LITMIR.BIZ

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than likely.’

      ‘Oh shut up, Phil,’ Saleem snapped. ‘What the fuck do you know? ‘

      My skin felt tight. I looked at my watch, ‘It’s nearly time to knock off.’

      ‘I need a drink,’ Ray said, ‘and a few packets of crisps. Want to come to The Fox for a while?’

      Before I could answer the kitchen door opened slightly and Cog wandered in. Cog was the park’s cat who behaved like a dog, was dogged and doggish, ran for sticks and didn’t mind a cuff and a wrestle. Nancy was two paces behind him.

      ‘Me and Cog are going for a run together,’ she announced. Her voice was just a fraction too loud.

      ‘Did you see Doug?’ Ray asked nervously.

      ‘Doug? I saw him.’

      She walked to the sink and rinsed her hands. She seemed calm.

      ‘Did Doug say anything?’ Ray asked, even more nervously.

      ‘Doug says a lot of things, Doug’s a sandwich short of a picnic ‘

      ‘Doug’s elevator,’ Ray grinned, ‘doesn’t stop at all floors.’

      ‘That’s as maybe,’ I said, ‘but above all else, it’s Doug who holds this place together.’

      Saleem cocked her head at this. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘It’s you that holds this place together, and Ray, and even Nancy. Doug holds the business together.’

      ‘It’s the same thing,’ I said, confident of this fact.

      ‘Not at all.’

      Nancy dried her hands on a tea towel. ‘I’m going for a run,’ she said, ‘Come on, Cog. ‘ She slapped her thigh. Cog came to heel.

      ‘Didn’t Doug say anything?’ Ray asked, for the second time. Nancy started jogging gently on the spot, warming up. ‘Did Phil tell you,’ she asked Ray, still very loud, ‘that I had another knock in the truck?’

      Saleem intervened on my behalf. She said, ‘Doug already knew. The insurance people rang him.’

      ‘I was unloading the privet from the van,’ Nancy said, ‘and Doug came over and asked me to load it up again.’

      Saleem, I noticed, was watching Nancy closely, staring at her, and she had a smile on her lips but her eyes were full of something else, an intensity, a fixity, a cruelty.

      ‘Privet?’ I asked, unable to stop myself. ‘You were unloading privet?’

      Nancy nodded, distracted. ‘Neat bushes with small, dark green leaves. A ton of them.’

      ‘You don’t need to tell Phil what privet is,’ Ray said, smiling glumly. ‘He’s the Plant King.’

      ‘Come off it.’ My cheeks tightened a fraction more and I started to glow.

      ‘Yeah, well,’ Nancy tucked her T-shirt into her running shorts. ‘I’m going for a run,’ she said, and before anyone could respond, she’d slammed her way out and sprinted off.

      Saleem turned to me. ‘He’s gone and sacked her,’ she said. ‘So what are you two going to do about it?’

      Ray stared towards the door, after Nancy, his expression inscrutable.

      ‘Let’s just sit this one out,’ I said. ‘Doug won’t actually get rid of Nancy. He’s just letting off steam.’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Ray looked uncertain. ‘I mean, I like Nancy and I respect Doug. I like them both. But they’ve both done things and they’ve both said things . . . I dunno.’ Ray picked up the packet of ginger-nuts and ate another one.

      ‘What’s Nancy said?’ Saleem asked, suddenly sounding interested. I turned too, focused on Ray, slightly daunted by his apparent overview.

      ‘Huh?’ Ray stopped chewing.

      ‘What kind of things?’ Saleem persisted.

      ‘Stuff.’

      Saleem looked towards me and said tartly, ‘Maybe you should go and catch up with her. Tell her you and Ray’ll sort something out. The way I see it, if Doug can get rid of her that easily and you’re both too spineless to do anything about it, then he can also dispense with your services too, if and when the fancy takes him.’

      ‘She’s running.’

      ‘Catch up with her. See that she’s OK.’

      ‘Maybe Ray should go?’

      ‘Not me,’ Ray said, ‘I’m not nimble enough.’

      Saleem smiled at Ray. ‘Anyhow , me and Ray,’ she said, ‘need to have a quiet little chat.’

      Ray’s eyes bulged nervously at this prospect. I smiled to myself and slunk out.

      Ten minutes later, after a cursory stroll around the sections of the park in which I was least likely to find Nancy - Christ, she would have been half way up Alderman’s Hill by the time I’d left the house, and anyway , what could I have said to her if I did catch up with her? What could I promise? And how could I be sure that the words would come? I couldn’t be sure - I found myself travelling past the main lake, past the ducks and clambering on to the bandstand and settling myself in a shady corner where I fully intended to dawdle for ten minutes before returning to the house, back to Ray and Saleem.

      It was cool and green here, and the water sloshed to my left, and in the distance I could hear a spaniel barking as it ran for a ball, and the thwuck and the swish as it caught the ball and returned it. To my right, I could see one of the tennis courts, and one of the greenhouses, and I could also see, if I stretched my neck, a small man in a white shirt who was limbering up, bending and stretching and bending and stretching.

      And I found a fuzzy rhythm in this corner. A wooziness. And as the lids on my eyes descended, cutting my view in half, I felt a terrible certainty, in my gut, in my soul, that nothing could change the way things were, it wasn’t possible, because nature didn’t work in jerks and starts, but in a rhythm, a cycle, a circle, and Doug, of all people, was aware of that fact. And so was I.

      Then out of the blue, out of the sky, a fistful of sand landed in my face. I blinked, shook myself, and then a clod of soil landed to my left followed by a small geranium plant, then a further clod of soil.

      I stood up and saw for the first time that the innocuous little man in the white shirt was bending and stretching in the middle of my newly planted flower bed, plum in the middle of my freshly planted flower bed, and he was yanking up plants and tossing them. My new geraniums, the spider plants, other things. This way and that. An arc of soil flew over him.

      I jumped off the bandstand and made my way over to him. As I drew closer I saw that he was Chinese and wearing kungfu robes and he was older than I’d initially thought - sixty or so - but his hair was black and his face was hooded, and something in it was scary, was withered, was fundamentally unpleasant.

      And yet his expression was in such direct contrast to his body, his movements, which even in his present task were as fluid and beautiful as a seal’s. I appraised his body as I approached, calculating my chances in the likelihood of any kind of physical confrontation.

      He was small but he was also solid and thorough and focused; clenched like a little nugget, a meteorite. Plain like a stone. I drew closer to him, but he ignored me. I drew closer still. I said, ‘Excuse me. I think you’d better stop what you’re doing.’

      His head turned, a fraction. ‘You fuck off.’

      He wasn’t nice. His voice was like a dry cork twisting in the neck of a bottle. A tight voice.

      I said, again, ‘I’d like you to stop what you’re doing, immediately, please.’

      He plucked a geranium, and weighed it in his hand, looked straight at

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