‘Snoo-ow o-on snooooww...’ sang the King, accompanied now by a choir of children and a Detroit brass section, his voice rolling like a big sea, wave after wave of tremulous emotion, an irresistible, heartbreaking, nonsensical bawling. They danced with Rosinne’s bare feet on Larry’s shoes. She was so light he didn’t think she could weigh much more than Ella. She had her arms around his neck. He held her very close, sliding one of his hands up her back where her skin was slick with heat as though she were running a fever. Once upon a time he had danced like this with Kirsty, the two of them leaning into each other like a pair of exhausted brawlers, those days of courtship at her father’s place in Lemon Cove when he could not look at her without wanting to touch her, could not touch her without needing to lie down with her, and like some slouch-mouthed movie star had called her ‘baby’ and ‘honey’ and ‘sweetheart’. On occasion – he had not dreamed this – the mere sound of his voice had made her flinch with pleasure as though he had stroked the denim between her thighs. So how on earth had he got from there to here? What was this tangle between them, this knot of ravelled emotion? It was pathetically distressing to him that he did not make love to his wife any more when he could recall so clearly the nights he used to plunder her, that look of insane concentration on her face, her arms flexed against the head-bars of their iron-framed bed, pushing against him with all her might as though she could never have him deeply enough inside of her. How had he got from that to this? From his wife to teenage coke fiends. From Kirsty to Scarletta Scar?

‘...iiin the bleeeek mid win’eer ... la-A-ang agOOOOO!’ sang the King. Rosinne snuffled and turned in the cradle of his arms. He kissed the top of her head then gently released her, sliding out from beneath her feet.

‘Got a phone in here, Ranch?’

‘Under the bed,’ said Ranch, pointing, but not looking away from the little screen where people very slightly larger than horseflies were doing things to each other. Jo-babe was still on the sheets, contorting herself in a doomed attempt to reach the last line of the drug on her belly. Larry searched under the bed. A Hemingway novel. A copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. A strip of passport photographs showing Ranch ten years back, grinning in a booth somewhere in America Profunda. Also a purple telephone of aerodynamic design with four yards of grey wire connecting it to the socket. He took the phone into the bathroom, slid the wire under the door, then shut the door against the King’s slacks-and-rocking-chair cover of ‘Stille Nacht’.

He had expected Alec, but it was Alice who answered.

‘412...’