the book collector

I own a small bookshop called Baskerville Books. I sell good quality fiction, poetry, art books. It's in a quiet part of town, tucked away in a small corner beside a tavern and a music shop. I don't really have the money for advertising so rely upon word-of-mouth. I try to make it the kind of place that people want to come back to; nice music, pleasant booky smells, a friendly smile...
One rainy afternoon, a woman with shoulder-length black hair came in. She wore black horn-rimmed glasses, a grey shirt and skirt, black pumps, had a mauve bag slung over her shoulders. I watched her as she perused the shelves. I couldn't put my finger on it but there was something unusual about her. She was like Barbara Gordon. You expected her to remove her glasses, pull off her clothes and reveal her lilac Batgirl outfit underneath.
She chose a Margaret Atwood novel. I had just ordered afternoon tea from a local shop: Earl Grey tea with two pistachio cakes dusted with icing sugar. As I processed her payment, I watched in quiet amazement as she reached over and picked up one of the cakes and lifted it to her mouth, biting a piece off. She put the rest back on the plate and wiped her lips of powdery sugar.
Stunned, I handed her her change and she smiled a tiny smile, then walked out of the shop with her book under her arm. I looked at the cake, bitten off at one end. I laughed. Well, that was a first, I thought.


She came back. It was a week or two later. She was wearing the same clothes. She didn't look at me as she walked in but headed straight for the poetry section. It was pouring down outside but she was bone dry, even though she wasn't carrying an umbrella. She was humming a little tune; something from West Side Story I think.
Eventually, she came over with a volume of Seamus Heaney poems.
"I'd like this book, but I haven't any money. Could I take it anyway and pay you later?"
I have no idea why but I said:
"Sure. Just write your name on this piece of paper."
I pushed a notepad across the desk and she bent over and wrote her name. Then she looked at me over her black glasses with her grey eyes and said "Thank you," then turned and left.
I looked at the notepad. She had written: "You'd like to know my name, wouldn't you?"

I thought I'd never see her again. I didn't understand why I had let her leave without paying for the book. I put it down to my hormones. She was an attractive woman and I had allowed my attraction for her get the better of my good judgment.
However, a few days later, she came back in. This time she looked at me and smiled as she entered. I thought she might be coming in to pay for the book but she headed for the shelves and ran her fingers along the spines of the books in the drama section, pulling a book out every so often, then sliding it back into its spot.
One of the things which I like about my job is the order. Everything is in its correct place, thematically, alphabetically, in order of surname.
I remembered who she reminded me of now. Ms Amos, the librarian at my high school. She wore glasses like hers, had straight black hair that curled up at the ends in the same way. I fancied her when I was a kid. I had imagined marrying her when I was old enough. I had taken a fancy to the shape of her hips in her grey skirt as she climbed the little ladder to reach the top shelves of the book cases.
She came over with a Harold Pinter play. The Dumb Waiter.
"Now, I can't expect you to let me go without paying a second time," she said, "but (opening her black handbag) if you'll let me leave you with this?"
She pulled out a single white rose. She placed it carefully on the desk.
"A token. I'm not leaving you with nothing, after all."
I didn’t know what to say. She didn't wait to hear whatever I might have said anyway. She smiled, slipped the thin book into her bag and turned to leave. I watched her open the door and walk down the street. I looked at the rose. It was perfectly shaped, not yet open.
Why was I being so acquiescent in this nonsensical affair I wondered? I stood up. I decided to follow her. I closed the shop, putting a 'back in ten minutes' sign on the door and looked up and down the street. I couldn't see her but walked in the direction I had seen her take and soon saw her a little way in the distance.
We walked through the main retail section of town, past hairdressers, CD shops, DVDs retailers, tailors, dressmakers, shoe shops. She turned a corner and I quickened my pace, not wanting to lose her. We walked down an alleyway, past some Chinese and Japanese restaurants, then around another corner.
We came to a part of town I was not familiar with. The shops were bright and cheerful: flower shops with colourful displays in their windows, an art shop with gaudy paintings on display, a shop which appeared to sell nothing but brass statues of lions.
She slipped under some eaves and into a little coffee shop. I stood in the road, hesitating. Then I followed.
Inside it was warm and smelled of cinnamon buns. I saw her sitting at a table near the counter, with her back to me. I took a seat at a table near the front of the shop. She was perusing the menu. I picked up a menu and opened it. Why was I following her? I should be back at the shop making money not out following a woman I didn't know. It was as if I were under some form of spell.
A woman with orangey-red hair came up beside me and asked what I would like to order. I looked at the menu. Everything was a little odd. Chilli and almond cakes; vanilla and tangerine buns with basil; apple and avocado milkshake; cherry and coffee potatoes. I chose hot chocolate with peppermint and plum brandy. The woman smiled kindly and left.
The woman with dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses was reading her play now. Why the hell had I let her take a book worth $23 for a single white rose?
Her food arrived. She had chosen a sandwich and what looked like a cup of coffee. She ate delicately, very carefully, sipping her drink slowly. My drink arrived. The woman with red hair wore lipstick the same colour and had skin as pale as cream. She smiled a wonderful smile, which revealed little creases at the edge of her mouth, then left my drink and the bill beside it. I sipped my drink. It was hot, aromatic and deeply choclately.
I sat watching the woman with horn-rimmed glasses, drinking my drink, feeling it warm the insides of me. Then she rose. I looked away, not wanting her to see me following her. I heard her clothes swish beside me as she passed, then a rush of cold air as she opened the door. I looked at the bill. $5. That was a bit steep, but I pulled a five dollar note from my pocket and, my drink unfinished, got up to follow her, but caught my trousers on a nail and ripped a large tear in one of the legs. The sound of the ripping fabric was loud and people looked over. The woman with red hair came over.
"Oh dear, we should do something about that."
"No, it's OK. Thank you."
"No, no. It was our fault. Please."
"Really __"
"I insist. I can't let you leave in that state. Come out the back."
Reluctantly, I followed her and she brought me a gown then told me to remove my trousers. Embarrassed, I did as I was told. We were in a back room with a little open fire. Underwear was drying on a clothes wrack. She took my trousers and invited me to sit in an armchair, where I sat drinking my spicy hot chocolate while she went off to fix my trousers. In the comforting heat, I dozed off.

I dreamed the woman with red hair was dancing with me. We were happy, laughing. We were the best of friends. We had known each other for years and years. And then the woman with horn-rimmed glasses came in through a door way carrying some books and I was immensely happy; we kissed. "I wondered how long you'd take," I said, 'I always miss you so much when you go out."

Then I woke up. I wondered where I was for a moment. The dream had been so real. My trousers were folded neatly beside me on the arm of the chair. I looked at my watch. I had been asleep for over an hour. I looked at my trousers. Incredibly, there was no sign of the tear, none whatsoever. Surprised, I slipped them on and headed out into the shop. The woman was behind the counter. She smiled when she saw me come in.
"Thank you. You've done a wonderful job," I told her.
"That's OK. Did you have a nice little sleep?"
"I'm sorry about that."
"You looked very happy. I didn't want to disturb you."
"I don't know why I fell asleep. I'd better go. Thank you."
"A pleasure."
She laughed, as if a little amused. I headed off out into the cold. I walked back to my shop and it started to rain again. By the time I got back it was too late to open up again.

I waited for her to return to the shop as I was sure she would. The single rose she had left me sat in a vase on a mantelpiece. It was still an unopened bud but its fragrance filled the shop wonderfully. It was if I had a dozen roses, not just one.
The days passed but there was no sign of her. Every time the door opened, I looked up and was disappointed when someone else walked in. My business was suddenly doing very well and I was inundated with customers but each sale somehow just added to my disappointment at not see the woman with horn-rimmed glasses.
One afternoon, I decided to visit the café, to see if the woman with orange hair knew her name. So I closed the shop early and headed off. I found the alley way and walked past the Chinese and Japanese restaurants, but the street it lead into looked different somehow. I realised the shops were different. There was a second hand shop, a trinket shop, a barbers. I must have taken a wrong turning. I went down a side street and came out on a main street that I was familiar with. I headed back in the direction I came, searching the streets in vain. Finally, I came across the shop which sold brass lions, but the café was nowhere to be seen. Either I was completely lost or the shop had vanished.

I walked back to my shop. I was certain I had followed the same route as before but clearly I had missed a turning somewhere. I was disappointed. However, my spirits rose when I returned to the shop, for the woman with horn-rimmed glasses was standing on the front step waiting for me to reopen.
"Hello," I said.
"I've been waiting here for half an hour."
"Sorry. Come in."
We entered the shop. She ignored me once inside and went to the children's section. I stood looking at her.
"Would you like a hot drink?" I asked.
She looked over at me.
"That would make up for keeping me waiting on the cold step," she said with a smile.
So I went out the back to my kitchen and put on the kettle. A little while later, she came into the kitchen herself, clutching a book of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales. She sat, resting against the table, clutching the book to her chest.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Charlotte," she replied.
"What are you going to pay with this time?" I asked wryly.
"What would you like me to pay with? Did you like the rose by the way? It's aroma attracts customers. I think you've made hundreds and hundreds of dollars thanks to that rose."
"You think so?"
"Oh, I know so."
I looked at her: her jet black hair, her red-painted lips, her glasses.
"Who are you?"
"I told you. Charlotte."
"No, I mean, what do you do?"
"I'm a librarian. I collect books."
"Do you ever pay for them?"
"Always. Usually a lot more than they're worth. Why did you follow me the other day?"
"You knew?"
"I'm not stupid."
I was a bit taken aback at being caught out.
"I was curious, that's all. About where you came from."
"Did you find out?"
"No. I'm none the wiser."
She smiled.
"Well, I hope it wasn't a wasted trip then?"
"Look __" I began, but she raised a hand.
"No time. I have to go. Thanks for the offer of a drink but I have to go now."
"The book?"
She came over to me.
"It's a lovely book, Luke. It's a nice edition. It'll go well with my collection."
"How did you know my name?'
She shrugged. She was so close to me now, I could smell her perfumed skin, see the tiny creases in her lips.
"This is for the book," she told me, then she leaned across and kissed me on the mouth; a kiss that was warm, soft and fragrant; a kiss that was oily with lipstick which tasted faintly of lavender. I closed my eyes, and felt myself falling into some emotional whirlpool, and then the kiss was over. I opened them and she smiled gently then headed off, leaving me speechless and shaken, as if bewitched.

I spent the next few days thinking about that kiss. I had never been kissed that way before. It was a kiss which left me longing for more. I was haunted by it. I felt as if I would do almost anything for just one more. I found myself dreaming of her mouth and lips when I drifted off into sleep at night.
It drove me crazy when she didn't come in. I was addicted to her now and craved her visits. I even found myself going to the front door, looking up and down the street, hoping to see her approach.
My business continued to do well. In fact, it had never been so good. I was raking in the money. Every one seemed to have heard of the little bookshop which smelled of roses and no-one came without leaving with at least one book in their hand.
She arrived three weeks later. She looked me directly in the eye and smiled knowingly. She headed off for the science section this time. I watched her as she perused the shelves, taking books out, reading the blurbs on the back, then replacing them. I ached to be beside her. I adored the shape of her hips, the way her hair hung just above her shoulders.
Finally, she came over with a book on quantum physics.
"Is that hot drink still on offer?" she asked.
"Of course!"
We headed off to the kitchen. She sat down and crossed her legs. I put the kettle on and stood by the sink, admiring her knees.
"This is the last time," she said.
"For what?"
"The last time I'll come here."
"Why?" I asked, feeling ridiculously heartbroken.
"I have to leave."
"Where are you going?"
"Nowhere you know."
"I'll miss you."
"Will you? That's nice."
I made her a peppermint tea. She took the cup with a friendly smile.
"Do you have to go?'
She nodded.
"Nothing lasts forever. Not in the real world."
She sipped her tea. She looked at me and I had the strange feeling that we had known each other for a very long time, even though I knew this wasn't true.
"Do you love me, Luke?"
I was surprised by the question.
"I hardly know you."
"That's not the point. None of us know each other. Falling in love is all about a journey. We get to know each other over time, but we never know each other from the beginning. That's love's raison d' être."
I didn't know how to ask the question. I had feelings for her; I was certainly attracted to her. I'd even go as far as admitting that I'd done my fair share of yearning over recent months. Was this the beginning of love? She stood up and she came over, putting her hands lightly on my shoulders.
"You know, you could be very happy. Did you know that? You could have more happiness than you ever imagined. But I'm not offering you something safe and easy. It's a risky and dangerous choice, Luke. A once in a life time choice."
And then she kissed me again. A long, slow, wondrous kiss that made my blood feel as if it were boiling. I held her by her hips and she fell against me, and I had never felt so happy or fulfilled; we held each other and swayed slightly on the floor of the bookshop, our feet barely touching the carpet, as if we were swinging on an invisible fulcrum and were about to float up into the ceiling.
Then she pulled away.
"That was for the book," she told me, "but there's more. If you want it."
"I don't understand what's happening," I said, bewildered.
"You don't have to understand. You just have to make the choice."
"What choice?"
"Come with me. Leave every thing behind."
"What?"
"You can do it. It's a simple choice. It's one of those rare moments. Like bungee jumping. Risking everything. When you have to chose to continue doing what you've always been doing or truly live."
"But where are we going?"
"That doesn't matter either. Here."
She threw me a box of matches, which I caught.
"What's this for?"
"Do you trust me?"
"I don't know."
"Here's the thing," she said, "in a minute, I'm going to walk out of that door and I'll probably never come back. You can try to follow me but you'll never find me again. Or you can come with me and I'll show you a life that will truly amaze you. But you have to pay the price."
"What price?'
"You have to show me you're willing to let go of your old life."
"How?" I asked nervously.
"By setting fire to the shop."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. She must be crazy.
"Are you kidding?"
She shook her head.
"You can have me, Luke. We can live a happy life together. I'll show you things you never dreamed possible. But you have to prove to me that you're the kind of person who can take the kind of risk it takes to be truly free and happy."
I looked at the matches.
"Set fire to my own shop?" I asked incredulously.
"Create a blaze that will start something new and exciting. Something wonderful."
She looked at me hopefully. I had never wanted a woman as much as I had wanted her that day.
"But the books?"
"There are other books. There's nothing unique here. It's not about the books. It's about letting go and embracing life with a capital 'L'."
"You really mean it?" I asked.
"I really mean it," she said with conviction.
I had the matches in my hand. I think I even opened them. And I'd like to tell you that I piled a whole load of books on the floor and set fire to their pages; that we watched the fire grow and gradually engulf the shop; that, in the heat of the golden flames, we had laughed, held hands and then run out into the wild streets to a new and wonderful adventure. I'd like to say that, I really would.
Instead, I put the matches down.
"I can't do that," I told her.
She looked disappointed. She came over and kissed me softly on the forehead, stroking the top of my head gently.
"Goodbye then, Luke. I won't make you do something you don't want to do. I'm sorry."
"Wait! This is crazy! You can't just leave."
But she did. She left through the front door and I never saw her again.

In the weeks after she left, I prayed that she had been joking. Surely it had just been a test? She'd come back and share the joke. I waited and waited for her return but, after a few months, I realised that she had gone. I searched for the café a number of times but never found it. I looked at my books. My shop still did well, but my books always reminded me of the choice I had made that day. I had chosen the real world, the ordinary world, over mystery and possibility.
Do these kind of choices come to you more than once in a lifetime? Having made your choice, is that it? Have you determined the course of your life forever? Or do we sometimes get the chance to revisit our choices and make up for the mistakes we have made?
I have one hope. The word 'probably.' She said 'I'll probably never come back.' Which means, of course, that she might.
The front door of my shop opens, these days, onto a world of fragile hope. I don't know if Charlotte will ever come back but, if she does, I am ready this time.
Sometimes I open up the top draw of my desk and look inside and I am filled with longing and desire. It is filled to the brim with boxes and boxes of matches waiting to be turned into flames.

Blood Oranges

Martin Smith looked down at the lawn below. It was the hottest April day on record. The lawn was lit by a distant, fluorescent streetlight and he was surprised to see his neighbour across the corridor, the young Polish woman, lying face down on the lawn in a bikini. She was lying in the path of a sprinkler, one of those ones which moves in a slow half-circle arc, then chatters back. Every time the water ran over her body, her muscles clenched. Her skin was dotted with glistening water droplets, like diamonds or pieces of glass placed on her back and legs.
He stood in the darkness of his hot room, watching his neighbour, imagining how good it must feel in this heat to have all that cold water drum into your bare skin. He enjoyed the sight of her water-studded back, but felt a little guilty spying on her like this. He didn’t know her first name. They had never spoken. They had once shared an elevator; she had been wearing a satin dress and carrying white tulips. But they hadn’t spoken. The name on her apartment buzzer was Cielecka.
He had been intending to open the window but daren’t now, in case it alerted her to him, so he went to the kitchen instead and poured a glass of water from the tap. When he went back to the window, she was gone.

When he lost his job, he convinced himself that he would find a new one pretty soon, but it had been seven months now and he’d run out of his savings. The money he got each fortnight from the government was enough to pay his rent with just ten dollars to spare. His electricity and gas had been cut off weeks ago. He had books on his shelves but the last thing he wanted to do was sell his books. He sat in his room at night, lit by cheap candles, resenting the fact that he couldn’t even make a cup of tea.
In the mornings he would go to the local church and pretend to pray so that he could participate in morning breakfasts of bad coffee, toast, jam and, if he was lucky, a couple of eggs. Sometimes he would splash out and spend a third of his ten dollars at a good café. It was a luxury he could ill-afford, but he would sip his strong espresso and watch all of the lucky employed going about their business trying not to feel bitter and envious.
A few days after seeing his neighbour on the lawn below, she passed him in the corridor and asked him into her apartment. He was surprised, but followed.
“These hot days,” she said, ushering him in, “they are terrible. You know what I would like? A glass of chilled vodka with a twist of lime. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Her flat was spotlessly clean. There was a green sofa, a couple of red armchairs, a small television and a bookcase, a rattan rug on the floor. She gestured for him to sit down then disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with two glasses of sangria, with pieces of lime, oranges and strawberries. She handed him one. It was nice to hold something chilled, straight from the fridge. She sat down opposite him. They sipped their wine, looking at each other awkwardly.
“You’re Martin, right?”
“Yes.”
”What do you do Martin?”
“I’m unemployed at the moment.”
“Ah. I thought so.”
“Why?” he asked, wondering how she could know that.
“Just a hunch,” she replied.
He wondered what she wanted with him. Maybe she had just asked him over for a glass of sangria, but he somehow doubted it? He tried guessing her age. Thirty? Thirty two? Her hair was the colour of summer: golden and bright.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“Nothing flash. I temp. It’s irregular but okay. It pays the rent and puts food on the table but not much more. Which is why I can’t afford vodka.”
She laughed. He smiled politely. She leaned across suddenly.
“So I have a proposal,” she whispered conspiratorially.
“You do?” he asked, surprised.
“It’s up to you, of course. Just an idea. But something which would benefit us both, I think.”
He waited for her to explain but she just sat there watching him. She crossed her legs, straightened her slacks. Finally she asked: “You like vodka?”
“Yes. But I haven’t had a drink for a long while.”
It had been a beer three weeks ago which he bought with half of his ten dollars one very hot evening. The memory of it made him thirsty.
“So a bottle of vodka would be welcome, yeah?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well… I was sitting up in bed reading the other night. It was hot. I was lying on my sheets with the fan on. Do you know what I did before?”
He shook his head.
“I went down to lawn. The sprinklers were on. I lay on the grass and let the water run over me. It was lovely.”
She paused, watching his reaction. He drank his wine, wondering if she knew he had watched her.
“Anyway, I came back and I lay on the bed naked and wet, letting the air from the fan cool me.”
He imagined her, lying on her bed, glistening with droplets of water. In this stifling heat, it was such a lovely, cool image.
“I was reading a book. A novel. It’s by an American. It’s about an aspiring writer. And he has a neighbour who tries to help him out because he’s very poor, see. And he can’t afford milk. So the neighbour has a plan to invite the milkman up for vodka and while they are drinking the writer goes down and steals some bottles of milk. But he does it all wrong and he steals buttermilk instead and he can’t stand buttermilk.”
She laughed.
“What are you getting at?” he asked again.
She gave him an irritated look, as if she was annoyed at him interrupting, but then said:
“Well, it gave me an idea. There’s a bottle shop which delivers. It does its deliveries in one hit. I thought, well, I could ring and order a bottle of vodka. And he’d come up here and I’d be all apologetic and say how I thought I had enough money but didn’t. And he’d be all right with it because I’m a pretty blonde and men never get angry with pretty blondes. And all the while, you’d be downstairs taking a couple of bottles of vodka from his van. So we’d both have vodka and it’d be for free.”
She sat back and smiled.
“What do you think?”
“But that would be stealing.”
“So?”
She looked at him as if his objection was just silly.
“I’m not a thief.”
“But it would only be a small thing. And just imagine, sitting back, with a glass of vodka and ice, with a twist of lime, getting slowly drunk. Wouldn’t that be just wonderful?”
“But I don’t want to steal,” he said, not quite believing she was even suggesting it, especially to a stranger.
“Let me tell you something,” she said seriously, leaning closer again, “once I was in this man’s shop and he propositioned me.”
“He did?”
She nodded.
“He asked me if I would sleep with him. When I said no he overcharged me for a bottle of wine. When I accused him of it he denied it. This isn’t just thievery, you see, it’s payback.”
“But aren’t you afraid he’ll be angry when he sees it’s you?”
“Oh no, he uses a boy to do his deliveries. It won’t be him. But it’s him who will pay.”
She put her empty glass on the table. The ice was nearly melted.
“So what do you say? A favour for me. It’s just a lark really. And you get a bottle of vodka for your time.”
He thought for a few moments. He wasn’t sure. What if he was caught? What if the man came back when he discovered the bottles gone and accused him of theft?
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Maria.”
He looked at her and the way she looked at him with her cool blue eyes, with expectation and anticipation, he felt as if he would be a failure in some way if he said no, so he nodded, without really understanding why he did so, and she clapped her hands in delight.
“That’s my boy, Martin,” she said, “well done you.”

So an hour later, he found himself waiting downstairs, standing in the phone box on the corner, pretending to speak into the hand set. He was waiting for the delivery van to come. He kept scanning the streets, checking to see if anyone else was around, but everyone was inside, in their air-conditioned rooms, watching television. He felt ridiculous, like someone playing at being a spy.
The van came. A young lad climbed out and opened the back. He took out a bottle and, checking the number of the apartment, went inside the building. Martin put the handset down and walked over to the van. He looked up and down the street. He had to act quickly. He looked at all the windows with their shutters down, keeping out the sweltering heat. Nervously, he opened the back of the van. There were cartons of beer and champagne and a box of spirits. He grabbed two bottles, pulled them out, then walked hurriedly across the road and into the park, where he hid behind the shelter of a tree.
He waited. The bottles were hard and glassy in his hands. He watched the empty road, the parked van washed by the light of a lamp. The boy was taking a long time. He felt bad about what he had done but it was too late now. He toyed with the idea of putting the bottles back but it would be just his luck to get caught, so he waited. What was taking him?
Finally the boy came out. He walked to the van. He put the bottle of vodka back into the box, then went to the cabin and climbed in. The engine started up. He drove off.
Martin sighed with relief. He ran across the road and up the stairs. He rang her doorbell. She opened it, saw the bottles and laughed loudly. She pulled him in.
“Sit down,” she said, taking one of the bottles from him.
She went into the kitchen and came back a little while later with two tall glasses of vodka and ice with a slice of lime floating in each one.
“That was so easy,” she said gleefully, “he said he didn’t mind. He understood. He was very polite and friendly.”
She laughed again, handed Martin his drink and sat down, resting her feet on the table. She sipped her drink and sighed happily.
“That was a great little adventure, Martin. A great adventure.”
He drank his drink. It went down, chilled, sweet, perfect. She looked at him, her eyes sparkling.
“And now we have a secret, don’t we? You and I have a secret to share.”
She smiled, resting the tip of the glass to her bottom lip, watching him.

They finished off her bottle between them. He was happy to stay as she had ice and lime and a fan which blew on them. They listened to music on her radio. He started to feel brave and heroic for stealing the vodka. He made derisive comments about the boy who hadn’t even noticed that the back of the van had been left open and she’d laughed brightly. Drunk, she persuaded him to join her in the park, where they stripped to their underclothes and stood under sprinklers, enjoying the coldness of the water, wet droplets on their limbs, the sudden pelting water drumming against their bare skin; they laughed, looking up at the starless sky.
When they got back to the apartment building, they stood outside her door and she grabbed him suddenly, and surprisingly, and they kissed. Their mouths tasted of purloined vodka. He was caught up in the perfumed smell and alcohol-taste of her. But then, just as suddenly, she turned away and opened her door.
“Goodnight,” she said, waving and shut the door.
He stood looking at her apartment door for a few moments, then turned and went back to his. He had imagined climbing into her bed with her, both wet and naked, but now here he was in his darkened, hot room, drunk and alone, a trail of sweat sliding down his forehead.
He lay on his mattress and his mind swirled.

They didn’t see each other for a few days. He found his bottle of vodka by his door one morning, half of it gone. He knocked on her door but there was no answer. He drank the vodka warm, without lime, and finished off a plastic container of cold vegetable curry he had bought at his local church fete for one dollar.
Nearly a week later she called him over. Her place was bright and warm, but cooler than his. She gave him a glass of iced water.
“How have you been Martin?”
“Okay I guess.”
“It’s so hot, isn’t it? I come from a cold country. I’m not used to all this heat.”
He nodded, sipping his water.
“That was fun though, the other night, wasn’t it? The vodka, the park, the water?”
“Yeah. Fun.”
She laughed. Then she put her glass down.
“I have another proposal, Martin.”
“Not more vodka? It won’t work a second time.”
“No. No vodka. Something else.”
He waited. She smiled a little smile.
“You know, in this heat, I hate to clean. It only makes me hot. But cleaning has to be done. The floors swept, the beds made, the dishes done.”
“I suppose.”
“But I have to work also. So it’s all so tiring. But here you are, Martin, with all that time on your hands.”
She looked at him and raised her eyebrows.
“You want me to clean for you?”
“That would be very helpful to me. Yes. While I’m at work. That would be convenient for us both wouldn’t it?”
“A job? What would you pay me?”
“Oh, not money.”
“What then?”
“Well, I’ll leave you a sandwich, some coffee.”
“Is that all? That’s not much for cleaning work.”
“But I’ll give you something more valuable as well.”
“What?”
“Silence,” she said.
“I’m sorry? I don’t understand.”
“Well, like I said, we have a secret. But it’s a secret I can share with others if I want to. I could ring up the man in the bottle shop and tell him how I saw you take the bottles from his van.”
“But… you asked me to.”
“Only you and I know that, Martin.”
“I’d tell him the truth and you’d get into trouble as well.”
“Oh I don’t think he’d believe it. A young, respectable and pretty blonde versus an unemployed boy. Besides, he’d have his man. He’d be happy with you, I daresay.”
“But you’re joking, aren’t you? I mean, you wouldn’t really do that.”
“If you think that you really don’t know me, Martin.”
She crossed her legs and watched him.
“Besides, it’s a good business proposition. I’m not talking about much. An hour at the most. You have the time. We both benefit. What do you say?”
He couldn’t believe she was treating him like this.
“You’re a nasty bitch,” he said and she laughed.
“I’ll leave the key under the mat,” she shouted as he turned and left.
He could hear her laughing as he crossed the hall and went back to his own apartment.

In the morning, he told himself he wouldn’t do it. But he was hungry and the thought of coffee was very tempting. It was only a small chore after all.
He crossed the hall. He took the key from under the mat. He entered her apartment. He went straight to the kitchen. On a small table was a sandwich on a plate and a packet off coffee. Propped up against an empty vase was a note.

1. Do the dishes
2. Make my bed
3. Vacuum the floor

No ‘hello’ or ‘thank you,’ just a list of what she wanted him to do. He sat at the table. He ate the sandwich. He boiled a kettle, poured coffee into the plunger and made the coffee. He washed her dishes. He found the vacuum and cleaned her floor. He went into her bedroom and made her bed.
He drank his coffee and washed up the cup and plate. She couldn’t complain he hadn’t done a good job. He spent the rest of the day at the library and in the park.

The next day was the same. A list of things to do. He ate the sandwich, had a coffee. He had a glass of orange juice as well. He did the chores, then went home. It wasn’t so bad after all.
On the fourth day, the list changed.

1. Do the dishes
2. Make my bed
3. Do my washing
4. Do my ironing

She was pushing it too far now. He did the dishes and made her bed. He went into the laundry and found a basket of dirty clothes. He put them in the washing machine and, while he waited, made a second coffee and watched a program on her TV. Then he hung out her washing and went home. She could do the ironing herself.
But, when she came home she knocked on the door.
“Martin? You didn’t do the ironing.”
“You can do the ironing.”
“But we had an arrangement?”
“You’re pushing it, Maria. I’m not your servant.”
“But you want my silence don’t you?’
“You can push it only so far. Besides, I don’t believe you’d do it.”
She smiled in an amused kind of way. She went back to her own apartment, leaving the door open. He followed. He watched her pick up the telephone and dial a number.
“Is this Mr Royston? Hello. I understand you had some vodka stolen the other week? Yes? Well I saw who did it and wondered if you would like to know his name? Yes. It was from the van. Of course. His name is Mar…”
He rushed up and pressed the receiver button down. She looked at him and raised her eyebrows. Then it occurred to him that she had probably rung the time or the weather. She was just pretending. He pressed the redial button and took the receiver from her hand. He pressed it to his ear. “Royston Cellars. Is that you again?”
He hung up. She looked at him.
“Are you going to do the ironing now, Martin?”
He nodded silently.
While he stood at the ironing board, she sat in an armchair, watching, drinking white wine. She put on a piece of choral music and listened to it while he ironed her shirts, pants, dresses and underclothes.
“That’s good,” she said, handing him a glass of wine.
He felt like refusing it but it was icy cold and it was so hot, and, besides, he was thirsty.
“By the way,” she said, as they sipped from their glasses, “I like fabric softener in my washes. That was my fault. I should have told you. But next time use it please.”
He downed the wine in one go and left.
“Goodnight, Martin,” she said.

The lists got longer. Do the dishes. Make the bed. Wash my clothes. Do the ironing. Dust the furniture. Do my shopping. Clean the bathroom. Make me a vegetable casserole.
He obliged. He ate his lunch and drank his coffee. He worked conscientiously. And, sometimes, she’d invite him for dinner and a glass of wine. Sometimes she would chat with him as if they were friends and he would almost forget their arrangement. But then she would go days without seeing him and she would add something to the list. Take my dress to the dry cleaners. Clean the windows. Bake me a chocolate cake.
One evening, she called him over. She poured him a glass of wine. She sat down.
“I’ve been thinking, Martin. I think we’re doing this the wrong way.”
“We are?”
She nodded.
“We’re wasting resources.”
“How so?”
“Well, you come over here and look after me. I come home and you sleep in your hot and dark room. It’s not very sensible is it?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, why don’t you give your landlord notice? Move in here. You can sleep on the couch. Then you’ll be here when I want things.”
“You want me to move in?”
“Yes. You’ll have to pay of course.”
“Pay?”
“Rent.”
“How much?”
“How much do you pay now?”
“Two hundred and fifty a week.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t ask that much. How about two hundred?”
“Two hundred? For sleeping on your couch and doing all your housework?”
“Yes, but you’d be using my water and eating my food. You’d have to contribute. And be reasonable. You’d be saving fifty dollars a week.”
“And losing my independence!”
She laughed.
“Don’t be such a bore. Think of it, Martin. Think of the opportunities.”
She stood up and walked over to him. She pressed her mouth against his and kissed him warmly.
“Think of all the possibilities,” she said.

He gave three week’s notice. He dumped most of his possessions on the street, then boxed up his books and clothes and moved into her apartment. She gave him some bed clothes and a pillow and he made up a bed on her couch. On the first night he expected a goodnight kiss, but she simply turned out the light and went to her own room.
He lay on the couch, wondering what he had done.

In the mornings she would wake him up and, while she showered and dressed, he would make her breakfast. Sometimes she would wake him with a kiss, other times with a nudge. It was like living with two people. Sometimes she was cold and distant, other times affectionate and friendly. A few times she cuddled up to him on the couch and they touched and kissed. Most nights they didn’t.
But the odd thing was that, the more time she spent being cool towards him, the more he wanted her. He would admire her perfect skin and her shiny hair and he would look at her mouth and remember the last time they kissed; and, the next time they kissed, her mouth was all the more wonderful, her touches all the more delightful. And, if she thanked him or wished him well, he was filled with a strange kind of happiness which, even when she was cruel to him or indifferent, he remembered with fondness and longing.
Once, on a very hot night, she left her door open and he could see her lying naked on the bed with her back to him. He stood looking at her, admiring her in the way you might a fine sculpture in an art gallery. He had the feeling that she knew he was there and was letting him look; that perhaps she had left the door open for this very reason?
But he daren’t go in. She had made it clear to him that, apart from when he made her bed, her room was her domain. So he just stood in the doorway and looked.
In the morning, he saw her in the kitchen in her satin robe and she looked so wonderful. He grabbed her lightly, pulling her gently close, then kissed her. She slapped him hard on the face. His face stinging, he looked at her in shock.
“Don’t do that again,” she said calmly, but firmly.
He shook with rage.
“You know what?” he said, “when you get home, I won’t be here.”
“But where would you go?” she smiled.
“I’ll find somewhere.”
“You’d sleep like a homeless person?”
“I have friends.”
“Really?” she said with a raising of her eyebrows.
“You can’t treat people like this,” he said, trembling.
“You love me, Martin. You are a country I have colonised. I came into your life and changed you forever and, no matter what you may feel, you can’t do without me any more.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said.

After she went to work, he packed up some of his books and clothes then left. He walked aimlessly. He sat in a café drinking coffee and eating cake. He sat on the library steps watching the people and the pigeons.
He wasn’t going back. He didn’t care if she rang and told them about the vodka. He didn’t care that he had nowhere to go. He would never go back.
He bought himself a cup of tea from a tea van. He found a park bench and sat drinking it. The day was very hot so he found a tree and sat under the shade. He remembered standing, watching her back as she lay on top of her sheets the night before. It was painful to remember.
He remembered the night he had seen her, lying on the lawn, with her skin shining and wet. She had enchanted him.
He wondered what might have happened if he had refused her suggestion of stealing the bottles of vodka. Would he still be in his own apartment, alone and with no electricity or gas? Drinking water from the tap, buying cold curries from church fetes?
The other day they had shared a bottle of white wine and an aubergine curry. She had sat opposite him with her left foot resting on his right thigh and she had smiled.
He walked around the park, wasting time. He wasn’t due for money for one and a half weeks and he only had twenty dollars to his name. Living with her, he had been able to buy wine and books, even a bottle of vodka which they had shared with ice and a twist of lime.
He thought of the long days of cleaning floors, washing clothes, cooking dinner, making her bed. He remembered running her a bath, pouring shampoo into her golden hair, massaging her head, soaping her neck and shoulders. But he also remembered the nights when she didn’t come home until very late, with him pretending to be asleep on the couch; or when she spent days largely ignoring him, leaving him notes of instructions propped up against the vase in the kitchen. Nights of tender kisses, other nights of stony silence, angry criticisms, all depending on her mood or desires.
He would be better off without her.
He found a delicatessen and bought some iced water and sat under a bridge drinking it. He fell asleep and was kicked awake by a passing cop.
As the sun went down he walked past a paddock and watched a group of school boys playing football. The ball made a loud, leathery, thudding sound when it was kicked. He wondered how they had the energy to play in this heat.
He imagined long, aimless nights like this, carrying his heavy suitcase of books and clothes, watching other people get on with their sweatyblives.
He went back to the apartment.

The front door was open and he found her sitting on the floor with her back to the sofa, wearing grey silk pyjamas. A window was open behind her and a breeze was blowing out a white, lace curtain, like the sail of a boat. She was eating slices of blood orange which were laid out on a plate before her. They lay in dark, red crescents, along with the orange and white strips of the ones she’d already chewed back to the rind.
She looked up as he came in.
“The breeze is cool,” she said, “and these oranges are delicious.”
She held up the plate and he took a slice, biting into the moist flesh. It was sweet and juicy. He sat down beside her. She turned to look at him.
“I knew you’d come back,” she said, then she leaned across and kissed him, her mouth sticky with citrus, her teeth biting into his bottom lip, but not enough to break the skin.
Outside a van went by. Together they finished the oranges, piece by bloody piece.

poised in that plum-coloured moment

Louise walks into the hotel foyer which is opulently-silent with its deep crimson carpet and brightly-polished brass lights; and the reception desk staffed by a man in a suit and a young woman; both as motionless as mannequins; the man holding a white phone to his left ear, the chord twirling downwards, the woman looking ceaselessly, mindlessly, at her computer screen; not like people at all, but modern artworks, made of plastic. Incredibly real but real people would not be so frozen, so still.
She walks up to the desk, goes behind it, searches the pigeon holes and collects a few keys. She touches the cloth of the man’s suit, feeling its warmth. She touches the woman’s skin, on the side of her face; it is warm, soft, the flesh of someone alive but without volition; these strange, sad, unmoving people of the frozen past.
She heads to the elevator and presses the button for floor nineteen. She rides the elevator in total silence and when it reaches the floor the doors ‘ding’ and open.
She steps out into the carpeted hallway. On the floor outside the room directly opposite are the remains of someone’s meal on a tray: empty coffee cups, an empty glass, plates, knife and fork, a metal teapot, a half-finished croissant. Nothing decayed or changed despite it having been there for months.
She finds a room to one of the keys. She opens the door. Inside the lights are off and a man stands naked at the window, looking down, illuminated by moonlight. His pale-fleshed nakedness, the thighs and buttocks, the line of his spine, are like a marble statue. She admires him briefly, then closes the door. She finds another one. It is empty and made-up.
She goes in and closes the door behind her. She goes to the bar fridge and takes out a small bottle of gin. She pours it into a glass, opens a bottle of tonic water and fills the glass; adds ice cubes, then, ice chinking against the glass, she kicks off her shoes and lies down on the bed, sipping her drink.
There are no sounds. No cars, no people, no birds. Nothing. Just her own breathing and the sound of ice on glass.


On a roof, a couple of young teenagers lie looking up at the night sky.
- How long since we saw the day? the boy, Peter, asks.
- Over a year, Alice replies.
- No sun, no clouds, just darkness and stars.
- Yeah. Stars.
- Why!? Why!? he asks exasperated.
- You keep asking that question.
- I know. But why us?
- And that one, she says in a slightly irritated tone.
He turns to look at her.
- Shut up. You don’t ask yourself?
She shrugs.
- Of course. But there are never any answers, so why bother?
Silence.
- Do you think we’ll find someone else? he asks.
- We found each other.
He looks at her wonderingly.
- But could we be the only ones?
- keep asking questions I don’t know the answers to, she says irritably.
- The world doesn’t just come to a stop without a reason, but how do you fathom the reason?
- Do you believe in God? she asks, spinning their conversation around with her question.
- No. I don’t think so, he answers doubtfully.
- But God could do a thing like this.
- Why would He do it though?
She thinks for a quiet moment but can come up with no answer.
- You think it’s us? she suggests, just us and not the rest of the world? Everything else is normal and people are rushing around everywhere but there’s something wrong with us and we can’t connect with that world?
- Now you’re asking a question we can’t answer.


In her hotel room, Louise finishes her drink, then heads down to the kitchens. Women and men stand frozen over pans, sinks, cupboards. A fork hovers in mid-air, fallen from a tray. She touches the fork with the tip of her finger and it falls with a hard, metallic ring to the floor.
She looks at the plates sitting ready for collection. She chooses one and takes it into the restaurant. She finds an empty table and eats the dish, still hot, looking at the people around her. She takes a bottle of wine from a nearby table and pours some into an empty glass. She drinks it. It is over a year-old, this opened wine, but it is fresh and good.
Afterwards, she goes into the bar and finds a bottle of whisky. She takes it to a booth and sits down. She lifts the bottle to her mouth and drinks.
Time can’t have stopped, otherwise how could she drink? This whisky, it flows, yet the clocks remain forever at 7.46; the people remain as motionless as dummies; cars, with their lights on, stand still on the dark roads. The world as it was at 7.46, thirteen months ago, preserved and mummified by some unimaginable force which only she escapes.
Only she.
She drinks more whisky, wiping her mouth.
She remembers that first night, wandering around in a daze, looking at the motionless population. She had held someone’s hand, felt its warmth and softness, yet the man hadn’t moved and his eyes were like glass. There was another man she saw at a bus stop weeks later, so beautiful, so angelic; she had kissed his soft lips, her heart beating faster at the touching of their mouths, but he just stood there, his lips wet from her touch, like a waxwork-dummy, agonisingly lovely and serenely unattainable.
She remembers the tram, stopped in the middle of a crossroads, like a becalmed metal whale. She had walked beside it, her fingers tracing a cold line along its curved frame. She had looked up and a young boy was looking out; and their eyes met. She had started, thinking that he was looking at her. But she had shifted sideways, to the left, and his still-eyes had remained looking ahead. It was a moment of quiet heartbreak; one of many in those first few months alone.
And, she remembers the moth. After so much stillness and silence, the sound of it flittering under a lamp had astonished her. She had stood looking at it, grey and tormented, crashing into the bright heat of the lamp, until it fell, helpless and burned. It lay in the gutter, dazed, flapping. She had put it in her hands and felt its tiny wings, as thin as paper, tickle her palm. Her whole body had felt the thrill of that movement. Tender, gentle life.
For days she wandered aimlessly, calling out, hoping for an answer, but the city was asleep and only she was awake.
She takes the bottle outside the bar. She heads up to the swimming pool on the roof. The night is deathly silent. If she shouted, her voice would echo over the city and possess it. The swimming pool is illuminated from within. She kicks off her shoes and steps into the shallow end, wades out, fully-clothed, until the water laps around her waist. She drinks from the whisky bottle. She turns slowly, the water slapping gently. She causes ripples. Ripples which sing like bells.


Alice and Peter walk through the streets, hand-in-hand. He drinks from a bottle of lemonade, she eats an apple.
They know there are lapses in this madness. A wind sometimes blows, lifting leaves and dust; a fountain in a plaza miraculously flows and astounds them; a mouse skitters across the road in front of them, like a dusty ghost. Once there was bird; a single, fawn sparrow hopping about among the motionless pigeons and sparrows on the pavement beside it. They had raided a shop and broken up a loaf of bread for it and had watched her eat all afternoon.
These brief and strangely-wonderful moments give them momentary hope. Somewhere there must be someone else like them. They can’t be the last people on Earth still living and moving, can they?
Once, in a hotel, they had heard a splash. They had run to the swimming pool and it was lit with blue light. The pillars were mosaic tiles of aqua and azure blue. The water rippled. They dared to hope that there was someone swimming under the surface but it was empty; water reflecting and breaking up light as it swayed.
At the edge of the pool, was a woman in a red swimsuit, mouth open, in the middle of removing a white robe. Peter went up to her and put a hand on one of her shoulders, which was warm and soft. The woman stared across the pool, not moving.
They both stood, looking down at the rippling water, wondering what had caused the loud splash, watching its wake as the still pool swelled gently, mysteriously. They had held each other for comfort.
They find a shop that sells cakes. They look at all of the multi-coloured confectionary, laid out like soft jewels. He chooses a cake with lemon-coloured icing and glace cherries, she a tart with glazed strawberries on custard and a bottle of sparkling water. They eat as they walk, savouring the indulgent sweetness. When they finish, they hold hands again, their fingers sticky.
- Do you think it’s the Americans? she asks.
- Why would it be the Americans?
- Well, I read somewhere they were experimenting with a Quantum Bomb.
- What’s a Quantum Bomb?
- I don’t know. Something to do with disrupting time. Stopping time in a selected area so the troops can go in.
- That’s just comic book stuff, he says derisively.
- No. It was real.
- If they were doing that kind of thing, they’d hardly let it into the papers would they?
- It was in a magazine.
- Same difference. It’s just someone’s imagination.
She looks around her.
-This isn’t imagination is it? she says vehemently.
She is angry with him, but she holds his hand even tighter because she is sometimes afraid of losing him. They walk past a woman sitting on the front step of a shop, a bottle of beer poised against her mouth, glass touching dark red skin, the liquid poised like an amber globule inside a spirit level.
- Maybe it’s the Americans, he concedes, but I don’t know. Probably a force of nature.
- What kind of force? she asks curiously.
- How do I know?
Ahead of them, a building is on fire, the flames frozen, like sheet-metal, bright and reflective. A woman is petrified in mid-run, her clothes on fire. They rush up to her. They douse the flames with their drinks. They hiss and disappear. The flames have melted away but the woman remains transfixed to the spot, her clothes burned, flesh exposed and red raw.
- Let’s go back to the roof, he suggests.
- Why?
- I like being near the sky.

Louise wakes. She has no idea what time it is. She laughs in the darkness. Of course: it is 7.46. She turns on the light. She undresses and showers. How can water flow when everything is still? It is something to do with her touch? Perhaps. She touches things and they come alive? But then, why don’t people come alive when she touches them? Nothing makes sense.
She stands under the water, soaping herself, then washes off the soap.
She dries herself then dresses. She goes downstairs to the café and makes herself a black coffee. She makes toast. See, the miracle of time in a timeless world where everything is frozen but here, in this café, when she touches the toaster, the toaster heats and turns bread into toast, hot to the touch and smelling of burned wheat.
She butters it, spreads on marmalade. The coffee is good.
Beside her, at an adjacent table, sits a man reading a book. He has an espresso cup lifted to his lips and a glass of port on the table beside him.
It is morning to her but, in reality, 7.46 at night; the day forever poised in that plum-coloured moment between late afternoon and night.
There were days, at the beginning, when she had left money for the things she had taken on the counter, but now she takes coins from the tills, using them in vending machines and coin-operated doors. Why bother worrying about stealing from those who can not use the metalled artefacts of a lost world? She could steal all the money she could carry and it would be mostly useless now.
She goes to the fridge and takes out a grapefruit. A young woman in a mauve dress stands beside the counter. She cuts the grapefruit into quarters and then halves the quarters. She stands by the counter, biting into the sharp-sweet flesh, sucking, chewing, until she is left with eight yellow and white rinds which she drops carelessly at the young woman’s feet.
She goes out into the silent, still street. She has long-since given up trying to find a word to adequately describe this silence; this terrible, night-loneliness; this empty space of madness.
She walks among the motionless world. She weaves in between cars and buses. Pedestrians are obstacles for her to meander through.
If only the world turned. If only the night changed into day. If only she could see the remembered-sun.
She sees her own reflection in the window of a shop. It moves. It makes her laugh, as if such movement in this world is a comic surprise.
Behind the glass are teddy bears and dolls. They look out with bead eyes, dull and hard.


- What do you want me to do? Alice asks.
- Nothing.
- You don’t want me to do anything?
- I said so, didn’t I?
- But I’m cold.
- Well hold me.
- Can’t we go back inside?
- I want to look at the night and the stars, he says distantly and the distance scares her.
- It’s not going away, she says, Ever. And we could be in beds with cotton sheets and woollen blankets.
- Well go downstairs, he says coldly.
- I don’t want to be alone, she says in a quiet, childlike voice.
He turns his head, regretting his indifference.
- I’ll be up here when you wake, he promises.
- How do I know?
He looks at her.
- I won’t ever leave you.
- How do I know?
- Why would I?
- I don’t know.
He walks up to her. He holds her, wrapping her up in his arms.
- No-one’s ever been as married as us. Not in the whole history of time. We’re the only people in the history of the human race who can never let go of each other because we’re the only people we’ve got. Just us. No-one else. Forever.
She touches his face, stroking it. He smiles.
- Go downstairs. I’ll be up here waiting, he says gently.
She nods. She goes down into warmth and the gentleness of cotton.


Louise finds a cinema. She helps herself to popcorn and soda. The woman behind the counter is smiling, her mouth parted slightly, like a piece of art, imitating reality.
She goes into a darkened cinema. A few people sit in chairs around her. The movie has frozen on one frame: a woman, looking to her right, with blonde hair down to her shoulders.
She sits sipping her drink, looking at the woman on the screen. Her eyes are brown, lit up. Her face glows with some distant light, perhaps a fire? She has a tiny mole under her left nostril. Her mouth is open, as if she is about to say something or perhaps let out a gasp?
The movie mirrors the world; a frozen moment in time, a piece of unfinished choreography waiting for the moment of its completion.
She eats her popcorn and drinks her soda, watching the screen and the face of the woman, which is as big as the side of a house. The cinema is lit by a pale blue glow and the people around her are in shadows, as still as statues.


In an office somewhere, on the twentieth floor, a woman sits at her desk. Her colleagues are gone and the sole occupant, aside from her, is a cleaner, frozen in the moment of picking up a bin.
She has returned to this place time and time again and again, though she has no idea why. She has spent the last year surrounded by silent, unmoving people, alone and lost.
Each time she returns to her old office, she looks at the cleaner, bent over to lift the mesh bin. She remembers speaking with her many months ago. She sometimes speaks to her still, like you might speak to a gravestone in memory of a loved one.
She stands at the window looking out at a city which exists always in night. Surely there must be other people like her, still aware and walking through lonely streets? She can’t be the only one.
She walks across the room and sits at her desk. She reaches for the phone directory. She lifts the phone from its hook.
She will be like a holy person, performing some long, hopeful ritual. Measuring the death of time with her fingers.
She opens the directory to the first page. The ‘A’s. The first name is Aab, a name she has never encountered before. She puts the phone against her left ear, listens to the dial tone, then punches in the number. Somewhere, in the suburbs or city, a phone rings. Loudness in the midst of silence. She lets it ring and ring. She gives it time. There are millions of names in this book. She will spend her days ringing every number. If there is someone else out there, they will answer. One day the phone won’t just ring and ring but will be answered by a human voice.
She hangs up, runs her fingers down to the next person, and punches in the number.


When Alice wakes from her cotton-warm sleep, she wonders how long she has been asleep. There is no way of measuring time anymore. No clocks or watches, no movement of the sun; just the ever-present moon, hanging like a lamp in the velvet sky. She still finds herself looking at the clock. The illuminated dial says 7.46. It is always the same and always a shock.
She climbs out of bed. She goes up to the roof.
He is not there.
She looks out on the eerily silent city and wonders, in a moment of panic, if he has betrayed her, though she can fathom no good reason for him doing so.
She sits, cross-legged, on the hard roof. She waits. He will come to her. Please let him come to me.
She thinks of her parents, still sitting in front of the TV. She wished she hadn’t left them but there was no point in remaining; touching them, feeling their warm flesh, the hardness of the bones underneath; looking into bright, glassy eyes. It was heartbreaking; they were there, within the realm of her touch, but gone; gone.
So she had wandered, alone, for months, before she had found him; the shock and wonder of another human being like her.
They shared their bewilderment and loss. They walked strangely among people who might as well be corpses. They both wondered.
He comes to her after a while. She is aware of him without seeing him. The sound of his footsteps and breath. She is ridiculously relieved.
- Have you eaten? she asks.
- I was waiting.
- Let’s go down.
- Did you sleep?
- A long time.
They ride the elevator down to the foyer, past the frozen reception clerks. They go outside.
- It doesn’t have to be God, he says.
- What?
- I was thinking. Last night. It doesn’t have to be God or Americans.
- Okay
- It could easily be nature. I mean, I remember at school they told us that every now and then the magnetic field of the Earth changes.
- It does?
Well, something like that. You know, the way the water goes when you pull out a plug? Anticlockwise or the other way?
- Clockwise.
- Yeah. And every so often it changes. Reverses.
- Okay.
- So, what if, every now and then, Time changes?
- But it hasn’t before, has it?
- How would we know? What if it changes every million years? We haven’t been around that long have we?
- But what about us? Why has everything else stopped but not us?
- I don’t know that bit. I mean, it doesn’t fit, does it?
She smiles.
- Let’s eat. What do you fancy?
- Pancakes, he grins.
She laughs and they run down the street, holding hands, heading towards a kitchen that has good pancakes and which they know has a plate piled high, just waiting for them.


Louise leaves the cinema, with the other people still sitting in their seats and the face of the woman still on the screen. She throws the empty popcorn box and soda cup into a bin.
The thing to do, she has decided, is to act as normally as possible; to live her days as if this is the every-day world. Days? Even the most fundamental thoughts are mocked by the world around her.
She passes a newsagent’s stand. She has read every single newspaper, with its news about a long-lost world. The man inside looks out, his jaw still in the same state of unshaven-ness. She picks up a magazine. She leafs through it but is only half-interested. She sees faces of famous people, more animated than the people around her.
She has a sudden desire to visit the train station, though she has no idea why.
She looks into the faces of the people she walks by. She has begun to think of them as Dolls, though they are real people. Perhaps it is she who is a ghost in their world? It is one of the possible permutations which have run through her mind over the months.
She finds the stairs to a nearby station. She heads lower, under the earth.
People wait, looking at newspapers, sitting, standing, craning their necks to see down the tunnel. There is a light from within. She stands on the edge of the platform. She jumps.
She lands on the tracks. She suddenly gasps, and thinks she is going to die. In the tunnel is a train, its lights pouring over her but, of course, it doesn’t move. She has commited suicide but only in the world which moves. In this world she can walk slowly up to the train; put her hands against its warm, metal frame; look up at the driver who stares blindly out of the window.
If the world were to become suddenly alive, she would be dead. She has thought of this often as she walks among stationary cars. This doesn’t stop her from walking beside the train, in the gap between its carriages and the curved wall of the tunnel, looking up at the windows lit from within and the lifeless passengers, reading newspapers, listening to silent iPods, talking, sleeping. Perhaps the sleeping have the best deal?
She climbs back onto the platform. She has ruined her cardigan with grease.
She walks past a young man, with his bling and tracksuit pants and cap back-to-front. She takes off his hat and flings it across the platform, across the rails, to the other side. She has no idea why.
She passes a man collecting for charity. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a handful of clattering coins and forces them into the box, pressing them in with gluttonous determination. A meaningless gesture.
She sees a man in a suit standing beside a young woman, his eyes preserved in a moment of leering at her cleavage. She finds his wallet and opens it. She peels out hundred dollar bills. She slips them into the girl’s jacket pocket and throws his wallet onto the tracks. She turns him so that he is leering at a drunk sleeping with his back to white tiles.


The two of them enter the fair ground. They are holding hands again. They wander through the stationery crowds; children, like them, with toffee apples and candy floss; adults, laughing, shouting, eating, drinking; a couple locked together in an eternal kiss in the corner of an alley.
- Have you ever been here before?
- When I was younger.
- It’s like we’re living in Madam Taussards.
She looks at a girl like her with red lips and bright blue eyes, beautiful and creepy at the same time, erotically-strange in her unbreathing loveliness. She looks away. Sometimes it is hard to look at these people, who might easily be dead or asleep or in a world between existences.
Look at the people on the roller-coaster. Those people screaming silently. They’ve been going down like that curve for over a year.
- Only to us.
- What?
- To them it’s probably not even a second. If this thing ever stops. I mean, if time ever gets back to normal I bet it will be the blink of an eye to them.
- Do you think it will?
- What?
- Get back to normal?
She looks at a woman standing beside her, wiping her glasses clean with a cotton cloth.
- How would I know? It might stay like this forever.
- Just you and me.
- Unless we find someone else.
- What are the odds of that?
- We can’t be the only ones.
- Have you ever thought it might be us and not the others?
- What do you mean? Like you said before?
- Yeah. That the rest of the world has left us behind? That everything else has moved on and it’s us who’ve fallen out of step with Time?
- But how?
He shrugs.
- Maybe this happens sometimes? People slip through and get trapped in a moment?
- So my parents, they’re somewhere in the future? They’ve left me behind?
- They wouldn’t have had any choice. It just would have happened. They went on as normal but we didn’t.
She looks at the crowd around her. Will they live here among the silent citizens of a becalmed world for the rest of their lives?
- Will we grow old? she asks wonderingly.
- I suppose we will.
- What if we don’t? Maybe we’ll stay young forever?
- Maybe?
He looks down at the ground. It is littered with papers; old tickets, scraps, sweet papers. Perhaps in sixty years from now they will come back to his place and he will remember this moment? The world will still be spellbound and nothing will have changed? The people on the roller-coaster will still be on their downward plunge, their mouths open in silent screams? But what will have become of them?
- Let’s do something silly, he says suddenly.
- What?
- Imagine if things get back to normal…
As he says this, he walks up to a red-headed man wearing black pants. He undoes them and tugs them down. He is wearing white underwear with a rose print on them.
- Do her, he says, gesturing with his head.
She looks at the woman standing beside her.
- Imagine time starts again, he says with a laugh, and they all have their trousers around their ankles. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
She smiles. Feeling a little shy, she pulls the woman’s pants down. They both laugh merrily. They wander the crowds, removing trousers and skirts until they are surrounded by dozens of people with pink-skinned, bare legs, clothes puddled around their ankles, like a scene from a silent movie. They sit in the saw dust, holding each other, laughing. She rests her head against his shoulder and he pulls her close into him, stroking her gently, hot tears rolling down his sobbing face.


Louise finds a wine bar and goes into the kitchen. She takes a sandwich and a bottle of white wine to a table by the window. She finds a CD-player and puts on a CD. Bach Cello Suites. The mournful music fills the café.
She eats. She looks at the people on the street. It has been thirteen months since she has spoken with a fellow human being; thirteen months since she heard a human voice. Sometimes she will go up to one of the mannequin-like people and touch them; stroking their faces, holding their hands, smelling their clothes, just to remind herself that they are real people, not painted dolls.
Once, a few weeks ago, seeing a beautiful man standing at the edge of a street, she had longed for the touch of another human being. She had looked into his blue eyes. He was handsome. She could imagine sharing a meal with him, going home, making love. She had unbuttoned her cardigan and had lifted the man’s heavy arm, placing his hand on her left breast. She had closed her eyes, feeling his warm fingers against her skin, yearning for tenderness.
She had cried. She had stood on the edge of the street and cried with this stranger’s hand held up against her chest.
He is still standing on the edge of the street. She knows with absolutely certainty that, if she were to walk back there, he would still be standing in the same position, still looking out across the street, with his mouth slightly parted, a sad reminder of hollow, manufactured intimacy.
She drinks her wine from the bottle. She finishes her sandwich.
Where will this end? she wonders. Will it stretch out into years? The rest of her life? An entire life lived without human contact or companionship?
She goes outside. She enters a hotel foyer. She rides the elevator to the top floor. She finds the steps to the roof. She goes up onto the roof and stands looking at the lights of the city. But for the absolute silence, it could a normal city, alive and thriving.
She drinks from the bottle, contemplating the endless darkness. It, too, has its effect on her. She is locked away from the day and sunlight forever. She drinks more wine, wiping her mouth.
She walks to the very edge of the building. The tips of her pink shoes are over the edge. She holds out her arms. She need only topple forward to drop twenty storeys to the street below.
That would end all of this.
Surely it would?
She takes a deep breath, tasting the city on her tongue.
To freefall to her death. It is a thought.
The neck of the bottle slips through her fingers and falls. It is a little time before she hears it, but the city is so silent, hear it she does, crashing below.
She laughs at the absurdity of it all.
She steps back.
- Damn you! she shouts defiantly, then heads back downstairs, where she will drink more wine, not yet ready to die.
Not only wine. Whisky, vodka, absinth, brandy, beer and champagne until, drunk, she finds a room and falls asleep in her clothes, with the clock beside her telling her it is still 7.46.


In the amusement park, they marvel at the rides, stopped in mid-swing or swirl. They laugh at a boy stopped in mid-run, being chased by a man waving a stick. They take sweets from stalls and munch on them as they wander the sawdust aisles. He picks out some flowers from a bunch and pulls out the yellow petals, dancing backwards before her, scattering them at her feet, as if she is a princess or goddess. She laughs gleefully.
He goes behind a hotdog stand and makes them hotdogs with bright-yellow mustard and relish.
They drink Coca Cola and search through show-bags to eat Violet Crumbles and Jaffas.
At a shooting gallery he shows off by putting a rifle to his shoulder, shooting at a metal duck, which he misses seven times, which makes her laugh loudly.
They walk past a band, their instruments still to their mouths, cheeks puffed. She bangs the drum and it falls out of the drummer’s still hand, clattering to the floor.
They stand under the Ferris wheel. People sit in carriages, waiting to ride. There is a queue. He tells her to get in.
She climbs into an empty seat, then he presses the button and it starts moving. He jumps in beside her and they ride slowly to the top, looking out at the bright lights of the sleeping city, holding hands while they circle around and around.
On the third revolution, they hear a phone ring.
They look at each other.
They are on the rise so have to wait until it ends its spin then jump out but, by this time, the ringing has finished.
The memory of the rings echo around them.
- No! he shouts, running around, trying to find the phone but, eventually, he falls to his knees in the sawdust. She falls gently beside him and lays an arm over his shoulder.
- They’ll ring again.
- What if they don’t?
- There’s someone else out there! We’re not alone.
He looks up at her.
- But what if they don’t ring again?
- It doesn’t matter, does it? There’s someone else out there, looking. One day. One day, we’ll find each other.
He looks at her and nods. He is crying. She wipes away the tears from his cheeks with her fingers. They kiss for the first time. Three quick, soft kisses. They hold each other tightly, lovingly. Above them, the Ferris wheel turns and turns and turns.


Louise wakes. She has no idea how long she has been sleeping. Instinctively she turns to look at the clock.
7.47.
She sits up and stares at it in disbelief.
7.47
She puts a hand to her mouth, gasping.
7.47!
Time has moved! A single minute. It has taken Time thirteen months to move a single minute. She slides off the bed. At this rate it will take, what? Fourteen or fifteen years to complete the hour. Time is moving infinitesimally slowly, but it is moving. This changes things, but she is not sure how. For the first time in a long time, she feels hope, though it is like the thinnest sliver of light in a dark room.
She walks to the window. From up here she can see the west of the city. The lights of cars not moving. The shopping precinct. The amusement park.
Something catches her eye.
The Ferris wheel is moving! She can see its multicoloured lights revolving in a pattern of red, yellow, white and green.
Is the world slowly awakening or is the changing of the minute on the clock and the slow revolution of the wheel a coincidence?
Last night she had wanted to kill herself but here she is, looking at some magical hope, some possibility of change. She watches the wheel turn beautifully, mesmerised, trying to fathom its meaning, wondering if she dare dream of salvation.
She goes downstairs, riding the elevator in a rush of impatient excitement. She steps out into the street. She walks past people standing in various poses. She wanders through the lines of cars. She doesn’t recognise this part of town. She wonders if she is heading in the right direction and, for a moment, panics. But, as she turns a corner, she comes across a street which heads downwards and there, not so far away, is the slowly turning Ferris wheel, brightly-lit, like a beacon.
She heads in its direction, having no idea what she might find there, but thinking that it might be some sort of beginning. It is a hope she tries to hold down but it flutters upwards like a bird.
As she heads closer she can smell sawdust and sweetness, the musty smell of horses and other animals. The wheel is magnificent, turning, turning, making the air sing, its gleaming lights lending it the quality of something sacred and ceremonial.
As she enters the front gates, she thinks she can hear voices. They are too far away for her to be sure, too quiet, but she begins to run. The lights wash the air with beautiful colours and the hurdy-gurdy music of the Wheel is making the world giddy and strange.
She feels like she is falling now; falling forwards into the vortex of the Wheel, like a leaf being drawn into a whirlpool. She prepares herself for astonishment or, perhaps – please no! - disappointment?
Above her, the stars, whose ancient light has taken hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years to arrive here, pierce the night sky with their astonishing brightness.

sorrow valley

PC Emily French started her day much the same as most days. There was nothing about the morning to suggest it would be any different from any other run-of-the-mill day. She had breakfast, showered, caught the bus to work, changed into her uniform. She attended the morning’s briefing, was assigned duties with PC Lancashire. There was always a certain awkwardness between them. He had once confided that he had a bit of a crush on her. That had been at last year’s Christmas party. He had drunkenly told her she had pretty ears. He had apologised the next day and she’d told him to forget it, but it remained an issue between them. any more.
They drove down the main street. They attended a drunken argument between two customers outside a 7-11. They cautioned someone whose right brake light was broken.
Then they got a call about a delirious man at Sorrow Alley. They attended. He was a young man, wearing a crumpled suit. It looked like he hadn’t washed for days, but he didn’t look like your normal down and out.
She climbed out of the car. She approached.
“Okay, sir. How are we doing?”
He looked up, surprised, as if confused about his whereabouts.
“What?”
“What seems to be the trouble?”
He laughed bitterly.
“Trouble? Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”
“Have you been drinking, sir?”
He shook his head.
“Taken any illicit drugs?”
He shook his head again. He was pale and shaking.
“Do you have anywhere we can take you? Someone we can call?”
He tried to work out what she was saying, then said:
“Fuck off! Just leave me alone!”
“I can’t do that, sir. You’re causing a disturbance. If you don’t have somewhere to go, we may have to take you in.”
He looked up, panicked, then started running down the alley way. She looked at her colleague and rolled her eyes.
“Leave him,” he said.
“There’s something not right with him.”
She started running down the alley after him. He wasn’t running very fast.
“Stay where you are!”
They ran past rubbish bins, the back doors of restaurant kitchens. God this alleyway stank. There was smoke. The man disappeared into it. Was there a fire somewhere? She ran ahead, covering her eyes, choking.
On the other side of the smoke, she stopped. She was still in the alley, but something felt different. It was colder. Yes, there was definitely an icy chill about the place. And there was some kind of sweet smell in the air. What was it? It reminded of her childhood. Marzipan. Yes , that was it. Marzipan.
She walked ahead slowly. She pulled out her baton. A rat ran across the puddled path in front of her.
“Where the hell is he?”
She kept walking. The alleyway seemed to go on forever. Surely it wasn’t this long?
Then she saw something on the ground up ahead. A body? She ran up to it. It was the man. But something about him had changed. He was cleaner somehow. He looked recently-washed. He was smiling, with his eyes closed. She knelt down beside him.
“Are you all right? ”
He opened his eyes. He looked at her.
“Yes, I’m perfectly fine,” he said, in a calm, quiet voice, “sorry, I was just resting.”
She helped him up.
“What’s going on?” she asked, feeling a little disturbed about the way he had cleaned himself up so quickly.
“Nothing’s going on. You’re so beautiful!”
“All right. That’s enough. Are you coming back with me?”
“What have I done?”
“Disturbing the peace.”
“I’ll be okay now, I promise you. I’m happy now. I won’t be going back. Just leave me and I’ll be perfectly, perfectly okay.”
She considered him carefully.
“Have you got somewhere to go?”
“Yes. My house is just around the corner.”
“What… what happened back there?”
“What? Oh. I had a turn that’s all. It happens sometimes. I’m okay now. I promise.”
He looked calm enough. She nodded.
“All right. But be careful. We’ll be watching out for you.”
“You won’t see me ever again. I assure you.”
He smiled and she looked at him a little suspiciously, but then turned to go.
“Oh, officer!” he shouted after her.
She turned to look at him. He had a posy of violets in his hand, which he offered her.
“You’re very beautiful, you know.”
He smiled, then headed off and she laughed, shaking her head.

Back at the car, PC Lancashire was waiting for her.
“Thanks for the back-up.”
“I didn’t think you needed it. Where’d you get those?”
“That guy gave them to me.”
He looked surprised.
“Where is he?”
“It was kinda weird. I found him on the ground.”
“He fell?”
“I don’t know. But he was different somehow. Calmer. Cleaner.”
“Cleaner?”
“His clothes were crisp, his hair washed. He was normal.”
PC Lancashire laughed.
“You were only gone a few minutes. He washed his hair and changed his suit did he?”
“I told you it was weird.”
He looked at her suspiciously then laughed.
“Right. You let him get away, didn’t you?”
“He was perfectly calm. He gave me these.”
He shook his head and laughed again, convinced she was having him on. She felt an odd wave of anger rush through her. They got into the car. She bristled. She didn’t like being disbelieved. She clenched one of her fists and felt an odd desire to hit him.

Over the next few days, she found herself thinking about the alley. What had happened didn’t make sense. She looked it up in a street map and was surprised to see it was actually quite short, not the seemingly never-ending alley she had walked down.
It bothered her more than it should.

A few days later, they heard a call to a purse snatch over the radio. Sorrow Alley. She said to record them dealing even though they weren’t close. Her partner, PC Johns, said: “There’ll be other units closer.”
“Well put your foot down then.”
At the scene, there was an elderly woman in a pink dress looking distressed. She told them some youth had snatched her bag and it had all of her money inside. She left PC Johns to take the details while she searched the alley.
She felt an odd tingle of excitement as she walked down the alley slowly. The same smells of decay and rubbish. Someone really should clean this place up.
She kept walking. She walked past some crates. The air ahead of her shimmered, like a heatwave.
She walked through it. The air was suddenly icy cold and, there it was again, that smell of marzipan.
She felt as if she were in some weird dream. She walked in slow, deliberate steps. There was something not quite right about this place. She couldn’t see the end of it.
“You’ve been here before?”
A woman opened the door to one of the restaurant kitchens.
“Sorry?”
“I haven’t seen you before, but you must have been here before.”
“Why’s that?”
The woman shrugged. She went back inside and closed the door.
PC French kept walking.
Eventually, she came to a red door that was ajar. She knocked. There was no answer, so she stepped inside. It was a simple room with a large dining table, an open fire, some platters laid out ready for some party. On the platter were all manner of sweets and lollies. A brightly-colourful array of them. White, pink, black, yellow, orange, lime, blue, speckled with red dots, purple-striped. She could smell icing sugar, aniseed, liquorice, musk, peppermint, vanilla… marzipan. The aromas were so enticing, making her mouth water. She couldn’t resist reaching out and picking one up, a small, round one with a red top. She put it in her mouth and it tasted intensely of raspberries and marzipan. It was the tastiest sweet she had ever tasted. It was smooth, creamy, soft, melting in her mouth; something buttery and nutty, berryful. It seemed to communicate its sweetness and fruitiness to her very soul. It was as if someone had condensed something particularly wonderful to its purest essence. She shivered. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted.
She looked around the room, suddenly aware that she was intruding. But the sweet had thrown her off centre. It was as if she had discovered something that she had never known could exist in this world. Something incredible. Some nectar made possible only through sorcery.
She sat down on a chair. She felt overwhelmed by it. She could feel the sweetness rush through her veins. It was like a revelation.
Hearing a noise inside the house, she stood up. She didn’t want to be caught out. She went outside. She debated whether to go off in search of the handbag thief, or whether to go back. She resisted an almost overwhelming urge to go back inside and try another sweet.
She headed back to the street.
“Anything?” PC Johns asked.
She shook her head. The air felt thick and suffocating. She got into the car.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded, not able to speak. She wanted to hold the sweetness inside of her mouth. She was afraid that, if she spoke, the gloriousness of it would float away, leaving her bereft. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, the tip of it searching for the memory of that honeyed, almond wonder.

The sugar spun through her blood sweetly all day. She felt deliriously happy. After work, she uncharacteristically joined some of them at the pub. She drank vodka and cranberry juice and got very drunk. She played Pulp’s ‘Common People’ on the juke box and danced, holding her arms out, as if crucified in air, spinning around happily.
In the corridor, on the way back from the bathroom, she saw PC Lancashire and suddenly pushed him against the wall, kissing him. He was surprised, but she pressed her mouth hard against his, wanting to taste and smell him, wanting to eat him, until he suddenly yelped and pushed her back.
“What the fuck, Emily?”
He raised his hand to his lips. His bottom lip was swollen and bleeding. She looked at him, surprised as well, but then laughed.
“You sure you still wanna fuck me, Harry?” she asked, brushing his bleeding mouth with her soft fingers.
She licked the blood from her fingertips, winking at him before she headed back to the front bar.

For the next few days, she was somewhat distant from the rest of her colleagues. She was inside of herself for most of the time. But, in the car, at the end of the week, she said;
“Sorry, Harry. I was drunk. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He looked at her, his lip still a little swollen.
“You were crazy, you know?”
“I know.”
“You were like an animal.”
“I’m saying sorry, mate.”
He nodded and smiled.
“Okay.”

She went back to her normal self. If anything, she was more cheerful than normal. She brought in a large box of chocolates to hand around at morning tea. She took to carrying blocks of chocolate in her jacket: organic dark with chillies and ginger, milk with Early Grey; lavender, basil, cinnamon and nutmeg; vanilla and cherries. She would break pieces off and chew them throughout the day, but seemed oddly frustrated by what she ate, often not finishing it, but throwing it away.
“What’s with you and chocolate?” PC Lancashire asked her.
“Nothing’s with me and chocolate. Just drive, okay?”

She decided to pay a visit to the alley again She was curious. No, she was being dishonest with herself. She craved that experience of utter joy she had felt when she had eaten the single marzipan-laden sweet. Her bedroom and front room was littered with the torn papers and crumpled aluminium foil of abandoned chocolates and sweets which had failed to meet her expectations. She had bought marzipan sweets, had even laboured to make them herself, from a recipe in an old cook book she found in the library, but it just wasn’t the same. She yearned for marzipan that was really marzipan.
She drove there on her lunch break. She walked down the alley with a sense of nervous anxiety and anticipation. She smelled rotting fish, mouldy vegetables. She held a hand to her nose.
Somewhere, a cat meowed. She stepped in a puddle. She looked down and watched reflected light break up in the rippling water.
She felt that familiar sudden coldness that indicated she had stepped into that mysterious place where weird things happened; where there was a rumour of marzipan in the chilly air.
Her skin was goosebumpy and tender to the touch. She walked as if following the pull of a magical spell.
She came to the red door, but it wasn’t ajar this time. She turned the door handle, but it was locked.
“You came back?”
She spun around. It was the woman from the restaurant kitchen the other day.
“I was wondering… the other day… inside this building..?”
“You went inside?”
“Yes. There were… I tasted…”
“You want to taste it again?”
She wondered how the woman knew what she was talking about. She nodded. The woman smiled.
“What did it taste like?”
“Oh! Like nothing I’ve ever tasted before.”
The woman laughed.
“Sweet? Hot? Bitter? Fishy?”
“Sweet. Like marzipan.”
The woman raised her eyebrows.
“Marzipan? Marzipan always reminds me of Christmas. My mother used to make rich fruit cake with marzipan and royal icing.”
“Yes!”
The woman smiled knowingly.
“There’s a shop. You have money? I could show you.”
“Please.”
So she followed this stranger down the wet alley, feeling the coldness of the place seep into her skin. She shivered. It felt oddly as if dozens of eyes were watching her.
“This shop I’m taking you to, the sweets cost a lot of money, but they’re like nothing you’ve ever tasted before.”
“I don’t mind paying,” she said, knowing, suddenly, that she would be prepared to pay anything for one more taste of that glorious marzipan.
She was following a stranger to a sweet shop. Whatever was happening to her? But she felt her tastebuds tingle in anticipation.
The shop was the most wonderful shop she had ever seen. She felt like she had suddenly and inexplicably been thrown back to the days of being a child.
It had a huge bay window and, behind it, were shelves of sweets. Gobstoppers, sherbet lemons, aniseed balls, peppermints, truffles, chocolate drops, gummy bears; handmade confections with flavours printed on little cards: mandarin and coconut; raspberry ripple; nutmeg and custard; vanilla and redcurrant; apple and cinnamon; coffee; pistachio; nougat; brandy and butter; dark chocolate, white chocolate; bitter chocolate; milk chocolate; chocolate with rum; chocolate with vanilla cream; white chocolate with dark chocolate insides…
She nearly fainted with the wonder of it.
They went inside. The aromas were almost too hard to take; they overwhelmed her with their sweet, nutty, chocolaty, spicy luxuriousness.
“This young lass here craves something with marzipan, the woman said to the person behind the counter.
“Marzipan?”
PC French had been looking at a tray of dark chocolate truffles. She looked up.
“The other day, I had a marzipan sweet. With raspberry topping.”
“Ah, the Marzipan Kiss. Yes, that’s one of ours. You like it then?”
“Oh, it was wonderful!”
The woman behind the counter seemed pleased.
“How many would you like?”
“How much do they cost?”
“$50.”
“For how many?”
“Just the one, dear.”
“$50 for one truffle?”
“They take many hours to make. It’s a special recipe. There’s none like it.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course. Okay. I’ll take… well, just the one thank you.”
The woman nodded and headed off. She came back a little while later with a single marzipan sweet wrapped in orange cellophane. PC French handed over the money and took the sweet. She was trembling.
“Thank you,” she said to both women.
She headed out of the shop. She walked back down the alley. She held the sweet in her palm as if it were something precious, something she should be careful not to break.
Eventually, she could carry it no more. She sat down on a step and carefully opened the cellophane. She looked at the tiny sweet, no bigger than a small plum. It looked unremarkable; the kind of sweet many would avoid among the prettier ones. She raised it slowly to her mouth and popped it in, whole. She chewed upon it…
… and was transported to a place of joy. She could feel the glorious flavours seep into her skin, making her face and arms glow. She felt lighter, less troubled by the world. She knew the world could be a good, kind place where incredible beauty flowered.
She closed her eyes, feeling the sugar rush through her veins. Her head spun, as if drunk. She laughed. She sobbed. She sat on the cold, damp step, crying out of the sheer joy of knowing such wonder existed.

She came out of the other side of the alley, stunned and shaken. Her face was sticky with tears. Her uniform was splashed with mud. The memory of the joy lingered, but she was shaking. She walked in a daze. She took the police car and drove home. She undressed. She stood under a hot shower and cried.

The next day, she felt oddly off-centre in the world. It was as if she was at a distance from it; she was in her own, quiet space, dreaming. In the car with PC Lancashire, she said nothing. Every now and then, she closed her eyes, summoning up the memory of marzipan. It was still there, lingering deep inside of her; reminding her of what it was like to experience perfection. Looking around the world as they drove through it, she understood how flawed it was; the cracks in its surface; the blemishes; the aspirations never satisfied. The greatest, most wonderful experience in this imperfect world couldn’t come within an inch of the joy she had felt from eating that single, heavenly sweet.
She wondered if it contained some drug? If she was becoming addicted? But she knew, instinctively, that this wasn’t true. It wasn’t a drug. It was a state of being; it was a revelation of some sort; some kind of new understanding of the world.
“Emily, are you okay?”
“What?”
“You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look ill.”
“I’m not ill. I’ve never been better. Stop by a sweet shop will you? I fancy something sweet.”

She visited the alley whenever she could. She rationed it. She didn’t want to let it get out of control. But she fell the pull of it getting stronger and stronger. And, each time, she bought a single Marzipan Kiss. She was never tempted by any of the other sweets. And, each time, she found she couldn’t wait to eat it and sat somewhere in the alley, chewing on the sweet, never ceasing to be astonished at its marvellousness. She met other people in the alley as well. There was something about them, something different, but she couldn’t put a finger on it. They all smiled at her, as if understanding her and she smiled back.
Whenever she was in the normal world, she unsuccessfully sought out that experience of pure joy she felt in the alley, but it was never there, it existed only as an empty craving.

PC Lancashire visited her one day. She hadn’t turned up to work. He found her looking pale and bleary-eyed. She invited him in, telling him she felt out of sorts.
“What the hell?”
He looked at the room. It was littered with cellophane, aluminium foil, chocolate wrappers, coloured boxes, unfinished chocolate bars.
“Emily, what the hell’s going on?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s going on. I’ve been a little tired, that’s all.”
“But what’s all this?”
She looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time and was embarrassed.
“Yeah. It’s a mess, isn’t it? God, I’m not normally like this.”
“If you keep going like this, you’re going to lose your job.”
“Yeah. You’re right. Okay. I’ll be in tomorrow. I’ll pull myself together.”
“But what is it? What’s happening to you?”
She looked at him. She felt suddenly sorry for him because he would never experience what she experienced; he would never understand. She felt a tear brim in one of her eyes.
“I’m okay. I just needed a day off that’s all. I’ll be in tomorrow. I promise.’
He looked at her sceptically, clearly worried about her, but she didn’t want his concern. Life on this side of the world was tough, but, on the other side, she knew a perfect kind of joy that PC Lancashire would never know.
“I’ll be okay,” she said, “I’ll be okay.”

At night, she curled herself up into an embryo. She imagined herself being born. She would emerge in a perfect world where no-one suffered, no-one yearned for things they could not have.

She pulled herself together. She woke, showered, resisted the urge to seek out confectionary heaven. She walked to work, needing the fresh air.
In the car, PC Lancashire glanced at her every now and then.
“I’m okay,” she said, without looking at him.
As they drove, she looked at the world and it seemed pale and watery, not quite as vivid and strong as the one she had known previously. She still felt distanced from her surroundings, sunk slightly within herself.
She looked at PC Lancashire. She studied his skin, which was the colour of musk lollies. She leaned closer, smelling his flesh.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Stop the car.”
“Why?”
“Just stop.”
Reluctantly, he parked the car.
“What is it?”
“I want to kiss you.”
“What?”
“Let me kiss you.”
“Why?”
“Just let me kiss you,” she laughed.
She put her mouth on his and they kissed. She needed the texture of another human being to feel real.
“You’re not going to bite me again are you?” he asked and she looked at him.
“No. I’m going to lick you.”
“You’re what?”
She began licking his neck, under his ears.
“Emily?”
“I need to taste you. I need to taste the world.”
She licked his mouth; kissing, licking.
He pushed her away.
“Emily!”
“I need to know how everything tastes. To make it real again.”
“You’re mad. Get away!”

They drove in silence. She felt angry. She had liked the salty taste of his skin. She had wanted more. She looked at the washed-out, insipid city and felt angry at it for lacking the vibrancy she craved.
She sank lower in her seat, sulking. She petulantly wanted to disappear from this world; evaporate into nothingness; melt into pure flavour and aroma. She smiled at the thought.
“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” PC Lancashire said.
She tuned out his words.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you.”
“It’s none of your fucking business.”
“It is my business, Emily.”
She looked at him.
“No. You don’t understand. You will never understand. You don’t even have the capacity to understand. I’ve been to a place where you will never go. I feel sorry for you.”
“Emily, you’re not well.”
“Stop the car.”
“Why?”
“Stop the car.”
But a call came over the radio about a petty theft nearby and so she went silent and they called in.
They found the thief not far away and he saw them, running off. She jumped out of the car and ran after him.
“Stop where you fucking are!” she shouted.
She pulled out her baton. She felt a rush of adrenalin spur her on. This was living! The rush, the thrill, the joy of it! They were headed for Sorrow Alley. She felt a sense of proprietorial fury at the thought of this scumbag encroaching on her beloved territory. As he ran into the alley, she put on a burst of speed and caught up, swiping him around the back of the head. He fell. She hit him again. Again. She swung her baton back and forth, left and right; until the fury subsided in sobbing gasps.
PC Lancashire caught up with her.
“Jesus Christ.”
She looked down at her blood-splattered shirt. She was trembling. A trickle of splashed blood ran down her face.
“Emily? What have you done?”
She knelt down. She looked at the bloody head of the man on the ground. She touched his head, feeling its heat and stickiness. She looked at her bloody fingers. Stunned, she lifted her fingers to her mouth, sucking on them, tasting the thing she had done.

While PC Lancashire radioed in, she walked down the alley. She tossed her baton on the ground. This wasn’t how she wanted her ecstasy to end up. She hadn’t meant to do that.
She pulled off her radio and tossed that to the ground as well. She walked slowly, almost unaware of her surroundings, sensing cold bricks and doorways only at the margins of her reality. She thought she heard a voice calling after her but it was far away and quiet.
She walked into coldness. She shivered.
Her mouth was filled with saltiness.
Her veins felt like ice.
She headed slowly towards the sweet shop. She thought of the man who had first led her here. She remembered his lost expression outside and his sense of peaceful, well-being this side of the alley. She understood now. It wasn’t possible to live on the other side of the world once you had tasted this one.
Inside the shop, she bought dozens of sweets: marzipan, caramels, liquorice, white chocolate truffles, Pontefract cakes, coconut creams, lavender buds, cherry blossoms.
She took her sugary haul to a small doorway not far away. Bloodied, pale, she sat on the cold step, swallowing them down, filling her mouth with bursts of intense flavour; feeling the sugary, soft, creaminess of the combined flavours explode within her head like a constellation of bright stars.
The pain left her, bite by bite. She swallowed her salvation in small pieces. Her own hot blood returned to her and the world was no longer cold. Her lips tingled with fruitiness. Whatever she had done, she would be redeemed with vanilla softness. She looked up at the grey sky and felt lilac and lemon flavours surge through her like some citrus-tinged divine light. Grace fell upon her in a pastel, peppermint halo. She knew that would live here forever now; she would live here in happiness and scented, caramel bliss. Sweet, hot tears rolled down her cheeks. Her tears tasted of almonds and sugar.