Which brought him back to his problem, which was how to get into the hospital and make sure what-you-call-her was who she was supposed to be. What was her name? Something beginning with ‘L’. He had it written down in his notebook, but he had left it at the hotel. He took up his book and turned to the inside of the back cover, where he had stuck her photograph with bits of sticky tape. He studied her, where she leaned on the fake pillar in her lacy frock.

Lawless, that was it, that was her name. Angela Lawless. Or that at least was the name she was going under.

He leaned his chin on his hands and gazed out vacantly over the bay. Nice colours on the sea today, blue, and a kind of bluey-green, and a shiny, scaly silver that looked like the sheen on the flank of a fish. The Girl, beside him, hadn’t stirred for the past ten minutes. He looked at her. She was definitely asleep. Sleeping was what she did a lot of. She worked hard, she was popular with the johns. Strange, that he didn’t mind her doing it with all those other blokes. He despised them, and pitied them, too, in a funny sort of way. The truth was, he didn’t get much out of doing it with her himself. Something mechanical about it. She had been at it since she was twelve, and there was no fight left in her. She was – what was the word? – passive. Whereas he liked a bit of resistance. He was fond of her, though. She was as tough as a terrier. Raised rough, like him. Terry and his Girl terrier.

He wondered what age she was. She had told him she was twenty-one, but they always lied. He put her at sixteen, seventeen tops. Not that it mattered. He didn’t know his own age. At the orphanage one day they showed him some bit of paper, his birth cert., they claimed it was, but it wasn’t his, the name on it was different. If anyone asked, he would say he was born on December 12th, same day as Frankie Sinatra, Ol’ Blue Eyes himself. He was ashamed not to know the real date. It sort of summed up all he had been denied in life, all that had been taken from him. If ever he found out who his parents were, he would know what to do. Hello, Mum, hello, Dad. Then blam! blam!

He sighed. He was bored and yet he didn’t mind. This beach wasn’t like the ones at home. You could sit out here for hours doing nothing and not get the heebie-jeebies.