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myself. The lights came on and off, the pillows were turned, the duvet thrown, until the clock showed half past one and I realised I had spent an hour doing nothing but destroy myself.
    Please go away.
    I lay on the bed in the dark and waited. I waited for her.
     
    My little girl is holding my hand again. She is wearing her green coat, the smart one I got her from Next, and her little feet in her black shoes are pointing towards the puddles and her dainty feet are going to step through them and I know I’m going to carry her, the way I’ll always carry her, even when she doesn’t want me to any more. Her feet are pointing to the future and we’re going to go there together. But when I try to pick her up and put her on my shoulders, I can’t feel anything. There is no weight on my shoulders and I realise she has gone.
    I’m going to start crying again.

8
     
    The day after my daughter’s disappearance, my life began to change. People I had passed without a word or sound would stop me and say they were thinking of me, praying for my little girl’s return. Even before the newspapers took an interest and my face appeared in grainy images alongside the porn stars and politicians, everything became known. By some arcane act of freemasonry, everyone knew who I was and what had happened. When I opened my flat door in the morning, it was as if I had left the wings and taken centre stage. I was greeted with compassion and warmth and respect I had never felt before; once again I felt the awe of a captive audience, there to watch the tragedy unfold.
    The fat Greek was first to arrive, with a handshake and a plate of olives. He had exchanged his string vest for a black suit and told me if I needed anything, I only need ask. I stared at his hairy hand and saw no alternative. I’ve never been good at fobbing people off. I’ve wasted years of my life - and I mean years - talking to people whose sole mission in life seemed to have been to sap me of the will to live (I include my friends and my ex-wife in that company). People presume on you too much, and I’ve always been too polite to presume otherwise.
    He looked round my flat with the same air of curiosity and bemusement the WPC had. I have a picture on my wall of a man with a very large dong. At least, it seems like that; it could be there is a large crease in his trousers. When people look at the picture, they always wonder about that. My ex-wife thought she knew, but that’s maybe because she thinks like a man. She also thought it was disgusting and that I should take it down - what would our daughter think? - until I pointed out that our daughter was too young to notice things like that, and besides, the man had a dog with him, one of those regal greyhounds - I think he was a fox hunter; he certainly looked the type - which she liked.
    ‘Look, Daddy. Doggie.’
    ‘I know, sweetheart. Doesn’t he look sweet?’
    Now, normally if I think of doggie and dong, I think of only one thing, but my daughter has not yet made the connection. My wife had. So had Albertine. I don’t know whether the WPC had, but I wished it. I wanted her nipples to prick up behind her starched shirt. Women say they don’t look for it, but they do. They’ll offer you the usual platitudes the way you do about their breasts and their ass, but they’re a slave to it just like you are. It’s in the jeans, as they say.
    The fat Greek was looking at it when I offered him a drink. I couldn’t care less what he thought, but he offered me his tuppence, anyway. In Greece, they’re used to nudity; they have all those statues. Small was beautiful. It suddenly made me think of her. I stared at the tea in the cups and tried to read the future in the leaves. Maybe I should have taken them out of the bags? I have no gift of prophecy. I have no need of it. He sat on the sofa with me and told me a story about a boy called Kostas who disappeared on a fishing expedition in Ithaca. The whole village went out to