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his dinner and some fucking comfort.
    He couldn’t stand her so cheerful.
    Taking off his jacket and tie, opening a beer and asking just what she was so bloody chirpy about.
    Had she been up to those woods again?
    Yes.
    Who with?
    Don’t be silly, Lee.
    Sucking off tramps in the bushes, I’ll bet.
    Then she’d laughed at him. No outrage like there should have been. No anger at his filthy suggestions, at the stupid suspicions that he’d only half tarted up as a joke.
    A jab to the belly and another to the tits had shut her up and put her down on the floor. Now, he straddled her chest, knees pressed down on to her arms, his hands pulling at his own hair in frustration.
    ‘We were going to do the business later on. I was well up for it and tonight could have been the night we did something special. Made a new life.’
    ‘Lee, please.’
    ‘You. Fucking. Spoiled. It.’
    ‘We can still do it, Lee. Let’s go upstairs now. I’m really horny, Lee.’
    He shook his head, disgusted, gathering the spit into his mouth. She knew what was coming, he could see it in her eyes and he waited for her to try and turn her head away as he leaned down and pushed the saliva between his teeth. Instead, she just closed her eyes, and he thought he saw something like a smile as he let a thick string of beery spit drop slowly down on to her face.
    As soon as the seven o’clock news had begun, Alan reached for the phone and dialled the number.
    It was answered almost immediately, but nobody spoke.
    Alan whispered, realised as soon as he had that he was being stupid. He wasn’t the one who needed to be secretive.
    ‘Rachel, it’s me…’
    Suddenly, there was a noise, above the hiss and crackle on the line. It was a guttural sound, that echoed. That took him a few moments to identify. An animal sound; a gulp and a grind, a splutter and a swallow. It was the sound of someone sobbing uncontrollably but trying with every ounce of strength to assert control. Trying desperately not to be heard.
    Alan sat up straight, pressed the phone hard to his ear.
    ‘Rachel, I’m here, ok? I’m not going anywhere.’
    He watched the comings and goings with something like amusement.
    For a fortnight he watched her leave the house in Barnet mid-morning, then come home again by late-afternoon. He stayed with her most of the day when he could, saw her meet him in the woods or sometimes go straight to his flat when they couldn’t be arsed with preliminaries.
    When they wanted to get straight down to it.
    He watched her leave the flat, eyes bright and hair wet. The smell of one man scrubbed away before she went home to another.
    He wondered if the man he saw climbing into the silver sports car every morning knew that he was a cuckold. On a couple of occasions he thought about popping a note under his windscreen to let him know. Just to stir things up a bit.
    He hadn’t done because he didn’t want to do anything that might disturb the routine. Not now that he was ready to take her. Besides, mischief for its own sake was not his thing at all.
    Still, he couldn’t help but marvel at the things people got up to.
    On the day Alan had hoped to give Rachel the bracelet, his mother tripped on the stairs.
    So many things that could have been different.
    Two weeks before, the jeweller had shown him a catalogue. There had been charms that would have carried more or less the same meaning but Alan knew what he wanted. He’d ordered one specially made. He’d decided against the diamond spots and gone for the enamel, but still, it wasn’t cheap. He’d thought of it as a dozen decent sessions with one of his private patients. He always thought in those terms whenever he wanted to splash out on something.
    A fortnight later, half an hour before he was due to meet Rachel in the woods, he walked out onto Bond Street with the bracelet. Then, his mother called.
    ‘Don’t worry, Alan. It’s just my ankle, it’s nothing.’
    A message that said C ome and see me now, if