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“What’s in it for you then? What can you expect for saving me?”

“There’s never anything in it for me,” Sean said, at last. “But I feel… I don’t know… some degree of responsibility for you. Perhaps because I feel nothing for myself.”

“You don’t have to use chat-up lines, Sean. But it’s sweet of you to say so. Unfortunately, I don’t share your concern. I can take care of me better than anyone else, and if I get into trouble, that’s my look-out.”

Sean nodded. “I’ll say goodnight then. If you need anything, give me a shout.”

She kissed him on the cheek. He said: “Karen?” But she didn’t reply.

Heading for the sofa, he watched her disappear into his bedroom. He thought: She doesn’t remember me at all

CHAPTER EIGHT: SURVIVAL INSTINCT

WILL WAITED FOR three hours, lurking in a church graveyard and walking the aisles of an all-night supermarket, before he returned. He paused a little way up the street from Cumberland Mansions. At the front of the house, sitting in an ancient, beige Allegro, was a man he had never seen before. He was wearing a thick, tight-fitting blue jumper, and a floppy cricket cap. He was affecting nonchalance, reading a newspaper but regularly flicking his attention to the entry door. Round the back, on the fire escape, he spied a woman in a greatcoat, smoking a cigarette. She moved to flick the stub into a garden, and the grip of a pistol tucked into her waistband pushed its way into view.

These two watching the front and back entrances might be police, but he found himself hanging back, reluctant to approach them. He wondered if they thought he might have killed his wife.

Will returned to the main street. He didn’t know where he could go. What if the news told of a man on the run, capable of violence? How could his friends take him in? His friends were also Cat’s friends; there could be no chance of some sort of skewed loyalty here. Even his closest companions would shop him; it was what he would do in the same position.

He caught a whiff of reefer, heard heavy, fast bass; a Saab parked up a sidestreet contained two teens watching the road. He knew them; they cruised around in their car late into the night, playing hip hop at full blast, or hung around outside coffee bars. Every time they saw his wife, one of them would smile and say: “Not long now, hey?”

The driver wound down the window without looking at Will as he approached.

“Want some blow?” he asked, softly. Now he did look. “Shit. Are you all right?”

Will said, “No. I want you to burgle my house.”

NOW PARKED ACROSS the way from Cumberland Mansions, Will watched from the car as the two kids – Known and Hot Badge – waited for the others they had phoned when Will had promised them it was no set-up and that they could keep what they could carry. All he wanted was a report on how the flat looked, and his coat and his wallet – untouched. Known had said: “Let’s see what we can’t do for you.”

“One more thing,” Will stipulated. “I want a weapon.”

The man in the cricket cap was clearly bothered by the sudden build-up of youths and had risen to his feet while trying to maintain a disaffected air. Known and Hot Badge and their friends, three or four louche boys in denim jackets and baseball caps, ambled across the road and up the steps to the front door. Cricket cap was on his phone once the lock had been sprung. Will huddled in the car, trying not to think too much about what they might find in his flat. The heater roared, coaxing movement back to his frozen joints. He closed his eyes and realised he was shifting into a dream. How could he sleep? But he saw Cat there now, waving to him through the warp and weft of his thoughts. With a slight tremor of fear, as of someone giving up life because of a lack of anything left within it to care about, he succumbed to the depths and followed her.

CHEKE HAD BEEN left in a stone room with a high window and a solid wooden door. A deep bath made of thick, frosted glass awaited her. The water was cold, but she had begun to understand how to alter herself to accommodate for temperature changes. She moved the blanket slightly and looked down at her body.

Already she was losing her hold on her own identity, such as it could be after such a short time – that which mapped out the set of characteristics was being subtly differed and she could feel invisible fingers plucking at her, though mercifully the change was painless. After a while she’d begun to notice it wasn’t restricted to her interior. Her breasts were swelling, the nipples becoming darker, more pronounced. Her hips were growing rounder, her buttocks firmer. Three moist, puckered punctures buttoned her abdomen. A curious fingernail made the punctures shiver and relax, betraying a moist, pink velvety lining within. The woman who had provided her with her first real sustenance did not have anything remotely resembling this formation on her. Absorbing her, feeling her body pulverise under the juices she ejaculated, Cheke had pored over the woman’s face, her interest quickening when death settled and her features relaxed. The woman had a rind of colour to her eyes; a dip at the apex of her top lip; just one set of canine teeth. Subtle differences, but they were fascinating to Cheke, who was coming to grips with the slow play of limbs still apparently discovering their true shape. Her body seemed to be going through a variety of minute alterations. She had spent an hour transfixed by the undulation of her knuckles, which dissolved and reknitted themselves in a new configuration. She couldn’t understand the motive for this mischief in her flesh, but she welcomed the freshness it inspired; the gradual improvement in her movement and thought.

She bathed, baptising this new body of hers. Faces she didn’t know (but seemed maddeningly familiar) loomed in the patterns of oil in the water, inspiring different levels of emotion. Hatred for this tired, ageing man; grief at the appearance of a woman with cataracts in her eyes; desire for a young man disfigured by scars almost beautiful in their symmetry. She realised with disappointment that these phantoms were somebody else’s memories, faces in the fire, tricking her into thinking they bore significance to her own life. She remained alone.

Her hands made their acquaintance with the fresh geography of skin and muscle, the experience both like self-exploration and the touching of another. Still there existed that vestigial tremor at her core – it transmitted itself no matter where her fingers reached.

“Why me?” she whispered.

A car drew up outside. Even before its doors opened she could hear Gleave barking orders.

She stepped from the bath and wrapped herself in a white towelling robe, the activity in her flesh reaching a new level of intensity. Her mouth filled with drool. A key in the lock. Only when the boy was pushed over the threshold did she realise the nature of its energy.

The boy stared at her. Ice cream was slicked across his jaws. His hair sprang up stubbornly at his crown. The door snicked shut.

The boy said, “Mummy?”

“If it makes you happy,” she whispered.

HE WOKE, FRUSTRATED, his heart pounding and his dick hard as a door handle. He had been unable to still Catriona. She had slipped in and out of focus, her words to him garbled, as though coming from a slightly detuned radio. Her smile was genuine enough, her mouth somehow super-real, Technicolor. He had been reaching to kiss her when she sank from view and he was unable to conjure her again.

But this wasn’t the only reason for his revival. The slap of fast-moving footsteps had him blinking and scooting back in his seat as Known and his gang came pounding across the road. Behind them, Cricket cap had got out of the car and was standing uncertainly in the road, alternating his gaze between the heels of the burglars and the flapping entrance door.