Portobello

it they took away? The one they found dead up at the top?'

Mistaking Lance's expression, his eyes staring, his mouth hanging open, for the beginnings of grief, the woman said, 'Not your uncle, dear. He's all right. Just gone to the hospital for a check-up. There was a young chap. We thought it was you.'

Oh, my God, Lance thought. Oh, my God. His sense of the unreality of it all deepened. The air smelt of burning. At his feet lay pools of black water and yellowish foam, and in the foam floated the picture of Jesus holding a lantern. Inside the shell of the house he could see his own bed, a black skeleton laden with black rags, stark against the dirty floral wallpaper. Higher up, what had once been a mattress hung over the edge of the charred and broken floor…

'He wasn't burnt,' the husband said, evidently trying to dispense comfort. 'He died from inhaling smoke. That's what they said.'

'You don't look well yourself. You've gone white as a sheet. You'd better come into our place for a bit. I'll make us a cup of tea.'

Lance couldn't speak. This must be what they meant when they talked about shock. Whatever he may have said about shock in the past, he had never really known it till now, never known its power to numb and deaden. He looked blankly at this couple, these neighbours, as if he had never seen them before, as if their words were no more than the twittering of birds. He looked at the concrete supports of the flyover. Perhaps nothing so overawed him as the sight up there of police notices and the absence of a single moving vehicle. They had closed the carriageway because of the fire.

Dawn was breaking. The eastern sky over Kilburn and Maida Vale had turned a pale and gleaming grey. Without a word to the woman and her husband, he turned and walked away. His feet seemed to move mechanically without his taking thought or even moving them himself. It was automatic, this slow trudging, his mind empty, his steps taking him down the Portobello Road, past the closed shops. His backpack bumped against his spine. An allnight cafe was open, a couple of men inside drinking tea. Another one stood outside smoking. Lance went on, past the Electric Cinema, past the houses painted ice-cream colours, down into Notting Hill Gate. There in a shop doorway, resting his head on a black plastic bag of rubbish, he curled up and fell instantly asleep.

Helping the police with their enquiries brought Uncle Gib a lot of pleasure. It was a new experience for him to find himself, so to speak, on the right side of the law. Neither the detective sergeant nor the detective constable who spoke to him seemed to know anything of his past history. To them he was simply an elderly householder, respectable, innocent, hard done-by, who had suffered the misfortune of having his home destroyed by an arsonist and murderer. By the time they came to interview him at the Perkinses' it was known that the fire had been started deliberately and that its victim was Uncle Gib's Romanian lodger.

The hospital had kept him in only until the afternoon following the fire. They had asked him if there was anyone they should notify and he had told them to phone Reuben and Maybelle Perkins. Within the hour both were at his bedside, overflowing with sympathy while not making any direct offer of accommodation. The first thing Uncle Gib did was borrow Maybelle's mobile, get the nurse to bring him the phone book (Business and Services edition) and call his insurance company. That out of the way and the assessor due to come next morning, he informed the Perkinses that he would be staying with them for the foreseeable future. They had brought him a copy of the Evening Standard in which the fire was the lead story and the rest of their visit passed in speculation as to how the newspaper had got hold of a head and shoulders photograph of Dorian Lupescu. No one mentioned Lance until the police did. Or, rather, until Uncle Gib did when the police talked to him.

'My late wife's great-nephew,' he said in answer to their question about the occupants of the house. 'Lance Platt's his name. There's no knowing where he was. Keeps very late hours, he does.'

'Have you any idea where he is now, Mr Gibson?'

'Not a clue.' Uncle Gib held out his cigarette packet to the two policemen and, when his offer was refused, lit one himself. The worst part of his few hours in hospital had been nicotine deprivation. 'He never tells me where he goes. I took him in out of the kindness of my heart when his mum and dad wouldn't have him no more. That was after he'd broke a woman's jaw he was living in sin with.'

'Can you tell us where he works?'

Uncle Gib laughed, then told them not to make him laugh. 'He's on the benefit, isn't he? What else?'

He gave them Lance's parents' address. They weren't his relatives but Auntie Ivy's. Not knowing Gemma's address or, come to that, her name, he described to them where she lived. They couldn't miss it. All they had to do was follow the graffiti. 'He's got aunts and uncles all over the place,' he said with relish. 'Mates too, the same sort as he is.'

If Maybelle Perkins was dismayed at finding herself saddled with Gilbert Gibson as a non-paying guest, she gave no sign of it. It was many years since he had slept in such a clean well-appointed bedroom, if he ever had, or eaten at such a neat well-laden table. Maybelle made a special journey to the Portobello Road and the Spanish grocer's to buy his favourite chorizo.

The police came back and told him that as a result of 'information received' (from the woman next door but they weren't divulging that) they knew that Lance Platt had said that Uncle Gib's house was 'a disgrace' and 'a shithole' that needed destroying. Did he know anything about that? Uncle Gib disliked his former home being referred to in these terms. It reflected badly on himself and might damage the rosy picture the police had of him. Angrily, he said that Lance was a liar and he personally had heard him say he resented Dorian Lupescu having the top flat because it was superior to his own accommodation.

Only when he had moved in with Gemma, now more than a year ago, had any householders actually welcomed Lance into their home. His parents had turned him out, eventually Gemma had shown him the door, Uncle Gib had taken him in only because having him there was lucrative. So when he had presented himself at his nan's, dirty, unkempt, exhausted, instead of putting her arms round him and promising him supper at the Good King Billy, she unlocked her front door in silence and pushed him in ahead of her. Like most members of a large extended family, particularly those who are employed and in possession of a home, she lived in mild dread of her relatives wanting to move in with her.

A Community Support officer had moved Lance off the Notting Hill Gate shop doorstep at nine in the morning. Five hours' fitful sleep had gone some way to healing the shock he had suffered, though it partially returned as he trudged up Ladbroke Grove, barely noticing the rather grand and elegant police station as he passed it. Who had set fire to the house? Where was Uncle Gib? He shook his head violently in answer to these questions and passers-by thought he was drunk. It took him a while to remember he had money, enough certainly to buy himself breakfast and take transport somewhere.

Working for one's living was so rare in Lance's family that he had forgotten his nan had a job. He waited for her, sitting on the floor outside her flat until she came home. Gaining experience by then of spending time on doorsteps, he ate the coronation chicken sandwich he had bought on the way, drank from the can of Cobra and fell asleep again. It was nearly five when his nan arrived and he had only been inside ten minutes when she sent him out to buy takeaway for their supper. She put a note into his hand. 'Don't lose the receipt,' she said. 'I'll be wanting the change.'

Talking of change, it was a funny thing how people you thought you could rely on became quite different people almost overnight. His nan had been lovely to him that day she'd bought him fish and chips and it was only a couple of weeks ago. But the fact was she'd changed in those ten minutes he was in the flat. She'd changed when he'd told her about Uncle Gib's house and that he'd nowhere to go. It would serve her right if he didn't go back with the Thai green curry but went off and threw himself on the mercy of his mum and dad. Only it wouldn't be a punishment, she'd be pleased. He began to feel very low, sinking down to rock- bottom.

There was only one bedroom and that one was hers. He had to sleep on the sofa. That would have been all right if it had been a soft sofa with proper cushions but hers was covered in shiny and very slippery red leather. At some point in the night he slid off on to the floor. His fall woke him and he could hear his nan and her boyfriend laughing in the bedroom and some old country music from the seventies keening through the wall. In the morning she gave him what she called an ultimatum. He had never heard the word before but he soon knew what it meant.

'You'll have to go, Lance. Dave's thinking of moving in and there's not room for three. You can stay one more night and then you'll have to be on your way.'

As it happened, Lance never had another night on those slithery red cushions. He hardly anticipated it because