"Thanks, but no thanks," Greg said. He didn't even have to think about it. Office hours, suit, tie, the same people day after day. He had wanted something regular, but not regimented. "I'm not ready for that yet."

The nineteen-fifties Rolls-Royce was waiting for him on Stanstead's buckling grey concrete as he came out of the administration block, chauffeur already opening the door.

Philip Evans died two days later. His funeral was the biggest civic event to be held in Peterborough for two generations. The Prime Minister and two senior royals were in respectful attendance.

His will named Julia Hazel Snowflower Evans as his sole beneficiary.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Julia watched the crackling life of the night-time city through the Rolls-Royce's tinted windows, impatient for the ride to be over, the drama she'd conceived to unfold. She could almost believe they were driving through some German metropolis. Peterborough's New Eastfield district possessed the same frantic pace and power, the strut that came from being number one.

Its buildings were post-Warming, laid out in a precise geometrical array, like Manhattan before the Anarchy March. They were foreign-funded, a thorn in the side of the PSP, physical evidence the Party couldn't fulfil its promises. All of them followed the same palaeo-Spanish theme, six-storey, marble or cut stone, with long balconies that sported a profusion of greenery and flowers. Smart-uniformed doormen stood outside the gingery smoked-glass lobbies.

Wealth was everywhere, in clothes, jewellery, salon beauty; in the absence of bicycles and graffiti.

The road was clogged with traffic: gas-electric hybrid BMWs and Mercs cruised up and down, their headlights and tail-lights two contrasting severed ribbons of light. The folksy tables of pavement cafés were spread out under brightly striped awnings, alternating with arched entrances into small arcades of exclusive shops. Brightly lit windows full of designer-label clothes and esoteric gear silhouetted the fast-moving pedestrians, painting their faces in cool neon tones. Soft warm rain had fallen earlier in the evening, its residual sheen reflecting gaudy biolum ads in long wavering flames from walls and paving slabs.

But the prosperity was only a few blocks across. A ghetto of the rich. She remembered Grandpa saying that New Eastfield was a seed, that in a proper economy this kind of lifestyle would spread out like a microbe culture, consuming and changing its surrounding neighbourhoods, right out to the city boundaries. He'd wanted the New Conservatives to build cores like it in every English city, showcases for a top-led society, the acceptable face of capitalism.

Good old Grandpa. An eternal optimist. But there were a lot of people enjoying the balmy evening street life.

"Are you sure Bil will be there?" Katerina asked.