymore than he could help it if his cousin was a murderer. And besides, the opportunity was too good to miss: how often did he get to spend seven hours a day alone with a vulnerable woman? He mother had been killed, her family were all insane; she was depressed and in need of support.

On Monday, Mark decided he would be the support she so desperately needed. When he arrived at work, he asked how the funeral went. As she spoke, he nodded sagely. He didn’t actually listen to anything she said, but he didn’t need to. All he had to focus on was keeping his expression open and sympathetic. It occurred to him it might be a good idea to touch her supportively, but he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. Eventually, at a particularly poignant moment in the story—something about her brother Jim shouting “Burn the bitch!”, or similar—Jim patted her on the top of the head. She looked more puzzled than consoled so he didn’t do it again.

On Tuesday, Mark decided to up the stakes a little. He brought a bottle of Vodka into work, closed the blinds to the office and told her she deserved not to think about anything except enjoying herself for the day. He even took the phone of the hook and disconnected the internet to prove he was serious. They talked for a while about the dead mother, but Sara was keen to change the subject. Unfortunately, everything Mark had planned to say was about bereavement—he’d even bought a book on the subject to appear wise—so Sara’s decision to avoid the topic scuppered him completely. They spent most of the day playing solitaire on their computers.

On Wednesday, Mark decided they needed a focus—so he took to work his chess board, his backgammon board and a 1980s edition of the game Operation. Sara didn’t like chess and didn’t understand backgammon, but seemed to enjoy the concentration Operation involved. They had a lot of fun trying to extract the organs from the body. Sara won more games than Mark, which made her happy. All in all, it was a major success. He was certainly very pleased with himself.

Things were going so well, in fact, that when he got home on Wednesday evening to find his fridge in the hallway on its side; his curtains cut like origami men—those that seem to be holding hands in a long row; and a half cooked rasher of bacon on his bed; he simply ignored it all and went to sleep on the sofa. 

The home life problems were overshadowed, being with Sara was a bit of niceness for Mark, richly deserved.

80. Another Nightmare for the Barrett Kids

In an unusual turn of events, for the second time in a matter of days the Barrett siblings all had the same dream.

It began with the enraged and bloodied face of their mother: brutalised, murdered, but present nonetheless, with all the undead malice of a movie zombie. 

In his version of the dream, Jim was reminded of the video shop job that never was.

For the rest, the experience was scary enough in what it appeared to be at face value. They were standing in the hallway, at the bottom of the stairs where Valerie’s body had been found. Their mother wasn’t impressed by being dead in the dream, not a bit of it. “What are you doing about it?” she demanded to know of her kids.

In his version of the dream, Rowan protested that he was out there, hunting the men down.

When she was finished being angry about their lack of action, she began berating them for their lack of compassion. “None of you cared. I raised you alone!” she shouted. It was as if all of the anger she had suppressed for a lifetime was coming out all at once. Her ragged, sagged, dead face was fired red with fury.

In her version of the dream, Camille began to cry without realising it again.

“It’s as if none of you can think of anything except yourselves,” she screamed, her hair flying back as if blown by an invisible wind. As she spoke, spittle flew from her lips and her voice was harmonised with an underlying roar that resonated with the ribs of all of her siblings; each felt as though they were literally being shaken from the inside. “You renounce everything of value!”

In her version of the dream, Sara pointed out that she worked for a living, that she wanted to make something of her life.”

“You can’t communicate with each other, or with anyone else,” Valerie continued. With each work she grew a few inches. The skin on her face wrinkled and scrunched in on itself, as if submerged under water. As she continued to shout, he voice became increasingly rasping. “You don’t know yourselves; you don’t know each other; you don’t know the world!” She stood nearly ten feet tall now and perfectly still, towering above all of her children, like some kind of horrific statue to herself. “You were united through me,” she said. “Without me you have fallen, scattered, blown apart as if carried by the four winds…”

In all versions of the dream, the reaction of the dreamer was the same: fear. Flames licked around Valerie’s ankles, unstoppable, insatiable. Suddenly her face turned to fear and pain, and in a voice almost unrecognisable she cried in a final act of supreme indignation: “YOU HAD ME BURNED!”

That was the last any of the Barrett children saw of their mother, living or dead.

81. What are the Odds?

The following morning, surrounded once again by the rubbish they had accumulated since Janice and Rodger came over to tidy up, Rowan, Sara, Camille and Jim sat in the front room and discussed their dream.

“I can’t believe we all had the same dream,” said Camille. “That’s like, proof of ghosts or something.”

“Yeah,” said Sara. “What are the odds?”

“Quite high, actually,” Jim said brightly. He had been quiet for a while, thinking it all through.

“How’s that?” Camille asked.

“Well, if you forget about statistics for a moment and ask yourself instead, ‘What is the likelihood of us all having the same dream?’, you would instinctively answer that it is not very likely at all. And you would be right to do so. But it’s like my dice theory: There is an ‘elastic limit’ to task repetitions, beyond which mathematical probability ceases to apply.”

The others looked at him blankly, but he pressed on anyway. “It’s quite simple, if you repeat something enough times, the laws of probability cease to apply. If you roll a dice enough times, eventually it will settle on one number and every time you roll it will be that number for ever more.”

“No matter how you throw it?” said Sara.

“Right. No matter how you throw it. And what I am saying is that dreams work in a similar way.”

Again, confusion all around on the faces of his brother and sisters.

“How many dreams have you had in your lifetimes? Thousands. And what are the odds of us all having the same dream—well, we’ve already said, very low. But probability in this case has reached and surpassed its elastic limit, so all our dreams are the same. I bet our next dream is the same, too. It’s even possible our last dream was the same…”

“What was your last dream?” asked Camille.

Rowan spoke first. “I saw him.”

“Dad?” said Camille, shocked.

Rowan nodded. Jim smiled and leant back in his chair. “Me too,” he said. “What about you, Sara?”

“Yeah… me too. I was in the kitchen—”

“Looking in the cupboards?” interrupted Camille.

“Fuck,” said Rowan.

“Weird,” Sara said.

“The point is,” said Jim, “that mathematics doesn’t know what the fuck it’s on about.”

82. A Relationship Blooms

Mark asked Sara to go for a drink with him after work. He even said, “You know, like a date.” To his immense surprise, she agreed. “Why not?” she said.

He could have said, “Because I spent weeks looking at you, thinking you were unattractive and flat-chested.”

Or he could have said, “Because I had a finger in your sister a few weeks ago…”

Or he could have said, “Because I am harbouring your mother’s killers in my home…”

But of course he said none of those things. Instead, he smiled broadly, put his the radio on and tapped away happily at his keyboard for the rest of the day.

At five o’clock, when work was over, the pair left work and headed to the nearest pub. Sara ordered a vodka, no ice, no lemonade, no nothing and Mark ordered a pint. Much to Mark’s surprise, Sara insisted they sat outside. It was freezing and Mark’s jacket was thin. But, he reasoned, it’s a small price to pay for a date with Sara.

He thought about that a bit, and accepted it wasn’t true. The truth was: it was a small price to pay for a date, full stop. That it was with Sara didn’t mean very much really. He was just glad to spend a few hours away from work and away from Simon and Steve.

“So,” he said. “What are your plans now? You said you would be thinking about moving on once the dust had settled on the funeral.”

“Yeah, I know,” she shrugged, lighting a cigarette. “But I’ve not really thought it through… Are you trying to get rid of me or something?”

“Ha—no, not at all,” Mark replied. He watched her smoke. There was, he supposed, something sexy about it. He tried to remember the last time he had a cigarette. He couldn’t, not really. He supposed it was at some party or other when he was young. He tried to remember parties from his youth; all he came up with was scenes from films. It occurred to him that perhaps there were no parties when he was young. And if there were no parties, there were probably no cigarettes either. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if any of those vague teenage memories actually happened. He was gripped by a sudden anxiety; it felt as if it could be that everything he had even pinned whatever small notion he had of being ‘cool’ or, at least, ‘normal’, now rested on decidedly shaky ground. Thinking quickly, he decided that regardless of what had gone before, and the circumstances of his life to this point, there was no reason why he couldn’t build himself a new self-image from this point on. He could begin now, he thought. This was just like the opportunity he had had when Camille collapsed that day—it was only his slowness to react that had led to the situation getting away from him. When Camille was there on the ground, he had the opportunity to run, to get away, to begin again. Perhaps he would have got on a plane and gone to another country; he would have sold his house from there, he would never have even needed to step foot on English soil. Just think of the advantages if he had done that! No work, no cousin, no trashed flat. No Sara either, but perhaps that was the small price to pay for a better life… but no—no, there was nothing to be gained from thinking like that. Right now was where he was, right now was what he needed to deal with. His last words, “Not at all,” still hung in the air. What if he were to ask for a cigarette? What would that mean? Would it present for him a new start in itself? He would be smoking—just one step removed from being a smoker. And smokers were nothing like Mark. Smokers were cool people, or at least normal people. He was sick of being pitied, sick of his own indecision and procrastination. Yes, fuck it, he would ask for a cigarette. Fuck the consequences, the heath risks, the financial commitment, the smell. He would ask—

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” Sara said, interrupting his train of thought, “but if you’re always this quiet and dull, it’s no wonder you’re single…”

83. Monument

Rowan, Camille and Jim were discussing their plans for something to remember their mother by when Sara arrived home from a fairly dismal date with Mark Selwyn, her boss. Everyone was smoking, so she joined in.

“We’re going to do something,” Rowan said. “Like get a bench or get an asteroid named after her or something.”

“I think a rose bush would be nice,” said Camille.

“And a plaque, perhaps,” added Jim. “She liked plaques.”

“What?” said Sara. “She liked plaques? What plaques did she like?”

“The one outside the corner shop,” Jim said. “For that policeman that died, you know.”

“No!” said Camille. “She hated it. She said it was too small, and too low—you can’t read it, she said. And the writing blended with the background, as well.”

“But she liked the idea of it,” Jim protested.

“I’m not so sure,” said Sara, sitting down.

“Fucking plaques, they’re talking about now,” Rowan said. It didn’t appear to be directed at anyone except himself, so the others ignored it.

“What about the bench idea, then?” said Jim.

“Where would it go?” asked Sara.

“The back garden?” offered Camille.

“Isn’t the point that other people use it?” Jim said. “It should go in a park or something…”

“I bet it would cost a fortune.”

“Lazy!” shouted Rowan. Again, nobody was sure who it was directed at, but Sara picked up on it anyway. “Rowan’s right,” she said.

Jim raised his eyebrows.

“Well it is lazy,’ Sara insisted. “What would happen? We would find a carpenter on the internet, pay him to make the bench; get a plaque done; call the council. It’s lazy… impersonal.”

“Since when did you care?” said Jim. “What’s all this about being personal all of a sudden? Like you were ever the model daughter!”

“Well you were hardly the model son, either, Jim,” retorted Sara.

“I never said I was,” he replied, raising his voice now. “Fucking hypocrite.”

“Why don’t you fuck off back to your dice and your tallying and your bullshit theories,” said Sara, “and leave the grown up stuff to us.”

“Arseholes, the lot of them,” Rowan muttered.

“What was that?” said Camille.

Rowan looked up in surprise. “What was what?”

“What did you just say?”

“Nothing!”

“Come on, you said it once, you can say it again!”

“I didn’t say anything!” Rowan shouted.

“You called me an arsehole!”

“No I didn’t… Rod did!”

Camille threw her arms into the air, exasperated. “What the fucking hell are you on about? Who the fuck is Rod?”

“Leave it,” Sara said. “Leave him alone.”

“He started it,” Camille protested.

“Whatever,” Rowan said, crossing his arms like a petulant child.

“Okay, so we’re saying the bench is a bad idea,” said Jim, trying to bring everyone back to the matter at hand.

“Well, have you got any better ideas, then?” said Camille.

“Build a fucking statue and have done with it,” Rowan said.

For the first time in what seemed like hours, the room fell into silence. Eventually, Jim spoke. “That’s not a bad idea at all,” he said.

“I like it,” Camille said. “A statue. How cool!”

“Where would we put it?” said Sara.

“In the back garden,” Jim said. “It’s not a bench, after all.”

“Maybe we could think about putting it where more people could see it, though,” said Camille.

“I don’t know,” said Sara. “The back garden could work.”

Jim smiled. “This might sound crazy, but what if we used the tree?”

They all looked outside at the giant oak that stood out the back.

“We could chop it down, chop it up, and carve a statue of mum out of it. It wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t perfect: it wouldn’t be lazy, and it would involve us communicating with each other. That’s what she wanted in the dream, wasn’t it.”

“Build high,” Rowan said.

“Okay,” said Sara, “so we’re agreed. We’ll build a statue of mum, and a big one at that. We’ll all work on it. It’ll be like fucking babel!”

Everyone nodded. It was agreed. Camille fetched some drinks from the mess in the kitchen and proposed a toast: “To the statue,” she said. “To the Valerie Barratt monument!”

84. Building High

They called Fred Wallace and Frank Wellington over, assuring both men that Valerie was, in fact, well and truly dead. They explained that while they appreciated that neither of the men’s primary line of work was in chopping down trees, they just needed the help of experienced handymen. Fred and Frank were dubious, but eventually lured by the promise of tripe time.

The tree came down quickly and easily. The six of them—Camille, Sara, Jim, Rowan, Frank and Fred worked together to cut the trunk down into a long solid pillar. It took days of sawing and sanding, but eventually they had what they needed.

Fred and Frank worked together to dig a hole for the pillar of smooth wood to slot into as a base. It was tough work, but Rowan kept them at it with his unique blend of carrot and stick. “Keep at it,” he would say, “Triple time if you finish, or I kill you if you don’t.” When Rowan had his back turned Fred and Frank would talk in hushed voices about what an absolute bastard he was, how nice Camille’s breasts were, how flat Sara’s breasts were, how boring Jim seemed and how downright frightening Valerie had been. They never said it, but secretly they were quite pleased Valerie was dead. Not that they were the kind of men to wish harm on people, but she had a way of sending out such a strong ‘stalker’ vibe that even grown men like Fred and Frank could never quite forget she existed; often when the phone went, it crossed their mind in horror that it could be her; or when they were walking home on a dark night, and there was a shape in the distance… But they agreed that regardless of their feelings about her, the murder was a tragic thing to have happened, and it was the least they could do to help her kids out. The triple time helped convince them too, of course.

When the foundations were done, it took all six of them to heave the twenty-foot tree-pillar into a vertical position and place it in the hole. The work was tiring and uncomfortable, particularly in the rain. Frank and Fred had used a variety of techniques—researched on the internet—to try to protect the wood, and overall they had been successful. Once the pillar was erect, all six of them stood back and admired it. Night was drawing in, they had been working for days, it was cold, wet and windy, but they all buzzed with the same undeniable sense of achievement. “We did it,” Sara said. “We did it.”

But of course, this was only the start. With Frank and Fred gone, the real work needed to commence. Armed with knives and saws and ladders and safety harnesses, the four children of Valerie Barrett began chipping away at the wood. They realised—too late, of course—that it would have been easier to carve with the tree on the ground, but by then it didn’t matter. And anyway, the each savoured the work. As Jim put it, “At least nobody can accuse us of being lazy…”

85. Steve and Simon on the Rampage

While the Barrett clan, along with Fred and Frank, worked on the monument they were building to Valerie, their dead mother, Mark Selwyn’s life was being tuned upside down. At first, his cousin Simon and Simon’s friend Steve had limited their anti-social activities to when Mark was out of the house. But this had all changed on Monday, when Mark had returned home to find Simon and Steve hosting some kind of party in his flat. ‘Some kind’ of party, because Mark wasn’t quite sure it was a party in the normal sense—although he acknowledged it could well be the most usual kind of party imaginable, having already accepted he may never have actually been to any kind of party in his life.

But even so, this one seemed particularly out there. People were drinking and doing drugs—no idea, but not too unusual, but not only that, they were fighting all over the place—a bit unusual, but not that unusual… no, the really bizarre thing was all the sex. There were people entwined with one another all over the place. In the kitchen, in the front room, in the bath… and in all sorts of mind-boggling positions. And those people that weren’t too busy snorting, shagging, drinking and fighting seemed to be quite merrily walking out with his things. A van that Mark had passed on the way into the flat was being loaded up quite casually with many of Mark’s belongings by a duo of rather large tattooed men who had the cheek to ask Mark if there was anything he wanted. They offered him his own Playstation 2 for twenty quid. 

Mark took them up on it, of course: he would never had got it back any other way, and besides, he wouldn’t get one cheaper than twenty pounds.

He found Steve and Simon passed out on his bed with three women and a variety of sex toys. By this point he was quite angry and feeling more confrontational by the minute. “Oi!” he said. “Get up!”

One of the women woke first. She roused the other two. “Get out, the three of you,” Mark shouted.

Steve and Simon were still asleep, naked.

Mark closed the door. For a moment, he considered the very real possibility of killing them. He could smother them with the pillow—he would solve all his problems in one go! He stepped over to them, but before he could do anything, Simon was up and had pinned him against the wall.

“Problem?” Simon asked.

“N—No,” Mark said, his resistance collapsing instantly. “But my things… they’re taking my things…”

“Aww.. poor Mark!” Simon said, laughing. “Hey Steve, guess what? The nasty men are taking poor Mark’s things!”

“If his things mean so much to him, maybe he shouldn’t be separated from them,” Steve said.

“You know,” said Simon, “you’re right. We should help him out. It’s the least we can do, I suppose.”

And of course, the next thing Mark knew, he was in the back of the van along with all his belongings. 

Poor Mark!

69. Appeal

On Sunday afternoon, the four bereaved children of murdered Valerie Barrett were sitting in a television studio, behind a desk with Jenny McElroy and the man who was heading up their case, DCI Banks. Behind the cameras were what appeared to be a number of work experience kids in oversized headphones, some middle aged pot-bellied men with big beards looking at little screens and Janice, who was there ‘to offer support’.

Camille had finally agreed to do most of the talking, when the time came. Sara had refused flat-out; Jim had been keen—no doubt to impress Jenny—but he was dissuaded by the others, he was prone to bucking under pressure; and no-one had even considered asking Rowan. It came as a surprise to all of them that he even turned up. Jenny had suggested that maybe he should sit it out, but he refused. “Is he a loose cannon?” Jenny asked Camille, clearly concerned. “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” said Sara, who wasn’t really too bothered what he did. In fact, Sara thought it might be quite funny if Rowan did loose the plot on national television. It would certainly teach Jim a lesson for forcing her in front of the camera against her will.

“A week ago today, at a little before one in the afternoon, a terrible crime was committed,” DCI Banks began. Camille and Sara cast each other an uncertain look. Neither had much confidence in Banks from the start, and his opening in this press conference did little to reassure them. “Valerie Barrett was murdered in her own home during a burglary. There were three men involved, one of them died on the scene along with Mrs Barrett. It would appear there was some kind of struggle at the top of the stairs. The assailant, who we have identified as Sean Sutton, died along with Mrs Barrett in the subsequent fall.

“Janice Pine, a family friend, arrived at the scene at this point, around 12:50 pm. She found her friend Valerie and Sean at the bottom of the stairs. The two other men were also upstairs, and, evidently shaken by the turn of evens, ran down, pushed past Mrs Pine, and ran down the street, in a southerly direction. Mrs Pine has been working with our e-fit team to produce the images of the two men you are seeing on your screen now. We believe them to be Steven Slater and Simon Sanders, two known associates of the deceased, Sean Sutton.

“If you see these men, do not approach them. They are considered armed and highly dangerous. This was an horrendous crime that resulted in the death of a dedicated mother of four. If you witnessed anything on that day, not matter how trivial you might think it is, let us know. If you have any idea about the whereabouts of these men, please let us know. You can call with any information on the number on the bottom of your screen now. Thank you.”

Addressing the family, someone from behind the camera asked, “Is there anything you would like to add?”

Camille cleared her throat and did her best to look sombre. The genuine sadness she had felt the other night at the loss of her mother was gone now; and it wasn’t something that could easily be turned on and off. She thought back to the week before, to practising the facial expressions required for just this occasion. She allowed her cheeks and jaw to relax, to slump a little. At the same time she furrowed her brow a little, as if in morbid introspection. The whole experience was a farce, she knew, but instinctively she felt the right thing to do was to conform to the situation. What was the alternative? Stand up and walk out?

“My mother,” she began, “was a peaceful, religious woman, who wouldn’t have harmed a fly. These men broke into her home, when she was there alone, preparing a family meal—that we were all very much looking forward to—tried to steal the few things she had managed to acquire through her difficult life as a single mother, and, when confronted, murdered her in cold blood. From what DCI Banks has told me, these men are wanted for a number of other crimes too, so please…” At this point, she took a deep breath, as if forcing back some tears. “Please, if you know anything, anything at all, call the number and let the police know.”

“I’d like to say something,” Rowan blurted out. Nobody had been paying him any attention for a while, but it was clear when everyone looked round that he had lost it: his eyes were wide, his forehead sweaty, his cheeks red. Off-camera, Janice suggested to a cameraman that he might want to stop filming; on-camera, Jenny widened her eyes and looked determinedly at the same cameraman, trying to get across the same thing. The cameraman either didn’t see the point, or didn’t care, and continued filming.

The next thing the nation saw was Rowan leaping over the desk at which the others were sitting, putting his face right up to the camera and yelling, “I’m after you, fuckers! I’m going to hunt you down!”

Jenny and DCI Banks put their heads in her hands. The press conference had certainly not gone as well as they had hoped.

70. Simon and Steve

The two surviving members of the three-man gang that had lived off a series of crimes, culminating in the burglary and murder of Valerie Barrett watched Rowan’s outburst the next day with interest.

They were in a hotel room they had paid for with someone else’s credit card, using someone else’s name.

“Are you worried?” asked Simon.

“About him?” said Steve, pointing at Rowan’s face. “No!”

“Did the other one look familiar to you?”

“Who?”

“The other bloke, the son.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I recognised him.”

“Maybe you saw a photo of him, you know, in the house.”

“Maybe…” agreed Simon. “Well, whatever way you look at it, we’ve got a problem.”

“There’s no problem,” said Steve. “Fuck that guy, he won’t do anything.”

“Not him,” said Simon. “The police.”

“We’ve got away with worse than this before.”

“But this fucking guy Rowan… going crazy on TV… it’s no good. It means people will pay attention to it—it’ll be on the news and everything, I’m sure: ‘Son of murdered woman goes crazy on TV’. That means our pictures will be all over the place.”

“That one looked nothing like you…”

“It was close enough,” Simon said. They looked at the still of Rowan’s face on the television screen for a moment.  “And the one of you was spot on,” he added.

“So what do we do? We can’t just stay here… And we can’t leave the country…”

“I might have idea. I’ve got a cousin. We could stay at his for a while.”

“You got a phone number?”

“I’ve got a work on somewhere…” Simon rummaged around his wallet. “Here. Give me your phone.”

Simon dialled, and waited. “Hi, guess who?”

“S—Si? Is that you?”

“Right in one! You’re going to do me a little favour, dearest cousin of mine.”

“Leave me alone!”

“Meet me in Swan Park in an hour. Alone.”

“Please… call someone else… I—I can’t, I’m at work…”

“You’ll be there,” Simon said firmly. “You would never let family down, would you?”

“Who was that?” Sara asked. “Is everything okay?”

Mark put the phone down shakily. “Everything is fine,” he said. “Listen: I’ve got to pop out for a while…”

71. Jill Jenkins

Having been confused and a little insulted by Rowan, Jill Jenkins, daughter of the late Dr Jenkins—the man who treated Rowan and more recently Jim, when he was attacked—bought some cigarettes and went home. Her mother Estelle was waiting for her when she got back. The old lady was so choked with tears she could barely speak.

“Mum?” Jill said. “Oh mum, let me get you a tea or—”

“They think the men who killed dad are the same as the ones that killed that poor woman.”

“What?”

Jill’s mother pressed play on the answer phone. It was a message from the police, confirming what Jill’s mother had just told her. The old woman looked at her daughter, horrified. Jill had never seen her mother like this before. She had always been so bright, so lively. She looked dead inside now, as if she had been somehow extinguished. It was as if she had aged thirty years overnight.

The relationship between Estelle and Dr Martin Jenkins had was exceptionally close. Jill, who was their only daughter, couldn’t remember ever seeing them apart for more than hours at a time, other than during the working day; certainly never for an entire night, or anything like that. For Jill, the priority was to see her mother through this time. So far, she had hardly had a moment to think about her own grief.

She pressed delete on the answering machine. “He has gone,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how, or who did it, or what the details are; it might seem like it matters, but it doesn’t.”

“It’s all I have of him…” Estelle said.

“What do you mean?” said Jill, shocked.

“When they talk about who killed him… It means they’re still saying his name, Jill. It makes it sound like he—like he is still alive.”

Jill held her mother’s hand and led her to the sofa, where they both sat. “But he isn’t still alive, mum…”

“I know,” Estelle said. 

But she didn’t, not really.

72. Sara’s Return to Work

A short while before his cousin Simon called, Mark Selywn arrived at work, and was shocked to see Sara already there. “I’m so sorry about what happened,” he said. She looked at him briefly and shrugged, turning back to her computer. “I thought you would have more time off,” he added.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Well, just take it easy, okay?”

Sara nodded and continued typing. If she were being honest, she had surprised herself coming into work today. She didn’t think she wanted to be there. And it wasn’t like she had done any work since arriving; mostly she had surfed the internet and stared blankly at the screen. It was the first time in a long as she felt directionless. She was used to feeling out of place, or like she wanted to be somewhere else—but this was different. It felt as if everything was out of her control: the murder, the television appeal, the funeral arrangements, all of it. 

A while passed, with Sara aware of Mark looking over at her every few minutes. “Will you please stop that,” she said finally.

“What?” said Mark.

“Looking at me; feeling sorry for me…”

“I wasn’t, I—”

“I saw you Mark, I know what you’re thinking.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think you do.”

Sara turned back to her screen.

“It’s just that Barrett is quite a common name,” he said.

“Obviously,” she replied. “But what has that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” he said, with a sigh. “It’s just—well, I didn’t see the resemblance before, but now I know, I can see—”

“Mark! You’re being weird…”

“A while ago I dated your sister, Camille.”

“What?!”

“I didn’t know…”

Sara burst out laughing. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in ages. I bet she ate you for breakfast!”

“Is she—I mean, um, I don’t know how to put this: is she unwell in some way?”

“Not as ‘unwell’ as our brothers,” Sara replied. “Did you see this,” she added, opening a video clip on the internet. She started it at the point that DCI Banks was talking about the order of events on the night her mother was killed, “…Mrs Pine has been working with our e-fit team to produce the images of the two men you are seeing on your screen now. We believe them to be Steven Slater and Simon Sanders, two known associates of the deceased, Sean Sutton.“

Mark’s face went white. The video continued, climaxing in Rowan’s outburst. “See?” Sara said. “Nuts!”

Just then, the phone rang. Mark’s face dropped. “S—Si? Is that you?”

Sara looked on, curious. She hadn’t seen Mark like that before.

“Leave me alone! Please… call someone else… I—I can’t, I’m at work…”

“Who was that?” Sara asked. “Is everything okay?”

Mark put the phone down shakily. “Everything is fine,” he said. “Listen: I’ve got to pop out for a while.”

“Where?” Sara asked.

“Just an errand. Stay here, will you? I’ll be back before you know it…” He was gone before Sara could say anything more.

Mark couldn’t believe the series of coincidences that had led him to be where he was right then: the woman in his office was the sister of the psycho who had practically stalked him, then demeaned him in a way he barely knew possible; and now it turns out his cousin murdered their mother. And all he wanted—all he desired from life, was simplicity. A decent, respectable job; or, alternatively, no job at all. Either way would be good. A wife, perhaps. It seemed ridiculous that he had thought once that Sara might have been a realistic option. How now?! He had dated her sister and was no doubt about to aid and abet her mother’s killer.

The park was deserted. Mark sat for a while on a bench, by the ducks. He couldn’t enjoy it, though. His eyes darted anxiously around. He knew at any minute Simon would appear from somewhere. They hadn’t seen each other in years—how many? Three, maybe five. Maybe even more. Mark didn’t have much family, and those he did have, he avoided. 

“Hello Mark,” came a voice behind him. He turned round. There were two men: Simon, and a man he didn’t know. It was Simon speaking. “This is Steven,” he said. “Steven, this is my cousin Mark. We’ll be staying with him for a week or two.”

Mark opened his mouth to protest, but it was quickly shut again by a jab from his cousin’s fist. “There can be more where that came from,” Simon said. “If you want there to be…”

“N-No,” Mark said. 

“Keys,” Simon barked. Mark handed them over. “Number twenty-three, isn’t it?”

Mark nodded.

“Tell you what, Marky-boy,” Simon said, slapping his cousin jovially on the shoulder. “You get yourself back to work, and I’ll have dinner ready when you get back.”

Steven gave Mark a thumbs up and turned towards the park exit. Simon moved to follow him, but thought better of it, having something to say before he went: “Mark, I want to tell you something,” he said, “and I mean this from the bottom of my heart: if the police ever, ever turn up when I’m at your place, I will kill you. I will kill you until you are so dead, it’ll be as if you were never alive. I will kill you slowly, and painfully…”

Simon carried on talking, but Mark tuned out. He got the point.

73. Vigilantism: Rowan and Rod Clean Up London Town

“Fucking justice,” Rowan said. “That’s what I am all about. Fucking justice.”

He was wondering the streets at a little after midnight, wrapped in his warmest coat, warmest scarf and warmest gloves. At his side, Rod nodded. Rod wasn’t really there, of course, he was simply a figment of Rowan’s growing madness.

“You’re an arsehole,” said Rod.

Rowan nodded. The little flame-haired fellow had a point.

Two men were arguing outside a pub. One was shouting, the other was shouting back. People around tried to ignore it, but Rowan couldn’t let it go. “Justice!” he said. Rod shrugged. “Whatever,” he said.

Rowan pulled his scarf over his mouth and pulled a short club out of his pocket, that he had bought earlier in the day just for this kind of purpose. He ran towards the two men, who paid him no attention whatsoever: they were completely wrapped up in their own argument.

Considering that at this time, Rowan was completely crazy, what he did next was extremely impressive. He leapt through the air, and in one motion cracked both men in the head with his club, sending them both tumbling to the floor. Standing over both of them as they held their heads and cried out in pain, Rowan shouted, “There will be no more violence in this city!” People looked on, flabbergasted, but no-one confronted him. “Right,” he said. “Good. I’m off. Come on Rod, you fucker!”

And with that, the masked vigilante and his invisible sidekick ran off into the distance.

74. Jim Puts His Heart Where His Mouth Is

“Any news?” Jim asked. 

Jenny shook her head sadly. I’m afraid not. But I’m still confident they’ll turn up. They can’t leave the country and someone is bound to see them at some point.”

The two were alone in the Barrett’s kitchen, at the table. Jim poured some tea. “It must be depressing, all this,” he said.

“How do you mean?”

“Well—your job. Dealing with people who’ve had a relative murdered or raped…”

“Oh, you get used to it. I’d like to think I’m doing some good—”

“You are!”

“…It’s nice to know I can help people. But yeah, some cases can really get to you.”

Jim stirred some sugar into his tea. “I don’t suppose you get much time to yourself.”

“No,” Jenny said. “I can keep some odd hours.”

“Hmm,” said Jim, nonchalantly. “I bet it’s hard to socialise. I had a friend in the police,” he lied. “He was always saying how hard it is to hold down a relationship.”

“Ah, well that’s the truth!”

“He said that the police often dated other police… because they understood each other, or something.”

“It does happen quite a lot,” Jenny agreed, sipping her tea.

“So um, is your boyfriend a policeman.”

“Boyfriend?!” Jenny said, laughing. “You must be kidding. I haven’t had one of those in years!”

“Really?” said Jim, as calmly as he could. He realised something then he had never even considered before: he could be social. “It must be difficult to work all day in something like this and go home alone at the end of it…”

“People are in a lot worse situations than me,” Jenny said. “That’s what I learn from my job.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Jim said. Jenny nodded. “Do you think you’ll catch them—the men, Simon and Steve?”

“Yes,” Jenny said.

“What would you say the odds are? You know, as a percentage?”

“That we’ll arrest them?”

“Yeah.”

“Ninety percent? Ninety-five, perhaps?”

“As high as that?”

“I wouldn’t want to get your hopes up unduly, but I wouldn’t want to lie either. The more we know about the criminals, the greater the chance of catching them. In this case, we know everything, so there is a very high chance they’ll be caught.”

“Hmm,” said Jim.

“But you have to remember what it’s really about: Catching a criminal is down to high-quality police work, not probability.”

Jim laughed and shook his head. “No, Jenny,” he said, unintentionally patronising her. “You’re quite wrong there: Everything is down to probability.”

75. Jill and Estelle Jenkins: One Version of Events

Estelle Jenkins didn’t just wish her murdered husband was still alive, she genuinely believed him to still be alive. This posed problems for her daughter Jill who was simultaneously trying to deal with the murder of her father, and look after her mother who seemed to be losing her mind. It didn’t seem to matter to Estelle how often Jill said, “He’s gone, mum,” or how frequently people called to pay their condolences, Estelle simply would not accept he was gone.

One evening Jill got home to find her mother sitting in a dining table chair in the hallway, about three metres from the front door. “What are you doing mum?” she asked. 

“Oh, just waiting for your father,” she said.

It was hard on Jill, seeing her mother like that, and she didn’t know what to do to help. As time passed, Estelle grew to be more and more dependent on her daughter to do everything. Estelle lived increasingly in her imagination, a way of life that did her body no good at all: her imagination didn’t need food or sleep or external stimulation. Slowly, she began to slip away from Jill altogether.

Then, one day, without warning, Estelle committed suicide. She left a note for Jill explaining that her life couldn’t give her what she needed: her husband. She wasn’t religious, but she said she had tried to think logically about it, and it seemed to her that if she died, she would either simply cease to be, or, if the religious types were right, she would be reunited with Martin. Either option was better than living.

Poor Estelle!

Jill went on to follow in her father’s footsteps. She studied medicine and became a GP, caring for hundreds of people on a daily basis. At the age of fifty, she participated in some groundbreaking research that eventually led to the cure of a series of diseases including all brain tumours.

She was so well revered that they hung a painting of her in the National Portrait Gallery.

Good for Jill!

76. Jill and Estelle Jenkins: Another Version of Events

Estelle Jenkins didn’t just wish her murdered husband was still alive, she genuinely believed him to still be alive. This posed problems for her daughter Jill who was simultaneously trying to deal with the murder of her father, and look after her mother who seemed to be losing her mind. It didn’t seem to matter to Estelle how often Jill said, “He’s gone, mum,” or how frequently people called to pay their condolences, Estelle simply would not accept he was gone.

One evening Jill got home to find her mother sitting in a dining table chair in the hallway, about three metres from the front door. “What are you doing mum?” she asked. 

“Oh, just waiting for your father,” she said.

It was hard on Jill, seeing her mother like that, and she didn’t know what to do to help. As time passed, Estelle grew to be more and more dependent on her daughter to do everything. Estelle lived increasingly in her imagination, a way of life that did her body no good at all: her imagination didn’t need food or sleep or external stimulation. Slowly, she began to slip away from Jill altogether.

But Estelle was determined not to give in. 

Good for Estelle!

She fought back from the brink psychologically, but sadly became very ill physically. For the next decade, Jill cared for her mother, but ultimately Estelle passed away. The type of brain tumour she had simply would not respond to treatment. She lost all of her faculties before she died. Jill found her one morning lying in a pool of her urine in bed, quite dead.

Jill decided she wanted to become a doctor and began training. But the past ten years caring for her mother had really taken it out of her, and she simply couldn’t find the focus. She dropped out after resitting and failing her first year exams three years running.

She spent the rest of her life as a cleaner, sweeping between the paintings in the National Portrait Gallery.

Poor Jill!  

63. Sketching in the Dark

All the while, Camille sat in her room drawing. It would have been pitch black in there, were it not for the small candle that offered a little shaky light over Camille’s diary. 

The diary was an old plain-page art book. It was the eighteenth one she had used, the seventeen others were piled in a locked box under her bed. The pages were A4 in size and Camille filled every inch with her pictures. More often than not, people were represented by stickmen, places by simple signs and actions by scruffy arrows intended to depict movement.

The page that Camille had open in front of her now was full of black squares. Each black square covered a picture Camille had drawn that evening, the first she had spent thinking about what had happened to her mother. She had tried in a number of different ways to show what had happened, or what she felt, but failed on each occasion. The page, with its black squares painstakingly coloured so as to fully obscure the inadequate images beneath them, looked like a warped chess board. 

For the first time in many years, Camille began to cry. The tears came naturally; she did nothing to slow or discourage them. But it didn’t exactly feel like a release either. In fact, had she not been able to feel the moist warmth running down her cheeks, she probably wouldn’t have even noticed she was crying.

She thought about how her initial reaction to her mother’s murder was to think of the opportunities it opened up: the television people, the nationals, perhaps even documentary makers. Tonight, those thoughts seemed nonsensical, alien even. Earlier that day, the police had left a message asking whether a member of the family would be willing to go on television and appeal for witnesses. They thought it might help with the case. Camille felt sick at the thought. What would she say, “Someone killed my mother?” Her craving for fame was driven by a will to appear strong, not to admit to beg to the world for help. The pity, the sympathy: it was more than her ego could bear. Yes, she had got it all wrong in those first minutes.

But that wasn’t the reason she was crying. She felt no sense of guilt at instinctively trying to profit from her mother’s murder. After all, what sense would there be in feeling guilty for something she did not contrive to think? Any selfish thought she had existed unconsciously. Camille would never have expressed it explicitly in those terms, but she understood it all too well. On occasion, especially with men, she would act atrociously, without any remorse at all, and without any concept of why she should or would feel any remorse. Her actions almost always preceded her thought, synonymous with her very being; it seemed ridiculous to her that something that stemmed from her very existence should be untrue, whether or not others accepted it—whether or not nature accepted it. This understanding of hers is why she felt that she understood something about her brother Jim that other people didn’t. Although she didn’t understand the first principles of his theories on dice or lotteries or anything else, what she did understand was his resistance of others’ truths. If people say it’s a one in a million chance of winning the lottery and Jim says it’s something else, and that’s what he believes, and it’s what he knows and it stems from his heart, then it is true. The same applied to Rowan and Sara and everyone else—and this was the part she grasped most clearly—that when it comes to truth, it doesn’t matter what religion says, or science, or your parents, or anyone else: what matters is what you know in your heart. What you know before you think, what you know before you speak. And because of that, Camille had never known regret, guilt or remorse.  But for that reason too, she could sit in her darkened room crying, sad to the core of her being, but hardly acknowledging it. Her truth was sadness. There was no need to reflect on it, it was enough to live it.

She stood and looked down through tear stained eyes at the page she had been working on for the past hours. The black boxes scattered on the page thoroughly hid the different attempts she had made to draw her feelings: the murder scene, the emergency services, Janice’s face… all failed images, all crossed out frantically, coloured in; erased, but not into nothing, into those black boxes… erased into something new… a visible, knowable void… 

Camille touched the page lightly and smiled. As with everything else in her life, she had accomplished the will of her heart without knowing it: the black squares strewn on the white page said it all. She closed the book and locked it in the box under the bed.

For her, and for the all the Barrett siblings, it was the end of a chapter.

64. I Can See Your Nipples

Rowan no longer cared if his thoughts occasionally spilled out of his mouth. To the outside world he must have appeared quite mad. In the shop at the end of the street, where he stopped to spend some of the money he had earlier stolen from the jar in the kitchen, he told the shopkeeper William that he thought his wife looked the sort to have an affair and that the previous week he had stolen crisps and sweets. He did this wholly accidentally; the words slipping from his brain, down his sinuses perhaps, into his vocal chords and out to the world via a flapping tongue. Some of what he said came back into his brain via his ears—”I said that aloud?” he’d think indifferently. For the rest, he had no idea: as far as he was concerned the voice he heard was strictly the echo of his mind’s narrative bouncing around his head. Regardless of whether he was aware or not, he had passed the point where it mattered to him at all. So what if William’s wife was a slut? William had a right to know!

And so Rowan continued on the streets, speaking and thinking interchangeably. His perspective on the world wasn’t changed in any way. For instance, when he saw Jill Jenkins, the daughter of Dr Jenkins, he approached her just as he normally would.

“Hello, Jill,” he said.

“Oh, hello!” she said. It was the first time she had left the house since her father had died; bumping in to Rowan was actually a pleasant surprise. 

“I probably would,” Rowan said. “But I wouldn’t, you know, make the effort.”

“What?”

Rowan’s face flushed momentarily, but he quickly got himself under control. “Thank your father for looking after Jim when he was attacked, will you?”

“Haven’t you heard, he—”

“I can see your nipples,” Rowan said, in a toneless voice.

Jill pulled her coat around her. “It’s cold,” she said.

“Isn’t it?” said Rowan cheerfully. “Well, good day!”

Jill stood, dumbfounded, as Rowan walked off. Just as he turned the corner at the end of the street, she was sure she heard him say, “She wanted it, that one…”

65. The Shopkeepers: One Version of Events

William the shopkeeper and his wife Debbie had been having a rocky time of it before Rowan stepped into the shop. William had always been jealous. Debbie was a beautiful woman; for every year that passed, she seemed only to age a matter of months. Meanwhile, William seemed to age a decade with every quarter of the financial year: if he wasn’t in the shop, he was buried in the accounts. Debbie wouldn’t have minded so much if they were hard up, but they had been turning over a good profit for years and besides, they had a fortune set aside ‘for a rainy day’ from the sale of a second home they’d inherited years before.

But Rowan pushed the tensions over the edge.

Jill Jenkins went in to buy cigarettes and was ignored completely. She eventually left empty handed. “What an odd day,” she thought. The husband and wife shopkeepers argued well into the night. “You work too hard!” Debbie screamed. “You fuck other men!” William countered. At the end of the argument, exhausted and weary, the two decided mutually that they would never be able to reconcile their differences. Perhaps it had been a mistake to get together from the start. Perhaps it was fortunate they had never decided to have children together. Perhaps this was all as it was meant to be.

The next morning, Debbie left. Within a week she had found herself a man who was as young as she looked. He was rich and exotic; together they moved to Spain, and in the end Mexico. When they were both very old, he developed a rare bone disorder and spent his last year wheelchair-bound. It didn’t detract from their altogether happy life, however—Debbie was happy to nurse him to a painless death. Once he was gone, she spent her days relaxing on a beach with friends drinking cocktails and participating in both Spanish and English reading groups. Her favourite book was Don Quixote. She died of old age, but before becoming too old to enjoy life anymore.

Good for Debbie!

William continued to work in his shop, becoming increasingly bitter as the years passed. To counteract his unhappiness, he chose to work longer and longer hours: he opened the store at six rather than seven, then at five rather than six. He closed up at eight rather than seven, then at nine. In the end, he moved into the shop completely. He slept in a sleeping bag in the back room. He had a sink and toilet plumbed in. The occasional scurrying of mice was the only suggestion of company through the long nights. The breeze that came in under the door and his wearying body contrived to cripple him; it wasn’t long before he needed two sticks to walk. He could no longer use the top lock, or stack the highest shelves. He preyed for it to be over, and his prayers were finally answered when he slipped on some spilled milk and cracked his head against the till. At the time he died, he hadn’t been out of the shop in two years.

Poor William!

66. The Shopkeepers: Another Version of Events

William the shopkeeper and his wife Debbie had been having a rocky time of it before Rowan stepped into the shop. William had never been the jealous sort, but it seemed possible that Debbie was indeed having an affair. Debbie wasn’t particularly attractive; for every year that passed, she seemed only to age three or four. William was much better looking, everyone commented on how young he looked, despite his work ethic. People wondered why he would stay with her; she was something of a leech, preying off this good man, trying to get her hands on the fortune he had set aside ‘for a rainy day’ from the sale of a second home he’d inherited years before.

But Rowan pushed the tensions over the edge.

Jill Jenkins went in to buy cigarettes and was ignored completely. She eventually left empty handed. “What an odd day,” she thought. The husband and wife shopkeepers argued well into the night. “You don’t take care of me!” Debbie screamed. “All you care about is yourself!” William countered. At the end of the argument, exhausted and weary, the two decided mutually that they would never be able to reconcile their differences. Perhaps it had been a mistake to get together from the start. Perhaps it was fortunate they had never decided to have children together. Perhaps this was all as it was meant to be.

The next morning, Debbie left. She met a succession of other men, but could never find a relationship that worked. Ultimately, she remarried an international porta-loo salesman, with whom she moved first to Spain, and then to Mexico. It was then that he developed a rare bone disorder. He spent the next thirty years in a wheelchair. Debbie, with no friends and no money of her own, looked after him day and night until he eventually died. Once he was gone, she fell apart mentally. Every day people would see her on the beach pretending to read Don Quixote—usually holding the book upside down—talking to herself and crying. She died of old age, a long time after he mind had passed away.

Poor Debbie!

William sold the shop and took early retirement. He became a man of leisure, waking when he felt like it, doing what he pleased. He joined a tribute band to the Rat Pack, and together they spent long nights performing all the old classics to appreciative crowds. He only lived to be sixty, but the days passed slowly and deliberately for him and he enjoyed each moment. He stayed strong and charismatic to the end, and when his time came it was during a rendition of ‘That’s Life’, his favourite song. He collapsed at the end of the last line, with a smile on his face. His friends and fans played the Frank Sinatra version at the funeral. The day was sad but permeated with a sense of joy, everyone agreed they would remember William as the man that could bring happiness to even the most bitter hearts.

Good for William!

67. A Note, A Message, A Knock on the Door

“All done,” Janice said, brushing off her hands and smiling triumphantly. The house certainly was immaculate. Not only had she and Rodger cleaned, they had also left a variety of meals in the fridge for the Barrett kids to heat up—all home cooked, of course—and some money on the side ‘to see them right.’

Janice dictated a note to Rodger: 

Dearest Camille, Sara, Jim & Rowan, 

I didn’t know where to start when I thought about talking to you, so I decided to help in action rather than words. I’ve tidied and arranged some meals for you… there’s some cash on the side, too.

Your mother was a wonderful woman.

See you at the funeral,

Janice

Sara and Jim went downstairs once they were sure Janice and Rodger ad left. They read the note together.

“Who’s organising the funeral?” Jim asked.

“We are, I suppose,” Sara said.

“How does it happen?”

“I don’t know. We phone the funeral directors?”

“When… When will we get the body?” asked Jim.

“I don’t know. The police said it should be any day now. They said it took a while because it’s so difficult to dust skin for fingerprints.”

“But what about this place? They barely spent any time here at all…”

“I don’t know, they say they got all they needed,” Sara said. She pressed play on the answering machine.

There was only one message: it was asking if they wanted to make a public appeal for information about the murder.

“What do you think?” asked Jim.

“It might look bad if we didn’t,” said Sara.

“But can you imagine it? We’d have to cry wouldn’t we? They’d tell us to cry, so as to make people more likely to call in.”

“Not necessarily…”

“I don’t want to do it, Sara. No way.”

“Well, let’s at least—” Just then, there was a knock at the door. Jim went to answer it but Sara shook her head. “Stay here,” she hissed. The knocks came again and again. Finally Jim threw his hands up in the air and went out into the hallway.

The woman knocking was simply beautiful. Jim had never seen anyone who looked like her in his life. She was his height, or a little shorter, with a slight figure and a face so delicate he feared it could be broken by even the gentlest of touches. “H-Hi,” he said. “Can I help?”

“My name is Jenny McElroy,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind me coming over unannounced. I’m taking over as your police liaison officer. I just wanted to meet you all, and to see if you’d thought anymore about the public appeal.”

“Come in, come in,” Jim said. Sara watched on disapprovingly. Jim wasn’t bothered what she thought, he continued anyway: “We were just talking about that. We decided, if you think it’s a good idea, and if it’ll help find the men who did this, we’ll do it!”

68. Rowan, Rowan, Rowan

Rowan could have sworn someone was calling his name. “Rowan,” the voice was saying. “Rowan, Rowan, Rowan…” He tried to ignore it, as he walked the streets of Camden, but it was difficult. The repetition was incessant; disturbing. As subtly as he could, he looked around, trying to see the man who was taunting him. As he walked, he turned this way and that, taking in the faces around him hoping to catch a glimpse of his tormentor, but to no avail. 

Half an hour later the voice became familiar to him. He stood in front of Argos and looked at himself long and hard in the mirror. The voice continued, “Rowan, Rowan, Rowan,” and, of course, his lips moved along in perfect time.

He tried to stop, but he couldn’t. “Rowan,” he said. “Shit… shh!… stop…Row—Arghh!—Rowan!—Oh, for fuck’s sake… Rowan, Rowan, Rowan…” In the end, he decided the best bet was to try and pretend it wasn’t happening. That approach seemed to work, a few minutes later he found he had stopped anyway.

The market was in full flow and Rowan allowed himself to be swept along with the crowds, moving this way and that, at the mercy of the pierced faces and tattooed arms and lower backs that surrounded him. Then, quite by accident, he noticed something that captured his attention. Two men were arguing in an alleyway. One of the men, a large bald lug, was trying to pry a mobile phone from the hands of the other, a determined, but ultimately physically inferior Goth. Defying the push and pull of the crowd, Rowan headed over. Before getting there, however, the bigger guy managed to prise the phone out of the other’s hand. He didn’t even run off, he simply walked away, further into the alley. 

Rowan’s mind began to spin back to the other evening, to what had happened to Jim. His sense of helplessness then—is that what had brought on his madness? He had smashed the window, had given the opening for the bastards who killed his mother, had lost control. If he could have done something about the guys that attacked Jim, perhaps his mother would still be alive. Perhaps he would be in more control of his brain, of his mouth. 

“What happened?” he asked the Goth.

“Huh?”

“With that guy… what happened?”

“He mugged me. Took my phone.”

“Stay here,” Rowan said, pushing the young man back against the wall more forcefully that he intended. “Do you understand me? Do not even think about fucking moving or I will hunt you down and kill you.”

The Goth stared at him blankly.

“Do you understand?”

“Have you got a cigarette?”

Rowan took out his pack and handed it over. “Have as many as you want but stay the fuck here!” he said, turning and running off in the direction that the bigger man had gone.

For a short while, Rowan worried that he wouldn’t find the man. He wondered round aimlessly, once again followed by his own seemingly disembodied voice, “Rowan, Rowan, Rowan,” only now it had become even more of a taunt, sounding more like, “Rowwwwww-an, Rowwwwww-an, Rowwwwww-an,” probably brought about by his stress, but in turn increasing his sense of urgency and agitation.

Just when he was about to give up, he spotted the guy crossing Camden High Street. Hanging back at a discreet distance, Rowan followed until they reached Mornington Crescent station. The guy stepped into a tiny newsagent just outside; this was Rowan’s chance! He sprinted into the shop, grabbing the first thing his hand happened across as he did so. Then, leaping and raising the weapon, which, fortunately for him was a stapler and not a magazine or A4 pad, he brought it down onto the big guy’s head, sending him crashing down to the ground, unconscious.

The shop was deserted save for the elderly owner. As quickly as he could, Rowan took the man’s wallet, and the boy’s mobile phone. There was twenty pounds cash in the wallet, which he handed to the shopkeeper. “Justice,” Rowan said. The shopkeeper nodded anxiously. Rowan ran out and back to the alley as fast as he could.

The Goth was there, smoking a cigarette. “Here you go,” said Rowan, holding out the phone.

“Um.. cheers,” said the Goth.

Rowan looked at the Goth incredulously. “That’s it?” he said. “‘Cheers’?”

“Uh, yeah,” said the Goth. “I mean, I appreciate it, but… well, the thing is… this isn’t my phone…”

Rowan looked at the phone again. “Yeah it is,” he said. “I saw him take it…”

“He did,” said the Goth, “but this isn’t it. It must be his phone.”

“Oh,” said Rowan.

“I appreciate it though. I mean, I’ll use it. It’s blue… I’d prefer black, but that’s not a big deal. It’s probably better than my old one anyway. That piece of shit was on it’s last legs…”

“It was?”

“Yeah—No, I mean… It meant a lot to me… Well, not that much, I mean, this is just as good… Better. Better! I’m pleased with this. It’s great. Um… So thanks!”

Rowan smiled brightly as the two parted company. “Freak bastard,” he said unconsciously. 

Yes, and despite the complications, all in all, Rowan’s first foray into vigilantism had gone quite well, he felt. 

50. Fork, a Montage

Simon, Sean and Steve crept up on the house. “They must have had it done this morning,” Simon said, about the window at the front that he’d spotted was broken last night.

“Let’s see who’s in anyway,” Sean said. The three men went up to the door, Simon rang the bell.

Inside, Valerie was on her second glass of wine. The kitchen door was still locked and by now she was singing along with the radio so loudly that she wouldn’t have heard the doorbell even if the kitchen door was wide open.

“Nobody home?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Simon.

Steve prodded at the wooden panel over the window. “Doesn’t look too solid, this,” he said.

Simon and Sean had a good look around. The road was deserted and no-one seemed to be watching from the windows of the neighbour’s houses. “Go on,” Simon said. “Do it.”

Sean looked at them uncertainly. “Hold on a moment,” he said. “The point of this was supposed to be that it would be easy… Straight in, straight out, no hassle…”

“That’s exactly what it is,” said Steve, pulling the panel clean away with a single tug and a deep grunt. “See?” he added, clambering onto the frame. “Straight in, no hassle…”

Simon followed, pulling Sean by the sleeve behind him. “Okay, Okay,” Sean said. “I’m coming….”

“Are you coming or what?” said Jim, ushering Camille along.

“He’s not here, Jim. It’s not even open, look…”

The three siblings were outside the Dublin Castle. It was 12:30. “I don’t know…” said Jim. “Maybe we should try the hospitals? Or the police, even?”

“That seems a bit premature,” Camille said. “I mean, on any other day, we wouldn’t have thought twice about Rowan not turning up at home, would we? How often does he do this? Every other night, at least.”

“How would you know? It’s not like you’re ever home, either,” Sara said, lighting a cigarette.

“Fuck you,” Camille said. And then: “Give me a cigarette, would you?”

“Yeah, me too,” said Jim.

Sara opened her pack and held it out to them both. “What about the World’s End?” Camille said.

Valerie was singing along to REM, now on her third glass of wine. The vegetables were coming along nicely, thank you, and so was everything else. The potatoes would crisp up perfectly, she just knew it. It was that kind of a day. It struck her as curious none of the kids had been down yet… She should go and check on them, probably. Make sure they were all present and correct!

“It’s like Christmas come early,” said Steve, who had just found some jewellery in and old ornamental wooden box above the fireplace. 

“You’re not wrong,” said Simon, who was packing Jim’s laptop into his rucksack.

“Let’s check upstairs,” said Sean.

Valerie thought she probably should check upstairs, just to be sure. She checked the clock: perhaps it might be an idea to put the gravy on first…

“I’m starving,” said Jim.

“Shit!” said Sara.

“What?”

“We’re supposed to be home…”

“The meal,” said Jim with dismay.

“I call her,” said Camille.

The phone rang in the front room. Simon, Sean and Steve stood rooted to the spot for a moment. “Don’t be stupid,” said Simon, gathering himself. “Just ignore it…”

Steve wasn’t one for ignoring anything—he ripped the cord clean out of the wall, and stuffed the telephone into his bag. It had to be worth a tenner at least.

“I could have sworn that was the phone,” Valerie said to nobody in particular.

“No answer,” said Camille. “She’s probably cooking.”

“We should head back anyway,” said Jim.

“I think she’d rather we found her youngest, don’t you?” said Sara, eyebrow raised.

“Fucking hell,” said Sean. “How many bedrooms are there?”

“Looks like five to me,” said Simon. “Sean, you take that one… Steve, you take that one… I’ll have a look in here.”

Valerie opened the kitchen door. She didn’t notice the draft that came through the house through the gap in the temporary boarding Frank Wellington had put up. Neither did she notice the muddy footprints, or the missing trinkets. She was drunk now, and thinking about lunch, how lovely it would be to have the whole family together.

She called out for her children when she reached the top of the stairs. “Sara,” she called. Then, “Camille.” No answer. “Jim?”

Slowly, in unison, three of the bedroom doors opened.

51. Stairs

The three men stood before Valerie, as surprised to see her as she was to see them. 

“W-Who are you?” Valerie asked.

Simon stepped forward. His tone was relaxed, cocky. “Look, I’ll be straight with you. We’re here to rob your house. You can either let us get on with it or we can hurt you.”

“What are you doing?” Valerie screamed, noticing the things the men were holding. “Those aren’t yours! Those are ours!”

“Shh!” Simon said.

“Fuck this,” Steve said, stepping forward.

Just then, there was a noise at the front door. A moment later, it opened. Janice had a key; she’d let herself in. “It’s just me, Val!”

“Help!” yelled Valerie. “Help!”

All three men lunged forward, but Sean was nearest. He put hand over her mouth, but he lost his footing: he and Valerie were flung forward, down the stairs. Head over heels they went, hitting the floor at the bottom with a bone-chilling crunch. 

In the kitchen, the bell rang; the chicken was ready.

Steve and Simon looked at each other in horror. “Run, Steve” Simon hissed. “Run.” Together the two men stormed downstairs, pushing Janice out the way, bounding over the body of their friend and Valerie, and out the front door.

Janice ran over to her Valerie, screaming. Just then, there was a yell from behind her. It was Rowan. He carried a dead duck under one arm. “What did you do?” he shouted at Janice. 

“Nothing…” she said. “I—”

“Get out of the way!” he screamed. He bent over his mother, feeling for a pulse.  “Who the fuck is he?” he added, pointing at Sean.

“A—a burglar, I think…” said Janice, who by now was shaking violently. “Is she—”

Rowan felt Sean for a pulse. “Bastard!” he screamed.

“What is it?” Janice said, paler than ever. “Is she—?”

52. Valerie and Sean: One Version of Events

Janice leant over Rowan and felt her friend for a pulse: there was nothing… no, maybe there was something… she couldn’t be sure. If it was there, it was faint. She began a shambolic attempt at CPR, trying to mimic what she’d seen on TV. A few moments later she checked for a pulse again. “Nothing,” she said, teary-eyed to a distraught Rowan.

Rowan checked for himself but it was true, there was nothing.

Valerie Barrett was well and truly dead.

In one swift, fluid motion, Rowan twisted Sean’s neck. There was an audible snap.

53. Valerie and Sean: Another Version of Events

Janice leant over Rowan and felt her friend for a pulse: there was nothing… no, maybe there was something… she couldn’t be sure. If it was there, it was faint. She began a shambolic attempt at CPR, trying to mimic what she’d seen on TV. A few moments later she checked for a pulse again. “Nothing,” she said, teary-eyed to a distraught Rowan.

Rowan checked for himself but it was true, there was nothing. 

Valerie Barrett was well and truly dead.

In one swift, fluid motion, Rowan rolled Sean away. There was an audible snap.

54. Guilty

The police and ambulance arrived at the same time as Sara, Jim and Camille. Rowan did what he could to explain what had happened. While he was talking, the fire alarm went off: the chicken was burning, the vegetable pans were overflowing with boiling water, the cook was dead.

Janice wouldn’t be calmed. The four Barrett siblings tried, the Ambulance man tried, the policewoman tried. She was absolutely hysterical. “I saw my best friend die,” she screeched. In the end, the paramedic had to sedate her.

“Thanks,” said Jim. He meant it.

The four Barrett kids stood outside the house while the police cordoned it off with yellow “crime scene” tape. They placed numbered cards all around and took lots of photos. Neighbours came out to watch, and the Barrett siblings could do little more than join them: passive observers. Not one of them cried. It was as if it had happened to someone else: to someone else’s family; to someone else’s mother. The four of them chain-smoked, and watched. Every now and then the policewoman—who called herself a ‘family liaison officer’—whatever that meant, would come and talk to them. She asked them if they had anywhere to go, if they had anyone who should be contacted. None of them really spoke to her; they just smoked and shook their heads. “Whenever you want to talk,” the officer said, “I’m here.” But what each of them knew, standing there in the encroaching darkness, smoking, with a vicious wind that stole the fire from their matches and the colour from their lips—what each of them knew was that there wasn’t now, nor would there ever be, anything of value to say about this night.

For all of their differences, in that respect they were all of the same mind. Each recoiled from the reality of the event, yet also embraced it—it was easy to get carried away with the buzz of activity that surrounded them and their house, but each time they took more than a passive interested they were reminded once again of the root of the excitement: their mother, who died unfulfilled, lonely, and before her time. 

It was Camille who finally voiced the only question that mattered. When the officer next came over to offer tea, support or tranquillisers, the eldest daughter of the late Valerie Barrett leant in close and asked, “When are you all planning on leaving..?”

55. Alone

Steve and Simon stopped running at the end of the next street.

“Do you think he’s dead?” said Steve.

“How the fuck would I know?” said Simon, lighting a cigarette. “Want one?”

Steve’s hand wasn’t steady enough; he couldn’t take a smoke, couldn’t even take the pack. He’d seen the dead body of anyone he knew before. Not that Sean was necessarily dead. People had survived worse… “There was a guy I heard about once,” he said. “A friend of a friend, you know. His name was Tim Richardson, he was a scouser, I think. Anyway, this guy Tim, he was in a plane, flying somewhere out east; China or something. About halfway into the flight there was some turbulence. Nothing too bad at first, but over the course of half an hour, it got worse and worse. Suddenly, the plane started dropping straight out of the sky… thirty five thousand feet, thirty thousand feet, twenty five thousand feet… just like that; like a stone. At about five thousand feet, the pilot managed to pull up, but not enough: the plane still came down, just not as hard as it could have done. There were two hundred people on that plane, Simon—and Tim fucking Richardson survived!”

Simon didn’t say anything for a moment. He stood, smoking, mulling the story over. Then he said, “Steve… What the fuck has that got to do with Sean?”

“I’m just saying, people have survived worse…”

“Did Timothy Richardson fall down the stairs in that crash?”

“No, but—”

“Did he end up wrapped round someone as if he was in some kind of old woman porn?”

“No.. Simon, I was only—”

“And what about everyone else on the plane?”

“Died, I think…”

“Fucking great, that is, Steve. So what’s the conclusion? Sean’s got a one in two hundred chance of surviving?”

The argument was redundant, of course. Sean was already dead; having suffered a broken neck at Rowan’s hands—either accidentally or on purpose, depending on what way you looked at it.

56. Jim, explained

What remained of the Barrett family had shaken off Janice and gone to the pub. The sat at a quiet table outside in the cold. Camille had complained but not vigourously. They all wanted to smoke, anyway. 

To take their mind off things, they talked about Jim’s dice. He was rolling a pair of dice over and over on the table.

“So what’s the odds of rolling seven, then?” Camille asked.

“About one in six,” Jim said. “Under controlled circumstances.”

“What does that mean?”

“You always have to take into account the observer effect…”

“What’s that?” asked Camille.

Rowan was tapping his foot loudly under the table. Usually this would have infuriated Sara, but today she let it go. None of them had the energy for confrontation. Jim and Camille were talking on autopilot; Rowan and Sara were listening on autopilot.

“Let’s say I was going to follow you everywhere, to study your behaviour,” said Jim. “If I tell you I’m going to watch everything you do, you wouldn’t behave the same way as if you didn’t know I was watching you, right?”

Camille shrugged. “Obviously.”

“So the odds of you… I don’t know… walking around naked would be reduced, right?”

“You’re my fucking brother, you pervert!”

“It’s just an example, Camille… Anyway, the point is: the probability of you doing or not doing things would change because you know you’re being watched. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s the same with dice.”

“Dice can’t know they’re being watched,” said Sara. “What a stupid theory…”

Rowan stopped tapping his foot for a moment. In a sudden motion, he picked up his glass and threw it into the side of the pub. It smashed, pieces of glass flew everywhere.

Jim, Sara and Camille looked at him, open-mouthed. Rowan relaxed, looking at them as if nothing at all had happened.

“What the fuck was that?” said Sara.

Rowan raised his eyebrows and looked at her. “I was just wondering…” he said. “I was just wondering… when your mum gets murdered, and you go to the pub, is it more normal to roll dice and talk about stalking people, or to smash glasses.”

Everyone agreed that they didn’t know, but neither seemed like such and unreasonable alternative.

57. Rowan’s brain

Rowan became concerned that he might have a repeat of the other night’s episode, when he began speaking his thoughts aloud instead of thinking his thoughts inside his head. He suspected it might be happening already.

“Already,” he said. “Hard to tell.”

As the others carried on talking about Jim’s dice theory, Rowan continued to think about what was right and wrong, given his circumstances. It was the first time he had given any thought at all to right and wrong in a long time, and he wasn’t quite sure where to start. He thought about what had happened with his mother’s murderer—it felt good to know he was dead, there was no denying it. Was that wrong? Surely not. Every fibre in his body screamed it was right. No, more than right; it was his duty to feel a sense of justice…

“Justice,” he said. “Simple.”

Justice. The word stuck in his mind like a splinter. He may not know much about right and wrong as other people saw it, but he knew all about justice and he knew all about being justified. He had a clear idea of those words, a definition, even: Justice  was any action he exacted on the world that made him feel calmer; the action therefore was its own justification.

“Justification,” he said. “Of me.”

Sara looked at him quizzically. 

“Am I saying this out loud?” Rowan asked, calmly enough.

Now all three looked at him.

“Shit, I am, aren’t I?” he said.

They sat there in silence, the four of them, all equally uneasy.

“I should go,” he said. “Should I go?” he added. “Yes, I should go,” he said.

“Er.. Rowan,” Sara said, putting an arm on his shoulder… but he brushed it off.

“I’ll see you later,” Rowan said.

And then, he was gone.

58. Sara’s Brain

For as much as she liked sitting outside the pub, in the bitter chill of the late afternoon, Sara was in no mood for company.

What did it mean, that she had a dead mother? A murdered mother! Attention, that was for sure. There would be a lot of attention. Janice would be in touch. Perhaps she’d begin to see herself as something of a matriarchal figure. Sara could imagine her with Rodger, “Oh, those poor kids, they need someone.” That’s what she’d say. Janice the fucking hero would ride right in… It was laughable.

On the upside, this whole ordeal had to be worth at least a week off work. The temping agency would understand; Mark Selwyn would understand. Perhaps they’d pay her for time off. Compassionate leave, she could call it. She’d have to say she was arranging the funeral, but there’s no way they’d ask her to prove it. “Excuse me, Sara, can you show us the Co-op’s name on your bank statement, please?” No chance!

Then another thing occurred to her: money. What if there was an inheritance? It would be a real opportunity… She could go away somewhere and not have to worry about working. She would go and see the northern lights first, definitely. By herself.

Yes, she needed to be by herself more. Starting now. She stood up: “I’m going to the toilet,” she lied. She was at the other end of the street in minutes.

59. Camille’s Brain

Jim was chatting away happily, but Camille had totally lost the thread of what he was saying. She thought that she knew when to nod, and tried to smile a little every now and then, but if she was honest she would say that she wasn’t interested in the conversation they were having and, furthermore, she didn’t really feel very much like smiling, what with their mother being dead as a result of murder only hours before.

Camille wasn’t stupid, but neither did she have the capacity of her siblings to think through the potential consequences of her mother’s death and what the future implications were. Not without prompting at least. 

But Jim’s ramblings were making an impact on her, unconsciously. What he had said about following people, about watching people, had got her thinking about reality TV. In turn, reality TV had got her thinking about celebrities. From there, her thoughts had moved onto fame, and her looks, and the chance that she too might make it onto TV one day… and then it occurred to her.

Her mother was dead as a result of murder.

That wasn’t an everyday situation, especially as the murderer—or one of them at least—was also dead himself. It was a big story. It would get in the papers, on the local news. Maybe it would get in the national news. 

And that meant interviews.

As Jim talked, Camille practised the kinds of facial expressions she might be required to do if she were interviewed about her dead mother. She moved her eyebrows down into the sincerity V shape. She realised that conveniently, this expression could double as grief, or deep thoughts. That was important, the deep thoughts expression. Otherwise, people could think she wasn’t really focused on what she was saying. 

Jim looked up at her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Camille was pleased: he took from her expression exactly what she hoped. He saw a distraught, broken daughter; traumatised by the untimely death of her mother, haunted by memories of what it was like before, when the family were together, when things were different, when the five of them were happy and—

“It’s just…” he broke off. “Well, the shock can do it to people, I suppose…”

“What?” said Camille, dipping her eyebrows, performing to the camera in her mind.

“Have you wet yourself?”

60. Jim’s Brain

Camille wasn’t taking it well, Jim thought. She’d left, and he was alone in the pub with nothing more than his dice and his pint.

He rolled the dice over and over; shivering in the cold. He thought despondently about Camille’s reaction to his probability theory. It seemed that more often than not, when he talked, he talked to himself. The people around him—what few there were—did nothing to validate him; they neither affirmed nor criticised him in any meaningful way. Sitting by himself in the beer garden where Sara had been just a few days before it slowly dawned on him that really, despite his three siblings, he was very much alone.

This was driven home especially when he thought of his dead mother. She hadn’t understood him, not really, but at least he had understood her. She had been his bridge—the thing that linked him back to the world and emotions of other people. But now she was gone. And without her, a host of other connections to the world fell away too. Already the idea of getting a job was forgotten. He wouldn’t work in a video shop. Not now, not ever.

He imaged his skin as a brick wall, standing between him and the world. He imagined his eyes as windows, from which he could see all and judge all objectively: It was almost a physical experience. Jim Barrett, in losing his mother, was becoming untethered from the world itself.

Panicking a little, he pulled his jacket closer around him. But it did nothing to help. Just like the family he had always been surrounded by, it was a false protection. From his deepest thoughts—like those on probability that he’d been expounding earlier—to his most trivial desires, he could see no parallel in other people. What did Camille know about the joy of learning? What did Rowan know about morality? What did Sara know about passion? Nothing! But Jim… He knew of nothing else. These things were his world, and his world was in his head, and the door was now closed.

He finished his beer in silence.

61. Over The Next Few Days

Over the days that followed, the reality of a murdered mother began to sink in for all of the Barrett kids. The initial feelings they had experienced became tinged with a genuine sense of loss. There was nobody to cook, nag, do the washing or wake them up in the morning. There was a vacuum, no doubt about it, a hole in their lives. Each of them quietened a bit—Camille even refused to speak to the press, choosing instead to spend time in her room sketching her thoughts, trying to make sense of the muddle in her mind.

She wasn’t the only one who kept to her room. Jim, of course, spent time with his dice; Rowan just drank and smoked: beer after Marlboro after beer; Sara spent much of her time lying naked on her bed with the window open, allowing the cold wind to tease her skin. 

On the fifth day, Janice arrived. It was important to her to know that the kids were all okay. She brought Rodger with her. Despite the gravity of the situation—her best friend murdered! She, first on the scene! Nearly brutalised herself!—she wore her usual type of clothes: a garish green top on this occasion, with a long flowery skirt. Rodger wore a more formal suit. It was very dark and against the dulled English backdrop it achieved the effect of making him look even shorter, an impressive feat.

“Hello!” Janice called out. There was no answer so she stepped into the house. It was the middle of the day, but the place was almost pitch black. Every curtain was pulled and the lights were off. She found the nearest switch and flicked it on. “Oh my God,” she said, gripping her little husband’s arm. “Would you look at this place!” It certainly was a mess. Pizza boxes littered the hallway floor. It appeared as if the food had been eaten upstairs and the empty boxes thrown down afterwards. There were also empty drinks bottles—everything from lemonade to beer to vodka—dirty laundry, at least two dozen letters, of which some looked to be very important, and all kinds of other mess. “But… it’s only been a few days…” Janice said to Rodger, absolutely stunned. Then, shouting, she said, “Hello! It’s Janice! Is anyone home?” There was still no answer. “Oh dear God,” whispered Janice. “You don’t think… what if they came back?”

“Who?” said Rowan, appearing from the kitchen. He looked awful: unshaven, half-dressed, hangover eyes.

“The men who broke in…”

“Men?”

“Yes, there were three—”

Janice didn’t get to finish. Rowan pushed past her and ran upstairs. In his room, he got dressed. As soon as he was done he ran back downstairs.

“What did they look like?” he said.

“I’ve already told the police—”

Rowan grabbed her and slammed her into the wall. Rodger looked on anxiously but didn’t move.

“What did they look like?” he repeated.

“Men, I—I don’t know. Twenties? There were two of them. Dark hair. I think one of them said, ‘Steve,’ but I’m not sure. I told the police that, and they said they had an idea of the suspects…” Rowan eased her grip on her. “I’m sure they’ll catch them Rowan,” she added, trying to be reassuring.

“I hope not,” Rowan said, picking up his keys from the sideboard. “At least, not before I find them.”

62. Sara & Jim

Janice knocked on all the doors upstairs but there was no answer so she and Rodger began tidying. “It’s the least we can do for the poor loves,” Janice said. Rodger felt less sympathetic towards them. Why should he help clean the house of a boy who just tried to attack his wife? These kids are freaks, the lot of them.

He said nothing, of course.

Sara and Jim were upstairs in their rooms, awake. They had both pretended not to be there, because they didn’t want to have to speak with Janice. The knocks on the door had, however, re-awoken them to the idea of an outside world. Sara took the initiative and crept along the landing to Jim’s room. She didn’t knock. She didn’t want  to make a noise and she didn’t think he would answer anyway, so she just walked in. Jim was sitting at his desk rolling dice. The room smelled disgusting; Sara was sure the place was teeming with life—there was food all over the place, half-drunk cups of tea, it was almost enough to make her turn around and walk out.

“Jim?” said Sara. He brother jumped; he clearly hadn’t heard her come in.

“Oh,” he said.

“How are you?”

“Okay… Yeah, okay… Just working at this, you know…”

Sara looked around a little. “So… do you mind if I sit?”

Jim turned around to face her. “Sure,” he said.

“If you want me to go, I can go…”

“No, no, it’s okay. I was just thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to anyone.. Days, I think. Janice is here, you know. I heard her earlier, she knocked on my door.”

“Mine too,” said Sara. “She brought Rodger I think.”

“I don’t want to see her,” Jim said, just as the vacuum cleaner started up downstairs.

“No,” agreed Sara. “I don’t either.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, until Sara said: “Have you thought much about it?”

“About mum?”

“Yeah…”

“I don’t know. I suppose. It’s more that I’ll expect her to be there, and then she isn’t than I sit here thinking about the fact she’s dead.”

“Like it creeps up on you?”

“I suppose. One minute I’ll be thinking about—I don’t know, the dice, and the next I’ll think, ‘Oh, I haven’t seen mum in a while,’ and then, form somewhere, a voice in my head says, ‘That’s because she has been murdered. You’ll never see her again.’ But it’s not like I sit around thinking, ‘Woe is me,’ or anything…”

“No,” agreed Sara. “Me neither.”

“It’s weird though…” said Jim, scratching his head.

“What?”

“That she got murdered… it’s weird. I mean, it’s one thing to die; that happens to people all the time. But to be murdered… I don’t know… it’s weird. Mum wasn’t the murder victim type…”

Sara chuckled, but understood what he meant. “I know what you mean. I expected her to lose her mind a bit, and fade away… to die of old age, perhaps.”

“I think about it a lot,” said Jim, in the tone of a man confessing.

“Dying?”

“Yeah—Well, about how people will die. You can usually tell.”

“How do you mean?”

“You just can. Rowan, for example. He’ll die young. You can tell.”

“Jim!”

“Oh, come on… you don’t see it?”

“Okay, what about Camille?”

“Cancer, probably.”

“Is that so…” Sara said. “Well, what about me, then?”

“You’re a bit more difficult,” he said. “I think there’s a good chance you’ll live to be old; to die of old age…”

“Well, thanks!”

Jim shrugged. “Hard to say though…”

“And what about you, Jim?”

Jim’s eyes opened wide, his eyebrows moving dramatically up his head in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“I’m just asking: how do you think you’ll die?” Sara repeated. 

“I thought it was obvious,” said Jim. “It’ll be suicide.”

All the Barrett children had the same dream of their father at a little after 4am that bitterly cold Sunday night. All were at home, save for Rowan, who was out on a park bench. All screamed at the same time. All woke up for a few moments, sweaty and breathless, before settling back down to sleep.

Valerie didn’t wake when the three screams in her house rang out. This was for two reasons. Firstly, she had the duvet well over her head to keep the warmth in; secondly, and more importantly perhaps, she had taken two sleeping pills, without which she hadn’t slept in three years.

All the children fell back to sleep in minutes. None remembered the dream in the morning, not even Camille who was usually particularly good at remembering dreams.

When she woke up, Valerie called Janice to ask if she knew of a man who could come and fix the window. Janice did. “His name’s Frank Wellington,” she said. “He’s very good at that sort of thing.”

Valerie called Mr Wellington immediately. He sounded nice on the phone and said that yes—even though it was a Sunday, he would come over. He couldn’t let her go through the day with a hole in the front of her house, could he?

Frank Wellington was in his mid-thirties. He was a large-set man with a receding hairline. He was in blue workman’s overalls, the kind a car mechanic might wear. “Mrs Barrett?” he asked, on arriving at the front door.

She had put some make-up on, just in case. As usual, she had overdone it somewhat. Her eyes were sunken beneath a bluish tint of eye shadow; he cheeks were more ruddy than healthy-looking thanks to the liberal dusting of blusher they had received. Despite this false colour, it was still possible to see that when she saw Frank’s face, she flushed slightly. 

“Please,” she said, opening the door. “Call me Valerie.”

44. Wrong Place, Wrong Time

He wrung its neck.

It wasn’t that he hated it; he wasn’t even particularly irritated by it. Slightly irritated, perhaps, but no more than that. It was, after all, just a duck. Once it was done, and the bird was limp and lifeless, he struggled to work out why he had done it at all. That wasn’t to say he felt any regret or remorse; rather, he felt a moderate sense of achievement. He’d never killed anything before. Not unless you count what happened to Rod—but that wouldn’t be fair. For one thing, it wasn’t his fault and for another, he couldn’t be sure Rod was even dead. But the duck—the duck was definitely dead. That was it for the duck. All over. No more ducking around, or whatever ducks do. Rowan didn’t suppose it mattered very much, whether the duck was alive or dead. At least, there was one less thing to peck at his leg when he fell asleep on park benches. It wasn’t that he hated the duck; it was just that he didn’t want it to peck at his leg anymore.

Rowan was mildly interested by the angle of the dead bird’s head. But even that was nothing to write home about. It was just a dead duck, lying on a mattress of dead leaves by a bench made from a dead tree… A jogger passed by. She didn’t notice the duck, but she did notice Rowan. Her expression was one that he had come to be extremely familiar with: disengaged disdain, as if half-watching a distasteful television programme. Or, to see it another way, this jogger’s mind was tied up with the morning’s activity, but could still be distracted, if only momentarily, to spare a look of disgust for the inferior being on the bench. If only she’d seen the duck! Then she would really have something to be disgusted about—”Oi!” yelled Rowan, wanting her to turn back, to see the duck with its backwards-facing head. Just because he wasn’t impressed by it, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t make an impression on her. “Oi!” he called again but the jogger didn’t even break stride.

Rowan marvelled again at his fellow mans’ capacity for judgement at a distance. “Coward!” he screamed, on his feet now. If he could be bothered, he would have chased her, rugby tackled her if need be, just to prove that he did not want to hurt her. If anything, he wanted to protect her; it was her and others like her who were threatened by muggers like the boy in the navy sweater and his friends, and it was Rowan who had spent his time trying to track the bastards down. Yes, if he could be bothered, he’d have told her all of those things. 

As it was he didn’t move; he just sat on the bench, wishing that someone might pass who could give him a cigarette in exchange for a dead duck.

45. Lunch Preparations

Much to Valerie’s disappointment, Mr Wellington finished his work without incident and left. He’d not been able to replace the glass, but he’d managed to board it up well enough to keep the wind out. He said he’d come back in the week to replace the glass properly. Under other circumstances, that would have excited Valerie, but it was clear that Mr Wellington had no interest in her at all. That’s life… there will be other men, at other times…

She called Janice and thanked her for the recommendation, explaining that the window was fine, that Jim was doing well; agreeing that yes, it was a terrible world these days. Eventually the subject changed. “We’re having a big lunch today,” Valerie said, excitedly. “The whole family will be here. Would you like to join us?” 

Janice said that she would. “I’ll help you prepare if you like,” she offered.

“No need,” Valerie said. “Just be here for one.”

Valerie hung up and went to the kitchen, closing the door behind her. This was one of her favourite feelings: the anticipation of the meal not yet prepared. Her kitchen was full stocked. She had chicken with sage and onion stuffing; potatoes—some of which she intended to roast, some she would sauté; and a whole range of other vegetables including parsnips, broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower. The washing up was done, the room was clean, the ingredients were ready. It was her kitchen, her sanctuary. She did something she hadn’t done since she gave up using the kitchen as a secret smoking room: she locked the door. Nobody would disturb her today.

Upstairs, Camille and Sara woke at the same time, bumping into each other in the hallway. “What were you thinking?” they both said, simultaneously.

“You just walked out!” Camille said.

“You just left me with that guy!” Sara said.

Both went for the bathroom door, but Camille got there first. “Bitch,” Sara said after her. 

Jim emerged from his room rubbing the back of his head. “What’s wrong with you?” said Sara.

“I was mugged,” Jim explained. “I got hit on the head, from behind.”

“Let me see,” Sara said, turning him around. “Hmm… Looks okay to me…”

“It is now,” said Jim. “It wasn’t at the time.”

“Did they take much?”

“Yeah, a bit…”

“Did you call the police?”

“Mum did. Nothing will happen. It’s not serious enough, I don’t think.”

“Did you see who it was? Who attacked you?”

Jim nodded. “Rowan went after them.”

“Poor them,” Sara said. She looked at Rowan’s door. “Did he come back?”

“I don’t know,” Jim said. “I’ll knock.”

Sara nodded. Jim rapped twice on the door, there was no answer. He waited a few moments before calling Rowan’s name. 

“Oh—just go in!” said Sara. 

Jim paused anxiously.

“For God’s sake!” Sara said, pushing past him. She flung Rowan’s door open. The room was immaculate; minimalist in the extreme. Rowan didn’t have stuff. Their mother kept it clean, but it wasn’t hard. All Rowan had was a bed and a pile of clothes in the corner. The bed was a single, in the middle of the room. It was empty and perfectly made.

“He didn’t come back then,” said Sara.

“No,” agreed Jim. “Do you think…”

“What?”

“Well,” said Jim. “Do you think he is okay?”

“He usually is,” Sara said, with a shrug.

“Perhaps we should go out and look for him?”

Camille was out of the shower, standing behind them. “What’s up?” she said. “And what’s that lump on your head, Jim?”

“I got mugged,” Jim explained.

“Rowan went after them,” added Sara. “And now he’s not home…”

“What? You’re worried? About Rowan?”

Sara shrugged; Jim looked at his feet.

“Okay,” said Camille. “Fuck it, let’s go find him.”

Downstairs, Valerie was singing along to the radio, delighted that the cooking was going very well indeed.

46. The Muggers

The three men who were responsible for the previous night’s attack were getting home just as Jim and his sisters left the Barrett house to look for their youngest brother. Their names were Simon, Sean and Steve. Simon was the ringleader. He was the one who wore the navy top.

The three were nineteen years old. They had met at school, but had dropped out because they felt they could make more from petty crime than they could from any potential career academia might have provided them. They didn’t fall into a life of crime, they made the decision completely consciously; one day, halfway through a geography lesson, Simon leant across to Sean and Steve and said, “Let’s get out of this shit-hole. I know a corner shop we can rob.” Simon led them there, and led them in stealing more than two hundred pounds from the till and about the same amount in cigarettes. “See what I mean,” Simon said. “What job can geography get you that pays five hundred quid a day?” Sean and Steve didn’t know, and quickly agreed join Simon as career criminals.

Much of the early work they had taken on was what Simon called the soft stuff. That meant that nobody got hurt. In fact, in one robbery a man resisted, he tried to jump over the counter. The three simply walked out of the shop. They could have stopped him, hurt him, killed him even, but it was simply too much effort. It was a line that Sean was particularly keen on staying behind. “It’s like breaking the seal,” he said. “When we do it once, it’ll be that much easier to do again. And we’ll need to be a lot more careful when we’re wanted for murder.” Steve was less reluctant. His view was that they should do whatever they needed to do. Simon’s perspective was very simple. “You’ll do what I tell you,” he said. “And nothing else.”

In their first year as career criminals they earned a little over twenty five thousand pounds each. Untaxed, naturally.

It was one day, as the three were walking down the street to the shops, that Simon decided it was time to up the ante a little. A man was listening to an MP3 player, holding a bag that clearly contained a laptop. “You knock him down,” he told Steve, the more aggressive of the three. “You grab the music player and the wallet,” he told Sean. “I’ll get the laptop.” The plan worked, but the victim was accidentally knocked unconscious.

Sean insisted they called an ambulance, but Simon was having none of it. “Casualty of war,” he said. “And anyway, he’ll live, he’ll live.”

Indeed he did live, but the next victim wasn’t so lucky. It was an accident again, but she was so old, she didn’t have a chance. 

Jim was the most recent of a long line of increasingly violent attacks. It was sheer chance that he didn’t end up with more than a bump on the head. So far this year, the three had made more than thirty thousand pounds each, untaxed from doing what they did to Jim, from robbing shops and from stealing handbags and the like from drunken patrons of London’s bars and clubs.

As they returned home that morning, to their luxury three bedroom house just two streets down from the Barrett’s family home, Simon announced that it was time they branched out. “I’ve got a mate who robs houses,” he said, rubbing a black eye. “The bastard cleared nine thousand in his last job alone. I think we should try it… and I know just the place.”

47. Fruitless

The three older Barrett siblings tried to look for their brother Rowan in the park first, but he had already gone.

There was nothing about the three Barrett’s that suggested they were family, except the fact that they appeared to have nothing in common whatsoever. Sara was dressed in a dark jumper / tight jeans combo—her favourite of her outfits. Camille, despite the cold, was wearing a low cut top with a shawl draped over her shoulders. Jim had a baggy t-shirt and combats on, as well as a big army-green coat and matching hat, which bulged slightly over the bump on his head.

They walked all around the park, but there wasn’t a sign of Rowan.

“He’s definitely not here,” said Camille.

“Hmm,” agreed the other two.

They didn’t say it, but they all wondered the same thing: what if he hadn’t even made it here. What if he was hurt? For all their differences, the siblings wouldn’t have wanted harm to come to each other. 

This came as something of a revelation to Sara in particular, who hadn’t really thought much about how she would feel if one of her brothers or Camille were to die. But when she thought about Jim getting hurt, and Rowan perhaps hurt too—or worse—she felt sick to her stomach. 

“Camden,” Sara said. “He could be in Camden. I saw him there the other day with a friend of his.”

“No way…” said Camille.

“Yeah,” said Sara. “I think he goes to Camden quite a lot…”

“No,” said Camille, “I meant ‘No way… Rowan has a friend?!’”

Jim’s watched beeped twice. It was midday.

48. Police Cordon

Standing at the exit to the park, the siblings noticed a police cordon. They enquired about it but the policewoman on duty wouldn’t tell them much except the victim was an ‘older man’. Satisfied it couldn’t be Rowan, they continued on their way.

Yes, it turned out Jim wasn’t the only victim of Simon, Sean and Steve that night. About fifteen minutes after Jim was mugged, a second man was attacked just around the corner.  Simon had gone in on the man first; leading from the front as he sometimes liked to so. The victim—Dr Jenkins—didn’t know too much about it. He felt a shove in the back, felt himself toppling over, then his head hit something and everything went white, then red, then black.

The old doctor died instantly. He had forty-seven pence in his pocket, a one day travelcard and half a pack of polo mints. Simon, Sean and Steve left the coins and the travelcard, but divided the mints between them. It worked out to two each.

Some haul!

49. Cooking

Valerie looked at the clock: midday. Perfect, she thought. Everything would be ready for one. She hadn’t heard the front door, as far as she knew at least three of her four children were upstairs, washing or asleep. And she was in no doubt Rowan would be back for lunch. She had faith in her boy.

The food was coming along nicely, so Valerie took her familiar seat at the large kitchen table with a glass of red wine. The drink warmed her instantly; her had swam a little after only a couple of sips. There was a time, she was sure, that she would go out with friends and drink much more than just a glass or two. Sinful days, fondly remembered! It was all such a long time ago now and time seemed to pass so quickly. The hand that held the wine glass was wrinkled: a young woman’s hand submerged underwater for some time. Her youth was gone, that much was certain!

Just as her past was faded, lost in time’s fog, unclear and distorted—so the present never seemed quite real, either. One day passed into the next smoothly, seamlessly, as if on some cyclical loop, destined to repeat itself forever. There was no distinguishing mark on her daily existence. Of course, things happened every now and then: Jim’s attack, for example. Or Rowan’s stunts. These things, she supposed, were the kind of events that punctuated the drawling sentence of anyone’s life; yet, they didn’t seem to interrupt her being in any meaningful way. Rather, they in themselves became part of the rolling monotony, incorporated and stripped down, weathered and worn so that they could slip inconsequentially, without sense or sensuality, into the rest of the bland plot that was Valerie Barrett’s life.

She sipped from her wine.

Perhaps it would have been different if she were still married. Janice was all the proof anyone needed that an unsatisfying marriage can be made to work. Valerie was just so alone, all the time. What she would have given for a husband! Or, even better, an infirm husband… a cripple, a shell of a man requiring one hundred percent of her attention. Immediately, she regretted the very thought. What a terrible thing to think! But the thought led her to realise something she’d never considered before. She saw for the first time what the appeal with Rodger was for Janice. He was so ineffectual, so little and… so pointless, that every day Janice must have been reminded of her meaning just in looking at him. What was he without her? Nothing, that’s what. You define yourself by those that need you.

And no-one needed Valerie. It seemed that not even Valerie needed Valerie.

40. More of Samuel

The cold shoulder that Samuel had been getting from Sara all night was the last in a long line of frosty reactions he’d had from women. Three weeks earlier he’d been on a terrible date. He knew it was over when he realised he’d been alone at the table for a full twenty minutes; it was then the penny dropped that perhaps, just perhaps, she wasn’t still in the toilet. 

It wasn’t that Samuel was an unpleasant person. In fact, he was liked by most people who met him; people thought of him as a nice guy. Jack certainly thought highly of him, at any rate. And he wasn’t unattractive, either. Jack was better-looking, but that didn’t take anything away from Samuel, who turned a few women’s heads in his own right. The problems for Samuel came when he was alone with women. The date that walked out on him wasn’t the first. And all of them—every one of those women with whom Samuel had spent time—cited the same reason for not wanting to see him again. He was boring. Not in the common sense; he had hobbies and he was even quite funny when he wanted to be. No, it was something more fundamental. It was as if, at his core, he wasn’t really there. The date who had disappeared having pretended to go to the toilet would later say to a friend that it was like being on a date with a shadow. Another described spending time with him as being like the sensation of not-being-in-the-world you get when extremely tired. It was as if he were present, but not really there.

Friends never got that impression. Jack, for instance, who had known Samuel for many years, would have struggled to believe that either of those women were describing Samuel in that way, as a shadow or anything like that. It was just on dates; just with women.

Sara would have found any man boring that night, because of the foul mood she was in, so that’s by the by.

Samuel couldn’t understand what his problem was with women. It was a pity no woman ever took the time to tell him how she felt in detail. All Samuel knew was that he would go out with them, and never see them again. He was twenty-two years old, but little more than a virgin.

It was set to be quite an extraordinary night for Samuel.

41. More of Jack

Jack’s experience with women was completely different to Samuel’s. He had slept with a lot of women. He hadn’t kept count, but the reality was it tallied well over a hundred. His problem wasn’t that he couldn’t have sex, but that he was rarely fulfilled by sex. He described the problem to Samuel one night, drunkenly. He said: “It’s like those strong man fairground games. You know, the ones where you have to hit the base with a giant hammer, and make the thing fly up to ring the bell? Well, it’s like for me, most of the time, the bell doesn’t ring…” Samuel laughed at this because to him it was pretty funny, a joke. It wasn’t a joke to Jack though. Not at all.

And so, disappointed as he was, Jack naturally went from woman to woman trying to find the one. So far, he hadn’t. The only people who he could really get close to were his friends, particularly Samuel. He liked being out, just having a few drinks, with no stress of what might happen later. He liked his life being simple.

The night when he and Samuel met the Barrett sisters, however, he found himself actually chasing Camille—a rarity. Usually, it was the other way round. And once Sara had left he thought, “Well, that’s that then,” expecting Camille to follow suit. But she didn’t. Jack, for all his sexual experience, had never had a threesome. The idea didn’t really appeal, but when Camille insisted they all go back together he was so shocked he agreed.

It was set to be quite an extraordinary night for Jack.

42. What Happened with Jack and Samuel: One Version of Events

Camille leant over to Jack, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Meanwhile, she reached out for Samuel, eventually finding his hand and gripping it tightly. “Now what?” she asked them both.

Jack looked at Samuel and Samuel at Jack, both had their eyebrows raised slightly, suggesting, “If you will, I will…”

A few minutes later, both men were standing naked in front of Camille, who, in turn, was naked on the sofa. She didn’t move. Samuel shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot; but Jack, the more experienced and confident of the two was calm. “Well?” he asked.

Camille chuckled. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“No, I mean… No offence but… Well.. I think it would be pretty, you know… awful,” Camille said, casually dressing herself.

“Awful?” repeated both men.

“Yeah… You know… Awful. Not good.” By now, she was completely clothed. The two men weren’t. She looked at them carefully: she knew this would be the picture she would later draw in her diary. “Well,” she said. “I’ll see you around, maybe? Bye!”

Jack and Samuel were both very drunk. Had it not been for that fact, and the fact they were both standing in the front room, sharing the same humiliation, what followed may not have ever happened.

It turned out Jack and Samuel had a desire to be closer than either of them had previously realised.

Neither Camille nor Sara ever saw or heard from Jack or Samuel again. It took Jack a lot longer to accept the sudden change in lifestyle that it did Samuel, who with retrospect could say that he secretly had known how he felt all along. Jack took a little more persuading, but the constant ringing of that strongman bell eventually convinced him.

A year to the day later, the couple had a small civil ceremony, and became, in the eyes of the law, a partnership. They took a honeymoon in Seville and loved it out there. After a fairly lengthy sangria-fuelled discussion, they both agreed they would quit their jobs the next morning, which they did. Jack owned the flat in London, which he sold through an estate agent. He didn’t need to go back to England at all. The money they got was worth a lot in Seville. They bought a beautiful villa, learnt Spanish and opened a small shop selling humorous t-shirts to the locals.

The became well liked in the community and lived long, relaxed lives. They died on the same day. They were very old and very happy.

Good for Jack and Samuel!

42. What Happened with Jack and Samuel: Another Version of Events

Camille leant over to Jack, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Meanwhile, she reached out for Samuel, eventually finding his hand and gripping it tightly. “Now what?” she asked them both.

Jack looked at Samuel and Samuel at Jack, both had their eyebrows raised slightly, suggesting, “If you will, I will…”

A few minutes later, both men were standing naked in front of Camille, who, in turn, was naked on the sofa. She didn’t move. Samuel shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot; but Jack, the more experienced and confident of the two was calm. “Well?” he asked.

Camille chuckled. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“No, I mean… No offence but… Well.. I think it would be pretty, you know… awful,” Camille said, casually dressing herself.

“Awful?” repeated both men.

“Yeah… You know… Awful. Not good.” By now she was completely clothed. The two men weren’t. She looked at them carefully: she knew this would be the picture she would later draw in her diary. “Well,” she said. “I’ll see you around, maybe? Bye!”

Jack and Samuel were both very drunk. Had it not been for that fact, and the fact they were both standing in the front room, sharing the same humiliation, what followed may not have ever happened.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Jack yelled at Samuel.

“What do you mean?” Samuel yelled back.

“You’re pathetic… It’s there on a plate for us, and you go and screw it up.”

Samuel grabbed his clothes and stormed out, slamming the door behind him

Once the dust had settled, Jack tried to contact Samuel, but his attempts failed. He phoned, he went round to the house, he even phoned Samuel’s work. Nobody had heard from him; he’d simply disappeared. But Jack couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t accept that his friend had gone, that the friendship was over. He contacted the authorities, Samuel’s family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, everyone he could think of. No-one knew where Samuel was. Everyone was concerned, but no-one was as concerned as Jack. He became obsessed.

Three months to the day later, the Jack took an overdose of anti-depressants, sleeping pills, painkillers, even allergy pills—in other words, everything he could get his hands on. He had become so withdrawn from the world and so distant from the people around him that his body wasn’t found quickly. In fact, it was three opportunistic burglars who discovered the corpse. The burglars stole the TV, the DVD player and the computer, among other things. As a gesture of goodwill, the ringleader—a young lad in a navy sweater—called an ambulance anonymously. “Some bloke’s dead,” he said. “Archibald Road.”

Coincidentally, that boy in the navy sweater was Jim’s mugger. He was also Samuel’s killer. Small world! It is worth mentioning that Samuel’s body was never found. The muggers had done a good job of disposing of it, that’s for sure.

Poor Jack! Poor Samuel!

34. Rowan

Rowan had meant what he said: it wasn’t for anyone else to rob from his family. He didn’t think his mum often got things right, but she got this right—there were kids out there these days that had no respect for anything.

Sure, Rowan had done a few things in his time that other people could consider anti-social. He knew that, he wasn’t stupid, no matter what anyone said. Some bastard like Rod or Jim or his Year 5 teacher saying he was stupid did not make him stupid. He was smart, and he was justified. That was the important thing as Rowan saw it. Justification.

And now, more than ever, he would have justice on his side. These kids, he would find them, and he would teach them a lesson. Rowan avoided fights, generally, but this was an exception. It wasn’t that Rowan didn’t like violence, it’s just that most of the time when he was involved in violence, it wasn’t a fight: it was him hitting someone. But Jim had said there were three of them. That, to Rowan, sounded like it might be more of a fight than normal.

He headed down Compton Street, right onto Oakley Avenue and up Grove Hill. There was no sign of anyone at all. Eventually, after walking for another twenty minutes or so, he turned back. 

The blood was pumping hard through his veins. It was no longer about just finding the bastard kids that did for Jim. It was about the whole fucking world, the way it worked. Rowan was so often in this position for one reason or another: one moment he’d be doing one thing and the next something entirely different, having been swept along by events outside of his control. That was the way it worked. If Jim hadn’t been attacked, Rowan wouldn’t be so pissed off now. He’d be at home with a full stomach, in front of the television, swearing casually at his mum or Camille or one of the others. It was as if the world set out to annoy him: that was the way it worked. As he walked, he shook his hands as if ending an exercise class. He was so full of energy: directionless energy.

He hadn’t calmed down by the time he’d reached home, so he stopped outside the front gate. There was a battered cigarette in his pocket. He wasn’t sure if it was smokable but sure enough, it lit. He paced as he smoked. For the first time, he felt the cold. He was shivering, in part from the temperature, and in part from the abuse his body had taken over the past days. This feeling—this sensation of being stretched, he knew it well. It was the way he felt when he was at the end of his tether, when he couldn’t take anymore. 

There was the biting cold, the rushing blood, the mangled cigarette… he looked into the front room where Jim was being nursed by their mother—Jenkins had gone—his pitiful fucking brother having his pitiful fucking head iced… then there was the navy blue, the rouge lipstick, the blocked toilet… he watched his mother leave, to make tea no doubt, he could hear her voice in his head, her whiny voice… then there was the flame hair, the oncoming car, the crunch of tyres over bone…

Rowan’s breathing accelerated, breath expelled through his nose in two great puffs. He was like a bull, squat and hunched, nostrils large, oxygen fuelled, nicotine fuelled, ready, ready, ready…

35. Jump

It was as if a sudden vacuum had been created in the front room of the Barrett family home. The window seemed to crack and—WHOOOM—the glass was pulled right in. Jim instinctively pulled a cushion over his face; Valerie, who was just walking through the door, threw the cup of tea she’d made across the room in shock.

Of course, there was no vacuum. It had been a rock, or a brick even. A large stone, at any rate. 

Jim slowly uncovered his face and looked around. There were shards of glass everywhere and the lamp by the window had been toppled. He looked to his mother. She was unhurt, but she was shaking uncontrollably. “Come and sit down,” he said, softly. 

Yes, and despite it all, Valerie smiled. Those were the first truly kind words she’d heard in a long time. 

Jim, with his back to the window, didn’t see the flurry of movement that Valerie did. She nearly screamed. She got as far as opening her mouth in fact, but she promptly shut it again. She’d only caught a glimpse of the man outside, but it was enough. 

A woman recognises her own son.

“It must have been those thugs that mugged you,” she said, convincingly. “They must have come back…”

Jim turned nervously to the window. “Well,” he said, “there’s no-one out there now.”

Then, Valerie experienced something she hadn’t had in years: the sensation of hugging one of her children. “I’m scared,” she said, holding Jim tightly and reaffirming in her mind his status as favourite child. 

“It’ll be okay, mum,” Jim said, although he was uncertain that was true.

But of course, Valerie knew it would be okay. For once in his rotten life, Rowan had done some good.

36. Just As The Window Caved In…

While the glass rained down across the carpet at home, Camille was lost in her own little jiggly world in the club. Meanwhile Jack, the bigger and squarer of the two friends they’d picked up, gyrated awkwardly at arm’s length. Sara, sitting by the  the bar, was now more than half turned away from Samuel. They hadn’t spoken in five minutes.

Eventually, Camille’s feet started to hurt and she suggested that she and Jack should get a drink. “What are you having?” he asked. A larger, she told him. Then she demanded that he buy a vodka for Sara. “I would have done that anyway,” he insisted.

The four of them stood around drinking for a while. They would have done so in more or less total silence, had it not been for Jack, who was desperate to raise the mood. He kept casting disapproving looks at Samuel, conveying the words, “I expect more from you, mate,” perfectly in quick glances and small muscle movements. Samuel, in return, raised his eyebrows slightly, non-verbal code for, “I’m doing my best, you bastard.”

His best, however, wasn’t cutting it. Jack decided to interject. “You seem quiet, Sara,” he said brightly. “I suppose Samuel’s enough to get anyone down…” He laughed at his own joke, weakly. Camille had taken her shoes off. She was balanced on one leg, flamingo-like, massaging her foot. “Cheap trainers,” she explained.

Sara got to her feet and left, walking right between the other three without saying a word. “Where are you going?” Jack asked after her, but she was already gone.

“Toilet, probably,” Camille said. “Anyway, who cares? Next round’s on me… it’ll be a cheaper one now!”

Sara hadn’t gone to the toilet, she’d gone to the cloakroom. She collected her jacket and left. 

Camille wasn’t far behind her sister in leaving the club. She and the two men fell into a cab and headed back to Jack’s place.

His flat was a tiny studio in Finsbury Park. The three sat round for ten minutes or so, eating burgers they’d picked up on the way and drinking warm canned beers. When they were finished, Camille leant over to Jack, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Meanwhile, she reached out for Samuel, eventually finding his hand and gripping it tightly. “Now what?” she asked them both.

37. Sara’s Journey Home

Sara left the club, relaxed instantly by the freezing air. She was drunk, but not drunk enough. The streets were alive with people getting cabs, getting kebabs, kissing, pissing… satisfying their bodies in every which way. Sara observed that all the mess: the vomit she had to jump over, the beer-bottles, the burger wrappers; and all the disorder: the argument over whose cab it was, the repentant sobbing on mobile phones to boyfriends and girlfriends, the drunken zombie-like lurching—she observed all this mess and disorder in the whirlwind of urbanity around her. Yet she wasn’t disgusted by it. Quite the opposite, for Sara it represented mankind at its most honest. 

Conversely, in the flats above the 24-hour convenience store, for instance, there was probably a 2.5 family tucked up in bed asleep, having had a wholesome night of boardgames and TV. A pleasant wind-down from a week of drudgery, a week of hard labour. Sara drew her jacket closer around her, unsettled by the thought of those people’s lives. Mostly, she was unsettled at the prospect of ending up like that herself. What of Mark, her boss, whose whole life was invested into a job that meant nothing? Nothing! He dealt with money—money: nothing more than a symbol, a representation. Paper cash in itself had never meant anything even in it’s height of the 20th century. Now even that paper it was printed on was even further devalued: money existing only in numbers on a screen. Life filtered down to the point where all that is left is concept: insubstantial, intangible and valueless.

A man appeared out of nowhere and staggered past Sara, who managed to sidestep him at the last moment. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot, his forehead and underarms sweaty, his shirt untucked. And Sara again wondered: what relationship was there between the sanitised office she shared with Mark on the second floor of a glass monument to abstraction, and this shoddy state of a man,  this reality, this humanity?

It was with these thoughts that she staggered reluctantly into another bar, and another, and another, and another, each closer to home, to bed.

38. Motherly Secrets or, Rowan Goes Crazy and Runs Away Again

Rowan rattled his keys in the front room. Valerie stood. “Jim, go to bed. You need your rest. I’ll come and check on you—”

“I don’t need checking on, mum,” Jim protested in a childish, whingy voice. In the space of a few hours their relationship had regressed to that of a first time mother with her toddler son. 

Rowan stood by the door, watching. 

“I take it you didn’t find them,” said Jim, pointing at the window.

“No,” Rowan said.

“Come on, Jim, go to bed,” Valerie urged..

Jim allowed himself to be ushered out of the room. He got himself a glass of water and went upstairs.

“His head’s fine,” Rowan said. “He’s not even bleeding.”

Valerie sipped from a cup of tea. “Sit down for a moment, would you Rowan?” Rowan looked at her uneasily but did as he was asked. Valerie continued, gently: “I know you put the window through, Rowan. I saw you. I—” Rowan began to try to defend himself, but Valerie carried on, talking over him. “I don’t care. Listen to me, Row—Rowan, listen—Rowan! Be quiet and listen to me a moment! It doesn’t matter about the window. I want to ask you something… I want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I want you never to tell anyone it was you who did the window.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter why, Rowan. I’m asking you: if anyone questions you, you say you don’t know anything about it. You say it was probably the lads who attacked Jim. Do you understand me?”

Rowan shrugged, spinning his keys in his hand nonchalantly. “Whatever.”

“Good,” said Valerie.

Rowan reflected on the treatment that Jim had got—for what? Being a coward, a victim? His mother hadn’t so much as asked Rowan if he’s okay. The fact was, he wasn’t fucking okay. He was pissed off. Frustrated. And not only that, he was second best, too. Jim was always the favourite.

“What?” said Valerie.

Rowan looked at her in surprise. “Hmm?”

“What did you say?” Valerie asked.

“I said, er, ‘whatever…’”

“No, after that.”

“Nothing.”

Valerie leant in close to her son. “I don’t have favourites, Rowan.”

Rowan, for the first time in a long time, was genuinely shocked. “I didn’t say that…” he stuttered. He had thought it, he hadn’t said it.

“What do you mean, ‘I didn’t say that’? I heard you! ‘Jim was always the favourite.’”

Rowan recoiled, stunned. His keys fell on the floor. He was scared. Was he mad?

“Some excuse!” Valerie said.

Rowan stared at her, slack jawed. “Am I mad?” he asked. His heart was racing again, his hands shaking. Valerie looked on, starting to become concerned. Why was he so confused? And why was he repeating himself?  It was all too much for one evening. First Jim, then the shock of the window, now this… “Go to bed,” she said. “You’re stressed.”

Rowan felt he had every right to be stressed. As he saw it, one of to things was happening to him: either his mother could read his mind, or he was speaking his thoughts without realising it. But how can you speak without knowing..?

“I’m no mind-reader,” Valerie said, trying to be reassuring.

Rowan looked at her in absolute horror, and then, in a flash, he was gone. Valerie ran after him into the street, waving his keys and shouting, “At least take these,” but in reality, she was glad he was gone for the night. She consoled herself with a familiar fantasy: nineteen years ago, there had been a terrible mistake… Comforted at least a  little, she went upstairs, kissed a sleeping Jim on the forehead, and went to bed. 

It had certainly been a long night.

39. A Very Odd Thing

At four in the morning, Rowan was back on his bench, asleep. He was the only member of the Barrett family not in bed in the family home. Even Camille had got back safe and sound, her diarised drawings of the night neatly laid out by her bed. It didn’t matter how drunk she got, the pictorial journal was a ritual she never forgot.

At five past four in the morning, a very odd thing happened. Every child of the Barrett family had the same dream—not just similar, but identical. And it came to all of them simultaneously: Camille, Sara, Jim and Rowan.

In the dream, they were standing in the kitchen of the family home. They were looking for some seeds. Plant seeds. It was crucial that they got the seeds, but they couldn’t find them anywhere.

In real life, incidentally, none of the Barrett family were remotely interested in horticulture… except, arguably, for Rowan, who had once grown weed with the intention of replacing Valerie’s basil with it when it was ready, for a joke. He was thirteen at the time.

In the dream, they raided every cupboard, threw food and glasses and bottles around—even ripped handles off drawers—in their desperation to get the seeds. Then, the each spotted one cupboard they hadn’t seen before, right in the corner of the kitchen.

In real life, incidentally, the cupboard they hadn’t seen before not only didn’t exist, but could’t exist, as it was where the back door was. To be precise, it was where the cat-flap in the backdoor was. The Barrett family didn’t own a real cat; Camille had a make-believe one as a child, that she named Neo. The cat-flap was put in at her insistence. “How else,” she asked, “can pretend Neo get out to see his pretend friends?”

In the dream, they delved deeper and deeper into the cupboard until their whole body was inside. They couldn’t find the seeds. The cupboard had almost everything else in it, though. Crisps and sweets and fizzy drink and so on. Mostly food and drink from their childhood. Eventually, unable to find the seeds, they gave up and pulled themselves out… slowly, slowly, slowly. Once back in the kitchen, it took their eyes a few minutes to adjust to the light, but when they did they saw something they never expected. It was enough cause each one of them to wake, screaming.

It was the enraged and bloodied face of their father.

22. Prodigal Son

The morning after the accident, Rowan woke on another bench in another park.

There was a terrible smell in the air, which immediately made Rowan think of Rod. He sat upright and gathered himself. He didn’t know what park he was in, but there was no-one around and, thankfully, no ducks. The events of the night before came back to him slowly: the drinking, seeing Sara, drinking some more, the accident, the ambulance, the hospital, drinking even more…

It was time to go home.

It turned out he was in a park just a few minutes walk from home. Perhaps, in his drunken state, he had tried to make it all the way back but only got this far. Or perhaps he’d just wandered there randomly. Whatever the reason, it was a relief to be so close to the bacon sandwich he’d invariably be able to persuade his mother to make him.

It was a Friday and the house was empty save for his mother, who was making cakes in the kitchen.

“Hello, mum,” he said.

“Rowan! I’ve been worried sick. How have you been. Come here! Ugh… When did you last shower? Where—”

Rowan stepped away from her and opened the fridge. There was bacon. “Can I have a sandwich?”

“Of course, you sit down. Bacon? A bit of tomato sauce? I know what you like, Rowan! You may be getting all grown up now but you’re still my boy!”

Valerie busied herself getting the frying pan, oil, plate, bread… she moved erratically, in jerks, but somehow precisely too. She was a woman who knew her own kitchen.

“How about Sunday lunch together, Rowan? All of us, the family?”

Rowan chuckled.

“What are you laughing at?”

He pointed up, at the faint smudge of the word ‘wankfest’ on the ceiling. Valerie didn’t bother to look up. Hands on hips, she said, “Rowan, it’s not funny.” Her youngest continued to laugh, even harder. He was thinking about Rod, about how Beth had thought he was masturbating. Mid-road wankfest, he was thinking, and it tickled him. 

Valerie harrumphed and turned back to the frying pan. She didn’t know what to make of the boy most of the time. Ill or otherwise, he was such a handful. He’d turned up today looking like some kind of Dickensian street urchin: grubby all over, clothes tattered, hair in his eyes. Of all her children, Rowan looked the least like his mother. Sara was thinner than Valerie, but had that same black hair her mother had when she was young. Camille had thinner hair but shared Valerie’s once voluptuous figure—now long gone, of course. Jim had Valerie’s withdrawn expression, both had slightly down-turned mouths. But with Rowan she shared nothing. He was stocky, square-headed, with eyes that could intimidate almost anybody. He was uncontrollable, a menace. 

In her darkest moments, Valerie wished he wasn’t hers. In fact, she would rather accept the guilt of the desire than deny herself those moments of relief at the idea of receiving a letter explaining that nineteen years ago, a terrible mistake was made…

“You’re not sorry, are you?” she asked, in a rare moment of confrontation.

Rowan thought about it. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Well, you did.”

Rowan nodded gravely. “Hmm.”

Valerie threw her arms up in exasperation, then continued on the sandwich. “There you go,” she said, putting the plate down in front of him. He ate in silence.

It occurred to Valerie as she watched him eat that even with company, she was no less alone.

23. Font Size 235

The office that Mark Selwyn and Sara Barrett shared was on the second floor of a rather large building, which wasn’t owned by any one company. Rather lots of companies paid a very rich landlord for a bit of the floorspace, with which they could do what they wanted. 

One company, FlameBrand, had a meeting room on the top floor for which they paid seven thousand pounds a year. They didn’t use it very often; mostly they just used it to come up with ideas for new product lines. The ceiling of the meeting room was painted like the sky, to encourage free thinking. The chairs cost over three thousand pounds each, to ensure anyone seated experienced maximum comfort. There was a massive electronic display panel on one side of the room that had a screensaver which flashed the motto “Creativity through Collaboration” in font size 235 unless someone made it stop. Nobody ever did.

Mark Selwyn would sometimes go up to the top floor and look in. Perhaps if he worked in that kind of office, he would be happy. He could give up all his dreams of quitting working life, and do a job he really enjoyed. If they needed an accountant, he could be there man. He knew a lot about accountancy. He could do financial accounting, management accounting and tax accounting. He could even do auditing. Maybe FlameBrand needed an auditor.

On her first day working for Mark Selwyn, Sara Barrett went to the wrong floor and found FlameBrand’s meeting room. She thought it summed up everything that was wrong with the world. It was so false, so superficial. She thought if she ever had to work anywhere like that, she would kill herself.

When she finally found Mark Selwyn’s office, she asked him what he did. “Accounting, mainly,” he said. She thought he seemed quite proud of that and thought him a bit odd.

After all, she thought, it can’t be such a special skill: It’s just counting with a prefix.

24. London Love Match, Again

Tom didn’t want to see Camille again after their first date. He correctly assessed her to be a nutter and waned nothing more to do with her. At the end of the night, he gave her a false telephone number, put her in a cab, and went out for a drink with some workmates. Meanwhile Luke, the friend who he’d texted the word ‘Nutter’ to, was still arguing with his girlfriend Amanda.

Camille had no idea she had been given the brush off by her date until she tried to call him for sex the next day and a woman’s voice told her: “The number you have called is not operational.” She didn’t care. 

One man was as good as another.

She called up Linda at London Love Match. “I want someone for tonight,” she said.

Linda knew who it was right away. “Hi Camille… No joy with Tom?”

“No. And I think he’s broken his phone. I need another.”

“Another…?”

“Another man, obviously.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause.

“Hello? Linda?”

“We’ve exhausted all of your primary matches, Linda.”

“What does that mean?”

“You see, the computer checks all the things you like against all the things the men on our database like and give a list of those men who match you the closest.”

“Whatever. Sounds great. Give me one.”

“Well, that’s just it… You’ve dated them all.”

“All of the men?”

“All of the primary matches, yes.”

“I don’t like Shrek,” Camille said suddenly.

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t like Shrek. I like, um… James Bond.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Find me a man who likes James Bond!” Camille demanded.

“I can’t just change—”

“You can!” Camille hissed. “And you will.”

“No, Miss Barrett, I’m afraid we can’t help you anymore…”

“Bastards!”

“…you’ll receive a full refund…”

“Screw you!” Camille yelled, slamming the phone down. She thought for a few minutes about what to do. She tried Tom’s number again: no answer. Then she tried Mark Selwyn. No answer.

One man might well have been as good as another, but no man was certainly not as good as any man, Camille thought.

25. Luke and Amanda

For Tom’s friends Luke and Amanda the argument about the text message proved to be a fatal blow to their relationship. The next day Amanda walked out, claiming she couldn’t stay with a man she couldn’t trust, a man who thought she was crazy.

Luke was past the point where he cared. “Fine,” he said. “Go.”

Amanda moved in with a friend soon after went back to full-time education. Although she was somewhat older than most students on her Bachelor of Performing Arts course, she made a number of good friends. Years later she got some work in TV adverts that paid reasonably well. Still single, however, she became increasingly depressed and began what turned out to be a lifelong dependency on prescription drugs.

Luke stayed in the flat they’d shared as he was the original tenant. He married the next woman with whom he had a relationship, a flighty girl called Alice. His insecurity about her fidelity grew steadily until, after three years, he decided to confront her head on about it. However, he never got the chance: he was killed on his way home in a freak construction accident. As coincidence would have it, the foreman of the site was the man Alice was having an affair with. Once the dust had settled on her double loss, Alice emigrated to the Central African Republic, where she spent her days as a teacher in a school for local children.

Tom outlived both Luke and Amanda, happily going about his life using the word nutter willy-nilly, oblivious to its potential consequences.

26. Right, That’s It!

“Right,” said Valerie, throwing open the door and yanking the curtains apart. “That’s it!”

“What’s what?” asked Jim, dazzled and bleary-eyed.

“We’re getting you out of here. We’re going to walk around the block—we can take that film you didn’t watch with me back to the shop.”

“No… Mum, no… I need to keep going.”

The counts of dice rolls had become extraordinary. Valerie looked in horror. “Jesus, Jim! Is this what you’ve been doing all this time? Are you unwell? Do you want some help? Is something getting you down?”

“Yes! Your nagging is getting me down! Let me be!”

“No,” said Valerie firmly. “Not this time. There’s boys that hang round out there. I’ll not be safe. You are coming with me!” She took her son by the arm and began pulling at him, tugging him into a standing position. Finally, Jim relented. “Okay, okay, but just to the shop and back.” He threw the die one more time, recorded the result and went downstairs with his mother for the first time since Fred Wallace had been in the house.

“I was thinking,” Valerie said as they left the house, “of having a family meal. It’s been ages since we were all together. What do you think?”

“Yes, it has been ages,” Jim agreed, squinting against the harsh winter sun.

“I was thinking tomorrow, a nice Sunday lunch. You’ll eat with us, won’t you?”

“Okay,” Jim said.

“Good. That’s you and Rowan as definites. If you see the girls, mention it to them, will you?”

The attractive young man was working in the video shop again, so Valerie took the DVD to him rather than posting it in the quick-drop box. He didn’t notice her there. She’d hoped that perhaps he’d ask her if she enjoyed the movie, or something.

On the walk back, Valerie broached a subject she had wanted to touch on with Jim for a long time. “You’re twenty-two,” she said. “Have you thought about work?”

“What do you think I do every day?” Jim asked, brushing the hair out of his eyes.

“I mean paid work…”

“When I publish my findings, they’ll pay,” Jim said, his tone firm.

“I can’t afford to keep you forever, Jim. You need to pay towards the mortgage, the bills… And anyway, you should get out more. Do you—well…”

“Do I what?”

Valerie stopped walking and looked at Jim, deeply concerned. “Do you have any friends? At all?”

“Of course!”

“I’ve never met them…”

“Internet,” Jim said simply. “We talk all the time.”

“Oh.”

They carried on walking in silence for a while.

“If I found you an interview, would you go?”

“I have my research—”

“What if it was only a few hours a week?”

“How many?”

“Ten. Maybe fifteen.”

“How much?”

“Five pounds an hour.”

Jim eyed her suspiciously. “And how much would you want?”

“None, Jim. None of it. You can keep it all.”

“Okay, if you can find a job like that, I’ll apply. Happy?”

Valerie smiled and opened her handbag. Inside was an application form. “Here you go,” she said, handing him the form. “But how—” began Jim… then he looked at the name of the company: Hollywood DVDs. Whatever Valerie was, she wasn’t stupid.

27. What’s in a Verb?

Sara spent that Saturday out in the cold, in the beer garden of a local pub, The Yellow Torch. The temperature was six degrees Celsius; not one other person ventured outside the whole time she was there. Sara saw that as being a victory on two fronts: she loved the cold and she loved solitude.

She spend much of the day drinking vodkas (no ice, no lemonade, no nothing) and rereading some old Agatha Christie that she’d found in the corner of her room. In between bouts of reading and drinking, she thought idly about her life and what should come next. She had taken the temping jobs to give her some money and eventually to make some opportunities for herself. Perhaps she could travel. Spending her time on the internet the other day looking up places to go had been something of an inspiration for her. 

So what was stopping her?

One definite problem was that she had no idea what she’d do when she got there, wherever there was. She wasn’t like those people she’d met at various jobs who spent all their time fantasising about jumping out of planes, climbing mountains or learning how to meditate. She hated those people. What she sought, if anything, was to be left alone. 

Maybe that was it.

Maybe she’d got it all wrong. Maybe doing was for other people—no idea what she’d do, that was what she thought her problem was. Well, maybe she just wasn’t a doer. Maybe she would just sit around, doing nothing. Technically, she thought, sitting around was doing something—but that line of thought was a red herring. This wasn’t about semantics, this was about her life. Why couldn’t the adventure just be being there?

Just then, her mobile rang. “What are you up to?” Camille asked.

“Nothing,” said Sara, irrationally defensive of the thoughts she’d just been having.

“Want to drink somewhere?” The Barrett sisters had little in common except their mutual love for alcohol.

“I’m in the Torch now,” Sara said.

“Are you with anyone?”

“No…”

“Great, I’ll be right there,” Camille said. “Oh, and were not sitting outside, weirdo.”

28. Janice

Fred Wallace, the plumber, had been recommended to Valerie by Janice. Janice was an old friend of Valerie’s. She was very, very short, and wore all manner of colourful accessories: red thick-rimmed glasses, oversized gold glittery bracelets, the works. She was responsible for the colourful patchwork coat that Camille was wearing the morning she pretended to collapse in front of Mark Selwyn. Janice had originally intended it for Sara—“That girl could do with some colour,” she’d said—but Sara had given it to her older sister. Sara was very fussy about what she wore.

Janice was married to a man even shorter than she, called Rodger. For the amount of times he said it, his name might as well have been “Rodger-with-a-D”. Rodger was a generally forgettable little man, his only memorable features were his very hairy nose and ears. People who met the couple, who experienced how dominant Janice was over her husband, could not believe that she never demanded he trim the excess hair. But what nobody knew was that Janice found the hair quite arousing; Rodger had often requested he should be allowed to cut it. This request was denied every time.

Valerie and Janice had always been close and like all close friends they were rarely honest with each other. For instance, Valerie never said to Janice: “That outfit it really garish,” or, “Why don’t you buy Rodger some nose hair trimmers?” Similarly, Janice had never voiced her concerns about the sanity of Valerie’s kids, nor did she repeat the rumours passed around the high street about them.

But something had changed recently: Janice had become deeply concerned about Valerie. So when she visited on Saturday evening, Janice decided to confront her old friend. She was as tactful as she knew how, which wasn’t very tactful at all.

“What’s your problem, then?” she said, interrupting Valerie’s conversation about Jim’s potential video shop job.

Valerie put down her glass of red wine on the kitchen table in front of her. “Whatever do you mean?” she said. “What problem?”

“You’ve been acting all depressed lately. Come on, ‘fess up. What is it, a man thing? Or the kids? Or has God done something to piss you off?” Janice laughed hard at that before carrying on: “No, seriously Val, something’s bothering you. Tell me what it is.”

“Well—”

“Wait, let me guess… Is it the menopause? I bet Rodger a fiver, you see…”

“What?”

“Joking, Val, joking! Jesus…”

The both sipped from their wine. Janice studied Valerie closely, who reacted awkwardly to being watched; she shuffled in her seat and touched her hair nervously.

“So?” asked Janice.

“No.”

“No?”

“No, there’s nothing bothering me.”

Janice drank some more wine. “Liar.”

Valerie looked around her conspiratorially, although she knew there was no-one around. “It’s just difficult, you know…”

29. Synchronicity

“It’s just difficult, you know…” Camille said to Mark’s voicemail, about men and relationships.

“It’s just difficult, you know…” Rowan said to the barman, about keeping his temper with people.

“It’s just difficult, you know…” Jim typed into an online forum, about trying to disprove established mathematical laws.

“It’s just difficult, you know…”  Sara said to no-one in particular, about work and life choices and so on.

30. Flirty

Camille and Sara sat inside the Torch, nursing a beer and a vodka respectively. “No man tonight?” Sara asked.

“No,” said Camille. “You won’t believe it when I tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“You won’t believe it: I’ve been through all the men at the agency. You know London Love Match. The whole lot that have anything in common with me.”

Sara stifled a laugh. “What did you put as your interests?”

“The usual: TV, films. Shrek. You know.”

“How many men are into Shrek? You should have said sex. You’d have been able to meet with every man there.”

“Yeah,” said Camille despondently. “Shrek probably did put them off. Too late now, though.”

Just then two men came and asked if they could sit with the Barrett sisters. Camille said yes immediately.

One of the men introduced himself as Jack. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a square jaw. The other was Samuel, a skinnier man but equally clean-cut. Sara begrudgingly moved her chair to allow them to sit.

Jack was speaking more to Camille than Sara, but she had more than enough attention from the extremely tactile Samuel. She thought maybe he was a pervert.

“So, ladies,” Jack said brightly. “What’s the plan for tonight?”

“We don’t know,” said Sara.  “Maybe go see Shrek?”

31. Monument

Jim’s wrist hurt from dice-rolling and masturbating. 

He conceded his mother probably did have a point about his social life. He turned the light on and looked at himself naked in the mirror. His skin really had deteriorated: thin and splotchy on his body. His hair was long and greasy and he desperately needed a shave. For the first time in his life he noticed the start of a pot-belly.

It was time for action.

The first thing was to tidy his room. He gathered all the crisp packets, biscuit wrappers and drinks cans he could find and threw them into a plastic bag, which he knotted and took downstairs. He picked up all his clothes and began splitting them into clean and dirty—but this proved dull so he decided to treat them all as dirty by dumping them in the washing basket in his mother’s room. He even summarised his dice roll totals and threw away the reams of paper he’d been keeping his tallies on.

The next thing was personal hygiene. He found his clippers and cut his hair back to a number one all over. When that was done, he shaved his face—then, for good measure, he shaved all the other hair off his body too. After that he took a long bath and followed that with a shower. He cut his fingernails, his toenails and brushed his teeth. He cleaned out his ears with cotton wool buds. He used deodorant and some of Rowan’s aftershave. There was no reason for it—he wasn’t planning to go anywhere, but he was on a roll…

On a roll… those words echoed round his mind, taunting him, teasing him…

But no, he needed to get himself under control. He never set out to get obsessive over any of his research, it was always supposed to be a hobby, nothing more. When had it happened?

He thought about Rowan, his psycho brother. Always smashing things up, shouting, arguing. Perhaps it had been the same for him at some point… perhaps at one time he’d just been mildly frustrated at something… but he’d thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and allowed it to build and build and build until it was so big he couldn’t think about anything else. Perhaps it was as if he had erected a great monument in his mind, that took up all the space that was in there. A monument to anger, so vast that all he could do was kneel before it and worship.

What, then, of the others? Camille? Perhaps one bad experience with a man? The idea that they could never satisfy her, never be enough? What if she projected that onto the next guy? What if she met him with the expectation he could never be what she wanted? It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, of course. She too had this monument in her mind, something she had built herself but was incapable of seeing around or pulling down.

It was all becoming so clear to Jim: it was a family curse.

Sara, then… what of Sara? Always so withdrawn. She too had probably had some experience that haunted her. She so wanted to be free, without knowing what from… Well Jim knew—from the idea that the world wanted something from her, and she couldn’t deliver it. She had built that up and focused on it, just as Jim had with his dice, as Rowan had with his anger, as Camille had with her relationships.

So what to do about it? Jim thought this over for a while and decided it wasn’t for him to preach to the others. It would only get him a punch on the nose from Rowan, anyway. But he could do something about himself. He could change… could become someone different. It had gone beyond the dice rolling with him. He had become a recluse.

He went downstairs to speak to his mother, but she was with Janice. Her handbag was by the front door. Jim quietly took the application form and went upstairs to fill it in. Once it was complete, he slipped out, closing the door behind him.

He had one thought all this time, and one thought only: he had to bring down the monument in his mind, the false idol, the—

32. Recuperation

Dr Jenkins, the man who checked on Rowan and treated his diagnosed mental illness, lived very close to the Barretts. So although he wasn’t a GP, he was the first person that Valerie called when she saw what had happened to Jim. Dr Jenkins, an ageing hippy with a walrus moustache, arrived in minutes.

“Jim? Jim lad? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah—What happened?”

“You were attacked, Jim! Mugged! They took your wallet!” Valerie was hysterical. She was soaked through, all three were outside on the pavement, no more than ten yards from the front door.

“Oh! My head.”

“Yes, yep, yeah…” Dr Jenkins said. “You got a right old bang on the noggin, that’s for sure…”

“Will he live, doctor?”

Dr Jenkins lit a cigarette and nodded. “He will, he will.”

“Oh thank God!”

Jim pulled himself to a sitting position with the doctor’s help. “I think… I can sort of remember… I was coming out of the house, there were three kids… one had a navy sweater on…”

Dr Jenkins took out a notepad and began scribbling the details. “It’s okay, Jim lad. Keep going, I’ll just write in case you forget later.”

“I’ll call the police,” Valerie said.

Just then there was a shout from the other side of the road. “What the fuck has happened here?” It was Rowan. He ran across to the doctor and Jim. “Jenkins? Is that you? What are you doing to my brother?”

“Ugh… Rowan… He’s helping me, you idiot.”

Rowan slapped him swiftly across the back of his head, right where one of the young lads had hit him only minutes before. “Ow!”

“I’m not a fucking idiot, Jim!”

“Enough,” said Dr Jekins. “Calm down.”

“Was he attacked?” Rowan asked the doctor.

“Yes, yep, yeah… attacked and mugged. Lucky to be okay, I should think.”

Rowan insisted on hearing the details. He was clearly becoming more and more agitated as the story went on. “It’s no-one else’s place to steal from my fucking family!” he stated when he’d heard enough. Then, he stormed off to find them, despite protests from the two men. 

Valerie returned with a blanket and a cup of water.

“I’ll be okay to get inside, mum.”

“You shouldn’t stand…”

“Really, please, I’ll be fine.”

The three made their way inside, uneasily. 

“What has the world come to when you’re not even safe on your on your own street anymore,” Valerie complained. 

Once inside, the two men sat down. Janice had left and Valerie busied herself with tidying the cup she had drunk from and the plate she had eaten from before eventually sitting down. She watched Jim with concern. Slowly, her face began to change from concern to horror. Jim became worried that perhaps he was bleeding, and put his hand to the back of his head. “What, mum, what is it?”

 “Jesus Christ in heaven, Jim. I don’t know how to tell you this… it must be the shock… All your hair’s fallen out!”

33. Singles

Sara and Camille were stuck with Jack and Samuel, whether they wanted to be or not. The two men were very determined. The foursome ended up in a local club together. Because the dancefloor was below ground, neither woman got the message from their mother about what had happened to Jim. 

Not that they would have gone home anyway. If they went home every time something happened to a member of the family, they’d never go out.

By coincidence, Mark Selwyn was in the club too. Neither Camille, his failed date, nor Sara, his employee, saw him. But he saw them. It suddenly occurred to him there could be some conspiracy… how on earth could these two women know each other. He broke out in a cold sweat, collected his jacket and left immediately without even saying good-bye to his friends. It was only in the cab home that he realised they shared a surname. What was the odds of that? You would never have guessed, he thought to himself. They have such different breasts…

The club was packed as it always was on Saturday night with local youngsters posturing and preening. The music was a mixture of dance and pop—Camille loved both, Sara hated both. Both agreed it was far too loud. Men in pastel shirts clung to the walls like light fixtures while women danced around pretending not to notice the onlookers.

This was probably Sara’s idea of hell. The sweatiness of it! It was all so tactile, so close. But mostly, it was so desperate. Why not just hand out raffle tickets and pair the men and women up that way? The whole thing was a waste of time and energy. Camille probably had the right idea with her dating agency. At least it bypassed all of this. Sara looked at the faces of the patrons closely: a lot of mouth smiling, but little eye-smiling. Admittedly, that may have been the effects of the alcohol but regardless, she just couldn’t be convinced people were actually enjoying themselves.

Camille was playing her favourite game with Jack. It involved her leaning close to him while dancing, looking him straight in the eyes, and waiting for him to touch her. Then, as soon as her did—POW!—he would slap his hand away and give him a filthy look. Jack was completely at a loss as to how to deal with her, but he was so drink-fuelled he kept lunging in, only to be suddenly repelled each time like a moth that flies into a lightbulb.

Sara and Samuel were sat at the bar drinking. Sara had already drunk the equivalent of half a bottle of vodka, but she was used to it. Her tolerance was higher than most people’s and poor Samuel was no exception. He was trying to keep pace and he was struggling. 

He did the best he could to make conversation. But whatever he tried, Sara wouldn’t be drawn in. “So,” he said at one point. “What do you like to do with your spare time?”

“I like to sit around,” Sara said. 

Yes, and poor Samuel had no idea she was being sincere.