‘When I see you come walking the street towards me and below in Stratford station and I see you in all the offices?’

‘Daniel?’ she said. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve seen you in the park,’ he said. ‘And I can’t come home because I’ll see you there for sure and I know you don’t want me.’

‘Ah Daniel.’

‘And I don’t want to put you out,’ he said.

He leaned forward and sipped from his Magners. She wasn’t getting up from that in a hurry.

‘I’ve to go,’ she said.

‘Ah yeah.’

‘We’re going to a disco in Essex someplace.’

‘Party bus,’ he said. ‘Massive.’

‘Don’t want to really, it’s just my cousins.’

‘Party bus,’ he said, ‘and the uncle still warm in the ground.’

‘Daniel,’ she said, ‘you’re so funny.’

She moved in and she kissed his cheek again and he closed his eyes.

‘I’ll see you around home sometime,’ she said. ‘Be careful!’

‘Right so,’ he said.

He drank his cider. The vision doubled on him again. Let them all off to their party bus. The bell rang for one more and he opened his eyes and stood uncertainly and he walked towards the bar. He didn’t know how many Magners he was after.

The barman sucked his lips as though in warning as Daniel approached.

‘You sure?’

‘Listen,’ Daniel said. ‘Will you tell me something straight up please. Was I just talking to a girl there?’

‘The black-haired piece?’ the barman winced. ‘Ooh. She was a sort. How’s it you know her? She work community Outreach?’

‘Okay,’ said Daniel. ‘Magners.’

‘What about half a lager?’

‘Better plan,’ Daniel said.

He walked home a while later. What had earlier been clear sky had clouded over and now it was unseasonably mild. There was no gainsaying the past. With all else that had happened, he had held her too, and that could not be taken away. He turned in the gate of number 126 to see what way they were getting on inside with the Excelsior.

Doctor Sot

DOCTOR SOT

LATE IN JANUARY, Doctor Sot felt the bad headaches come on again and he drank John Jameson whiskey against them. The naggins slipped pleasingly into a compartment of his leather satchel but they needed frequent replacing and he thought it best not to replace them always from the same off-licence in town. He aimed the car for the 24-hour Tesco on the outskirts of town. A cold morning was coloured iron-grey on the hills above town – brittle and hard the winter had been, and it was such clear, piercing weather that brought on the headaches. The heater in his eleven-year-old Megane juddered bravely against the cold but inadequately and his fingers on the wheel had the look of a corpse’s. Steady nips of the Jameson, he found, kept in check the visions of which these headaches were often the presage.