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hand.
    â€˜Why are we wearing gloves?’ Spencer wants to know.
    â€˜It’s a pact. You have to promise to love me for ever.’
    â€˜What do I do with the glove?’
    â€˜Afterwards you keep it. First you have to promise to love me.’
    Spencer is thinking they ought to check on Rachel and Olive, and what will Hazel’s mother do when she finds out that Hazel’s made a pact? Why can’t he stop thinking like this and just kiss her?
    They hold on tight to each other’s gloved hands.
    â€˜Promise,’ Hazel says, shaking his hand up and down, looking straight into his eyes. ‘Cross your heart and hope to die.’

    11/1/93 M ONDAY 08:12
    At the bottom of the deep end of the empty swimming pool, Hazel mouthed a mouth breathing underwater bubbles. Then she made a face like a fish. She looked up brightly at Spencer and asked him if he knew what time it was.
    â€˜It’s twelve minutes past eight,’ Spencer said, but Hazel already knew what time it was. She meant, ‘Have you seen how early it is?’
    â€˜I brought you some tea,’ Spencer said.
    He climbed down the short ladder into the shallow end, walked carefully past the full-size billiard table, and then carefully negotiated the steep slope to join her at the bottom of the deep end. The tiles in the pool were dark blue, and the dusty light falling from the glass roof felt thick like underwater. Hazel had her telephone with her and Spencer’s library books, and she was already twenty pages into a crime novel called
Sir John Magill’s Last Journey
. Something terrible was always about to happen.
    Spencer slid his back down the side of the pool, his vertebrae clicking on the plaster lines between tiles.
    â€˜It’s like being in a huge bathroom,’ Hazel said, ‘but without a bath in it.’
    â€˜Bow-wow,’ Spencer said, showing her the echo.
    â€˜Boing,’ Hazel said. ‘Bing-bong.’
    â€˜Boom.’
    Hazel’s hair, parted in the middle, was darker than usual because it was still damp from the shower. She was wearing her long charcoal-coloured sweater dress, loose-necked with finger-skimming sleeves and obviously an evening outfit. It was all she had with her. She wore a gold chain and a little lipstick and a pair of Spencer’s socks she’d borrowed to keep her feet warm. They were very big and woolly and a kind of oatmeal colour. She hoped he didn’t mind.
    â€˜Great house,’ Hazel said, taking the green-and-white striped mug which Spencer held out to her. ‘Quiet.’
    The tea wasn’t very hot but she blew some steam off the top anyway, getting a good look at him without making it too obvious. Not bad. Could have been a lot worse.
    Alas, he seemed to have brought a funny smell into the pool.
    â€˜Kippers,’ Spencer said. ‘William likes a kipper for his breakfast.’
    â€˜This is the man who lives in the shed?’
    â€˜In the vegetable garden. He doesn’t go out much. His brother owns the house but they don’t get on.’
    â€˜And what happens to William if someone buys the house? What happens to you?’
    Hazel’s telephone went off like an alarm. They both looked at it, black on top of the library books, its insistent electronic noise finding echoes in the sharpest angles of the swimming pool Spencer said: ‘That’ll be the phone.’
    â€˜Does it bother you?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Spencer said. ‘Depends who’s ringing.’
    The phone went quiet, and the broad silence which followed sank slowly to the bottom of the deep end. ‘Nobody,’ Hazel said. ‘Not anymore anyway.’
    Spencer stood up again, and Hazel wondered if he was always this restless. She followed him back up the slope to the billiard table and skidded the last metre or so in her socks.
    â€˜The billiard room’s going to be re-painted,’ Spencer explained. ‘They had to put