While the machine circled and the white flag of my handkerchief waved to us from its drowned world, I sat her on the kitchen table, scarcely smaller than the strip-club stages. Her knees were held tightly against my hips by her short leather skirt. Her hands rested on my chest, as if she were measuring me for a new life on which I was about to embark. I was grateful to her for the unforced references to Miriam, whom she had known well, and for taking the lead so expertly. She had realised that only a frivolous approach, as divorced from real feeling as the Soho clubs and marquee signs, could ever have reached me.

Her fingers lowered my zip, and I said: “I hope something happens … it’s been a long time.”

“Three weeks? Or three months?”

“Eleven months.”

“Time for a baby. Let’s see what we can do about that.”

She unbuttoned my shirt and pressed her hands against my diaphragm. “Heavens, you’re tense … deep breaths, now.” She laughed cheerfully, amused by herself. “Still, at least we’ve met before. These days you have sex straightaway and the wooing starts later.”

“I’ll woo you.”

“Good. Something does seem to be happening. Now, can you remember what to do next?”

*   *   *

That night I dreamed of Miriam for the last time. I was walking down Shepperton High Street on my way to the shops when I saw her by the traffic lights at the crossroads. She was as young and beautiful as I ever remembered her, and I was filled with a deep sense of love for her and relief that we would meet again. I was glad that the nightmare of the past months was over and that we would be reunited with the children in our little house. I called to her as she strode confidently across the road, her skirt swinging at her knees. She looked back, recognising me with a cheery smile, and walked on. I called to her again, but she strode past the shops, and I saw her disappear among the cars and pedestrians.

Waking from the dream, I listened to my children sleeping in their rooms. I lay in the darkness and knew that Miriam had set me free.

Craze People

9

CRAZE PEOPLE

“We’ll take the pixies with us! You can’t leave them behind!”

With a noisy swoop Sally Mumford lifted Lucy into the air and held the excited six-year-old against her shoulder, while gathering Alice and Henry to the folds of her floor-length dress.

“Sally…” I tried feebly to protest. “They’re too young for a pop concert. And I’m too old.”

“Rubbish! We’re going together. We won’t listen to him, will we?”

“No!” they yelled.

“Right! Coats and scarves, and earplugs for Daddy. I’ll make a picnic for us, if I can find anything in that mouldy fridge…”