New Short Story - You Used To Call Me Toni

You used to call me Toni

...I can't blame anyone but myself for what happened. I mean I could, though it would be pointless really. It has been said enough times, that we have to own our actions, each and every one of us, and so I have to own mine, even though I realise that it will undoubtedly deliver me into the hands of an uncaring legal system that cares not for the whys and wherefores of the situation, only the facts.

The facts are plain enough. The facts are lying inert and lifeless on a cold stainless steel table in the mortuary. One of the facts is his name: Eric Steadman, though that is not always the name I knew him by. In the past he went by several other aliases. They all meant the same to me. Most of the time I would call him Eric and Eric is how he would identify himself to me. After hearing what I have to say you might feel that, in some ways, Eric deserved what happened to him, that he brought it on himself.

Yes, it was true his behaviour was appalling, but he didn't deserve to die that way. No-one does, do they?

When he arrived that afternoon, I believe I was down to my last two customers. The doorbell sounded as he strode in and honestly, I did not initially recognise him. Not at first. He sat down on the couch next to Mr Gilliver and the weird looking student, whose name I seem to have forgotten and appeared to pay me no never-mind. I continued with John Stretton's flat-top and watched him surreptitiously in the mirror.

He did seem familiar, in that way that certain men do. He was tall, square-jawed and had the athletic frame of someone predisposed to manual labour. I wondered if he was a builder or someone who worked outdoors, with their hands. I mention that because he was very healthy-looking, tanned. Perhaps I had seen him nearby, working at a building site, or a garage, or... As I said he did seem kind of familiar.

When I had finished Johnny's trim I showed him the back of his head in the hand mirror. He liked it, he said, and obviously I was more than pleased. Yet, as I replaced the mirror on the hook I noticed that the guy - the last guy who had come in - was staring at me. He had this weird, crooked smile on his face that was more like a sneer than a smile. It completely creeped me out, but I held my tongue. After all, it had been a long day, there was a possibility I had just imagined he was regarding me more peculiarly than others do.

Johnny paid for his cut and left; he tipped me exceptionally well. I turned the 'OPEN - Welcome' sign round on the door after he'd gone so that it was apparent to anyone arriving late for a haircut that we were closed. Then, I swept up the detritus from the heads of my last three customers into a small pile by the sink and invited the student into the chair.

I still can't recall his name. I'm sorry. It might be because of everything that happened afterwards or maybe I don't remember because he never told me what it was, or perhaps I never asked. Anyway, all he wanted was a trim. Nothing special, a bit off the top, a bit off the sides and a square neck. He was done in seven minutes exactly.

How do I know that? Because I could see the clock on the wall above my last customer of the day reflected in the mirror. I could see him too, still watching me, slyly, from time to time over the top of a copy of this month's FHM he was reading. His eyes followed me. It made me very uncomfortable, yet still I said nothing.

The student left then, leaving the seat vacant for Mr Gilliver who only wanted a shave. It was his normal weekend treat.

I like to think he came, religiously, to me every Friday because he was seeing some special lady on Saturdays and Sundays, which was why he liked to be trim and clean shaven. His wife had died some seven years back from ovarian cancer or some other such horrible disease. It was such a shame. He took it really badly at the time.

I always did my best for Mr Gilliver. He had nursed his wife from when she was first diagnosed right up until the day she died. He was devoted to her, but now she was gone, I imagined he felt lonely just like the rest of us do from time to time, perhaps more so. I figured that if he had found someone new to share his life with, God knows he deserved it. That's why I always made sure the razor was sharp and the water was hot and he got the closest shave I could manage.

Afterwards he would smile at himself in the mirror, admiring my handiwork and say, 'Son, you've done a grand job.' He always tipped well too.

When Mr Gilliver left that left just him and me.

He walked over and sat in the chair, his heavy frame causing it to dip slightly, then waited with his hands in his lap for me to attend to him. I put the paper collar around his neck, put the nylon cover over him to prevent any hair from falling onto, or even into his clothes and adjusted the seat with two short pumps on the foot lever, so that I could cut his hair without stooping. It's very important - in my profession there are a lot of barbers with serious back problems because they don't have their clients at the right height. Constantly bending over someone can cause real problems.

I stared at him in the mirror, a vague thread of recognition starting to form in my mind.

"What's it to be sir?" I asked him.

He looked at me as though I was a piece of shit he had picked up on his shoe.

"Take it all off." He said.

That was all he said, but in that instant I remembered him, who he was and where we had met. Sometimes it's like that. Someone says something and there is this element to their voice, some inflection that brings the memories flooding back.

I began shaking, not noticeably, but I was acutely aware. His eyes never left me. They were pale blue, flecked with darker blue or grey. I noticed that one of them was slightly bloodshot, though I couldn't imagine what might have caused it.

I think I might have been lost in thought because he spoke again, this time more impatiently, prompting me to make a start.

"Are we going to do this or not?" He asked me. "I haven't got all fucking night!"

That was how he spoke to me. Me! A customer addressing me as though I was some low-life on a street corner! It was then that I realised exactly who he was and, more importantly, that he hadn't changed. In his mind everything was exactly the same. He imagined that I was the same. He really did; that was why he spoke to me the way he did.

Everything started falling into place.

My head began to spin as fragments of memory that I had purposefully pushed into the furthest reaches of my mind began to reassemble. Faces, places, dates, times, names, all came spinning back towards me, filling my head with unbidden recollection. I remembered him. I remembered his name was Eric.

I am unsure if he noticed that spark of recognition that threatened to engulf me and tear my body apart with the shame and humiliation that had begun to assail me for the second time in my life. Could he see it, I wondered. What was it that he saw reflected of me in that mirror? Because all I could see, was him. Him and that day, which, until he had walked into my shop had mercifully seemed so long ago.

My body convulsed. In the mirror was the sole orchestrator of my shame and terror and degradation. The perpetrator of my anguish. The architect of my suffering. Here was the demon from my past, made manifest in the sun-kissed, rugged form of a stranger with pale blue eyes. They bored into me, searching for something. Another opportunity to whet his sadistic appetite on my naked, broken body?

He stared at me now, eyes full of rage, a cruel smile on his lips, just like before. Exactly like before.

"You don't remember me do you?" He growled. Like a dog. Like a ravenous dog, getting ready to tear it's prey to pieces.

I tried to remain calm. I tried to recall what it was he used to say, the jibes and the taunts, designed to embarrass me, to ridicule me and my desires which I know were different from my peers, yet unworthy of his bile and vitriol. My name is Anthony Shapiro and even back then I knew I was worth more than his sadistic barbs.

"Yes." I replied. "You used to call me Toni..."

I slit his throat from ear to ear.

I can't remember how the razor got in my hand. I recall seeing it hanging limply from my hand though in the mirror, as I watched him thrash around, impotently in the chair.

He tried to get up out of the seat but I had severed his carotid, the major artery into his head and the blood loss was rapid and far too great. It went everywhere. I saw it pumping like a geyser from the gash in his neck. It was a very neat, very deep cut that had not only sliced through his blood vessels, but through his windpipe too.

He gurgled like a student who had been beaten half unconscious because of his sexual orientation and was too weak to rise up against his tormentor.

His eyes were filled with the same fear that might be evident in the eyes of someone who had been bullied and victimised to the point of suicide for being something that they were unable to alter or control.

I watched him become quieter, the rage that had consumed him for most of his life passing from his body until, in death, he looked serene and just like any other of my customers stopping by for a haircut - except, obviously, for the blood...

The Process...Part 1

I have been a writer for longer and with more sustained focus than I have been anything else. Whilst I describe myself as an artist per se, the individual facets that make up the whole are unequal, some even disjointed or fractured.

For example, I have always believed in my disability to paint. I use the word 'disability' openly and honestly. The result of a genetic birth defect which while it does restrict me in much else that I do, my peculiar digital arrangement means that I cannot hold a paint brush in the standard way and need to lean very heavily on whatever material I happen to be painting on.

Early attempts with poster and palette paints were invariably messy and painting in oils was an absolute nightmare. So instead I concentrated on drawing and became proficient at that skill because it didn't matter if I had to rest my hand on the piece I was creating. I never gave up my desire to paint though.

About the same time that I was perfecting my drawing style I became aware of another palette, a palette of words with which it was possible to create a painting not on a canvas but in someone's head.

The concept fascinated me and I began using both words and pictures (to augment my writing). It was very successful but frowned upon by both purist sections of the disciplines I had combined. Eventually I had to bow to pressure and I gave up illustrating my stories. It was a pivotal moment in my life.

For a while both skills ran parallel but something had to give and for a while it was my art. My interest was rekindled later, but by then my ideas, imagination and ability had changed. I still loved the creative freedom that was possible whenever I wielded my pens and pencils, but I could not achieve the length and depth and scope of what I could achieve with words.

I later began illustrating my stories again - book covers - that lent the viewer some kind of idea of what awaited them in the pages of my stories. Artistically I was also becoming interested in photography and this opened up another vast field of creative endeavour.

Like most things I threw myself in head- first, learning as much as I could from others already proficient in the field and, naturally, from my mistakes. Photography gave me the opportunity to be the painter I could never physically hope to be (or so I thought) and my photographs became inspiration for my writing, capturing momentary fragments of existence so that later I could commit them to writing.

The last artistic development I want to share with you, reading the first part of this blog, was accidental and involved my children (a subject I intend to return to in another part of this series of musings) who introduced me to acrylic paints.

The fast drying pigments enabled me to finally paint. I could put my hands all over my work with no problem. It was another skill I had to pick up from scratch and develop through trial and error. I am pleased to say that painting is another string to my bow and yet, despite the pleasure all of my artistic endeavours gave me, none were really comparable to what I felt I could achieve by writing.

It seemed I was always driven to create, by whatever means I found at my disposal and I took up every challenge willingly. I was yet to discover the dual nature of creativity and the price that invariably, has to be paid...

Always at the edges

Time to change the rules...

That is, if there are any rules...

That I haven't already bent, broke or destroyed.

Moving on... Part 2

So... Regardless of the teen vampires, proliferation of graphic tomes, treasure / secret potboilers* and mummy porn (WTF?! Who considered 'mummy porn' to be an accurate description of what are basically Mills & Boon novels with bondage and the words 'fuck' and 'cunt' littered throughout..?) what represents the largest proportion of books by genre in the entire store?

Actually it is hardly surprising... The writing was on the wall some twenty or so years ago but even the most astute publisher could have foreseen the popularity of the crime / thriller market. Certainly, commanding the largest proportion of bookstore space by specific genre is the crime novel and yet strangely some of the greatest historical and literary crime novelists do not not even feature on the shelves of the modern book store.

The bays and bays and bays of books devoted to stalk-and-slash murderers, devious sociopaths and demented serial killers are so full, it defies accurate analysis of the mental state of the market or the average reader. Just what is the zeitgeist here? What do our reading habits actually tell us about the current state of society and our individual fears? (for after all, reading is an individual pastime)

We are running scared, it appears. We have secularised ourselves and in doing so realised that the real monsters lurking in the shadows of our lives, towns and cities are not scaly, or slimy or horned; they are bespectacled and ordinary and called Colin. God cannot save us from the real demons abroad in society. These beasts have no pity, no mercy, no real function except to mutilate, humiliate, eviscerate and destroy and it will take more than a priest these days to stop them... Actually usually a brilliantly gifted detective, behavioural psychologist, forensic scientist or a mixture of all three.

In our ever-advancing technological world it is less than reassuring to realise that there are people who do not conform, will not fit in and who defy everything except the intellectual expertise of someone who understands them. I don't mean someone who understands society, but who understands those that are not of society; those who do not share the norms and mores of the majority. It frightens us, terrifies us; more specifically, it always has.

Shamefully, there are a growing number of writers - desperate, creative souls - who, in order to be accepted by the mainstream flow of both book publisher and book-seller are willing to sacrifice their intellectualism and creativity in order to deliver up something less than adequate to fulfil a need demanded not by the readership but a publisher exploiting the readership. Yet, surely it is the writer who should dictate the terms of that need, not the readership, not the publisher and not the agent.

The storyteller has, historically, always exploited current trends but in doing so always delivered their own unique tale. Trends come and go. Crime is in. Vampires are on the wane. Pseudo-eroticism has been legitimised. Sci-Fi has been hidden away for far too long. True literature has been stifled except in the case where it serves no other purpose than the continuation of grandiose titular awards.

We need to move on. To damn the eyes of the agent. To publish and be damned. To stand or fall by the strength of our narratives and to deliver new feasts for the reader so that they, like the authors may experience something new, something bold and often something altogether more dangerous...

* Treasure / secret potboilers are thriller off-shoots that are so formulaic that readers are often uncertain from the blurb on the back cover whether they have read that particular story before or simply another one that sounds exactly the same. Generally the plots are the the same, i.e.:

Beautiful / handsome / rugged archaeologist / crypto zoologist / historian finds a priceless / unusual / mysterious artefact and finds herself / himself in terrible danger that involves her / him / the fate of the human race and needs to enlist the help of her / his old friend who is ex-SAS / a mercenary / a skilled weapons expert and together they must fight against an unseen foe / a mysterious brotherhood / a shadowy cabal who have sworn to keep the secret safe at any cost, even at the cost of humanity. See Dan Brown wife's book: The DaVinci Code.

Moving on...Part 1

Contemplating the peculiar state of affairs in my local Waterstones, where, from time to time, I do nothing more than assess the market as perceived by this particular retailer; made manifest in the manner in which their shop is laid out.

Apologies to anyone reading this, say, in Wells or Loughborough where their own branch of Waterstones is not as expansive as the one in my own fair city (which is complete with third floor Costa Coffee franchise outlet, don't you know...) but I dare say that any cursory look at even the smaller stores will give an indication of which direction Waterstones anticipates the book market to be headed.

Gone are the genre specific racks of books which made browsing in the old style W.H.Smith stores such a pleasure, but then gone are the publishing houses who turned out genre specific books for genre specific aficionados. I am not saying that such genre sections are missing in Waterstones, far from it, but they just aren't the same...

Best sellers are at the front of the shop, naturally (commercially that makes sense) alongside recommended reads (recommended by whom? Please remember that Richard and Judy are hardly the cornerstone of literary review) and strangest of all a whole bank of e-readers. I kindle you not. What exactly are you trying to tell us Waterstones? That you would rather have some of the market these machines are capturing instead of losing out entirely by only catering for traditionalists? (again it makes absolute, obvious commercial sense)

Where are the classics? Relegated to a side annexe, the last place you would visit upon deciding to leave the shop.

Where are the new writers, the Independant publishers and self-published novels? Right at the back of the store hidden away from everything. Even the counter staff were unable to locate one particular novel I enquired after, but there it was, hidden away at the back of the shop, isolated and unloved. I did at least find it. Yep, fuck you Amazon!

There is a whole bay and six whole shelves dedicated to manga and other types of graphic novels. An indication of the popularity of this form of literature amongst the masses or a warning about the increased level of illiteracy in the Country? At least, mercifully, teen fiction is still well catered for. They are still reading, thank goodness.

Vampires have all but taken over the horror section, with more than a slight edging in by a growing band of werewolves and the odd zombie. Teen vampires - please keep to the teen fiction section. There is no place for budding breasts in tight sweaters on 12-year olds and pubescent blood-letting in the adult section; not with it so close to the erotica section for Christ's sake...It's only a hop, skip and jump away from from full-blown paedophilia.

Two-faced Charlatan

Another year slides in and the murkiness associated with the previous trip round the Sun becomes less prominent with each new day that passes.
My focus is still a little way off but my direction is certain.
2013 here I come.

A true Christmas ghost story

I had begun seeing shadows. Nothing definite; nothing that I could categorically state was 'something', although each sighting was accompanied by a general feeling of ill-ease that left me wondering if I had imagined everything in the first place.

The shadows were confined, at first, to the periphery. I would catch sight of 'it', something, someone glancing off - against - the edge of my field of vision and that was all there was to it. I could never hold these anomalies fully in my line of sight. I was unable to focus fully on them... Try as I might they vanished, or perhaps... I began to question if they were never really there at all...

I should have paid closer attention perhaps, but in the run-up to Christmas amidst all my other business commitments I was happier to concentrate on getting the job done and dusted before both the deadline and the fast approaching Christmas holiday close-down.

The house clearance would pay well, provided I could finish all my chores on schedule. The list might have seemed endless, but in reality was a piece of cake to someone like myself who managed that kind of extreme removal on a semi-permanent basis.

Should I have been concerned about the shadows? Why should I have been when there were much more pressing matters to attend to... Like where I was going to dispose of all the old, 'unfashionable' brown furniture which was a feature of virtually every one of the houses' nine rooms? Like why the living room - the one that connected the kitchen and the lounge - was so cold all of the time?

"It's Winter, what can I say?" The estate agent attempted to placate me. The other rooms in the house were very warm, to the point where I found it uncomfortable to work in them in anything heavier than a T-shirt. Not the living room though. That was like an ice box.

"Just make sure it is clear of furniture and everything else by the 20th of December. We are going to list the property on the 27th and I expect it to be on the market for no more than two days. I want this pile sold by New Years Day, so I am counting on you to do a good job," he stressed.

It was unnecessary. I always did a good job. That was why I didn't need to advertise anymore. It was all word of mouth and repeat business. I was on the books of every estate agent in the city. Business was booming.

I was curious.

"What happened to the previous owners?" I enquired.

"Owner." He corrected me. "An old girl. Lived on her own after her husband died. No family to speak of; at least - no family you would want to speak of - a distant cousin, inherited everything. Our client now. A very lucky beneficiary - the place is worth a hell of a lot of money."

I could tell. The house was stuffed with treasures. The 'unfashionable brown furniture', for example, was Sheraton - not the mass-produced early 20th Century revivalist reproductions - but genuine Sheraton. That kind of furniture was seriously valuable to the right person. I wasn't that kind of person myself, however, I had several customers who were.

It wasn't just the furniture either. The domain was rammed with fine quality porcelain and ceramics, glass, paintings, silver and jewellery. It lay where I imagined it had perhaps always lain, or at least had laid for quite some time. It appeared now to be unappreciated, unwanted and unloved; although I was sure it hadn't always been that way.

The contents spoke of happier times, more opulent times where wealth and it's trappings had been accepted and assimilated into the very fabric of the building; had become part of the lives of those who once lived there. Like the old girl.

"Alice Freemantle. Born, lived, died here. She was married but never had children. The client says she died of a broken heart after her old man passed away."

"Where?"

As I said, I was curious.

"Right there, in the living room. One of the home helps found her in the armchair. Thought she was asleep at first, apparently, but she had been dead for about two days. She was clutching a photograph of her husband in one of her hands. I guess she just slipped away in the chair, in her sleep."

I made a mental note to dispose of the armchair. I never found the photograph; I figured they must have buried her with it, or burned it with her.

The deadline gave me enough time to complete the task to an expected standard, although was a lot to do on my own. Dennis, my assistant was away with his family, skiing, which meant, seeing as I trusted so few people, that I had to do the bulk of the emptying, cleaning and disposal on my own.

I cleared the bedrooms first, then the huge bathroom. All the linen and clothing went to a local drop-in centre. The suites of furniture - identical in each boudoir - comprising of matching 'his' and 'her' wardrobes, dressing table, night stand, bedside cupboards and chest of drawers - went straight to auction. I estimated their value to be around four or five hundred per set.

The jewellery and personal effects went home with me so that I could sort and evaluate them at a later date, at my leisure. I already knew that my haul would put me in the enviable position of not needing to work again for several months. As I say, the house was a gold mine.

After the bedrooms I moved on to other rooms in the house and it wasn't long before I had the job well under control, with the exception of one room.

It was because of the temperature of the room, I initially convinced myself, that I avoided working in the living room. However as the job neared completion I was aware there were other reasons that had forced me to ignore it for almost the entire time I had been working there; ones which I simply wanted to disregard.

The first time I saw it - them - I must admit it startled me. I was carrying a box of bric-a-brac through the room to my van parked on the drive when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It was a shape, soft and pale coloured, low and moving at speed to my right.

I must admit it caused me to catch my breath and stop dead still in the centre of the room. My breath, when it eventually escaped from my open mouth, condensed into a grey plume, rising up into the frigid air and it was that, I convinced myself, I had seen. That thought allowed me to continue, but it was not long before I realised my original assessment of the phenomena was incorrect.

Making coffee in the kitchen the following day, I saw a nebulous shape streak past the open doorframe in the living room. Again, it was nothing definite, yet I was certain what I had seen was human.

I immediately checked the front and back doors in case some inquisitive passer-by, or opportunistic thief, had wandered into the house to check on what was inside or what I was doing there; both were locked. Following up on my hunch, I then checked the entire house from top to bottom, room by room. I was entirely alone.

It unsettled me. Working alone has it benefits, though I generally preferred to get the job done as quickly as possible and move on to the next assignment. Not having Dennis with me, slowed me down, but more than that, it allowed me to dwell unnaturally long on stuff that had begun to to make me feel uneasy around the house.

Chimeric thought took over. I pondered on possibilities, fanciful and ridiculous. I actually considered the possibility of the spirit of Alice still being with me, trapped in the house. It's what happens when there are unexplainable occurrences that you are unable to discuss logically with another level-headed human being. I began whistling to keep myself company.

Had everything stayed the same I may have even shrugged it all off after a few days as nothing more than fantasies created by my overactive imagination, and eventually forgotten the whole episode. However, on the final day something happened that led me to consider, for the first time in my life, the possibility of supernatural occurrence.

It was the 19th of December, the last day before the deadline I'd given to have the house cleared. Despite my best intentions it had become obvious that I would not be able to clear the remnants of the furniture on my own. In particular I knew I would need help to lift and load a particularly large, heavy and cumbersome aubrey located in the living room. That was why I enlisted the help of Matthew.

We had worked together a few times before and apart from his volatile temper, when things went awry, he was perfectly suited to the house clearance business. He had his own van, he was built like a power-lifter and most importantly, he was completely honest. I trusted him implicitly and could rely on him to work alone at packing smalls without ever worrying if he had taken a fancy to anything I might have missed. After Dennis, he was the only person I could have ever considered employing.

It was sad that I could not use him more often and I told him so, but he was grateful for the opportunity and the chance to make a few extra pounds just before Christmas. The other thing about Matthew that made working with him a pleasure was, that apart from when his anger got the better of him, he always seemed to be happy. It made any job seem like so much less of a chore with his buoyant cheerfulness never too far away.

After arriving early to give us plenty of time in case of any unforeseen problems, I unlocked the house and went straight to the kitchen to make us both a cup of tea. Matthew sat at the table. I had just put the kettle on, when there was a knock at the door. I wasn't expecting any visitors and so was a little curious as to who might be outside at such an early hour. It was one of the neighbours, a dour red-faced woman who was, apparently, 'unimpressed' with the manner in which I had kept her and her husband awake the previous evening.

That was perplexing. I hadn't been at the house the previous evening. I'd finished working there at three in the afternoon.

"Impossible!" She snorted. "Who else could it have been? Turning all the lights in the house on and off all night."

I was genuinely puzzled. Perhaps it was the estate agent, I ventured, checking on the progress of the clearance.

She was having none of it. She folded her arms across her chest and warned me that if it happened again she would call the anti-social behaviour hotline and let them or the police deal with it. I tried to reassure her that I hoped to be finished by 4pm at the very latest, but her blood was up. She warned me again and strode off down the drive without looking back.

"Who was that?" Matthew inquired when I returned to the kitchen.

I told him and he shrugged. It transpired, hearing raised voices, that he thought it might have been the agent reiterating the importance of clearing the house on time. He was unconcerned as soon as he learned it was nothing more ominous than a nosey neighbour. So, with that behind us we drank our tea and started to work.

We worked solidly for more than four hours, humping and lifting, packing the remainder of the small - mainly worthless items, such as pegs and pens and keys - into boxes. I remember we stopped around 10.30am for a cup of coffee and carried on. Whilst Matthew was with me I saw nothing out of the ordinary. It appeared that the peripheral shadows preferred solitary visitors to the house, another indication that the whole idea was fanciful.

Once everything was stowed and loaded we commenced a sweep of the house just to make sure that we hadn't missed anything. I believe we had been very thorough. We emptied the kitchen and filled the bin outside the back door with the mugs we had utilised and any others we hadn't. The coffee, the tea bags, the half-empty bag of sugar and tub of powdered milk all went in with the rubbish. As I said, we were very thorough.

Yet, it appeared that we had overlooked one thing. We were securing the items in the back of the van, ready for transit when Matthew remembered that he had put his jacket down in one of the bedrooms. I continued with the task while he went back inside to retrieve his clothing. He appeared a couple of moments later, with something in his hands.

"You've forgotten something." He said as we walked towards the van. He was carrying a brass cornered writing-slope, a key protruding proudly from the lock.

Impossible I thought. Between the pair of us we had scoured the house from top to bottom. There was nothing, not even a scrap of paper left in there. Where had he found it?

"Your nosey neighbour from this morning has just given it to me."

It didn't seem likely. She hadn't passed me on the drive. I glanced at the houses on both sides, hoping to see her returning to one of them. I didn't. I wondered if perhaps there was a short-cut around the back of the property adjoining the houses.

"She gave me a start, to be honest. I walked into the living room and she just was standing there."

I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I took the box from him and asked if she had said anything.

"She just said, 'make sure you take this' and handed me the box."

I must have looked ill because Matthew asked me if I was O.K. I felt sick.

I put the box on the tail-lift of his van and slowly opened the lid. Inside was a packet of neatly addressed envelopes all tied together with a length of thin red silk cord. Each letter bore the name Alice and some were prefixed with the endearments 'darling', 'my lovely' or 'my precious'. Beneath them was a single deckle-edged card, marked in ink in the same hand that read 'my sweet Alice'

I turned it over. It was a photograph.

"Why the fuck would your neighbour give you a picture of herself?" Matthew asked.