took me under their bingo wings, showed me ’ow to use a fish knife. One afternoon in group, death — which went by the name of bereavement — reared its zombie head, and Genie found herself choking out that. . they’d done an autopsy on Cutty — just like they’d done one on Hughie. They’d cut up Cutty — what a laugh — but Genie wasn’t laughing, she was crying, crying hot salty tears. After the autopsy there hadn’t been a funeral — his body was donated to a teaching hospital by his family. Donated! That wasn’t a laugh either. . basically they just dumped ’im. Genie sobbed on annon, imagining some cack-handed medical student taking a scalpel to Cutty’s razor scars and opening ’em up again. The student not knowing a thing about Cutty — how he could do the Times cryptic crossword in an hour, or that when he hadn’t been too off ’is nut ’e was a decent father — no, for real. Genie cried hot salty tears and shared . . Cutty’s remains. . with the group. His younger brother had come to see her a couple of months after it happened. Their parents were middle-class Glasgow Jews — both psychiatrists. . which was ironical — and they wanted no part of Cutty, alive or dead. The brother was quiet and diffident — he’d looked around him with ill-concealed pity at the chipped and bashed furniture, the carpet off-cuts laid on the rancid floor, and Pippa’s small collection of toys — mostly give-aways with unhappy meals that were kept in a milk crate. He couldn’t see the earwigs that wiggled out from the kitchen waste pipe, or, because it was too early in the year, the flies buzzing in the bathroom, or the cockroaches moseying in from the rubbish chute opposite the front door to infest this house — ’cause I been on the pinball, And I no longer know it all, And they say that you never know when you’re —. Cutty’s younger brother told Genie they’d done an autopsy, and it wasn’t the resounding smack or the screeching coke or the gasping Physeptone or the snorting Tuinal that had silenced Cutty. . at least not directly . . but a well-spoken heart attack talking its way into the flat. Cutty’s magpie body had been. . thieved from me — the medical student who inefficiently hacked him up had probably thought he was only some dumb crim’ or mental defective. — It’s sunny outside. The faecal fetor and acrid bleach of Lincoln House cling to Genie for a moment — then disperse. Everyone she passes as she walks along the road towards the little convenience store on Bow Street wears the same slightly dazed expression: the historic landslide has slid under their features. . making ’em all soft and wonky. Since taking up with the Sylheti women Genie tries not to think of smelly Pakkis running dingy little Pakki shops — but it’s difficult, given that Meria and the others speak as poisonously about Pakkis as they do about Derek Beackon. . and his Nazi slime. It is, they say, a matter of izzat — honour: the war crimes of the past cannot be forgotten or forgiven. This much Genie does understand, because she dimly remembers the pot-bellied kids that George and those other hairies did the fundraiser for in New York. Sporting their cheesecloth smocks and Moroccan burnouses. . who the fuck did they think they were — Guardian angels? — Mars Bars and Kit-Kats, the thousands of tiny stabbings crisps inflict on ready-salted gums. Genie takes the lightweight and light-blue cardboard box from the top shelf and at once feels. . sorta unburdened. Acceptance — nowadays everything is about acceptance. Ibrahim, who runs the shop, looks embarrassed when she puts the Tampax on the counter next to the stack of early-edition Standards with their. . HISTORIC LANDSLIDE! headlines below the faces of the Happy Couple, newly-wedded to power and garlanded by plastic Union Jacks. Mumsie used to say: For an ugly Imperialist warmonger the Brit state does ’ave the prettiest flag . . But then that was Mumsie, who, for a black-hearted cow, had a pretty face. Genie supposes Ibrahim thinks her too old to have this sort of curse — but then what does he know: Pakki boys grow up fumbling in the dark, believing women’s bits are dirty bloody holes, all they want are. . angelic fucking virgins. She smiles: How’re you today, Ibrahim? Yeah, yeah, mustn’t grumble, Genie, mustn’t grumble — new gov’ment, innit, brave new bloody world —. His revolving eyes lock on to the Tampax, he flutters his long eyelashes and blushes. . a pretty sight — ’e’s a pretty boy. She saves him from himself: Gotta felt-tip pen, Ib’ — not a Magic Marker, but nothing too fine either? He says, I’ve just the thing, and tips forward on his stool to rummage under the counter, where he keeps the boxes of phone cards. Genie sees the label curling up from the waist of his jeans, and the thick, black hairs felt-tipped in the dip of his spine. Her eyes go to the rows of Mayfair, Parliament, Park Lane and Rothmans. — The last cigarette she smoked was on the terrace at the treatment centre. It was the one Sunday afternoon she’d had a visitor of her own. She’d made her visitor a piece of toast. . and two for me. A few minutes later she’d made two more for herself — larding them with big mounds of glistening jam from the litre catering tin she had to restrain herself from plunging my hand in, scooping it up and guzzling it down. Sitting on the terrace, dismembering conversation with him — tearing off arms of memory, legs of reminiscence — and watching him fussily anoint the corner of one of his pieces with butter, then a little honey, then tuck it slowly in his mouth, Genie felt the hard ball of undigested bread swell in her own shrivelled stomach. She’d only finished her detox the week before. . and the hunger was fierce. She wanted to eat every-fucking-thing: chew up the genteel old biddies with their Victoria sponge-brains, suck down the Bristolian fuckwits drivelling their newfound dogma of sharing and trust. Her guest sipped his tea, nuzzling his wet lip wetter with the rim of the cup. It was the first fine day in weeks, and they’d had at least this to enjoy: passing clouds . . Genie got out her mingy, crumpled pack of ten Embassy and, brightening, he said, I say, d’you mind if I bum one of your fags? It made perfect sense at the time: why give up all those addictions and hang on to this one. . in many ways the worst of the lot. But by the same token: why let go of all those dull hatreds and hang on to this one. . the sharpest of them all. — But she does hang on to it, and when she walks around Covent Garden she often imagines she sees him — sees him in Great Queen Street, peering at the window of the shop that sells Masonic regalia. Or, if she uses the public toilet in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, when she comes out she sees him again: a tall, stooped figure in a hairy tweed jacket who examines the list of opening times attached to the railing outside the Soane Museum. Why not? If Kins were to come to London. . that’d be the sort of thing he’d do. — Apart from the one devastating remark. . which touched me for the very last time, I wish. . Mumsie had been on her best behaviour, passing out pleases and thank-yous, giving sidelong glances at her Plantation cronies. . to make sure they kept in line. The rain continued to fall — and Genie watched it fall, propped up by the window. She fidgeted with an ivory shoehorn, pressing her eyelids and cheeks with its cold curve, then using it to lift the sodden cloth from her cold neck. Kins came and stood beside her. For a long while he’d had the good sense to say nothing at all — but then he cleared his throat: Harrumph!