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spaceship because it’s the fifteenth century and there’s no such things as vans. Think of their faces. Laughing makes her cough. Coughing sends – Christ, yes, she thinks as she coughs – a sheaf of fifteenth-century arrows through her chest with all their little flinty hooks and notchy metal edges, and that’s just a small cough, a choked-back cough, because a real cough, she thinks daring herself, taking inch-large breaths, recovering, would shake the foundations and send a whole slab of fortress wall into the moat. A real cough, she resets the muscles in her arms and shoulders, shakes her head, is like the whole fucking National Trust ancient fucking property breaking up into nothing but rubble.
    Else is going to have to stop thinking. She’s going to have to stop using her
(Spr sm. Chn.)
    imagination. She daren’t laugh again; she daren’t cough again. Who knows what she’ll cough up? Something the size of a baby fucking pig, by the feel of it, covered in fucking pigbristle. Fuck. Cunting fucking. It coughs out of her, satisfying and sore. Laughing makes her cough. Breathing makes her cough. So presumably actual fucking would make her actually haemorrhage. Moving makes her cough; just her shoulders, her head. Else daren’t move, not just yet.
    When she does decide to get up, this is what she’ll do. She will go across the road to that girl, like she’s done the last twice, and pick up the money they’ve been dropping at her feet. That’s how they’ve decided to play it, her andthe girl, and that’s how they will play it. First Else gets to her feet. Then she crosses the road. Then the girl sees her coming and runs away. Then Else picks up the money. It’s fair. It’s her right. Everyone knows the hotel is Else’s. But she has to be careful how she plays it. She has to judge it right. If she gets up too soon she could chase the girl away too soon and miss out on potential money. If she doesn’t get up the girl might up and go herself, and what if she took it all with her for once? what if she decided for once that she wanted it? Else steadies her breath. It’ll be fine. In a while the home rush will start, a short while after that the home rush will be over; that girl could make who knows how much more in that time. Else will wait. She’ll sit quietly and wait, because there could be ten or fifteen quid extra in it, say,
(Spr sm chn?)
    and that’s fifteen quid more than Else can make, since she’s making next to nothing today. You never make anything if you’ve got a fucking cough. They walk round you in a wide berth. Three pounds and forty-two pence she’s made since night fell. So she could get quite fond of that girl. They’ve got quite a partnership going. Else could eat well tonight and maybe even buy some sleep too.
    If the girl doesn’t go first and take the money.
    If Else can last out past rush hour and the girl is still there.
    If nobody comes and moves them on.
    Move along
    People don’t want to see it.
    And I don’t want to see it.
    Okay?
    That’s the girl.
    Thank you.
    Some of the other things policemen and policewomen have said to Else over time :
    Is that your stuff? Move it. Or we’ll bin it. Move it. Move. (a man)
    How old are you? You won’t see another year at this rate. You know that, don’t you? It’s not just me saying that. It’s statistics. They die every day, people like you. I’m not making it up. We see it, every day. You just keel over in the street. Don’t you want to see thirty? (a woman)
    You’ve got a home. Everybody’s got somewhere. Go home now, there’s a good girl. (a man)
    Move along now, Else, we can’t have this; you know we can’t. (a woman)
    Ever thought of working for a living? The rest of us have to. We can’t all just loaf around like you. (a woman)
    (whispered) Now I’m telling you straight and I’ll only tell you once. You want a good raping, and you’re for it. You let me see you in here again and you’ll get it. I mean it.