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Marilyn associated metal with height. The more metal she could carry around on her person, the taller she seemed to feel.
    The pentagram buckle on her belt was something else as well. It was a magical sign, something that might catch the eye of Danny Mann. Marilyn had explained that it was a five-pointed star, the number of destiny. Ellen had shaken her head, it sounded like mumbo-jumbo to her. What Marilyn meant was that Danny Mann was her destiny, just as Jeremy Paxman had been and those other unreachable celebrities and actors she’d attached herself to. The difference with Danny Mann was that he lived in York, only a couple of streets away. The poor man’s life was destined to become a misery if Ellen failed to keep her daughter Marilyn under control.
    The lavatory flushed and Marilyn padded along the landing to her bedroom singing, ‘Danny Boy. The hills, the hills are caw-aw-ling ...’
    I don’t want you getting fixated on him,’ Ellen said when her daughter came into the room.
    ‘And I don’t want you snooping in my bedroom,’ Marilyn said. She threw off her dressing gown and stood m front of the wardrobe. She was pear-shaped with surplus flesh on her thighs, bottom and stomach, but surprisingly pert and firm breasts. Her skin was milky-white, dappled and becoming varicose on the back of her legs.
    Ellen looked away. She wondered what had become of the small girl she had dragged around for all those years, the pretty teenager with the wide eyes. There was something gross and feral and unknown about this woman’s nakedness that seemed to defy any relationship to her.
    ‘All the signs are there, Marilyn.’
    ‘What? What signs? What are you talking about?’
    ‘Jeremy Paxman.’
    ‘That was different. He was married, with kids.’
    ‘And how do you know this magician isn’t married?’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘But you don’t, Marilyn. It’s the same thing. You talk yourself into it. You convince yourself. This is going to I lead to more trouble, I just know it.’
    Marilyn slammed the wardrobe shut, turning to face her mother. Her naked back was reflected in the mirror on the door. ‘He chose me,’ she said. ‘You were there, I you saw it. He chose me last night. How many women were in that theatre? Come on, tell me, how many?’
    ‘I don’t know, love.’
    ‘How many?’ She stamped her foot, a residue of red nail varnish clinging to the nail on her big toe.
    ‘A hundred... five hundred? But it doesn’t mean...’
    ‘A thousand more like, maybe more than that. And out of all of them Danny picked me. He took me on the stage with him. I was a star.’
    ‘Not a star, Marilyn. You see what I mean, how you exaggerate? You have an idea in your head and it gets out of proportion. He needed someone to help with that trick. It doesn’t mean he loves you. It was a card trick.’
    ‘Fuck you, Mother,’ Marilyn said. ‘I know what this is about, you want him for yourself. You’re jealous that he picked me instead of you.’
    ‘I’m going downstairs now,’ Ellen said. ‘We can talk about this later, when you’ve got yourself dressed and when you’ve stopped using profane language.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Marilyn shouted after her. ‘That means I’ve won.’
    Ellen went outside to the back garden and lit up a Benson & Hedges, drawing the smoke and nicotine deep into her lungs. She watched the water from the river creeping over the field towards their house. Every day it drew a little closer. If it didn’t stop raining up in the hills they would find themselves marooned one morning. Life had been a battle for as long as she could remember and looked set on remaining so for as far as she could see into the future.
    There had been a period of calm when Marilyn married a soldier boy and went to live in a house near Fulford Barracks. Soldier boy helped to train dogs in the art of sniffing out bombs. Ellen felt her life had entered a tranquil patch then and had taken herself off to Scotland to live in a