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right,’ she said. ‘It’s just one of those things.’
    â€˜Don’t be so bloody soft,’ said Big Sue. ‘Sorry, Poppy, but it makes me sick, that line. Pussyfooting around with psychiatrists. Not their fault. Jesus! I’d teach him a thing or too if I could get hold of him!’
    She meant it, too, for the moment at least. Her big face was a mask of primal anger, the muscles bunched, the dark and usually rather dreamy eyes now hard and glittering.
    â€˜Easy, Sue, easy,’ said Fran.
    â€˜I’d cut their cocks off, then I might feel easy.’
    There were mutters of agreement. Poppy said nothing and felt ashamed, partly at the feebleness of her liberal conscience in not attempting to reason with them, but more because in her heart she knew she didn’t believe that conscience either. She welcomed the distraction of Nell coming down the path, shoving the push-chair with one hand and with Nelson looking bewildered on the other arm. Nell’s face was set.
    â€˜It’s all right,’ said Poppy, ‘he’s gone. He won’t come back. It’s just one of those things.’
    â€˜See you tomorrow,’ said Nell and strode past.
    Slowly the mood of outrage subsided. Those children who had noticed anything strange quickly forgot, and scampered and triked and dug and explored as usual. The girls split into smaller groups. Poppy forced herself back into Floodlight , marked possible courses and made decisions. Later on a policewoman turned up, summoned by the play-leader, George, on the hut telephone, and took statements. Poppy excused herself on the grounds of her poor distance vision and left early.
    The man was waiting for her by the entrance to the park.
    She was almost sure it was the same man. He sat on a bench in the rose garden just inside the gate. His head was bowed aside as he lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of an old one. He had a beard and wore jeans and a dark green, thin sweater. A pale coat, folded to show its tartan lining, lay on the bench beside him. Solitary people often used those benches, and Poppy was already past him before she realised that it might have been him.
    Waiting at the crossing it was natural that she should turn to watch for the stream of cars to stop. Seeing the push-chair they did so almost at once, but not before the man had emerged from the gate and stood on the kerb, his head turned away as he too watched the traffic. She was aware of him threading between the halted cars to her right as she crossed. She felt angry and frightened, but reasonably in control.
    The first thing was to verify that he was in fact following her. Then she must shake him off, or find a policeman, or confront him. Above all she mustn’t lead him back to Janet’s house in Abdale Grove. She walked up the wrong side of Belling Road to the chemist’s, where she bought an unneeded spare toothbrush. Waiting for change she could study the road outside. He’d gone. No, that was him in Frith’s opposite. She walked back down Belling Road, past her usual turn, and swung the push-chair round to back in through the door of Jinja’s Megastore, a perfectly natural manoeuvre apart from the suddenness of the move. The man wasn’t ready. He was still on the opposite pavement and she’d caught him sufficiently by surprise to make him turn his head away and thus collide with an elderly man in a turban who was trudging in the opposite direction bowed down by two carrier bags full of vegetables. Toby was restless by now—shopping didn’t amuse him if he couldn’t do it himself—so she bought him an illicit packet of crisps.
    â€˜There’s a man following us,’ she told Mrs Jinja at the till. ‘That chap with the coat over his arm. Will you take a good look at him, just in case? I’m trying to think how to get rid of him—I don’t want him to know where Toby lives.’
    Mrs Jinja swung her bulk