Kearney stepped forward quickly and, before Tate could react, pulled back the hood of the parka. Fluorescent light fell mercilessly across Tate’s face, stubbled, exhausted, old-looking, and with an abraded appearance about the eyes, as if he had been working without spectacles, or crying all night. Probably, Kearney thought, he had been doing both. The eyes themselves were watery, a little bloodshot, with pale blue irises. Nothing was odd about them in the end except the tears pouring in a silvery stream from their inner corners. There were too many of them for Tate’s grief. Every tear was made up of exactly similar tears, and those tears too were made from tears. In every tear there was a tiny image. However far back you went, Kearney knew, it would always be there. At first he supposed it was his own reflection. When he saw what it really was he grabbed Anna by the upper arm and started dragging her out of the room. She struggled and fought all the way, hitting out at him with her luggage, staring back in horror at what was happening to Brian Tate.

“No,” she said reasonably. “No. Look. We have to help him.”

“Christ, Anna! Come on!”

The white cat was crying too. As Kearney watched, it turned its thin, savage little head towards him, and its tears poured out into the room like points of light. They flowed and flowed until the cat itself began to dissolve and spill off Brian Tate’s shoulder like a slow glittering liquid onto the floor, while Tate rocked himself to and fro and made a noise like:

“Er er er.”

He was melting too.

An hour later they were sitting in the brightest place they could find open in the centre of London, a pick-up bar at the Cambridge Circus end of Old Compton Street. It wasn’t much of a place, but it was as far away as they could get from the cold endless suburbs and those streets of decent, bulky stockbroker homes with one lighted room visible between laurels and rhododendrons. The bar did food—mainly odds and ends of tapas—and Kearney had tried to get Anna to eat something, but she had only looked at the menu and shuddered. Neither of them was speaking, just staring out into the street outside, enjoying the warmth and the music and the feeling of being with people. Soho was still awake. Couples, mostly gay, were hurrying past the window arm in arm, laughing and talking animatedly. There was some human warmth to be had by holding your glass steady in both hands and watching that.

Eventually Anna finished her drink and said:

“I don’t want to know what happened back there.”

Kearney shrugged. “I’m not sure it was actually happening like that anyway,” he lied. “I think it was some sort of illusion.”

“What are we going to do?”