helps me with my research will be named in the acknowledgments if they want to be. As for this person, whatever his real name is, I've said all I intend to say about him.
I copy this before I post it, and once I've loosed it I set about sending it to the other newsgroups, almost forty of them. By the time I've finished, my tendons are twitchy with repetition. I shut my eyes while I recompose the next message I outlined at the edge of sleep.
Dear Rufus:
Just wanted to update you. I'm on the Tubby Thackeray trail. He caused a riot at one theatre he played at, and someone died laughing at him somewhere else. I'll be visiting the grandson of the director who made all his films. I may find out more than I can write up by the deadline. Can we solve this, do you think? Oh, and I seem to have attracted some kind of Internet antagonist by putting him right about a Tubby film on the IMDb. Part of the fun of being a writer, I expect.
Yours until the final frame –
Simon
I've shut my eyes in an attempt to recall another task when I hear Natalie emerge from her room. The door swings inwards, and she blinks at me. 'What are you doing in the dark?'
'Trying not to waken anyone who shouldn't be awake.'
'No need to go blind doing it,' she says, surely not because she's suspicious of my activity, and switches on the room light. Beyond my eyelids she asks 'Haven't you been to bed?'
'Hours ago. I thought you knew I was there.'
'Well, I didn't. I'll be back in a minute.' She's at least four times that in the bathroom, but when she returns I still haven't identified the thought she interrupted. 'Do you want coffee?' she says. 'I should put something on before Mark joins us.'
Since she's wearing a robe, she means me. I'd forgotten staying naked so as not to disturb her sleep. I fetch my robe from the bedroom as she fills the percolator. 'Close the door,' she says, and then 'You might want to watch out round the school.'
'Is Mark having trouble? What do I need to sort out?'
'Not Mark. I think some of the parents were talking about you. Were you making a fuss of one of his girlfriends?'
'Me? A fuss? I may have smiled at one. That wasn't illegal last time I looked.'
'I'm only saying you might have taken a little more care when nobody knew who you were.'
'Did you tell these parents you thought it was me?'
'I had to. One of the girls thought you were Mark's father.'
I'm not going to ask how Natalie responded, but I'm provoked to ask 'So how was your day at work?'
'Good fun. Hard work but I enjoyed it.'
'You like it hard, then. Much contact with Nilochas?'
'Who did you say?'
'Sorry if I've mixed him up. Too long at the keyboard. Head full of letters and no sense. Nicholas, that's the man.'
'He's behind the scenes. I don't expect to see much of him,' Natalie says with a smile that's ready to be more of one. 'You aren't jealous, are you, Simon?'
As I open my mouth it stiffens as if a mask has been clamped to my face. I'm struggling to voice my thoughts when Natalie says 'Anyway, how were your parents?'
'Old.'
'You'd expect that, wouldn't you?'
'Older.' Rather than pursue this I say 'We've been asked up for Christmas.'
'Then we'll go, or we could for your birthday. We'll need to spend either Christmas or New Year with my parents.'
'Whichever you like,' I say, although the prospect of either with them makes me nervous.
'Let's see what Mark says.' She pours two coffees and carries them into the room. 'I may as well have my bath,' she says and is taking her Supermum mug to the door when she pauses. 'Was your trip successful otherwise as well?'
'Maybe next time.'
'I'm sure it was still worth the journey,' Natalie says and delivers a swift kiss to convince me before she pads out of the room.
I take a sip and then another from my mug, which is decorated to resemble a spool of unexposed film. I set it down almost hastily enough to spill coffee across the desk. Natalie's last question or the caffeine has booted up my brain, and I've remembered what I couldn't bring to mind: I need to check which newspaper I bought at the fair. The trouble is that the paper isn't on or in the desk. It isn't in the room.
TWENTY-THREE - MISS MOSS
We're nearly at the school when I have a last try. 'I know you were on the stage, but did you really not see me buy the paper?'
'I was looking for you,' says Mark.
'I was at the stall not a hundred yards away.'
'Looking for Tubby.' When this clarifies nothing he adds 'For you, I mean.'
'No need to put that face on every time you mention him.' I wait for his eyes and grin to shrink to reasonable dimensions before I say 'You must have seen what I'd bought when I came on the stage.'
'Some bits of paper and your DVD.'
'All right, I know it's the comic you cared about most.'
I'm not even sure why I brought up our visit to the fair. I had the newspaper, even if neither Natalie nor Mark remembers seeing it. It isn't in the apartment, but Natalie insists that she wouldn't have thrown it away. Could I have lost it on the way home? While I don't like to think so, it seems more reasonable than suspecting her parents. At least I can summarise the newspaper report in my book. Meanwhile I've locked the posters and the DVD and
Parents and their white breaths are gathering outside the schoolyard. More than one parent stares at me longer than I glance at them. Beyond the children dashing about the yard or settling into groups I see the woman with the handbell. 'I'm just coming in for a word, Mark,' I say and squeeze his shoulder as we pass beneath the wrought-iron name. He runs to join his admirers as I make my devious way through the crowd of children.
The little woman is mostly monochrome: black suit and tights and shoes, white blouse, grey hair. Her economically compact face grows neutral but watchful. 'May I help you?' she says.
'You're the head.'
'I'm Miss Moss.'
Her look may be a warning that her name is no occasion for mirth, but it makes my face eager to contradict her. 'That's the head,' I say, and when her raised eyebrows signify her patience 'I'm Mark Halloran's, well, not parent, sadly, not yet anyway. Guardian, would it be? I'm with his mother.'
I don't know whether her doggedly polite expression or my unwieldy face is compelling me to babble, but she doesn't help by asking 'Had you something you wanted to say?'
'I've already said a mouthful. Make that a bunch of them. I'm not just mouthing, am I? Can't you hear me?' Instead of uttering any of this I jabber 'I expect you'll be seeing a lot of that. Today's style of relationships, I mean. I just wanted to establish who I am in case anyone's wondering.'
'And who is that?'
'The way I heard it, some of the parents.' Resentment or sleeplessness makes me add 'If that's what they are, of course.'
'I was asking for your name.'
I release a laugh that seems as uncontrollable as my face. I haven't regained control of my speech when a voice says 'Simon Lester.'
