Portobello

looked like a flower on a landfill site. Had they dared, the other men would have whistled at her as she came to take her seat opposite him in her pale-pink miniskirt, high black boots and white fur jacket.

'It's not real,' she confided in him. 'I wouldn't wear real fur, not when you know what they do to them poor little animals. How've you been, lover?'

'I'm good,' said Lance, not because he felt well or happy but because this was what he always said when asked this question. 'That Fize know you're here?'

'You must be joking. He'd kill me or get that Ian to do it.'

'Like that, is it? Now, listen, Gemma. I never done that fire.'

'I know that, sweetheart.'

Lance lowered his voice to a whisper. 'I was over in Pembridge Villas in a house.' Now it came to confessing it he found himself increasingly reluctant to state baldly what he had been doing. 'I was – well, I mean, you know, I broke a window and I, you know, got in. I'd been in before, had a look around and ate a chocolate cake.'

Gemma started laughing. 'You what?'

'I ate a chocolate cake and some soup. The old woman what lives there was away on her holidays, I mean the second time. I took some stuff, jewels and stuff, you know, whatever. I come back with the stuff in my backpack and there'd been that fire, only it was all over and her next door and him too was outside, and they said about Uncle Gib was OK and Dorian being dead and they thought it was me…'

'Wait a minute, Lance. You've lost me. You mean, you was breaking into this old lady's place on Pembridge, so you wasn't burning Uncle Gib's house down? Is that what you're saying?'

'Yes,' said Lance simply.

'You'd better tell the fuzz, then.'

'They won't believe me.'

'They will. The lady'll have told them there'd been someone in there and said what was missing and all. Look, lover, you have to tell them. You want to get sent down for murder?'

'I don't know,' said Lance.

'I do. You could go inside for life and that's fifteen years. Maybe the judge'd say -' Gemma put on an accent she would have defined as 'posh' – 'I recommend this evil person serve at least twenty-five years on account of he burnt a house down as well as murdered a poor harmless visitor to our shores. He could, Lance, I'm not kidding.'

'You reckon?'

'Look, if you won't tell them, I will. OK? I'll write them a letter. Now you tell me the number of this house you broke into and the lady's name and the time, right? Maybe I'll tell them about the chocolate cake too. It'll sort of prove it was you.'

* * *

She went up to him, holding out her hands. He took a step backwards, shaking his head. His face seemed to have accumulated enough lines to age him ten years.

'What is it, Gene? What's the matter? Are you ill?'

Again he shook his head. He made a movement with his hand, indicating that she should sit down, the kind of gesture a man might make to a female stranger, courteous, remote. She hesitated, then sat down rather heavily. They faced each other but his gaze faltered and he lowered his head.

'Please say something, Gene.'

'There's only one thing I can say.' There was an undercurrent of despair in his voice. 'I wish things were different but they're not.' He seemed to be searching for words. 'We can't be married,' he said at last. 'I can't marry you, Ella.'

She stared at him, slowly clenching her hands. Her voice came at last, as hoarse as his had been. 'I'm not hearing this.'

He shrugged, his expression hopeless. 'I can't marry you,' he said again.

'I said, I can't believe I'm hearing this.'

'I mean it. I can't marry you.'

'But why?' The two words came out like a cry from the heart.

He avoided answering. 'You can stay here. I mean, you can stay indefinitely, for ever if you like. I'll go to an hotel. I'll do the cancelling of all the – the arrangements. I'll tell everyone what's happened. I'll try to make it as easy for you as I can.'

'You'll try to make the breaking of our engagement easy for me?'

'What else can I say, Ella? I can't marry you, that's all.'

'Don't you love me? You loved me yesterday, you loved me last week.' She put her head in her hands but almost immediately looked up, staring at him. 'Why? Why?' Events of the evening before came back to her. 'It isn't – it can't be – it's not because of those – those things I found?'

The deep flush had returned to his face. He lowered his eyes. She saw a tremor start in his hands.

'It is. It's because I found those sweets. No, this is mad. It's not possible. Is it possible?' His attitude of humility, of a meek yielding to the inevitable, told her that it was. She jumped up, cried out, 'But it doesn't matter, darling. It doesn't matter. I can forget all about it. I'll never mention them again. You can eat the wretched things to your heart's content. I don't care.'

'But I do.' He spoke with quiet finality.

'You can't destroy both our lives because I found out you'd got a harmless habit. For God's sake, it's not as if it was looking at pornography online or stalking women or – oh, I don't know. You can't split us up for that. We love each other.'

'I'm leaving now, Ella. As I said, I'll see to everything.'

He was shaking so much she thought he would fall. She went up to him, trying to touch him.

'Ella, please don't. I have to go.'

She followed him out into the hall. It was as if she felt that so long as she stayed with him, shadowed him, kept close, he would be unable to carry out his threat. Yet she was afraid to touch him. He kept his back turned to her. She walked round to face him again but he turned away once more, took his overcoat out of the cupboard, felt in the pockets, put the coat on. He picked up his briefcase. She put out both hands and clung to his arm but he loosened her grip with his free hand, finger by finger.

'You are making things worse for yourself and for me,' he said in a remote voice.

Opening the front door, he stepped outside without looking back. She followed him down the path but when he let himself out of the gate, stopped and turned away. The front door was swinging in the wind and she had no key with her. She ran back, grabbed her bag with her key in it, and without attempting to find a coat, ran down once more to the gate and the pavement outside. Eugene had disappeared from view.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Until now, his journalistic experience had been confined to answering readers' letters; and when no letters from people with emotional and sexual problems came, to inventing suitably lurid substitutes. But now Uncle Gib was confronting a new challenge, the composition of Reuben Perkins's obituary. He sat in Maybelle's former dining room, now allotted him as a study, at work on the computer the Children of Zebulun had bought him. Its ivory-white keys were already dyed pale yellow from his cigarette smoke and stubs mounted in the pottery fruit dish Maybelle had provided as an ashtray. A life of selfless service and generosity to the community, he had typed, unparalelled single-minded devotion to one and all, regardless of age, sex or creed, when Maybelle came into the room with a cup of tea for him and a black pudding and cheese sandwich.

'How d'you spell 'unparalleled'?' he asked her.

'I don't know, Gilbert. I'm not intellectual like you.' She scrutinised the screen. 'Like you've done it. That looks right.'

Uncle Gib thought it looked wrong. The trouble was he didn't know how. Maybe he'd put 'unrivalled' instead.