'Here. Just now. Who was it?'

He didn't want to hear her answer. He had had to ask the question, but if he could have, he'd have defied the laws of physics to have missed the man so he would never have to be here now, asking again ... 'Who to ask the question, but if he could have, he'd have defied the laws of physics to have missed the man so he would never have to be here now, asking again ... 'Who was was he, Lu?' he, Lu?'

'Jonas--' she started and then stopped and thought hard before going on. 'It's not what you're thinking.'

'I come in the front door and a strange man runs out the back. What am I thinking?'

She was having an affair. She couldn't say it. The thought made Jonas unbearably sad. He'd have thought he would be furious, but he wasn't. He just felt like sobbing.

'Come and sit down.' She held out her hand for his but he didn't give it. Instead he tucked both hands into his armpits, as if the forearms crossed on his chest might protect his heart from the truth.

'Please, Jonas. Can we sit down?'

He recognized the tone from the few times he had been to pick Lucy up from the kindergarten before they moved. Although then she would be crouching, so she could look into the face of a tearful child.

Now he realized he was close to tears himself, and felt the image was not far removed from reality, despite the fact that she had to look up to meet his eyes. He still saw love in her face, but his heart twisted as he saw pity there too. Pity for him. Pity because she was going to hurt him.

He bit his lip and wished it were already over; that he already knew the worst and didn't have to go through the sordid shock of hearing it.

Numb with foreboding, Jonas followed her into the front room.

They sat on the sofa, but not as they always had before. This time they sat at either end, prim and upright, half turned towards each other, like insurance salesmen. The room was dark but for the silent television which tonight showed A Nightmare on Elm Street A Nightmare on Elm Street.

'I've been wanting to tell you ...' she started.

He couldn't look at her. Instead he watched Freddy Krueger's arms grow impossibly long and chillingly inescapable in a silent nightmare.

'... I just didn't know how.'

She was stalling. It was torture. He couldn't bear it.

'What's his name?'

She looked perplexed that he'd ask.

'Brian Connor.'

'How long have you been seeing him?' Every word sounded wrong to Jonas's ears, all the emphasis, all the syntax, as if the sentence had been cobbled together by robots, syllable by syllable, from sound bites found in some alien archive. He'd had no concept that he would or could could ever say them to his wife. ever say them to his wife.

'I'm not having an affair with him, Jonas.'

Was she going to deny the fact now? Or had he just caught them before anything could happen?

She slid her eyes from his gaze, which made him suspect the latter. Jonas felt himself unwind just a little bit. It was hardly any better, but it was something something-- 'He's run from me twice, Lucy.'

'He knows who you are. He didn't want to ... get into a conversation.'

I'll bet, he thought. Some suitably outraged, angry and cuckolded words swirled in his head for a second but never got the energy to make it out of his mouth. He just gave up on them.

'He's from Exit, Jonas.'

She glanced at him to see his response, but he looked blank. She cleared her throat and made a gesture with her hands that was half shrug, half pleading.

'They help ... I mean ... they support ... voluntary euthanasia.'

Jonas made a sound that had never come out of his mouth before. Pain and shock and fury. He stood up as if ejected and stared down at Lucy, whose face was bathed in a pale-blue TV flicker.

'NO!' he shouted. 'NO!'

Lucy Holly would have been Steven Lamb's favourite customer even if her husband hadn't been tipping him PS5 a month to keep watch over her.

He liked the companionship of sitting down with her in her cosy front room where the fire was almost always alight and smelled wonderfully of warmth and winter. He liked the fact that she rarely tried to make conversation. Everybody always wanted to make conversation - to ask him how he was and what he was doing and whether he was all right. Even his best friend Lewis sometimes put out feelers. But Steven always felt that they were tiptoeing around the subject that surrounded him like a moat.

He didn't like it.

He didn't like to be reminded.

So sitting in silence with Lucy Holly while fake fear played out on the TV was oddly comforting for Steven. The scenes of horror rarely affected him and when they might he closed his eyes. But the warm silence calmed him and sometimes even made a bit of conversation pop into his own own head. Over the years he had shared with Mrs Holly extracts from his life, and learned that he could be of interest to someone outside his family, for reasons other than that he was still alive when - really - he should be dead. head. Over the years he had shared with Mrs Holly extracts from his life, and learned that he could be of interest to someone outside his family, for reasons other than that he was still alive when - really - he should be dead.

Now, as he struggled up the hill in the snow towards Rose and Honeysuckle cottages, Steven hoped Mrs Holly was watching something good - but not so good that he felt bad about interrupting with a t.i.tbit about his little brother, Davey, who had just this morning accidentally swallowed his last remaining baby tooth and who was therefore down to the last fifty-pence piece he was ever likely to earn from their nan for doing absolutely nothing. As Davey had already spent the money at least ten times over in his head, the tragedy was compounded for him, while that only increased the humour of it for Steven.

The snow was shin-deep in the lane and Steven wore wellies and his black waterproof trousers and kept his head down as he trudged uphill, staring at the crystalline surface he was about to break with each step, smooth and pale grey in the fast dark of winter.

He pa.s.sed the telegraph pole halfway up the hill and heard it creak under the weight of snow and ice on the lines. Creepy.

The DayGlo sack on his shoulder held only junk mail tonight. Frank t.i.thecott gave him a fiver a week so that he didn't have to bother stuffing leaflets through letter boxes himself, and Steven kept it for the nights when he collected the newspaper money from his customers. He liked to make Mrs Holly's his last call of the day so that he knew he could go straight home afterwards and didn't have to rush.

He finally looked up to see that he had made it to the gate of Honeysuckle Cottage. Mrs Paddon didn't get a paper delivered. He'd knocked at her door once to see if she would like to order one from him but she had waved him away as if he were a Jehovah's Witness, and told him, 'We don't want that kind of thing here.' Steven still pondered on what on earth she might have thought she heard come out of his mouth instead of 'Would you like to order the Western Morning News Western Morning News?' After all this time, he'd never been able to come up with anything that sounded even remotely unsavoury.

Steven went up the three stone steps to the second gate and fumbled in the dark for the catch. As he did he heard something coming from Rose Cottage. He held his breath so he could hear better.

There it was again. Raised voices.

Steven was surprised. He was used to hearing customers shouting at each other as he opened the letter box on their lives for a brief moment. He couldn't remember the last time he'd opened the Randalls' letter box and not not heard Neil yelling heard Neil yelling something something at his father. at his father.

But he'd never heard raised voices at Rose Cottage.

He stood for a moment, undecided in the cold and dark.

He liked Lucy Holly very much. He liked Mr Holly too - even though he'd splashed about in the moat of Steven's memory. Steven hadn't liked that that, but he'd understood that it was the policeman's job to ask. Plus Mr Holly was a source of income for him.

So even though he decided to open the gate and walk the few paces to the porch of Rose Cottage, Steven had not yet made up his mind whose side he should be on when he got there.

Lucy's bottom lip trembled but she sat up straight and determined.

'It's my life, Jonas. It's my right.'

'No!'

This was worse than an affair. So much So much worse! If Jonas had come home to find Brian Connor buried inside his wife, if she had eloped and sent him a postcard from Hawaii, it would not have been one millionth as bad as worse! If Jonas had come home to find Brian Connor buried inside his wife, if she had eloped and sent him a postcard from Hawaii, it would not have been one millionth as bad as this this. How could she do this to him? How? How? After the pills? After the tears? After they'd worked so hard and come so far? After they'd held each other and made love and whispered After the pills? After the tears? After they'd worked so hard and come so far? After they'd held each other and made love and whispered I love you I love you in the bed where his parents had loved each other too? After everything he'd done for her? After he'd in the bed where his parents had loved each other too? After everything he'd done for her? After he'd protected protected her ... her ...

She still wanted to die.

He shook his head stupidly, seeing horror in his mind the way he'd never seen it in a movie.

Lucy stood up almost straight and spoke quietly.

'It's my choice.'

He hit her.

He hit her with a heavy hand on the end of a long arm that swung fast. The blow spun her round and knocked her on to her knees on the couch - her face bouncing off the wall they'd repainted together the week they moved in. Summer Dawn, the colour was called. And as Lucy curled, sobbing, Jonas noticed with detachment the smear of blood that now sullied the horizon above the back of the couch.

He leaned over her, putting one hand on the wall beside the blood, the other on the arm of the couch.

'No,' he said again.

'Stop!'

Jonas looked around to see Steven Lamb in the hallway.

The boy stood there tightly clutching the strap of the DayGlo sack on his shoulder with both hands, as if it was keeping him from falling from a great height. Even from across the room and in semi-darkness, Jonas could see he was shaking.

'Just stop stop!' he cried again, the words vibrating and cracked with fear.

'Steven, get out!' Lucy wept at him from between her hands.

But he didn't. He just stood there and shook, staring at Jonas.

'Leave her alone alone!'

Jonas stood up and Lucy hunched away from him.

He had to go.

Without even looking at her again, he strode across the room.

Steven Lamb backed into the hall table and knocked over the vase of drooping carnations. He watched Jonas coming with a look of resigned terror on his face, then at the last second he stepped aside as he realized he was not coming for him him.

Jonas brushed past him without a glance, and closed the front door quietly behind him.

Steven sank slowly to the cold flagstone floor, with his back against the banister, and hugged his knees to his chest.

Lucy looked up from the couch and saw that Jonas was gone and Steven was sitting in the hallway.

She touched her mouth where warm salt leaked from her lip, and tried to stop sobbing.

She backed off the couch awkwardly and dropped to her knees and crawled across the floor, not trusting her legs to carry her across the room. She knelt beside the boy in the hallway and put her arms around him.

'It's OK,' she told them both. 'It's OK. Jonas was just upset, sweetheart. He didn't mean it. He was just very upset and frightened.'

But Steven didn't respond to her touch or even appear to see her. His eyes were still fixed in the middle distance, a deep frown splitting his forehead. Lucy felt liquid soaking her knees. She looked down and realized it was the water from the flowers. He was sitting in it.

'Steven,' she said. 'What's wrong?'

He did not respond and Lucy started to worry seriously about something other than herself and Jonas. She shook him by the shoulders and saw him blink, so did it again and raised her voice, making it sharp - her playground-duty voice.

'Steven! Talk to me, please! What happened? What's wrong?'

Finally the boy turned his haunted eyes towards her.

His lips trembled as he whispered: 'Nothing.'

Reynolds laid out his case on the cheap brown bedspread.

He had almost everything he needed.

He could hardly wait until the case here was officially closed so that he could go and see the Chief Super with his d.a.m.ning evidence. The thought of how that interview would unfold consumed Reynolds like p.o.r.n.

'Sir, could I speak to you on a matter of some delicacy?'

He knew there might not be an actual promotion in snitching on his boss, but he was sure there would be some some benefits for him somewhere down the line. benefits for him somewhere down the line.

He antic.i.p.ated taking Lucy Holly's statement with pure pleasure. At last, hearing critical words coming out of a mouth other than his. Around colleagues he'd always been discreet, but every little eye-roll, every murmur of discontent, every sudden cessation of chatter when Marvel walked past, he'd squirrelled away like winter nuts to sustain him whenever he felt he was all alone and that n.o.body else noticed what was going on. Even now the Senior Investigating Officer was probably knocking it back in the musty farmhouse with Joy Springer. It made Reynolds ashamed to be a policeman.

He hoped Lucy Holly would remember lots more about her confrontation with Marvel when she made her statement. What she had told him on the phone was good enough, but he would draw more from her. Nuances, looks, implied threats. Reynolds wanted them all, like an egg collector wants to shake a rare bird through a tiny hole in a sh.e.l.l.

He put his notes and Lucy's statement away in their folder, then turned on Mastermind Mastermind.

Steven sat at the kitchen table with his hands around the first cup of tea he had ever accepted from Lucy Holly.

He was wearing a pair of Jonas's trousers. She had told him where to find some in the bedroom cupboard. It had been strange opening the Hollys' wardrobe, but no stranger than opening their front door. He'd tried several pairs before he found some newly washed jeans which were only too big, rather than ridiculous, and rolled them up, then cinched them with his school belt.

He'd put his trousers and underwear in the laundry basket, as she'd told him to, and gone back downstairs to the sound of the kettle whistling.

Now they sat on opposite sides of the table and Steven watched Mrs Holly pretending she was OK. He knew she wasn't. He'd seen her hands shake while making tea and he'd seen her wince as she put her cup to her broken lip.

He had registered these things but had detached himself from thinking about them too hard. Instead he had become a vague little ball with a shiny sh.e.l.l, so that he could protect himself. He knew now that that that was his job, and his alone. was his job, and his alone.

She smiled faintly at him, so he moved his mouth in response.