Next thing I knew I was in the summerhouse, but there was nobody there. Nobody at all.

And the next thing I did was to steal Cain and Abel’s hats. I did it the next morning when I was still not entirely sober. Their hats were lying under the kitchen table where I suppose they had torn them from each other’s heads, and I was seized with a bright idea—the sort you get when you’re not entirely sober. They were made of scarlet crêpe paper and I imagine they’d been handed out at some pre-Christmas party. I slipped them into my pocket and if anyone asked I should say I’d thought they were rubbish and had neatly thrown them in the bin. You may be wondering what appeal these hats held for me, so I will explain that it was not for their beauty but for their utility that I desired them. I cut them up and turned them into red flowers and I told Monica that her cactus was undoubtedly going to bloom in time for the wedding. It was all part of my plot. I told her that from biblical times there had been a belief that there was no more fortunate portent on a nuptial occasion than the blossoming of a cactus. I said it was held to be so by all the people of the Book, by Muslimin and Farangi alike, and it might have been true for all I knew. Certainly a desert people might find it cheering to discover a flower when a wedding was about to take place. Monica, although she was unimaginative, was superstitious, so she swallowed this whole. I told myself she was grasping at the last straw that broke the camel’s back, but that was because I still wasn’t entirely sober.

I put on my new coat and went out with my paper hats, down to the summerhouse. Margaret was there already, just sitting and staring out of the window at the leaves and the birds blowing around in the cold. So I couldn’t finish my flowers there.

She said, ‘You look warm.’

I said I wasn’t warm really. The coat helped but I felt chilled all through. I told Margaret her mother’s cactus was due for a happy event and then I went to see Syl’s mother.

We sat at the kitchen table and drank whisky and I got smoke in my eyes trying to make fiddly little flowers with a cigarette between my teeth. No easy matter, I can tell you. Syl’s mother was being gloomy about Margaret. As well she might be. She was wondering if she should tell Syl about Derek’s misdemeanour towards his daughter.