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would visit the cemetery every Sunday. For three years,unless she was away, she had done so, spurred by nagging fear that if she didn’t go once she might never go again. She began to recognise other grave tenders, who like her brought their floral offerings at the same time every week. A pair of twins trailing plaits like thin tails down acid-bright backs made a noon pilgrimage to a plot three down from Jessica. In patent shoes their little feet pattered a rhythm along the paths and they looped arms near the grave, their coats a billow of neon yellow. The plaits were streaked grey, rouge smeared circles on four identical cheeks and Christy guessed the twins were fifty at least. The object of their fluorescent mourning lay beneath a black headstone engraved with ferns. ‘Basil Shelton, R.I.P. February 14 1989.’ He could have been their father; there was no clue beyond the ferns to his age or status. Perhaps he was brother or lover or husband. Ferns did not suggest romance; father was most likely; identical twins didn’t share husbands, and these two looked like spinsters. Christy imagined them living together, brushing one another’s hair a hundred times each morning and evening until it crackled and flew with static before binding it into tight pigtails.
    Beyond them an old man crept towards his wife’s grave, his skin bone tight, refined through the folds of old age into sheer antiquity. Each week he brought a posy from his garden and it took him longer than Christy was ever there for to bend down and place the flowers on the grave. She always smiled at him, even though his soft irises were blank, and her tears welled because his loneliness and dignity were somuch more substantial than he was. He wanted to be dead like his wife.
    The sun appeared for a moment from behind a cloud and rushed across the grass. Christy clasped her hands at the back of her neck, pulling her hair into a hood over her ears as the breeze snapped her dress against her legs and filled Mick’s coat so it bulged across his back. They turned to walk out of the cemetery together; Christy in her shimmering dress with her hair flying leaned towards Mick. His coat embraced her, it covered her like a net catching a leaping fish.
    Mick didn’t take Christy to his house until their sixth date. She got drunk on their fifth date and cried at him the way hysterical women in films cry, all bosoms, teeth and sobs.
    â€˜You know me, you know about me, and I don’t know you. You’ve met my family and seen my mother’s grave and I’ve only met your dog.’
    They were at a table outside a pub on the river and they had been there too long. Behind them the river lazed black and a pair of ducks snapped blunt beaks through a crisp packet. Mick was tense and unshaven, tapping his keys on the table, glancing at his watch, scratching in a manner Christy was convinced he had perfected to annoy her. He didn’t answer or try to soothe her; she glared at him and her eyes smarted again. She marched off to the lavatory to wash herface and compose herself. All evening Mick had been buying her drinks, sighing because she asked for another straight away, and with every drink Christy slumped further from being able to talk to him.
    When she returned a group of girls had settled on the edge of a nearby bench, their backs to the men on the other side of the table. The girls were passing photographs of a recent holiday between them, drumming their heels into the grass, shrieking like peacocks when an incriminating picture reached the top of the pile. Presently they rose and left, brushing out their skirts as they walked away, their summer prints a drift of coral and sea green above long brown legs. Mick watched them go, frowning, his fist a claw around his keys. Christy slewed her chin down on both hands, soft and uncoordinated, her eyes blurring into her hair which she kept rearranging further into chaos. She felt pink and fluffy