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could make you think it was Trick or Treat night. Tall, skinny and corpse-pale, his shoulders were rounded from stooping and his hair was lank and black from over-zealous dyeing. He had regular enough features, but there was just something about his strange quietness and the way he would turn up close beside Lou without a clue of his approach that made her dread the mere hint of his visit. She hated the way his eyes dipped to her chest. She disliked his long skinny hands with their long skinny fingers most of all. God knows what his toes must look like.
    When Phil had lent him a key to get something from the house on a previous occasion, Lou had been in the shower when she heard activity downstairs. She broke the world record for drying and dressing herself when she heard Des’s, ‘It’s only me!’ drifting up the stairs.
    ‘It was just Des, Lou. He only popped in for a hammer, not a screw,’ was Phil’s laughing response when she countered him about it later.
    ‘Why didn’t you tell him to come back later when you’d be in?’
    ‘You’re getting this totally out of perspective,’ Phil said, failing to see any problem.
    ‘You shouldn’t be giving him a key to our house!’ said Lou crossly.
    ‘Well, excuse me, but I think you’ll find it says my name on the deeds,’ said Phil then, with a dangerous degree of impatience. ‘You’re forgetting this house was mine long before you came on the scene.’
    ‘I think you’ll find that since we’re married, it’s ours ,’ said Lou, her voice firming as much as Lou’s voice could.
    ‘I think you’ll find if you want to push it, we can carry on with our original plans to split up and find out exactly what the law says about it!’
    Lou hadn’t argued any more then.
     
    Lou flicked on the cellar light. ‘You don’t have to come down here, Des. It’s a bit dusty,’ she said.
    ‘No, I don’t mind. I’ll help you look,’ Des said. He was one step behind her all the way down. She felt like Flanagan with Allen.
    God, it’s a mess down here, she said to herself. If she hadn’t read that damn article her eyes would have just flicked over the stuff they kept down there ‘just in case’. Now her new rubbish-alert radar had already spotted twelve things that they would never use again and which should be thrown out.
    ‘Nope. They’re not here,’ said Lou, returning asquickly as she could back upstairs, hoping his eyes weren’t glued to her bum. That bloody husband of hers! She knew he’d given Des the key so Des would have come and gone by the time Phil came home for lunch. Her husband relished his brother-in-law’s company almost as little as Lou did.
    There were only the garages left to check, and the loft–but Lou wasn’t going up there.
    She pressed the electronic opener for the garage door, which slowly slid up and over, and checked there, quickening her step to put a reasonable distance between herself and Freddy Kruger.
    Thank God, she thought. Relief washed over her as she saw the clubs poking out from under some dust-sheets, next to the old cracked plastic garden chair and grimy table-set that would never see sunshine again, and the skeleton of a broken umbrella that looked like a long-dead giant spider.
    Des left her to heave it out by herself because his mobile was ringing. It played ‘Sex Bomb’, which was a joke in itself. The ‘Funeral March’ would have been more appropriate.
    ‘Hello, baby,’ he said to the caller.
    Yeuch , thought Lou.
    ‘I’m at Phil’s…Yes, he is but I’m with Lou,’(he winked over and Lou shuddered). ‘Golf clubs…I’m going to have a cup of tea here then I’ll be off…Oh, you are? See you in about quarter of an hour then.’
    Lou really hoped she hadn’t filled in the missing gaps correctly. That would be too horrible to contemplate. She also pretended she hadn’t heard the bit about the tea.
    ‘Well, that’s great you’ve got the clubs! Right well, I’ll leave you to it, Des. Got to