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it’s down here, and it’s all yours. Boiling water in the boat.”
    â€œAt the same time, Billy,” said Walter, liking it less and less, “I don’t see anybody from the Threes funneling down here.”
    â€œWhat am I then, Walter? A fly on the fucking wall? I’ll stand for the rest of them.”
    And this was the part that Walter liked least of all. I turned away from the cell door and all of Walter’s brood just automatically got up off their backsides and went to get their mugs. Walter had no choice but to follow after them as though the general exodus had got something to do with him.
    While the others from Walter’s room went to fetch their mugs, I sorted a few more malingerers from out of their cells and went off on my own to the Twos’ TV room to wait for them to assemble.
    But when I got there the room was empty except for Benny Beauty who was sitting back in his armchair smoking and watching television as though there was nothing on except the TV set.
    â€œWhere’s Hopper?” I said.
    Benny blew out smoke. He didn’t take his eyes off the TV.
    â€œI told him to fuck off else he’d get hurt. He’s banged himself behind his door.”
    â€œWhat did you tell him that for?”
    â€œI’m not with you.”
    â€œI mean, you knew what the plan was. For Christ’s sake, man. How can we do the ponce now?”
    â€œOh, that,” he said. “Yeah, well, Billy, but who wants to get nicked for that, eh? I mean, the way you’re going about it, you’ll get everybody nicked. If it’s got to be done it’s got to be done but it’s better this way.”
    I was beginning to get it.
    â€œWho says it’s better?” I asked.
    â€œWell, Billy, there’s only you here, so everybody must say it’s better.”
    Yes, I thought, but they daren’t say it to me. Walter’s organised this one. Just to trim a bit of weight off me.
    Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind me. Just the one pair. Walter’s. He appeared next to me in the doorway carrying his mug.
    â€œWhere is everybody, then?”
    â€œDon’t you know, Walter?” I said.
    Walter tut-tutted.
    â€œEverybody dropped out, have they?” he said.
    â€œEverybody but us, Walter,” I said. “That’s what it looks like.”
    â€œPity,” he said. “Still, there’ll be another time.”
    But there wasn’t. The next day Moffatt installed a set on the Fours, just for the use of the sex-cases and no one else. Everybody got steamed up about it, and the new catch phrase was, “The governor does like a sex-case.” But the people who got steamed up were the same people who’d swayed in Walter’s wind and left themselves out of actually doing anything about Hopper.
    Of course, I never let on to Walter that I’d cracked it. That’s what he would have liked. I was just the same as ever. But we both knew what it was all about; it was either him or me. For the time being there was just one consolation as far as I was concerned: that inside Walter’s rubber mind he knew who it was going to be in the end.
    Sitting at the table next to the window, the street sounds drifting up unheard, my elbows boring into the green dust of the corduroy table-cloth, the pages of my mother’s library book brilliant in the window’s sunshine. The clock ticks and a fly buzzes and the dust itself hums with silence. The cocoon is complete. The book wrapped round me like a blanket. Till tea time I belong to no one but myself and the book is me till then.
    But I’d forgotten Linda.
    The door opens and the sound of her voice strives against the rattle of the handle and the crash of the woodwork, the entrance of her tiny body propelled forward on the kitchen sounds behind her.
    â€œBilly billy billy,” she shrieks. “Billy billy billy.”
    â€œClear off.”
    â€œI want to come