"Look into my eyes. Do it. Gently, friend. I am indestructible, son. I was here before you and I come from a place that you'll never find. You can't take me. It is against the natural order. I decide when I go, and the rule of law must be obeyed. Simply must. So buzz off and dance, son. Bag some old bag, or seize her old geezer."

Alone for some time now, Mal Parish tightens his dressing gown, lets go of the mirror's strapping frame, and sits at his desk. He picks up his finest pen and unscrews the top, and lowers himself towards writing paper.

The Natural Order of Things

The natural order of things
Works by breakdown and repair.
Recall your
Infant flowers of malady,
The cough lupin, a chest of bowing honeycomb.
Sweat petals, sneezing bees.
Our roads must be uneven, we muscles learn.
We cells find out.

That's alright. Find out what? He stops and asks the window. Then "The harder you kick me, the sooner I'm bouncing back, you bollocks." He tells the room. What? What do we find out? To escape where we're going; to be a little bit sure that something happened while we were here? Meanwhile stay stagger-headed on hormones just long enough to not notice that it was all in your head. Mal's body was all in his head, and had been for some time.

He couldn't get to church any more, which was irony where he needed it the least. The Bollocks took the church off him. He turns to the internet, which was far too broad to be a source of real inspiration, either for poetry or for life. The television had Hitler, ghosts and sharks; three subjects on a permanent cable rotation somewhere in the world. The internet, as a general totting up of the human mind, was feline. If the cats met the sharks, somewhere a phantom Führer stood president over the pool, would this be a good enough snapshot of the human condition, for the spacemen to take as their souvenir, when they do? The outer does my inner in. Or something.

Mal chooses a tablet and checks his order. Parallel twin-cylinder engine, throttle position sensor and electric carburetor heaters, customised to 790cc. The customer services portal has no status change, but the guy did say between six and three. And mail from Mr Zafy in Madagascar. "Malcolm, thank you so much for your latest contributions. These days, you're a regular church bulletin. Could you knock up our Spot-The-Ball while you're at it? Listen, we are praying for you both. If you need Adopt-A-People again, pray in this direction! God Bless."

Mal missed Fara. Words could not describe it. There was such a joy in watching her grow, being some manner of guardian from afar. But even text books and yellow boxes full of silly things come up against the starker teenage order. "I think this is sometimes odd." She looked briefly into the church web-camera but didn't smile. What did she mean? "I'm grown up now. I don't need toffees and t-shirts, from anyone." Even there. Even there. "Please.." He felt like tears when she looked back at him, and he feels like that a lot these days, and still sends money and still wonders where she is, and prays for her. And, late in the night, still wonders if he caught what he caught to stop her getting, Lord knows, HIV or something. Drew some hazard across the planet, as a friendly exorcist might do, a catching hand that passed unseen over coastal sheets, between summer-warm peaks of towned-in shanty tyre, to a slightly open door and on again. He thinks he would have done that.

What else? Unopened 'Re:Probate'. Accumulation or Maintenance Trusts? 'Your Executors'. Your Executors. For the first time in his life, finance actually made him sick. No metaphor. Lose lunch.

What else else? Shut the whirlpool, Parish. Shut the junk. 'Things Pulled Together', he thinks. I assemble my dustpan and brush. Hunt a Fleur de Lis glass that completes this borrowed set. I pull things together. As I come apart. Pen down. Dreary, hellish and dreary. And not exactly him. Not really. If there was any sort of upside to this condition, though, it would be that pulling together. The awful focus. The chasm certainly has drive. Boy does it. Mal is ten miles high in there. So fast and so nowhere. He turns through sleep cycles like a hollered-at hamster on a wheel. We stop suddenly, minds taken, to look for our boats, to bud-find and gather in. Emotionally, we wait for wood and a fresh morning. Look for a kinder order in things.

At this point, poking through his own thoughts, the doorbell goes, and Mal Parish finds his feet, and then raises one beech Venetian slat by a finger or two. The world outside, he thought, had lost its heroes. All the kids knew were faces. Faces and score charts.

He tries the peephole. Suit, fair and neatly shaven. "The homeowner?" Squatter actually. Not the bike. Maybe there's been a problem.

He opens up. "Yes?" If the man on the step had a hat he would pull it to his chest and cower a little. Instead he raises some kind of hand-held data capture device and bends his head up and around the roof with a cheery smile. He introduces himself, and his assets management firm.

"Thinking of selling at all?"

"No." Did Mal know that he lived in a freshly-linked commuter girdle? "Yes." And that city bulls were hungry to plant their annual bonuses somewhere friendly. Perfect time of year for your windfall sale. Price-driving. "No, thanks." Whatever happened to clothes pegs? Look into my eyes. Gently, friend, so gently. Some school kids pass along the street, as if they're bunking off early, sent home or something. As the chap prints an estimate off his hand-held and onto his business card - "How much?" - a van pulls into the street. This was more like it.

Standing so long, pain threatens to return to his left side. Nevertheless, he thought, Val was just. going. to. love. this.

"Anyone hurt?" Val's arrival ended the cheering. Cheering. She was directed from the front gate, into the sports field, by the fire service.

Anyone hurt? Too early to say, they say. Yes, the insurance covers most eventualities. She repeats it, again, to the material trim upholstering the ceiling of her SUV. The smoke had drawn her back down the hill, never as fast as she would like, and never as slowly either. Dread, a parallel place of perpendicular speeds. Her first reaction, too early, too distant to put real meaning to the threat to life, was to rehearse. Question time. Indemnity. Then, nearer the gates, 'Dear Val. Re: hearse. They've asked if they can all file past your prison cell?' The closer she got, the more the excited faces passed her car, the more empathy overtook. But look outside now. From the edge of the hockey pitch the clouds are even more ominous. They have a shape, a twisting hammer keen to come this way.

Too grown-up smart for mess around, too young smart to try to weave any voodoo over this, her fingers are finding the latch when Bob Beattie's loud hailer appears. How many hurt? "Too early to say. Sorry." He drops the megaphone. "Chemistry. Empty but you never know. We just don't kno-" Oh, Bob. Born not of the womb, but of the worry line. Deputy since year dot. Born deputies, a living mystery. Happy on the scaffold, but happier a creep away from the block.

Feet on the ground. If you're not cutting mustard, leave the pot. "Who was on monitoring duty?" Sophie East- "Can I speak to her?" Quick headcount, but not around. Every cloud, even here, has a lining. "What?" Shake the head. "What?! What brand of incomp.." But Bob can never get more startled looking, no matter which tone of voice she gives him. "Do we know what happened?" Bob shrugs. Someone resembling a fire crew captain is there, picking brains with the head of Chemistry. They discuss hazardous storage and halon versus smothering. "Hello. Hello, sorry to bother. Headmistress. Mrs Parish. I saw an ambulance. Just up there." Ray. Smoke inhalation. No trace of anyone else. "Ah good. Not for Ray. He's a good man. He'll be running around after some Vicks?" Coma. "Right you are."

Past the track, and to the pitch, ushering latecomers. A pit of dread in the gut, the grass arrives as a steadier. A slow tonic. Nature's reflexology. For some people it's the sea. Where was Bob Beattie's happy place? "1983, you know. Dropped mercury. Had to split the floorboards and dig. White suits and gas masks. Chernobyl for a day. But nothing like this.."

"It's going to be dandy, Bob." Hammer of the gods, bring it down. The pupils have been gathered as best they can, into houses, each amassed into a corner of the rugby field. Heads of House usher their Prefects, to count and keep a check on vanishers, no shows and horseplay.

She'd let them go, for the p.m. Heads of House shrug. Sure? Sure. Get them on her side at least. Sure.

"Good afternoon." She advances into their midst, swinging Bob's loud hailer. "Attention please."

"Was Ray making ketamine?" Someone chances their arm, and those that aren't gabbling find it funny.

Never should have expanded. Never. "Very good. Yes. Raymond needs an ice pack for a day or so."

"No change there." "Ice pick?" "Nice pack. Lunchbox." A shove. Val leans towards Bob. List of all absentees and latecomers, please. This morning's, and the present headcount. She makes a mental note. Van der Venn.

"Thanks to the kick-in of new safety policies no-one was killed. Now. Cause has yet to be ascertained. Anything Bunsen burning in anyone's conscience let me know. My door is always open."

"No, it's not." "Why doe she say that?" Fair point.

"My door is fully knockable." It's an opportunity, Val. Steer things up. "I'd like to say a prayer for Ray." Sighs. "After we sort out getting you home." Cheers.

Hammer of the gods, hear it coming. "Anyone with travel issues can utilise the pavilion." Bags, being shouldered already. Then turning, she sees the Traynors, poised at the Dead Ball Line. Val tries to ignore their look of abject concern. Mrs Traynor hopping, gawking, mouthing 'Hayley'. Mr Traynor pacing tightly, like he'd quite happily punch the school's lights out. Suddenly, the mother can't take any more of this. "Hayley!? Where is she? You alive, babe?"

"Prayers first, then." Other parental cars appear to be lining the hill beyond the gates.

"She's not here." The girl probably has her mouth full of Aspartizade. "This is an asylum, Parish."

"Lord, we thank you today for our good fortune. Which serves to remind us how we are part of something greater than ourselves."

"Mum." A voice finally swallows and pipes up.

No-one listening. Blazers sit on shoulders. "Oh, babe. Oh, thank you. Thank you." Mr Traynor remains unconvinced, drifts his hips from side to side as if set for a sprint.

"Something humanity feels a need to reach for." Val backs up to the Dead Ball Line, raising a hand to their faces. "But which you show in abundance, in the trees.." You can't put a spin on it, sometimes. Fans to be hit, forces gather. She watches Bob Beattie check a line of fluff from his pockets. You’re only as strong as your inner circle.

"Amen." Bedlam. Exodus in every direction. Colliders, colluders and matinees perused by mobile. Ah! Ms Easterby-Smith. Nice of you to - "Slow and orderly, please. Ties on!"

Face the storm and give what you receive. "Excuse me. Children have been praying. Could you leave the grounds please?"

"This is going to the Ombudsman, Parish."

"You say that, Mrs Traynor, and it never happens. All anything goes to is my office. I'm beginning to think you have a little thing for me. Yes? Possibly?"

Mr Traynor turns his head, looking at the grass, disgusted.

"Because it rests at your door, Parish. It rests at your door. You're the source."

"Of your daughter thumping other girls? I am there, vocal in her ear? 'She's got Chlamydia. Pass it on?' I suppose I'm the source of that too? I suppose I'm guiding her fingers to Wikiplagiara of a morning? I shin your drainpipe, scraping the window. 'Petrify the numpties, Hayley. For me?'"

Mr Traynor looks up quickly, like this has gone too far, and makes a 'Jee-' sound.

His wife smiles weakly into the distance, suddenly finding her demure mode. "You're right. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're not in charge of this place at all. Maybe it's just the wind." She smiles as her daughter approaches. "Babe." She extends her arms, drops them as the group passes. "Going up the river? Don't be late, babe."

Val excuses herself, and Bob joins her as they pass silently back towards the gates.

"Can we get a bouquet at his bedside? No wife. Try the file." Val Parish hangs up and turns back to her screen. "Can't look. Worried I'll see myself." She and Bob Beattie are examining CCTV playback in her office, relayed via the local area network.

"It was you, Val. It was you." Bob points at a paused section of playback, on the stand-alone in the corner.

"What?" She glances over. The rota had been run through, tomorrow's science classes rescheduled, and the staff were in the staff-room or gone. Meanwhile, the fire service was supervising the police, who were waiting for someone to take a back up of the CCTV. Banned from even inspecting the damage, Jack's call was forthcoming.

"Feeling guilty?" Bob does his best to smile under the circumstances. "Right steps, wrong day."

Guilty. Never, or never much. Well, a kind of survivor guilt at times. Probably Mal, although it predated him. Surviving what, she didn't know. The past was of little interest to her and never had been. Life began this morning. Maybe guilt can hold ambition's cloak, as the actor feeds on nerves. Or maybe we can't just tear through life without being a survivor of ourselves.

She gives her deputy a stare and continues to examine what looked like a crafty drugs transaction. She zooms to and fro, but suspects she'll never prove anything so late in the day. What was she becoming, the police? Bob scratches his neck. "We didn't dream this would happen when we woke up."

"Don't really dream, Bob." Then, after a while, done with forwarding and rewinding, endless faces or space, and after perusing the What's On at the Evenbridge Playhouse, she asks "Any ambitions, Bob? If I were to leave here, I'd like to think it was in better hands."

His profile freezes imperceptibly. You could sense the calculations, and they usually calculated towards zero, just as Val tended to calculate towards one, binary creatures that we become. Then a rift of anxiety. "Any plans?"

The headmistress doesn't seem to answer his question. "I'm meeting an old friend tomorrow. Oxford. You know, I was the unambitious one. Or maybe I was just a late starter. So I have expanded this place, watched it suffer for it. Big Brother won't shine the shoes, raise an average or sweeten the vinegar. Might be the zeitgeist. I'll see it improve, but to any point of real glory? Still ambitious, you see. The only drug we're paid to take."

Bob tastes his coffee, and chooses his response carefully. "Sunnier shores?" After Mal? A son in prep to consider. But, as a practical person, she had the feelers out. "Superhead?"

"No, public school. Looking for somewhere on the HMC. Suit my background. I'll miss the Evenbridge mums. You betcha."

"Righto." Bob chuckles. "Point taken. Not sure I.. I. Wrong age to start filling shoes to be honest."

Val sighs and stretches. Then she lets herself get distracted by a departing fire engine. She already asked Jack about a new position. Not approved, but any rejigger within budget was always down to her. Someone needed grooming.

Eventually she looks over. "Misplaced motion sensors. Blind spots a bus could do a bootleg turn and back again. Don't you agree?" He looks at her, and she waves her finger around the screen.

"Give me your hand. I've written you a poem, darling." The cold grey respirator will rise and fall, and Val will squint across the white light suffusing everything, and read it to him, finally. It will be fitting, and it will be a surprise. And, who knows, surprise might keep him going.

Well, she would do. If she could write poetry. "A hearty C+" Mal would probably conclude, if that was in any way possible, eyes flickering from side to side, and finally slip away. But she couldn't write poetry, and would therefore have to ask someone who could, to write something fitting for her.

The hammer of the gods is a mashie, a five iron, with Jack attached to it, waiting at the top of the steps. He must have flown here. Emerging from the side door, Val pockets her mobile and waits. White trousers, pink polo shirt, red visor. He has his back to her, one leg folded, observing the roof of the science block like he had just teed off.

"I'm trying to butter them up, Val. Looking for Lurpak." He shields his eyes and scans around. "Good day sunshine. I get a royal bucket of sand up my ass."

"CCTV would suggest accident." She takes to the steps.

"It shouldn't have happened." He smiles politely, watching her approach. "There's always a responsible."

"Coma. Counting sheep. I'll check beneath him."

Jack winces. "Whatever dance you do, the rough can just get nastier. Val, if I'm getting it in the ear, you'll get it harder. The fun bus parks somewhere."

"Dress me down, Jack. The whole way. Just leave me the contingency. The ricochet."

"Dress you down? Special measures, Mrs Parish. You know what Britain manufactures these days? Little management consultants with a commando's grip and heads like chessboards. Make that Deep Blue. Deep Shit V, under a big Swiss mountain. What they pull apart and screw back is all the same to them, so long as it whistles like wet nuts in a windtunnel."

Special Measures. Special Measures spelt abroad. "And how foregone are they? As a conclusion. Any room to look at things like people people, or adults?"

"Bring me the fucking Lurpak." Jack hollers, before noticing a special constable emerging from the science block. He immediately hushes, but moves right up to her face. "One bloody month month, I see an effing miracle miracle." He then grasps for the sky. "Golden. So buttery no-one can hold it."

"End of term." She offers.

"Booked out. Replacement interviews. Yours and mine. One month, I show a wrapper. If they nibble, I cut slowly and we might not be toast. And nobody's heard of Jarlsberg."

Val Parish acknowledges another knot of police officers emerging, moving around the back, to the glade and to the fence. She sighs and checks her watch. "Feels like mommie just got the early score from daddy." It was almost relieving to get it out of the way.

Frowning, Jack looks at his five iron, then shakes his head. "Come on. Professional, Val. Look around. Everybody's mommie. Yes? There's just good mommie and bad mommie in Bishop's Evenbridge."

"And I am..?"

"You'll never know. And that's how the world keeps us swinging."

I'm No Friend

Do you read me, sir and captain?
I whispered to a walkie-talkie, stolen
From a man I killed, who shot me
As I did stoop to finish him.

I'm no friend, sir and captain,
But the men you charge are fodder
For the guns that come behind me.
I just thought I should warn ye!

Fuel ridden, lit with the punch of an erring shell
I curled into sacked concrete, a smoky stock room
Shook in the rush of wing. Breathless helicopters
Cry for a still night when wives are simply sorrowing.

I hear you, lad, eventually a voice
Asked why I should tell him
Such a thing, on such a morning,
After such a forceful sortie.

Why, captain? Look behind ye,
Above the man above ye. All around!
Fodder is their fortune, their low tale of misgiving
We're the full stop in their illiteracy.

Sophie Easterby-Smith turns a pencil through her fingers. The front of the notebook says 'R Rowntree'. Last month, she was selecting the school entries for a regional anti-smoking competition, and found it difficult enough after the first swathe of phlegm allegory. So many goblins, a fistful of fetid emerald. This month, the 'Poetry 4 Peace' entrants: which Val had asked the department not to be too specific about in terms of contemporary events, although she had ignored this request and told her class to go where they felt right.

An afternoon train back home would not normally be so full, and it was a battle just to keep marking at times. "We're on the 2:35." The girl opposite danced between a phone conversation and excited vigil of the people around her. "Ask him to come after the boat club. I'm not sitting outside for half an hour till he's past schmoozing. Or I can stay over?" Sophie examines the girl's outfit, for she has changed from her uniform. A shortish strawberry gold dress shrouded in light grey hoodie. The younger pupils tended to wear an amiable combination of items bought for them, with dazzling errors of judgement brought upon themselves. But some had broken past, defined their own ensembles down to day-glo details. "Yeah right." She continues, after some silence. "I can make her mum do anything." She drops a hand onto the knee of the boy beside. "I can make anyone do anything." Her laughter is a low, adapted whoop. "Oh damnation, dearest, you have to learn the appropriate pressure points. Once achieved we simply turn people off and on. Like that." When she snaps her fingers at the phone, the boy leaves his conversation, and simply frowns. "Yes?"

Sophie examines the two boys next to the girl, who have cardigans tucked into black drainpipes, and swap smileless in-jokes. There is something without a name, Sophie considers. Without it, music is noise and art no more than colour and shape. It makes some people wonder what the fuss is at a rugby match, while some will punch the air. It is appreciation and understanding, to be sure, but it is also gut level, running into social posture. Milieu? Maybe. Soul? Why not call it that? Without it, dukes are still itinerant. It is our root into the world and ourselves. Each of us has this social globe and sextant, this inverse fortune teller's instrument. It makes us here and now, whether we fashion it ourselves or accept a hand-me-down. Put simply, why do some people wear mint green eye shadow? Why do some people chuckle hard at nothing much? You'll either understand these things, or never understand.

"You marking my homework, miss?" One of the boys raises a finger, swallowing something he is chewing.

"No, I'm not. Bribery greeted as though I were."

The girl, Opportunity Newton, twitters in again. "Remember? Her sister had a big piñata at her seventeenth. We bashed it with sticks but it just walked up the drive. Had to pull her car keys out its arse?"

"Anything exciting back home?" The boy's friend offers her a sweet.

Hmm? 'Look, of course I wasn't there. Someone was busy checking perimeters.' Sophie avoided Mrs Parish's look, eyes widened at the ceiling. Quiet reprimand. Talking much as she would do to a child. Lies, mutual lies, and expected lies. Don't we outgrow our passion for things, for example, toys? For example, the only department seeing qualitative betterment in the past year. For example, who really cares? A lot of people, don't you agree, outgrow the object and transfer the attitude? For example, toys become boys. For example, talking to staff like they were deficient dolls, not sitting neatly in a pram. Emotions themselves have the same source, as if we haven't got capacity to change. Peek-a-boo and humiliation, the hidden heights of adult discourse. Googoo versus gaga, the requisite stupidity of women. Sophie folds the notebook back into her bag.

"You got a boyfriend, miss?" She is taken aback, awoken sharply by this question. "Only we're off to get Mongolian food. They've the biggest chocolate fountain in Britain."

She knits her brow and shakes her head. "Those things are gruesome. They -"

"You're very pretty, miss." The boy examines his sweet wrapper.

"What the heck ends up in there? Thank you."

"Nah, I'm serious. Not the type I'd ask out though. Would you?" He wrinkles his nose and turns to consult his friend.

Nah, I'm serious? Cheers. Sophie wonders if asking why would be a step towards some kind of trap. "Why?"

The first boy raises his head and scrutinises. "Deflecting forcefield. Hands Off Annie."

"Some people need that." His mate considers. "Challenge is everything. For me it suggests a life of hard pedaling. They say one person is always pedaling. I'm no dollop. Bang. I want it instant, reciprocated and lasting. Or die trying. Talking off the record. These are exceptional circumstances and I trust we can do away with the conventional mores. Anyway, we'll be at the Mongolian buffet but don't feel obliged. No pressure."

"Thanks. My flatmate away. Place to myself. Obscure DVD. Perfect for me."

The second boy strokes his chin. "He's doing the Neg, miss." Leaning forward, he looks about as if to confess something terrible. "Women don't want a puppy running after them, so the best chat-up is often the put-down. Reveal yourself as the definer of boundaries."

"Oh." She whispers, looking to the first. "Seen much success?"

He sits back, while his friend shrugs against the full sunlight. "Not really. Actually, it beats stand-and-stare. Which used to work a treat."

"Better or worse than voodoo?"

Opportunity Newton finally comes to a close. "Mwah. Love you. Love you." Sophie considers the words, realizing that she never does a familial 'Love you'. Aware that, in this, she was probably a minority. Chirpy, she was 'Friday then!', but more often it became a flat-lined and officious 'Take care.' Parents divorced. No real memories, or just of being the centre of attention. Massively central, central to a battle. Somewhere in there, she managed to keep her head down. Somewhere in the endless focus of curses, mixed signals and lies, and gifts to wrap changed plans, something stepped into the dark. Something fell onto a bed, very ignored.

"Can't beat old fashioned fancying." She smiles quickly. "No strategy required."

"Hi, guys. Back again." Opportunity shuts her phone and looks to her friends. "You wouldn't!? Wouldn't you get the elbow?" Sophie looks down, along the girl's dress, and smiles cautiously. In her experience, 'girl friend' was an oxymoron, for hers had had a waning sense of loyalty. Show them a boyfriend and they become a list of apologetic texts and no-shows. "Anyway, you can't have these two, they're mine."

"Two?" Sophie turns her head, beginning to get the feeling that she should stay aloof in this conversation.

"She won't entertain the concept of chocolate fountain." The first boy bites his nail.

"Come on, miss. It'll be fun."

"I-" Again, Sophie looks along the girl's dress. She said she could make anyone do anything. Pressure points. Come and try. Where were hers? "I'm not.. that hungry." The train slows as it finds a bend, and the next station is announced. "Really.?"

Opportunity Newton gazes down at her compadre, scratching his shoulder but saddened, some theatrical expression fallen to his lap. Then she shrugs. "Your loss." Is that my pressure point? "It's all about networking these days." Try again, dearest. "Look how sad he is. All sad. He's a big floppy jellyfish with no spine and no bones floating in a sea of his own weep." Opportunity Newton looks up. Well, that's a part of my job. Practically in the spec.

"Don't creep her out." The first boy sniffs while Opportunity continues talking over him. "Pikey fountain. Sorry, miss." He then reaches across the shake Sophie's hand.

"Awkward." His friend can only add, raising both of his hands.

Suddenly, they scramble down the train, before it pulls in, leaving Sophie to pack her things and file into the line of departing people. No friend, sir and captain. Pressure points below radar. And definitely no dollop.

"Eat this, you smarmy tramp." Mrs Pierce well and truly AWOL, Toby Pierce manoeuvers the remote of the television around, and tries to find something a bit worth watching. "Not the wedding cake, Marlene!" "..the certain result of greenfly.." "Holmes! To the abbey!"

Bloody awful. Worse on cable. Off it goes as he swaps remotes, for the stereo. John Coltrane keeping it lazy. He sets down his coffee and considers cleaning. Cleaning would be a treat. The house has some unkemptness to it, but not the unkemptness of laziness. On the contrary, the unkemptness of an essential double income, with enough on their plates, thank you very much. They got on with it, and they got the finger out when visitors were due. Things went by. Things flew by sometimes. The afternoon sunlight catches his eye. Poor Ray. Poor sod. Could have been anyone. Nice fellow, but a bit bold in the language department.

Toby Pierce considers lunchtime and the easy curve of E-Smith's neck and breasts. More to her than meets the eye. No-one had a bad word to say about E-Smith. Beautiful, but like watching some poised animal from another place.

He bites gently into a biscuit. A man tended to need a road in, he considers. One man's tarty is another's turnstile. Girl next door sort. Foreign as muck. Miss Mystery, descending the stairs. Noticably different from Mrs Pierce's tier of glossy mags to his right. Beauty most bland. Himself, he usually needed things over-obvious. Hit with a brick. Mouth broader, confusion apparent and causing a full-blown dose of pout. Hips that command attention. Rougher, but therefore ready. Men's women. Same as the glossies, just sharper in contrast. Genetically speaking, a bond with E-Smith would probably muddy the pool. A genetic endgame as she is. He rolls his head around and bites again on the Driller's Original. He'd do the garden. He'd do the edges. Spring and trimmed grass, perhaps a cheeky can in the hammock. Spring's ordinary miracle.

Christ, he was dozing off again. He opens his eyes. He then closes them, thumb in the waistband of his trousers, wondering if he should tinker to John Coltrane. School's out. But even as a grown adult, especially as one, fiddling felt underhand. We should be more in your face about the whole business. Not in your face. Just not underhand. Bloody hell, was there a third way, a third way of the flesh? Somewhere over the rainbow, a new dimension? One eye finds Mrs Pierce's glossies. People you'd never meet and offer a weak hand to. A bonus, to be honest. But something missing from those featureless features and slick wetsuits. And the guttering needed attention. He'd get a ladder out. A job in itself. What the hell was up there?

Fingers waver, then the eye closes. Mrs Pierce. Not guilty. Fantasy beyond the marriage, probably to be expected. Thinking about it: as bad as doing it? Surely you're just some skin away? One sense apart from real crime. Pity the skin, still the beast. While the head is allowed just about anywhere. And so to guttering. And slates. The slates he could try. Rattling all through dinner last night. You've got squirrels, Tobe. Come again? The Wards, from opposite, found the almond and tamarind risotto, the special tandoori kebabs, 'better than good'. The kitchen natter. Fags? Can do. Can do. Can we go outside? Squirrels? Starscapes and half a poxy spliff, knocking him for six. He felt himself slink against the wheelie bin. Squirrels, Wardo? Chatwise, Pierce was happiest as social lubricant. I'd lay a bet on it, Tobe. Bloody squirrels. Listen! Don't mind if I do. The loosener, getting looser by the second. Suddenly a human O, unable to locate his own house. Financially, they were a hell of a lot looser, but the Wards had no real stuffiness about them. Kitchen gadget comparisons, going on forever. Who'd have thought it ended here? Up in the attic, playing mums and dads. Time was, we'd run a mile. Nuts.

Slowly, Stabber Warren folds and removes his hand. His fantasies, when they took hold, were predictable enough, bar the sleeping girl. Shh! Running a hand through night clothes, shorts and cotton vest, sports white if we could ever see. Just to test the crispness of her stir, her ease with brushing kisses nearing the lips. Breast beyond reach. Events beyond good order. Odd, but say no more. They deviate. Whose fantasy is a blank-faced missionary , saluting the mind's eye with "Nothing special going on here. Is there dear?" "No, dear." There isn't a single person in the world with that fantasy. And if there is they need help. They deviate. That's their job. But rarely power. Rarely power, which was in the eye contact. Even ranging around on top of him. Even Mrs Ward. Once. Tables cannot turn. Wrists remained ungrippable, the seam is just unrippable. Eyes, if they meet, never share their power, and nothing actually happens. Of course nothing actually happens. Berk!

Feeling some kind of release, from some kind of mid-wake capture, he opens his eye again. Focusing hard at a plug board, he gradually stands and kneads his back, looking into the emptied sofa. No, he wasn't Mrs Pierce's ideal man. Of course not. And she wasn't his ideal woman. Scooping up the mug and biscuits, he tucks his feet into some slippers. Things adhere, we discover, at their penultimate point, never at their limits. And that's just the way of things. Guttering, slates. And things. He passes into the kitchen.

Now, Triton Ward. By all accounts, there was a kid looking for limits. There was a kid breaking rank.

Behind the near pavilion, over the path and up the hill, a mesh of fence serves to separate the sports field from the forest. She is at home now, of course she is, but, for a while, Ruby Rowntree had stood alone, running a finger around one plastic-coated diamond of mesh, from north to south, east to west, considering the bento in her bicycle basket; and considering the height of the fence; the gates adjoining the hill; and the trees and how motionless every leaf was, even in a breeze.