'Nothing.'

'My drink? You're looking at my drink drink?'

'No Mum, forget it. I wasn't looking at your drink.'

'Come on, don't bottle it up. You think your mother's drinking too much? Say Say so. You think I should feel ashamed because I'm drinking in the afternoon? so. You think I should feel ashamed because I'm drinking in the afternoon? Say Say it.' it.'

I don't say it.

'Daniel could be lying dead in a gutter somewhere. Did you think of that? Did Did you?' you?'

It's pretty much all I'm thinking about.

'It helps me sleep. It helps me get through it. I'm sixty years old, what does it matter to you if I have a couple of drinks to help me cope?'

'It doesn't, it's none of my business. But it won't make you feel any better, it never does.'

'How do you you know how I feel?' know how I feel?'

'I don't...but we all need to be thinking straight. To be there if...when Daniel needs us.' Daniel needs us.'

She gives her trademark sniff, but mis-times it ever so slightly, sending a trickle of tonic water spilling down her nose.

'This from the responsible one,' she says, holding up her gla.s.s in triumph. ' from the responsible one,' she says, holding up her gla.s.s in triumph. 'This from the girl who threw away her husband and her savings and her home. This from the one who's never there, who's always off f.u.c.king some filthy boy when her family needs her.' from the girl who threw away her husband and her savings and her home. This from the one who's never there, who's always off f.u.c.king some filthy boy when her family needs her.'

There it is. There's the quality invective I was waiting for.

Predictably she's worn herself out with this tirade and she attempts to make a grand exit from the room. She stumbles to the bathroomto throw up or compose herself, I'm not sure which, and I sit down opposite Robert.

'You want one?' he says, holding up the gin bottle.

'Yes,' I say. 'Absolutely.'

As he makes the drinksgreat boats of gin and tonic with rings of lime floating on the surface like life preserversit strikes me that I know too much about him for us to hang out comfortably one to one. Among other things, I know that he and my mother have no s.e.x life any more; that they haven't had one for quite some time. I know that Robert's prostate is enlarged, that he's mildly incontinent and that these days he finds it near impossible to maintain an erection.

I know this because my mother told me. And Sylvie, and Daniel and Kay and Stinky Jools, and just about anyone else in the distant recesses of our family that cared to listen. The same way she still tells people that I was busy losing my virginity on the afternoon that my father suffered his fatal heart attack. The same way she sometimes refers to Daniel as her 'mental son' when she's drunk, because of his infamous five-day silence. It's her lack of respect that's so fearful. The way she delves into everyone's wounds like a maggot, irritating the core of the infection instead of allowing it to stiffen and heal. It means people keep her in the dark. No one tells her anything unless they're forced to.

'She doesn't mean it,' says Robert, handing me my drink and attempting a smile. 'There have been more crank calls today, it's wearing her down.'

'Haven't you changed the number yet?'

'She won't do it, in case he phones.'

Mum comes tottering out of the bathroom and collapses back onto the sofa like someone's emptied her out of a carrier bag. She's all weepy nowand contriteand she slips her arm gratefully through Robert's.

'Did Robert tell you,' she says, dabbing at her mouth with a tissue. 'Some woman phoned to tell me Daniel was dead. Said she was a psychic, that she knew where my dead son was buried.'

'Mum, please please. Change the number. You can't put up with that. It's just cruel.'

'Do you think she knew something? Should I have listened to her? Robert made me put down the phone.'

'No Mum, you did the right thing. These people are sick, they don't know anything. They're just doing it for attention.'

'What do you you think?' says my mother, leaning towards me. 'What do you think has happened to my beautiful son?' think?' says my mother, leaning towards me. 'What do you think has happened to my beautiful son?'

He belongs to her, right now. He only belongs to her.

'I don't know. I just...I think he's OK.'

'Alive?'

'Yes,' I say. 'I'm sure he is.'

'Why?' she says falling back into the sofa. 'Are you you a psychic now too?' a psychic now too?'

She doesn't really want my answers to these questions, she just wants to make me feel worse. And what am I meant to say? That I think Daniel's alive because I know know him, because we're close. Because I think I would be able to feel it in my bones if something dreadful had happened to him? him, because we're close. Because I think I would be able to feel it in my bones if something dreadful had happened to him?

'It's early days, that's what the police said. There's no point in us thinking the worst.'

She seems comforted for a moment and relaxes long enough to take a sip from her gla.s.s of water.

'Have you spoken to your sister today?'

'No...not since the broadcast.'

'Would you look in on her for me?'

'Me? Why?'

'She hasn't called. I've been leaving messages for her...she hasn't called me back.'

'I'm sure she's fine. She's probably just busy studying.'

'You'll go and see her?'

'Yes,' I say, reluctantly. 'I'll go round and check on her tomorrow.'

'She's such a sensitive soul, Sylvie. I've no idea how she's coping.'

'She's OK, Mum, she's getting through it. Just like the rest of us are.'

p.u.s.s.y Talk

'Do you want to lick my p.u.s.s.y?

'Yes, yes, u-huh, that's so good. Ooh, amazing you're so hard.'

'Ooh...you're so big. Mnnng...I don't think I can take it. You might have to try it in my ar-'

My sister is bent over her feet, digging toe-jam out of her nails with a pair of scissors. She's wearing lose sweatpants and a grubby sweatshirt and has a slick of hot oil conditioner spread through her hair. A brown sludgy face pack is smeared across her cheeks and an episode of Friends Friends plays dimly in the corner. She slips her free hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispers to me, ' plays dimly in the corner. She slips her free hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispers to me, 'Wait, I won't be long.'

I don't hang around. I head for the kitchen and turn on the kettle so I can't hear the rest of what she's saying. I like to think that I'm pretty open minded, but listening to my twenty-three-year-old sister describing her p.u.s.s.y to pervert strangers over the phone is pushing it, even for me.

'What are you so bothered about?' she says, sloping in after me.

'Nothing. I'm not bothered. At all.'

'So come and sit down, then. Have a drink or something. Take off your coat.'

'In the living room?'

'Yes, in the living room.'

'Is...uh...is the phone likely to go again?'

'It might do, Claire. Why do you ask?'

'No reason. It's just...well if there's going to be more, you know...p.u.s.s.y talk...maybe I should come back another time.'

'Don't be so uptight,' she says, making cracks in her face pack. 'It pays my course fees, it's easy work, I don't even hear what I'm saying any more. I know the entire script off by heart.'

'You say the same things every time?'

'Pretty much.'

'And a stranger m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.es at the end of the phone while you say it?'

'Yes, that's the general idea.'

'And you're OK with that?'

'I'm fine with it.'

'You're sure?'

'It's a job, Claire. I'm the only one on my course who's not in serious debt.'

'Right...well, sure. I understand.'

Sylvie goes to the bathroom to wash off her mud pack and rinse her hair and when she comes back she looks about sixteen years old: fresh faced and perfect and pretty, like a Victorian porcelain doll. Not like the medical student who dissects cadavers once a month and moans about the human grease getting stuck under her fingernails. Nothing like the girl who spends hours on the phone muttering a stream of profanities to total strangers.

No one ever thinks that we're sisters at first. When you tell someone we're relatednine times out of tenthey rise up on the b.a.l.l.s of their feet and say really really? Her hair fine and blonde like my mother's, her eyes big and brown like my dad's. People do nice things for Sylvie. Usually for no apparent reason. Most people in the world have to jump up and down and wave their hands from side to side just to get decent service in a restaurant: Sylvie just sits there looking vacant and dewy and the whole world flocks right to her feet.

'So,' she says. 'I take it there's still no news?'

'No. I've just been with Kay, still nothing.'

'How is she?'

'She's numb. The doctor gave her more sleeping pills but she won't take them.'

'She must be distraught.'

'We're all distraught, Sylvie. This is f.u.c.king desperate.'

'You think I don't know know that?' that?'

'You haven't phoned anyone. You haven't spoken to Kay since the appeal. You haven't called Mum back, she's worried. It's not like you...that's all.'

Sylvie seems to have disengaged. All her life she's been told she's the caring sharing intuitive one, but there's never been an occasion to test it. Now something's happened that requires her to step up to the plate and I'm not sure she even knows how to behave. I've seen Mum every day since Daniel disappeared, put up with her rages and her drunkenness because I know that it's part of the deal. Still all I hear from Mum is Sylvie. How must this be effecting poor Sylvie? How is she ever going to cope? Maybe I should tape a bit of p.u.s.s.y talk and play that back to her; that would show them all what's what.

'I have to study, you know,' she says, miserably, 'There's so much to do, it's the only thing keeping me sane.'

'I know, I understand. Just give them both a call, OK? They just need to know that you're all right.'

She nods; I a.s.sume this means she will.

'I can't believe it's been ten days, it feels like forever already.'

'Yeah,' I say. 'It really does.'