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back, intercept her before she got on that damn bus, and say to her, either you go with me or I go with you, right? Makes no difference, as long as we go together. You mustn't go by yourself, you're not fit; I love you. I'll take you home. Too late. He had been running up the hill like a madman in the heat as the bus stormed down. She had not seen him, but he had seen her face at the window, crying into the shawl round her neck. Abandoned by him, haunting him ever since.
    'I didn't go back for her, Mr Burns,' he found himself saying. 'I didn't go back for her soon enough. I should have. She had to come back here because her father had died. I didn't understand.
    We had such plans. I tried to change my mind, but not soon enough. Should have turned back.'
    There was a silence, interrupted by the drumming of fingers on the ruined surface of the desk.
    'Twenty years ago, Mr Evans? Twenty years? It's a bloody lifetime.' Burns' peculiarly black, tufted eyebrows were arched to meet the mess of his hair. Henry's eyes wandered back to the fish in the glass case and he encouraged himself to wonder if beasts that size were swimming in the English Channel, like monsters of the deep. Your mind hops about like a frog, Henry, Francesca had told him once. It hops in a straight line more or less, via a series of sideways jumps. You can't sit on the fence, Henry; you'd never concentrate long enough. As well as thinking about the likely origins of the monster fish in order to distract himself from his own embarrassment, Henry was also wondering if everything Francesca had ever said to him was pertinent and observant, or whether it was the romantic deception of memory which made it seem so. They had laughed, much of the time; he had never since met a woman who made him laugh so much, but she had always seemed so much older than he. She seemed, in retrospect, to have emerged from her adolescence a fully formed woman, whereas he had been a boy.
    Burns lit a cigarette with all the furtive clumsiness of a boy; the smell of it brought Henry back to the present, made him aware he was in an old office space which was either entirely decrepit or deliberately eccentric, and a place where smoking was not only a health hazard but also a fire risk. Burns looked for an ashtray in the chaos of the desk top, failed after a desultory attempt and absentmindedly tapped the ash on the floor. Downstairs, the door banged; the building trembled and settled back to a kind of somnolence.

    'What a shame you aren't looking for a house, Mr Evans,' the lawyer resumed, chattily. 'Then I'd really be able to help. Wills, estates and the transfer of houses, that's basically what we exist to do, especially houses. There's one section of the better-off population do nothing but move house, move house, until finally they die and the fun really starts. Bit of crime, of course. We've got three dozen public houses in this town, plenty of stimulants and unemployment, bound to cause trouble from time to time. If only they'd all go home and take your Viagra, ha ha. Less bloody trouble all round. . .'
    'I don't want a house, and I don't want to make a will,' Henry said.
    The cigarette flew out of Burns' hand, and landed, smouldering on the carpet. A few dozen others must have gone the same way, judging from the marks on the wood to the side of the desk.
    Henry winced, watching as Burns retrieved the cigarette with surprising grace, swooping upon it like a bird of prey, taking a quick, desperate puff and throwing the remnant into the fireplace behind him. Henry craned to see where it had gone, calmer for the pantomime and privately delighted to see the man move. He seemed to consist of overlong legs and arms, with a narrow torso. Burns leaned back in his chair, something Henry did not dare to do, and laced his long fingers together. They disappeared inside the cuffs of the funereally black, suspiciously dusty jacket. The voice was suddenly precise and dry.
    'Of course I know of Francesca