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too, Jo laughed when something scratched in my thatched roof, probably a bat or some night creature. Jo’s jokey question if my cottage was haunted didn’t help either. I’m thankful my garden’s an obstacle course of weeds and brambles.
    Hiding my nervousness, I became frantically adoring and, I prayed, adorable. That night I really earned survival. I was the world’s most ardent lover. I became a raconteur, the wittiest humourist, sensitive and worshipping. And, it turned out, the most wide-awake sleeper. Not a bloody wink all the dark hours from worry while Jo softly breathed. All right I’m a coward, but that car business . . . Anyway, cowards last longer, even if knackered.
    ‘Lovejoy,’ Jo whispered as the curtain gained its grey dawn rims. ‘I must go. Will you see me tonight?’
    ‘Anything you say, er, darling,’ I said fervently. After all, maybe I owed her my life, having used her as a night shield against the predators. ‘Er, sorry about those, er, marks.’ Her arms wore bruised fingerprints.
    ‘Silly. I’ll come at nine,’ she said mistily. ‘We must talk seriously. About us. And Bob.’
    This sounded bad news. ‘Of course, love,’ I said sincerely.
    Cautiously I saw her off into the palish world. I waited until the milk float clattered along the lane, then, calming in the comparative safety of dawn, I fried some bread for breakfast.
    That evening, ostentatiously carrying no suitcase, I caught Jacko’s rickety lorry into town.
    Once, I saw a famous comedian die – not meaning he got no laughs, but as in death – on the stage. The newspapers trumpeted that he’d ‘gone as he would have wished’. Never. Death is the worst option, and I was going to give it up for Lent. The police would only ballock me if I asked their help because they always do. Flight was the best policy, and where else but to pretty Shona McGunn? And the prospect of that treasure mine of antiques.
    An hour of flitting from alleyway to ginnel in town, from doorway to cranny, and I left the place underneath a friendly driver’s tarpaulin bucketing along the A604. He dropped me off at a Sudbury tavern where I stayed until closing time. I stole a white towel during my sojourn there, and was down on the bypass by midnight among the wind-blown rubbish cutting letters from the towel with a penknife. When held, a passing motorist could see the name FRANCIE quite clearly. Then, soaked to the skin, I crouched miserably in the shelter of the hedge and waited with my improvised sigh. God, I was tired.
    The fairground cavalcade came through three hours after midnight. Clapped out, I creaked erect, and held up my sign against the driving rain. The seventh vehicle was Francie’s. I was among friends.
    ‘Fairs are creatures of habit,’ Francie told me as she drove northwards through worsening weather. Husband Dan was driving the big wagon which carried his Wall of Death sideshow. Little Betty was asleep in a specially made bunk in Francie’s vehicle. She handled it with reflex skill, towing her caravan. Unless there was a hold-up along the Great North Road somewhere, they’d be pitching in Penrith in time to catch the early evening crowds. The fair did the same every year.
    ‘Penrith’s always worth two evenings,’ she explained. ‘We call pitches two-ers, fourers, sixers, according to how many days.’ She’d put the heater full on to dry me out. ‘I guessed you were in trouble, Lovejoy. Dan was all for seeking that saloon car that tried to run you down when I told him. He was mad at me, not taking its number.’
    Not imagination, then. I cheered up. Even a murder risk becomes easier to cope with when you know it’s really there. ‘Look, sunshine. I can’t exactly pay for the ride, but I’m good value. Any ideas how I can fund this excursion?’
    She was a full minute replying. ‘I’ll think of a way, Lovejoy.’
    I took a further minute. ‘Ta, love,’ I said.
    That day I slogged harder than I’d ever done.