He fell, plunging to the ground cleanly, clear of the pylon, down and down, twisting a little, his arms like wings. The grass down there received him silently and he lay spreadeagled, as the lights of the cars appeared around the curve in the road. Thank God he made no sound. He was dead.

Chapter 6

6

I WAS SITTING ON MY roof terrace with Mabel on my lap and my gin and tonic at my elbow, trying to guess the identity of a castellated building I could just see on the South Bank, when Darren called around. He often does at this sort of time, usually on his way to Junilla, who lives in Crouch End, or Campaspe, who lives in Stroud Green. I asked him if he’d like a drink but he refused.

“I’m driving and, besides, I don’t like Callum smelling liquor on my breath.”

“So it’s Junilla tonight, is it?”

My tone annoyed him. He hung over the roof garden wall, muttering that he wanted to check on what someone had told him, that you could see Harrow-on-the-Hill from here. Darren has a son by one of his girlfriends and a daughter by the other. He knows I don’t approve, though my disapproval mainly takes the form of laughing at his domestic arrangements. In spite of having a flat of his own in Hendon, he spends almost every night with one or other of the girlfriends. To see his children, he says. “No nonsense,” with those girls, Afro-trash, as he calls them. I don’t believe a word of it but he insists sex is in the past, all over and a mistake at the time but too late now. He’s a good father, attentive and anxious, and he supports Callum and Olympia heroically. The refusal of a drink lest his son detect it on his breath was typical.

“I wouldn’t say no to an orange juice,” he said.