Teddy mostly did not talk about his looming fate, preferring, as men - especially men of his generation - to believe it ignoble to do so in some way. He carried the unwelcome burden of his thoughts in silent misery. It frightened him, because although he read well throughout his life, he had never been able to make up his mind about anything. Lala, an atheist, had always laughed any time he mentioned a fascination for the numinous, but he was at the same time utterly without faith. He did not know what to believe in, and so believed in nothing. Occasionally, seeking that tenuous reassurance that our lives have mattered, at least in some small way, he confided in Sèdonoudè. ‘I can’t believe it, Don Don,’ Teddy said, ‘I mean, we all know it’s coming someday, but it doesn’t seem real. I mean, I feel alright, apart from the bloody pissing, and they’ve given me something to relieve that. The doctor said I haven’t got long.’ Sèdonoudè sat silently looking at him for what seemed

The Other Letter  The writing on the front of the envelope was barely legible, and Baden presumed that it can have only arrived at his home because the staff at the post office in Big Cidering knew his name and could make out some of the postcode. Baden opened it impatiently. der Jermyi wont to let u no I am finking about you. i sor you on the telly i beleeve in wot you say on the telly and wont to suppot u i am fed up with the way are country is going can u send me sum money i wont tell anyone about what we did in france i promis yors Billy ‘What’s that?’ Jeremy dropped his hand guiltily, crumpling the letter at his side, unconsciously willing it to disappear.‘Oh, nothing. Just a letter from a constituent. Wants more done about beggars in the shopping precinct.’ Eloquentia lost interest and carried on fussing with a vase she had just filled with flowers. She turned it left and right on the marble surface of the French Empire console, searching for its bes

  In the cyber-land he had created for himself, Billy O’Leary was becoming more and more unhinged. His life of transience, of crime, the abuse he had suffered as a child, were an easy reservoir to draw upon. He entered deeper and deeper into a world of the dark side of the web, visiting sites where death was uploaded in real time. Middle Eastern and Mexican head choppers, or imaginative amateurs, tortured and mutilated their victims without conscience. The videos they made travelled fast around the bands of communication, and were watched by young men and women, some of whom, like Billy, were not quite right in the head. They grew inured to suffering the way a tree slowly grows, incrementally, until what was once a seed easily lost upon barren ground, becomes fixed in the most fertile part of it. Solid, immovable, vast, all encompassing, until it covers in shadows the alternative shoots of opportunity. Having won their referendum, the engineering rats were scurrying for power.

  Billy rang the doorbell. The ring sounded loud inside the massive white house, even behind the heavy, pastel pink painted door. Billy had slipped in unobserved - the estate was named Gormwell, and it was surrounded by a low drystone wall - for the sleepy, bucolic fields and villages of Big Cidering were hardly ever troubled by interlopers of any kind. Clearly, Billy had not understood what was expected of him when Bumford had asked him to ‘case the joint’. When Baden opened the door and found a surly, straggly, unkempt rat of a man who he recognised but could not exactly place, he failed to hide his shock. Normally, Baden epitomised what it meant to be nonplussed, but his mouth popped open in an ‘O’ shape, his eyes widened so that the grey-blue irises, surrounded with watery, milky white sclera bulged as the spat word, ‘What!’ forced itself through lips not quite prepared to utter it. Composing himself he continued, outraged, ‘What the bloody devil do you think you a

Death  Dying, is a serious business. There is no room for laughter. Only horrible panic, as all you have in the world finally slips away. There was no room for Lala. She hid herself. In the way an alcoholic, a sex addict, a person suffering from a mental illness, might hide behind the walls of denial until the illness refuses to let itself be ignored, she hid from Teddy’s dying, guiltily and ashamed, because she could not begin to accept the finiteness of mortality. It was far too late anyway for Teddy to fret and worry about who was what and where, or who would dare to care. It was time for fear, which, as it must, affects those devoid of meaning when facing the final outcome of a life’s adventure, to play its cruel, insidious part in the time Teddy had remaining. That, and those casting eyes of regret. Lala had asked him, in one of those beautiful, shared, inebriated moments, when their thoughts rode tandem, ‘Do you have regrets, Teddy, my old Teddy, my tuppen