He looked at Jim’s papers that he had collected up, along with the pair of glasses that Jim vainly almost never wore as he didn’t think they suited him. ‘He’s just a friend,’ he tried, daringly, ‘that’s all he is.’ Yes, thought Omar, that was right, he believed that. There was no deception in that at all. And yet why, insisted an annoying little voice in his head, when he formulated this belief statement, did he refer to his friend just as a ‘He’? Why did he dare not speak his name? Hadn’t he got accustomed to his best friend’s face, too?

‘I’m fuggled,’ thought Omar, finally, to himself. ‘I’m fuggled and I’m thinking a load of crap.’ He was glad when the bell signalled that the library was shutting. He gathered all of his and Jim’s papers, and left.

Ricky-Rashid Makes a Damning Discovery

IT WAS JUST a few days before Easter, and Ricky was still jet-lagged after a duty trip back to Bangladesh, where his mother was cussedly clinging on to ill-health and ill-humour, and Henna and Aziz barely attempted to share a single meal with him. He’d just chaired an all-day meeting at the company offices in London Bridge, and was shattered to the point of illness. Verity and Candida were right, he should have taken early retirement at sixty. He had only stayed on to improve his share options, because he was worried about the sort of income they’d have once he retired. They’d need to rent out the Clapham flat, or let it go. Despite his tiredness, he asked the cab to drop him off at Clapham, rather than going straight home; he knew that he had better check on the flat while he was in town. At the flat, he had trouble opening the door due to the small mountain of junk mail that had gathered there. All else was well, although the place was a little dusty - he’d call Ana, the local cleaning lady, to give it a once over. He decided to walk to the main road to hail a cab, rather than call his corporate cab company - it was a bright, crisp day, and the air might do him some good. He passed the local florist on the corner of his street, and on a whim, bought some flowers for Verity. The only decent blooms were the roses, and even those were a bit blowsy, but he picked some pale pink ones and had them tied in brown paper with a pink ribbon.