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photo in the Sun and the Mirror and the Evening Mail. Maybe they didn’t put her photo in The Times which you probably read. Anyway she was going to be the model for Parrot, I think they call it The Face, but they only had a few pictures from the photoshoot and they used them all for a bit then found another girl. You might remember her, Lucy Something and she was in all the pictures after Fliss. Black girl .
    Anyway, I expect you know Fliss (Felicity) and I lived apart, but she wrote to me all the time and we was like real mates. Her Mum (Rita) died of cancer and Fliss nursed her on her deathbed, like the good girl she was, but I’m her next of kin, there isn’t anyone else .
    Of course it grieves my heart to accept a legacy that was meant for my darling Fliss (Felicity) but I think she’d like itthat way. We was very close. She told me about her American cousins lots of times .
    Anyway you can contact me at the address above .
    Yours Truly
    Jack Tilly
     
    78 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12. A beautiful number. As if Straker had planned it. Each one an individual, each number irreplaceable. You can’t take any one of them away, because forgetting would be as great a crime as killing.
    At first, they were only numbers. Nameless, anonymous, hammering through his mind, inanimate as nails, kept at bay with other numbers. Twelve years ago, they changed, or he changed. He kept dreaming about them, a crowd of strangers, a turmoil of spinning legs and arms, faces without features. He wanted to know their names, and then the numbers became a list. A silent roll-call that echoed through his mind all day and night. Two years ago, he changed again. He wanted to know who they were.
    He’s found plenty of excuses to contact them. He’s writing a book; he runs a firm that investigates unclaimed inheritance; he’s a journalist researching an article.
    Now when they come into his dreams, chattering, arguing, being ordinary, his mind becomes full of them all, bursting with their problems. They are rich and alive, their thoughts pouring out of them, frantic in their desire not to get lost. Sometimes he can’t cope. His brain isn’t big enough, his shoulders not broad enough. He wants to live their lives for them, carrying on where they left off. But he can’t do it. He hasn’t the strength or the ability.
    The voices stay with him long after he wakes up. He carries them round with him like a tape recorder that switches itself back on when he’s not looking, so their conversations echo through his mind at unexpected moments.
     
    Sangita: ‘Rob Willow was doing a concert in Birmingham. I had to go.’ Her voice is gentle, diffident .
    I have a photograph sent by her mother. Young and sweet, a darker, more demure version of Felicity, in a pink sari with a single gold chain round her neck. A long black plait. ‘Who was Rob Willow?’
    ‘Rob Willow? Who was he? You don’t know?’
    ‘I don’t know anything.’
    ‘Well said, Straker.’
    ‘Thank you, Maggie.’
    Sangita: ‘Rob Willow was gorgeous, the most handsome man in the world.’
    ‘What did you want from him?’
    ‘Want?’ Her voice crumples, uncertain. ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to be near him.’
    So she didn’t know him. She was just a fan .
    ‘What happened to him?’ Her voice is shy, hesitant. ‘Does he still perform?’
    ‘I have no idea.’ I don’t read newspapers, watch the television, listen to the radio. How would I know if he’s still around?
    She’s crying, softly but desperately .
    ‘But he wasn’t real. He was just a distant figure you imagined you knew.’
    The weeping gets stronger, more desperate .
    ‘Shut up, Straker. You’re just making it worse.’
    Maggie, who, as always, knows the right thing to do .
     
    When he wakes, it’s with a painful jolt, as if he’s gone down a step that’s steeper than he expected. He lies, panicking, for a long time, his heart beating aggressively, Sangita’s face in front of